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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Holy Roman Empire
+
+Author: James Bryce
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2013 [EBook #44101]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Rowland, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+ Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+ been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+ Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+ BY
+ JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.
+
+ _FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
+ and
+ PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_
+
+
+ THIRD EDITION REVISED
+
+
+ London
+ MACMILLAN AND CO.
+ 1871
+
+
+
+
+ OXFORD:
+ By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,
+ PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
+
+
+The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history
+of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic Empire--Italy during
+the middle ages, Germany from the ninth century to the nineteenth--as
+to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the
+wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have
+almost wholly passed away from the world. Such a description, however,
+would not be intelligible without some account of the great events
+which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has
+therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a
+narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of
+what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the
+political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
+of mediæval Italy. To make the succession of events clearer, a
+Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has been prefixed[1].
+
+The present edition has been carefully revised and corrected
+throughout; and a good many additions have been made to both text and
+notes.
+
+ LINCOLN'S INN,
+ August 11, 1870.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete
+and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve
+as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany and Italy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ Introductory.
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+ The Roman Empire before the Invasion of the Barbarians.
+
+ The Empire in the Second Century 5
+ Obliteration of National distinctions 6
+ Rise of Christianity 10
+ Its Alliance with the State 10
+ Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality 13
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+ The Barbarian Invasions.
+
+ Relations between the Primitive Germans and the Romans 15
+ Their Feelings towards Rome and her Empire 16
+ Belief in its Eternity 20
+ Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire 26
+ Theodoric the Ostrogothic King 27
+ Gradual Dissolution of the Empire 30
+ Permanence of the Roman Religion and the Roman Law 31
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ Restoration of the Empire in the West.
+
+ The Franks 34
+ Italy under Greeks and Lombards 37
+ The Iconoclastic Schism 38
+ Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings 39
+ The Frankish Conquest of Italy 41
+ Adventures and Plans of Pope Leo III 43
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 48
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+ Empire and Policy of Charles.
+
+ Import of the Coronation at Rome 52
+ Accounts given in the Annals of the time 53
+ Question as to the Intentions of Charles 58
+ Legal Effect of the Coronation 62
+ Position of Charles towards the Church 64
+ Towards his German Subjects 67
+ Towards the other Races of Europe 70
+ General View of his Character and Policy 72
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ Carolingian and Italian Emperors.
+
+ Reign of Lewis I 76
+ Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire 78
+ Beginnings of the German Kingdom 79
+ Italian Emperors 80
+ Otto the Saxon King 84
+ Coronation of Otto at Rome 87
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ Theory of the Mediæval Empire.
+
+ The World Monarchy and the World Religion 91
+ Unity of the Christian Church 94
+ Influence of the Doctrine of Realism 97
+ The Popes as heirs to the Roman Monarchy 99
+ Character of the revived Roman Empire 102
+ Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor 104
+ Proofs and Illustrations 109
+ Interpretations of Prophecy 112
+ Two remarkable Pictures 116
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom.
+
+ The German or East Frankish Monarchy 122
+ Feudality in Germany 123
+ Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
+ the Character of the Empire 127
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ Saxon and Franconian Emperors.
+
+ Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome 134
+ Trial and Deposition of Pope John XII 135
+ Position of Otto in Italy 139
+ His European Policy 140
+ Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian 144
+ Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III 146
+ The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II 150
+ The Emperor Henry III 151
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+ Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.
+
+ Origin and Progress of Papal Power 153
+ Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors 155
+ Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII 159
+ Gregory's Ideas 160
+ Concordat of Worms 163
+ General Results of the Contest 164
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+ Frederick and the Papacy 167
+ Revival of the Study of the Roman Law 172
+ Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans 174
+ Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities 175
+ His Policy as German King 178
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ Imperial Titles and Pretensions.
+
+ Territorial Limits of the Empire--Its Claims of Jurisdiction
+ over other Countries 182
+ Hungary 183
+ Poland 184
+ Denmark 184
+ France 185
+ Sweden 185
+ Spain 185
+ England 186
+ Scotland 187
+ Naples and Sicily 188
+ Venice 188
+ The East 189
+ Rivalry of the Teutonic and Byzantine Emperors 191
+ The Four Crowns 193
+ Origin and Meaning of the title 'Holy Empire' 199
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ Fall of the Hohenstaufen.
+
+ Reign of Henry VI 205
+ Contest of Philip and Otto IV 206
+ Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II 207
+ Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy 211
+ The Great Interregnum 212
+ Rudolf of Hapsburg 213
+ Change in the Character of the Empire 214
+ Haughty Demeanour of the Popes 217
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ The Germanic Constitution--the Seven Electors.
+
+ Germany in the Fourteenth Century 222
+ Reign of the Emperor Charles IV 225
+ Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
+ Electoral Body 225
+ The Golden Bull 230
+ Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany 233
+ Results of Charles IV's Policy 236
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ The Empire as an International Power.
+
+ Revival of Learning 240
+ Beginnings of Political Thought 241
+ Desire for an International Power 242
+ Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe 244
+ Illustrations 249
+ Relations of the Empire and the New Learning 251
+ The Men of Letters--Petrarch, Dante 254
+ The Jurists 256
+ Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages: its Causes 258
+ The Emperor Henry VII in Italy 262
+ The _De Monarchia_ of Dante 264
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ The City of Rome in the Middle Ages.
+
+ Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars 273
+ Her Condition in the Dark Ages 274
+ Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century 276
+ Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi 278
+ Social State of Mediæval Rome 280
+ Visits of the Teutonic Emperors 282
+ Revolts against them 284
+ Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome 286
+ Want of Mediæval, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
+ Modern Rome 289
+ Causes of this; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens 291
+ Modern Restorations 292
+ Surviving Features of truly Mediæval Architecture--the
+ Bell-towers 294
+ The Roman Church and the Roman City 296
+ Rome since the Revolution 299
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire.
+
+ Weakness of Germany 302
+ Loss of Imperial Territories 303
+ Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution 307
+ Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs 310
+ The Discovery of America 311
+ The Renaissance and its Effects on the Empire 311
+ Projects of Constitutional Reform 313
+ Changes of Title 316
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ The Reformation and its Effects upon the Empire.
+
+ Accession of Charles V 319
+ His Attitude towards the Reformation 321
+ Issue of his Attempts at Coercion 322
+ Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement 325
+ Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church 327
+ How far it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty 329
+ Its Effect upon the Mediæval Theory of the Empire 332
+ Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe 333
+ Dissensions in Germany 334
+ The Thirty Years' War 335
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline
+ of the Empire.
+
+ Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia 337
+ Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book 339
+ Changes in the Germanic Constitution 340
+ Narrowed Bounds of the Empire 341
+ Condition of Germany after the Peace 342
+ The Balance of Power 345
+ The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy 348
+ The Emperor Charles VII 351
+ The Empire in its last Phase 352
+ Feelings of the German People 354
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ Fall of the Empire.
+
+ The Emperor Francis II 356
+ Napoleon as the Representative of the Carolingians 357
+ The French Empire 360
+ Napoleon's German Policy 361
+ The Confederation of the Rhine 362
+ End of the Empire 363
+ The German Confederation 364
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ Conclusion: General Summary.
+
+ Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome 366
+ Parallel instances: Claims now made to represent the Roman
+ Empire 367
+ Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy 369
+ In how far was the Empire really Roman 374
+ Imperialism: Ancient and Modern 375
+ Essential Principles of the Mediæval Empire 377
+ Influence of the Imperial System in Germany 378
+ The Claim of Modern Austria to represent the Mediæval Empire 381
+ Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe 383
+ Upon Modern Jurisprudence 383
+ Upon the Development of the Ecclesiastical Power 384
+ Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles 388
+ Its Relations, Past and Present, to the Nationalities
+ of Europe 390
+ Conclusion: Difficulties caused by the Nature of the
+ Subject 392
+
+
+ APPENDIX.
+
+ NOTE A.
+ On the Burgundies 395
+
+ NOTE B.
+ On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark
+ and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 398
+
+ NOTE C.
+ On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies 400
+
+ NOTE D.
+ Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome 406
+
+
+ INDEX 407
+
+
+
+
+ DATES OF
+ SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS
+ IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+ B.C.
+
+ Battle of Pharsalia 48
+
+ A.D.
+
+ Council of Nicæa 325
+
+ End of the separate Western Empire 476
+
+ Revolt of the Italians from the Iconoclastic Emperors 728
+
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 800
+
+ End of the Carolingian Empire 888
+
+ Coronation of Otto the Great 962
+
+ Final Union of Italy to the Empire 1014
+
+ Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII 1076
+
+ The First Crusade 1096
+
+ Battle of Legnano 1176
+
+ Death of Frederick II 1250
+
+ League of the three Forest Cantons of Switzerland 1308
+
+ Career of Rienzi 1347-1354
+
+ The Golden Bull 1356
+
+ Council of Constance 1415
+
+ Extinction of the Eastern Empire 1453
+
+ Discovery of America 1492
+
+ Luther at the Diet of Worms 1521
+
+ Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618
+
+ Peace of Westphalia 1648
+
+ Prussia recognized as a Kingdom 1701
+
+ End of the House of Hapsburg 1742
+
+ Seven Years' War 1756-1763
+
+ Peace of Luneville 1801
+
+ Formation of the German Confederation 1815
+
+ Establishment of the North German Confederation 1866
+
+
+
+
+ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
+ OF
+ EMPERORS AND POPES.
+
+
+ A. D. B. C.
+ Augustus. 27
+ A. D.
+ Tiberius. 14
+ Caligula. 37
+ Claudius. 41
+ 42 St. Peter, (according
+ to Jerome).
+ Nero. 54
+ 67 Linus, (according to
+ Jerome, Irenæus,
+ Eusebius).
+ 68 Clement, (according Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
+ to Tertullian and Vespasian. 68
+ Rufinus).
+ 78 Anacletus (?).
+ Titus. 79
+ Domitian. 81
+ 91 Clement, (according
+ to later writers).
+ Nerva. 96
+ Trajan. 98
+ 100 Evaristus (?).
+ 109 Alexander (?).
+ Hadrian. 117
+ 119 Sixtus I.
+ 129 Telesphorus.
+ Antoninus Pius. 138
+ 139 Hyginus.
+ 143 Pius I.
+ 157 Anicetus.
+ Marcus Aurelius. 161
+ 168 Soter.
+ 177 Eleutherius.
+ Commodus. 180
+ Pertinax. 190
+ Didius Julianus. 191
+ Niger. 192
+ 193 Victor (?). Septimius Severus. 193
+ 202 Zephyrinus (?).
+ Caracalla, Geta,
+ Diadumenian. 211
+ Opilius Macrinus. 217
+ Elagabalus. 218
+ 219 Calixtus I.
+ Alexander Severus. 222
+ 223 Urban I.
+ 230 Pontianus.
+ 235 Anterius or Anteros. Maximin. 235
+ 236 Fabianus.
+ The two Gordians, Maximus
+ Pupienus, Balbinus. 237
+ Gordian the Younger. 238
+ Philip. 244
+ Decius. 249
+ 251 Cornelius. Gallus. 251
+ 252 Lucius I. Volusian. 252
+ 253 Stephen I. Æmilian, Valerian,
+ Gallienus. 253
+ 257 Sixtus II.
+ 259 Dionysius.
+ Claudius II. 268
+ 269 Felix.
+ Aurelian. 270
+ 275 Eutychianus. Tacitus. 275
+ Probus. 276
+ Carus. 282
+ 283 Caius.
+ Carinus, Numerian,
+ Diocletian. 284
+ Maximian, joint Emperor
+ with Diocletian. 286
+ 296 Marcellinus. [305(?)
+ 304 Vacancy. Constantius, Galerius. 304(?)
+ Licinius. or 307]
+ 308 Marcellus I. Maximin. 308
+ Constantine, Galerius,
+ Licinius, Maximin,
+ Maxentius, and Maximian
+ reigning jointly. 309
+ 310 Eusebius.
+ 311 Melchiades.
+ 314 Sylvester I.
+ Constantine (the Great)
+ alone. 323
+ 336 Marcus I.
+ 337 Julius I. Constantine II,
+ Constantius II,
+ Constans. 337
+ Magnentius. 350
+ 352 Liberius.
+ Constantius alone. 353
+ 356 Felix (Anti-pope).
+ Julian. 361
+ Jovian. 363
+ Valens and Valentinian I. 364
+ 366 Damasus I.
+ Gratian and Valentinian I. 367
+ Valentinian II and
+ Gratian. 375
+ Theodosius. 379
+ 384 Siricius.
+ Arcadius (in the East),
+ Honorius (in the West). 395
+ 398 Anastasius I.
+ 402 Innocent I.
+ Theodosius II. (E) 408
+ 417 Zosimus.
+ 418 Boniface I.
+ 418 Eulalius (Anti-pope).
+ 422 Celestine I.
+ Valentinian III. (W) 424
+ 432 Sixtus III.
+ 440 Leo I (the Great).
+ Marcian. (E) 450
+ Maximus, Avitus. (W) 455
+ Majorian. (W) 455
+ Leo I. (E) 457
+ 461 Hilarius. Severus. (W) 461
+ Vacancy. (W) 465
+ Anthemius. (W) 467
+ 468 Simplicius.
+ Olybrius. (W) 472
+ Glycerius. (W) 473
+ Julius Nepos. (W) 474
+ Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus
+ (all E.) 474
+ Romulus Augustulus. (W) 475
+ (End of the Western Line
+ in Romulus Augustus. 476)
+ (Henceforth, till A.D. 800,
+ Emperors reigning at
+ 483 Felix III[2]. Constantinople).
+ Anastasius I. 491
+ 492 Gelasius I.
+ 496 Anastasius II.
+ 498 Symmachus.
+ 498 Laurentius (Anti-pope).
+ 514 Hormisdas.
+ Justin I. 518
+ 523 John I.
+ 526 Felix IV.
+ Justinian. 527
+ 530 Boniface II.
+ 530 Dioscorus (Anti-pope).
+ 532 John II.
+ 535 Agapetus I.
+ 536 Silverius.
+ 537 Vigilius.
+ 555 Pelagius I.
+ 560 John III.
+ Justin II. 565
+ 574 Benedict I.
+ 578 Pelagius II. Tiberius II. 578
+ Maurice. 582
+ 590 Gregory I (the Great).
+ Phocas. 602
+ 604 Sabinianus.
+ 607 Boniface III.
+ 607 Boniface IV.
+ Heraclius. 610
+ 615 Deus dedit.
+ 618 Boniface V.
+ 625 Honorius I.
+ 638 Severinus.
+ 640 John IV.
+ Constantine III,
+ Heracleonas,
+ Constans II. 641
+ 642 Theodorus I.
+ 649 Martin I.
+ 654 Eugenius I.
+ 657 Vitalianus.
+ Constantine IV (Pogonatus). 668
+ 672 Adeodatus.
+ 676 Domnus or Donus I.
+ 678 Agatho.
+ 682 Leo II.
+ 683(?) Benedict II.
+ 685 John V. Justinian II. 685
+ 685(?) Conon.
+ 687 Sergius I.
+ 687 Paschal (Anti-pope).
+ 687 Theodorus (Anti-pope).
+ Leontius. 694
+ Tiberius. 697
+ 701 John VI.
+ 705 John VII. Justinian II restored. 705
+ 708 Sisinnius.
+ 708 Constantine.
+ Philippicus Bardanes. 711
+ Anastasius II. 713
+ 715 Gregory II.
+ Theodosius III. 716
+ Leo III (the Isaurian). 718
+ 731 Gregory III.
+ 741 Zacharias. Constantine V
+ (Copronymus). 741
+ 752 Stephen (II).
+ 752 Stephen II (or III).
+ 757 Paul I.
+ 767 Constantine (Anti-pope).
+ 768 Stephen III (IV).
+ 772 Hadrian I.
+ Leo IV. 775
+ Constantine VI. 780
+ 795 Leo III.
+ Deposition of Constantine
+ VI by Irene. 797
+ Charles I (the Great). 800
+ (Following henceforth the
+ new Western line).
+ Lewis I (the Pious). 814
+ 816 Stephen IV.
+ 817 Paschal I.
+ 824 Eugenius II.
+ 827 Valentinus.
+ 827 Gregory IV.
+ Lothar I. 840
+ 844 Sergius II.
+ 847 Leo IV.
+ 855 Benedict III. Lewis II. 855
+ 855 Anastasius (Anti-pope).
+ 858 Nicholas I.
+ 867 Hadrian II.
+ 872 John VIII.
+ Charles II (the Bald). 875
+ Charles III (the Fat). 881
+ 882 Martin II.
+ 884 Hadrian III.
+ 885 Stephen V.
+ 891 Formosus. Guido. 891
+ Lambert. 894
+ 896 Boniface VI. Arnulf. 896
+ 896 Stephen VI.
+ 897 Romanus.
+ 897 Theodore II.
+ 898 John IX.
+ Lewis (the Child).[+] 899
+ 900 Benedict IV.
+ Lewis III (of Provence). 901
+ 903 Leo V.
+ 903 Christopher.
+ 904 Sergius III.
+ 911 Anastasius III.
+ Conrad I.[+] 912(?)
+ 913 Lando.
+ 914 John X.
+ Berengar. 915
+ Henry I (the Fowler).[+] 918
+ 928 Leo VI.
+ 929 Stephen VII.
+ 931 John XI.
+ 936 Leo VII. Otto I (the Great).[+] 936
+ 939 Stephen VIII.
+ 941 Martin III.
+ 946 Agapetus II.
+ 955 John XII.
+ Otto I, crowned at Rome. 962
+ 963 Leo VIII.
+ 964 Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).
+ 965 John XIII.
+ 972 Benedict VI.
+ Otto II. 973
+ 974 Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).
+ 974 Domnus II (?).
+ 974 Benedict VII.
+ 983 John XIV. Otto III 983
+ 985 John XV.
+ 996 Gregory V.
+ 996 John XVI (Anti-pope).
+ 999 Sylvester II.
+ Henry II (the Saint). 1002
+ 1003 John XVII.
+ 1003 John XVIII.
+ 1009 Sergius IV.
+ 1012 Benedict VIII.
+ 1024 John XIX. Conrad II (the Salic). 1024
+ 1033 Benedict IX.
+ Henry III. 1039
+ 1044 Sylvester (Anti-pope).
+ 1045( Gregory VI.
+ 1046 Clement II.
+ 1048 Damasus II.
+ 1048 Leo IX.
+ 1054 Victor II.
+ Henry IV. 1056
+ 1057 Stephen IX.
+ 1058 Benedict X.
+ 1059 Nicholas II.
+ 1061 Alexander II.
+ 1073 Gregory VII (Hildebrand).
+ 1080 (Clement, Anti-pope).
+ 1086 Victor III.
+ 1087 Urban II.
+ 1099 Paschal II.
+ Henry V. 1106
+ 1118 Gelasius II.
+ 1118 Gregory, (Anti-pope).
+ 1119 Calixtus II.
+ 1121 (Celestine, Anti-pope).
+ 1124 Honorius II.
+ Lothar II (the Saxon). 1125
+ 1130 Innocent II.
+ (Anacletus, Anti-pope).
+ 1138 Victor (Anti-pope). [*]Conrad III. 1138
+ 1143 Celestine II.
+ 1144 Lucius II.
+ 1145 Eugenius III.
+ Frederick I (Barbarossa). 1152
+ 1153 Anastasius IV.
+ 1154 Hadrian IV.
+ 1159 Alexander III.
+ 1159 (Victor, Anti-pope).
+ 1164 (Paschal, Anti-pope).
+ 1168 (Calixtus, Anti-pope).
+ 1181 Lucius III.
+ 1185 Urban III.
+ 1187 Gregory VIII.
+ 1187 Clement III.
+ Henry VI. 1190
+ 1191 Celestine III.
+ 1198 Innocent III. [*]Philip, Otto IV
+ (rivals). 1198
+ Otto IV. 1208
+ Frederick II. 1212
+ 1216 Honorius III.
+ 1227 Gregory IX.
+ 1241 Celestine IV.
+ 1241 Vacancy.
+ 1243 Innocent IV.
+ [*]Conrad IV, [*]William,
+ (rivals). 1250
+ 1254 Alexander IV. Interregnum. 1254
+ [*]Richard (earl of
+ Cornwall).
+ [*]Alfonso (king of
+ Castile), (rivals). 1257
+ 1261 Urban IV.
+ 1265 Clement IV.
+ 1269 Vacancy.
+ 1271 Gregory X.
+ [*]Rudolf I (of Hapsburg). 1272
+ 1276 Innocent V.
+ 1276 Hadrian V.
+ 1277 John XX or XXI.
+ 1277 Nicholas I
+ 1281 Martin IV.
+ 1285 Honorius IV.
+ 1289 Nicholas IV.
+ 1292 Vacancy. [*]Adolf (of Nassau). 1292
+ 1294 Celestine V.
+ 1294 Boniface VIII.
+ [*]Albert I. 1298
+ 1303 Benedict XI.
+ 1305 Clement V.
+ Henry VII. 1308
+ 1314 Vacancy. Lewis IV. 1315
+ (Frederick of Austria,
+ rival).
+ 1316 John XXI or XXII.
+ 1334 Benedict XII.
+ 1342 Clement VI.
+ Charles IV. 1347
+ 1352 Innocent VI. (Günther of Schwartzburg,
+ rival).
+ 1362 Urban V.
+ 1370 Gregory XI.
+ 1378 Urban VI,
+ Clement VII [*]Wenzel. 1378
+ (Anti-pope).
+ 1389 Boniface IX.
+ 1394 Benedict (Anti-pope).
+ [*]Rupert. 1400
+ 1404 Innocent VII.
+ 1406 Gregory XII.
+ 1409 Alexander V.
+ 1410 John XXII or Sigismund. 1410
+ XXIII. (Jobst of Moravia, rival).
+
+ 1417 Martin V.
+ 1431 Eugene IV.
+ [*]Albert II. 1438
+ 1439 Felix V (Anti-pope).
+ Frederick III. 1440
+ 1447 Nicholas V.
+ 1455 Calixtus IV.
+ 1458 Pius II.
+ 1464 Paul II.
+ 1471 Sixtus IV.
+ 1484 Innocent VIII.
+ 1493 Alexander VI. [*]Maximilian I. 1493
+ 1503 Pius III.
+ 1503 Julius II.
+ 1513 Leo X.
+ Charles V.[3] 1519
+ 1522 Hadrian VI.
+ 1523 Clement VII.
+ 1534 Paul III.
+ 1550 Julius III.
+ 1555 Marcellus II.
+ 1555 Paul IV.
+ [*]Ferdinand I. 1558
+ 1559 Pius IV.
+ [*]Maximilian II. 1564
+ 1566 Pius V.
+ 1572 Gregory XIII.
+ [*]Rudolf II. 1576
+ 1585 Sixtus V.
+ 1590 Urban VII.
+ 1590 Gregory XIV.
+ 1591 Innocent IX.
+ 1592 Clement VIII.
+ 1604 Leo XI.
+ 1604 Paul V.
+ [*]Matthias. 1612
+ [*]Ferdinand II. 1619
+ 1621 Gregory XV.
+ 1623 Urban VIII.
+ [*]Ferdinand III. 1637
+ 1644 Innocent X.
+ 1655 Alexander VII.
+ [*]Leopold I. 1658
+ 1667 Clement IX.
+ 1670 Clement X.
+ 1676 Innocent XI.
+ 1689 Alexander VIII.
+ 1691 Innocent XII.
+ 1700 Clement XI.
+ [*]Joseph I. 1705
+ [*]Charles VI. 1711
+ 1720 Innocent XIII.
+ 1724 Benedict XIII.
+ 1740 Benedict XIV.
+ [*]Charles VII. 1742
+ [*]Francis I. 1745
+ 1758 Clement XII.
+ [*]Joseph II. 1765
+ 1769 Clement XIII.
+ 1775 Pius VI.
+ [*]Leopold II. 1790
+ [*]Francis II. 1792
+ 1800 Pius VII.
+ Abdication of Francis II. 1806
+ 1823 Leo XII.
+ 1829 Pius VIII.
+ 1831 Gregory XVI.
+ 1846 Pius IX.
+
+[*] Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.
+[+] The names marked with a + are those of German kings who never made any
+claim to the imperial title.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Reckoning the Anti-pope Felix (A.D. 356) as Felix II.
+
+[3] Crowned Emperor, but at Bologna, not at Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the
+Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the
+imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest
+political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so.
+The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the
+Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius
+had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the
+cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through
+eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in
+extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all
+meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the
+old world to the new--nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts
+of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much
+of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into
+the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised
+centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an
+influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It
+is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than
+of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are
+designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and
+brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a
+subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail
+sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy
+with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still
+less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire,
+would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to
+the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth;
+while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt
+to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries
+the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be
+compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining
+so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though
+not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of
+principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as
+an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful
+system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the
+Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be
+briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who
+founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched
+upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on
+the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the
+fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew
+how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to
+revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of
+their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced
+the European commonwealth of nations.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 A.D., when a King of the
+Franks was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, that the
+beginning of the Holy Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there
+is nothing isolated, and just as to explain a modern Act of Parliament
+or a modern conveyance of lands we must go back to the feudal customs
+of the thirteenth century, so among the institutions of the Middle
+Ages there is scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced
+up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic antiquity. Such a mode
+of inquiry is most of all needful in the case of the Holy Empire,
+itself no more than a tradition, a fancied revival of departed
+glories. And thus, in order to make it clear out of what elements the
+imperial system was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the
+antiquities of the Christian Church; to survey the constitution of
+Rome in the days when Rome was no more than the first of the Latin
+cities; nay, to travel back yet further to that Jewish theocratic
+polity whose influence on the minds of the mediæval priesthood was
+necessarily so profound. Practically, however, it may suffice to begin
+by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in the third and
+fourth centuries of the Christian era. We shall then see the old
+Empire with its scheme of absolutism fully matured; we shall mark how
+the new religion, rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by
+embracing and transforming it; and we shall be in a position to
+understand what impression the whole huge fabric of secular and
+ecclesiastical government which Roman and Christian had piled up made
+upon the barbarian tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the
+ancient civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire in the second century.]
+
+[Sidenote: Obliteration of national distinctions.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Capital.]
+
+That ostentation of humility which the subtle policy of Augustus had
+conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was
+gradually dropped by their successors, till despotism became at last
+recognised in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an
+aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an army no longer recruited
+from Italy, the semblance of liberty that yet survived might be swept
+away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the
+provinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial administration had
+originally assumed there, soon reacted on its position in the capital.
+Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish
+senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time
+went on, even this veil was withdrawn; and in the age of Septimius
+Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the
+single centre and source of power and political action. The warlike
+character of the Roman state was preserved in his title of General;
+his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more
+terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his dependence on the
+army, at once the origin and support of all authority. But, as he
+united in himself every function of government, his sovereignty was
+civil as well as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted
+under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity.
+This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the
+necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than
+disaffection. Few troops were quartered through the country: few
+fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed
+Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the
+Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in the profound
+quiet of the Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had
+disappeared. No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that calm, for
+all national distinctions were becoming merged in the idea of a common
+Empire. The gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the
+_coloniæ_, the working of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the
+even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement of
+population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily
+assimilating the various peoples. Emperors who were for the most part
+natives of the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate
+Rome: it was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by
+whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit
+the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul,
+Spain, and Asia. The edict by which Caracalla extended to all natives
+of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship, though prompted by
+no motives of kindness, proved in the end a boon. Annihilating legal
+distinctions, it completed the work which trade and literature and
+toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left,
+so far as we can tell, only two nations still cherishing a national
+feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his religion: the Greek boasted his
+original intellectual superiority. Speculative philosophy lent her aid
+to this general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a
+universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between man and
+man seem insignificant: and by its teachers the idea of
+cosmopolitanism was for the first time proclaimed. Alexandrian
+Neo-Platonism, uniting the tenets of many schools, first bringing the
+mysticism of the East into connection with the logical philosophies of
+Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or controversy for the
+minds of all the world. Yet Rome's commanding position was scarcely
+shaken. Her actual power was indeed confined within narrow limits.
+Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign:
+more rarely still could they control his policy; neither law nor
+custom raised them above other subjects, or accorded to them any
+advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past
+Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress of
+others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had descended to
+the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its
+reward. From her came the laws and the language that had overspread
+the world: at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour:
+she was the head of the Empire and of civilization, and in riches,
+fame, and splendour far outshone as well the cities of that time as
+the fabled glories of Babylon or Persepolis.
+
+[Sidenote: Diocletian and Constantine.]
+
+Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought about this unity,
+when other influences began to threaten it. New foes assailed the
+frontiers; while the loosening of the structure within was shewn by
+the long struggles for power which followed the death or deposition of
+each successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of
+Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in every part of the
+Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no
+allegiance to the possessor of the capital.
+
+The founding of the kingdoms of modern Europe might have been
+anticipated by two hundred years, had the barbarians been bolder, or
+had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough
+to bind up the fragments before they had lost all cohesion, meeting
+altered conditions by new remedies. By dividing and localizing
+authority, he confessed that the weaker heart could no longer make its
+pulsations felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the
+supreme power among four persons, and then sought to give it a
+factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his
+earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became
+more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the
+interposition of a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was
+menaced by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness of
+Milan. Constantine trod in the same path, extending the system of
+titles and functionaries, separating the civil from the military,
+placing counts and dukes along the frontiers and in the cities, making
+the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more
+important, though to a Roman eye degraded by their attachment to the
+monarch's person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain
+of honour. These changes brought little good. Heavier taxation
+depressed the aristocracy[4]: population decreased, agriculture
+withered, serfdom spread: it was found more difficult to raise native
+troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal of the seat of
+power to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life of a part of the Empire,
+shook it as a whole, by making the separation of East and West
+inevitable. By it Rome's self-abnegation that she might Romanize the
+world, was completed; for though the new capital preserved her name,
+and followed her customs and precedents, yet now the imperial sway
+ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did
+the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its
+local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so to speak,
+naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external
+conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the Empire would
+be unaffected by the disasters of the city. And though, after the
+partition of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian, and finally
+settled on the death of Theodosius, the seat of the Western government
+was removed first to Milan and then to Ravenna, neither event
+destroyed Rome's prestige, nor the notion of a single imperial
+nationality common to all her subjects. The Syrian, the Pannonian, the
+Briton, the Spaniard, still called himself a Roman[5].
+
+[Sidenote: Christianity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its alliance with the State.]
+
+For that nationality was now beginning to be supported by a new and
+vigorous power. The Emperors had indeed opposed it as disloyal and
+revolutionary: had more than once put forth their whole strength to
+root it out. But the unity of the Empire, and the ease of
+communication through its parts, had favoured the spread of
+Christianity: persecution had scattered the seeds more widely, had
+forced on it a firm organization, had given it martyr-heroes and a
+history. When Constantine, partly perhaps from a genuine moral
+sympathy, yet doubtless far more in the well-grounded belief that he
+had more to gain from the zealous sympathy of its professors than he
+could lose by the aversion of those who still cultivated a languid
+paganism, took Christianity to be the religion of the Empire, it was
+already a great political force, able, and not more able than willing,
+to repay him by aid and submission. Yet the league was struck in no
+mere mercenary spirit, for the league was inevitable. Of the evils and
+dangers incident to the system then founded, there was as yet no
+experience: of that antagonism between Church and State which to a
+modern appears so natural, there was not even an idea. Among the Jews,
+the State had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion had
+been an integral part of the political constitution, a matter far more
+of national or tribal or family feeling than of personal[6]. Both in
+Israel and at Rome the mingling of religious with civic patriotism had
+been harmonious, giving strength and elasticity to the whole body
+politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible in the Roman
+Empire, for the new faith had already a governing body of her own in
+those rulers and teachers whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of
+sacerdotalism its necessary consequence, was making every day more
+powerful, and marking off more sharply from the mass of the Christian
+people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical organization could not be
+identical with the civil, it became its counterpart. Suddenly called
+from danger and ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her
+inexperience perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied, the
+Church was compelled to frame herself upon the model of the secular
+administration. Where her own machinery was defective, as in the case
+of doctrinal disputes affecting the whole Christian world, she sought
+the interposition of the sovereign; in all else she strove not to sink
+in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system. And just as with
+the extension of the Empire all the independent rights of districts,
+towns, or tribes had disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and
+diversity of individual Christians and local Churches, already
+circumscribed by the frequent struggles against heresy, was finally
+overborne by the idea of one visible catholic Church, uniform in faith
+and ritual; uniform too in her relation to the civil power and the
+increasingly oligarchical character of her government. Thus, under the
+combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, there shaped
+itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops, their
+jurisdiction, although still chiefly spiritual, enforced by the laws
+of the State, their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to
+the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no patriarch yet
+enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy, the head of the Church--so
+far as she could be said to have a head--was virtually the Emperor
+himself. The inchoate right to intermeddle in religious affairs which
+he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus was readily admitted;
+and the clergy, preaching the duty of passive obedience now as it had
+been preached in the days of Nero and Diocletian[7], were well pleased
+to see him preside in councils, issue edicts against heresy, and
+testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal for the advancement of the
+faith and the overthrow of pagan rites. But though the tone of the
+Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions
+wanting which revealed the future that was in store for her. The
+resistance and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society
+could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known
+before: the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before Ambrose the
+Archbishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the
+decrepitude of old institutions, in the barrenness of literature and
+the feebleness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings
+of the people sought more and more to attach themselves; and when in
+the fifth century the horizon grew black with clouds of ruin, those
+who watched with despair or apathy the approach of irresistible foes,
+fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes
+revered.
+
+[Sidenote: It embraces and preserves the imperial idea.]
+
+But that which we are above all concerned to remark here is, that this
+church system, demanding a more rigid uniformity in doctrine and
+organization, making more and more vital the notion of a visible body
+of worshippers united by participation in the same sacraments,
+maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman people
+throughout the world. Christianity as well as civilization became
+conterminous with the Roman Empire[8].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the
+_curiales_ in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when
+there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.
+
+[5] See the eloquent passage of Claudian, _In secundum consulatum
+Stilichonis_, 129, _sqq._, from which the following lines are taken
+(150-60):--
+
+ 'Hæc est in gremio victos quæ sola recepit,
+ Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,
+ Matris, non dominæ, ritu; civesque vocavit
+ Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.
+ Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes
+ Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes:
+ Quod sedem mutare licet: quod cernere Thulen
+ Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus:
+ Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Oronten,
+ Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquam
+ Romanæ ditionis erit.'
+
+[6] In the Roman jurisprudence, _ius sacrum_ is a branch of _ius
+publicum_.
+
+[7] Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de
+religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est
+suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim,
+noster est magis Cæsar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.'--_Apologet._
+cap. 34.
+
+[8] See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, _Contra Donatistas_.
+'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id
+est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus
+Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's _Patrologiæ Cursus completus_.)
+The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of
+the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair,
+as constituting its centre and representing its unity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Barbarians.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admitted to Roman titles and honours.]
+
+Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians of the North descend.
+From the dawn of history they shew as a dim background to the warmth
+and light of the Mediterranean coast, changing little while kingdoms
+rise and fall in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm
+comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes that they are
+known. The Romans never forgot the invasion of Brennus; and their
+fears, renewed by the irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not
+let them rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and the
+Danube removed Italy from immediate danger. A little more perseverance
+under Tiberius, or again under Hadrian, would probably have reduced
+all Germany as far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or
+jealous advice of Augustus[9] was followed, and it was only along the
+frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the Teutonic races.
+Commerce was brisk; Roman envoys penetrated the forests to the courts
+of rude chieftains; adventurous barbarians entered the provinces,
+sometimes to admire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius[10], to
+take service under the Roman flag, and rise to a distinction in the
+legion which some feud denied them at home. This was found even more
+convenient by the hirer than by the employed; till by degrees
+barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most
+effective, part of the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had
+been so composed; the prætorians were generally selected from the
+bravest frontier troops, most of them German; the practice could not
+but increase with the extinction of the free peasantry, the growth of
+villenage, and the effeminacy of all classes. Emperors who were, like
+Maximin, themselves foreigners, encouraged a system by whose means
+they had risen, and whose advantages they knew. After Constantine, the
+barbarians form the majority of the troops; after Theodosius, a Roman
+is the exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the time of
+Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of whom had been settled in
+the provinces; while in the West, Stilicho[11] can oppose Rhodogast
+only by summoning the German auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along
+with this practice there had grown up another, which did still more to
+make the barbarians feel themselves members of the Roman state.
+Whatever the pride of the old republic might assert, the maxim of the
+Empire had always been that birth and race should exclude no subject
+from any post which his abilities deserved. This principle, which had
+removed all obstacles from the path of the Spaniard Trajan, the
+Pannonian Maximin, the Numidian Philip, was afterwards extended to the
+conferring of honour and power on persons who did not even profess to
+have passed through the grades of Roman service, but remained leaders
+of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been soothed by the title of
+Friend of the Roman People; in the third century the insignia of the
+consulship[12] were conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his
+Alemanni entered as an independent body into the service of Rome;
+along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of Laeti, lands
+within the provinces on condition of military service; and the foreign
+aid which the Sarmatian had proffered to Vespasian against his rival,
+and Marcus Aurelius had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius,
+became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire, in civil as
+well as in external strife.
+
+Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken down--Romans admitting
+barbarians to rank and office, barbarians catching something of the
+manners and culture of their neighbours. And thus when the final
+movement came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves
+through the provinces, they entered not as savage strangers, but as
+colonists knowing something of the system into which they came, and
+not unwilling to be considered its members; despising the degenerate
+provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of
+respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries
+confronted and instructed them.
+
+[Sidenote: Their feelings towards the Roman Empire.]
+
+Great during all these ages, but greatest when they were actually
+traversing and settling in the Empire, must have been the impression
+which its elaborate machinery of government and mature civilization
+made upon the minds of the Northern invaders. With arms whose
+fabrication they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in the
+forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns whose busy
+workshops, marts stored with the productions of distant countries, and
+palaces rich in monuments of art, equally roused their wonder. To the
+beauty of statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the
+rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles with which vanity
+or devotion, or the passion for amusement, had adorned Milan and
+Verona, Arles, Treves, and Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as
+they gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial of
+Christianity, most unlike their own rude sacrifices. The exclamation
+of the Goth Athanaric, when led into the market-place of
+Constantinople, may stand for the feelings of his nation: 'Without
+doubt the Emperor is a God upon earth, and he who attacks him is
+guilty of his own blood[13].'
+
+[Sidenote: Their desire to preserve its institutions.]
+
+The social and political system, with its cultivated language and
+literature, into which they came, would impress fewer of the
+conquerors, but by those few would be admired beyond all else. Its
+regular organization supplied what they most needed and could least
+construct for themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among
+them were the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol Attila
+excepted, there is among these terrible hosts no destroyer; the wish
+of each leader is to maintain the existing order, to spare life, to
+respect every work of skill and labour, above all to perpetuate the
+methods of Roman administration, and rule the people as the deputy or
+successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him were the highest
+honours they knew: they were also the only means of acquiring
+something like a legal claim to the obedience of the subject, and of
+turning a patriarchal or military chieftainship into the regular sway
+of an hereditary monarch. Civilis had long since endeavoured to govern
+his Batavians as a Roman general[14]. Alaric became master-general of
+the armies of Illyricum. Clovis exulted in the consulship; his son
+Theodebert received Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as
+the gift of Justinian. Sigismund the Burgundian king, created count
+and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius, professed the deepest
+gratitude and the firmest faith to that Eastern court which was
+absolutely powerless to help or to hurt him. 'My people is yours,' he
+writes, 'and to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the
+hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us account those the
+highest honours which your military titles convey; we have always
+preferred what an Emperor gave to all that our ancestors could
+bequeath. In ruling our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants:
+you, whose divinely-appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose blessed
+beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant Gaul, employ us to
+administer the remoter regions of your Empire: your world is our
+fatherland[15].' A contemporary historian has recorded the remarkable
+disclosure of his own thoughts and purposes, made by one of the ablest
+of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the brother-in-law
+and successor of Alaric. 'It was at first my wish to destroy the Roman
+name, and erect in its place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the
+place and the powers of Cæsar Augustus. But when experience taught me
+that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not suffer them to
+live beneath the sway of law, and that the abolition of the
+institutions on which the state rested would involve the ruin of the
+state itself, I chose the glory of renewing and maintaining by Gothic
+strength the fame of Rome, desiring to go down to posterity as the
+restorer of that Roman power which it was beyond my power to replace.
+Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace[16].'
+
+Historians have remarked how valuable must have been the skill of
+Roman officials to princes who from leaders of tribes were become
+rulers of wide lands; and in particular how indispensable the aid of
+the Christian bishops, the intellectual aristocracy of their new
+subjects, whose advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate
+the vanquished. Not only is this true; it is but a small part of the
+truth; one form of that manifold and overpowering influence which the
+old system exercised over its foes not less than its own children. For
+it is hardly too much to say that the thought of antagonism to the
+Empire and the wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the
+barbarians[17]. The conception of that Empire was too universal, too
+august, too enduring. It was everywhere around them, and they could
+remember no time when it had not been so. It had no association of
+people or place whose fall could seem to involve that of the whole
+fabric; it had that connection with the Christian Church which made it
+all-embracing and venerable.
+
+[Sidenote: The belief in its eternity.]
+
+There were especially two ideas whereon it rested, and from which it
+obtained a peculiar strength and a peculiar direction. The one was the
+belief that as the dominion of Rome was universal, so must it be
+eternal. Nothing like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander
+had lasted a short lifetime; and within its wide compass were included
+many arid wastes, and many tracts where none but the roving savage had
+ever set foot. That of the Italian city had for fourteen generations
+embraced all the most wealthy and populous regions of the civilized
+world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep that they
+seemed destined to last for ever. If Rome moved slowly for a time, her
+foot was always planted firmly: the ease and swiftness of her later
+conquests proved the solidity of the earlier; and to her, more justly
+than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian historian be
+applied: that she advanced farthest in prosperity, and in adversity
+drew back the least. From the end of the republican period her poets,
+her orators, her jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of
+world-dominion, and confidently predict its eternity[18]. The proud
+belief of his countrymen which Virgil had expressed--
+
+ 'His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono:
+ Imperium sine fine dedi'--
+
+was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for the
+persecuting power whose fall would bring Antichrist upon earth.
+Lactantius writes: 'When Rome the head of the world shall have fallen,
+who can doubt that the end is come of human things, aye, of the earth
+itself. She, she alone is the state by which all things are upheld
+even until now; wherefore let us make prayers and supplications to the
+God of heaven, if indeed his decrees and his purposes can be delayed,
+that that hateful tyrant come not sooner than we look for, he for whom
+are reserved fearful deeds, who shall pluck out that eye in whose
+extinction the world itself shall perish[19].' With the triumph of
+Christianity this belief had found a new basis. For as the Empire had
+decayed, the Church had grown stronger; and now while the one,
+trembling at the approach of the destroyer, saw province after
+province torn away, the other, rising in stately youth, prepared to
+fill her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to adopt and
+sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a universal and unending
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Sanctity of the imperial name.]
+
+The second chief element in this conception was the association of
+such a state with one irresponsible governor, the Emperor. The hatred
+to the name of King, which their earliest political struggles had left
+in the Romans, by obliging their ruler to take a new and strange
+title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of the world. To
+the provincials especially he became an awful impersonation of the
+great machine of government which moved above and around them. It was
+not merely that he was, like a modern king, the centre of power and
+the dispenser of honour: his pre-eminence, broken by no comparison
+with other princes, by the ascending ranks of no aristocracy, had in
+it something almost supernatural. The right of legislation had become
+vested in him alone: the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the
+senate, and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three
+centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions; his domestic council,
+the consistory, was the supreme court of appeal; his interposition,
+like that of some terrestrial Providence, was invoked, and legally
+provided so to be, to reverse or overleap the ordinary rules of
+law[20]. From the time of Julius and Augustus his person had been
+hallowed by the office of chief pontiff[21] and the tribunician power;
+to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths[22];
+his effigy was sacred[23], even on a coin; to him or to his Genius
+temples were erected and divine honours paid while he lived[24]; and
+when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of
+Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration[25]. In the
+confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was
+the only worship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore
+that usually proposed as a test to the Christians on their trial.
+Under the new religion the form of adoration vanished, the sentiment
+of reverence remained: the right to control Church as well as State,
+admitted at Nicæa, and habitually exercised by the sovereigns of
+Constantinople, made the Emperor hardly less essential to the new
+conception of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had been to the
+military despotism of old. These considerations explain why the men of
+the fifth century, clinging to preconceived ideas, refused to believe
+in that dissolution of the Empire which they saw with their own eyes.
+Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the slowness of
+the change and its external aspect, as well as in the fortunes of the
+capital, something to favour the illusion. The Roman name was shared
+by every subject; the Roman city was no longer the seat of government,
+nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power, for the maxim was
+now accepted, Where the Emperor is, there is Rome[26]. But her
+continued existence, not permanently occupied by any conqueror,
+striking the nations with an awe which the history or the external
+splendours of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna could nowise inspire,
+was an ever new assertion of the endurance of the Roman race and
+dominion. Dishonoured and defenceless, the spell of her name was still
+strong enough to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The
+irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or revenge, not
+of destruction: the Hun turned back from Aquileia with a vague fear
+upon him: the Ostrogoth adorned and protected his splendid prize.
+
+[Sidenote: Last days of the Western Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its extinction by Odoacer, A.D. 476.]
+
+In the history of the last days of the Western Empire, two points
+deserve special remark: its continued union with the Eastern branch,
+and the way in which its ideal dignity was respected while its
+representatives were despised. After Stilicho's death, and Alaric's
+invasion, its fall was a question of time. While one by one the
+provinces were abandoned by the central government, left either to be
+occupied by invading tribes or to maintain a precarious independence,
+like Britain and Armorica[27], by means of municipal unions, Italy lay
+at the mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by their
+leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might have seemed to reign
+by hereditary right, but after their extinction in Valentinian III
+each phantom Emperor--Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Anthemius,
+Olybrius--received the purple from the haughty Ricimer, general of the
+troops, only to be stripped of it when he presumed to forget his
+dependence. Though the division between Arcadius and Honorius had
+definitely severed the two realms for administrative purposes, they
+were still supposed to constitute a single Empire, and the rulers of
+the East interfered more than once to raise to the Western throne
+princes they could not protect upon it. Ricimer's insolence quailed
+before the shadowy grandeur of the imperial title: his ambition, and
+Gundobald his successor's, were bounded by the name of patrician. The
+bolder genius of Odoacer[28], general of the barbarian auxiliaries,
+resolved to abolish an empty pageant, and extinguish the title and
+office of Emperor of the West. Yet over him too the spell had power;
+and as the Gaulish warrior had gazed on the silent majesty of the
+senate in a deserted city, so the Herulian revered the power before
+which the world had bowed, and though there was no force to check or
+to affright him, shrank from grasping in his own barbarian hand the
+sceptre of the Cæsars. When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus,
+the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Cæsar of
+Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a
+deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the
+insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West,
+they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch
+sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and
+courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was
+entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of
+the Italian provinces[29]. The Emperor granted what he could not
+refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King[30], continued the
+consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions
+of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of
+the Eastern Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction of the
+Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form,
+and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to
+their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that
+Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The
+joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further
+by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I and again at the death of
+Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway
+the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church[31].
+To those who lived at the time, this year (476 A.D.) was no such epoch
+as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men's minds
+commensurate with the real significance of the event. For though it
+did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its
+consequences were from the first great. It hastened the development of
+a Latin as opposed to Greek and Oriental forms of Christianity: it
+emancipated the Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and
+government of the Teutonic rulers of the West. But the importance of
+remembering its formal aspect to those who witnessed it will be felt
+as we approach the era when the Empire was revived by Charles the
+Frank.
+
+[Sidenote: Odoacer.]
+
+[Sidenote: Theodoric.]
+
+[Sidenote: Italy reconquered, by Justinian.]
+
+Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than those of his
+neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But the mercenary _fœderati_
+who supported it were a loose swarm of predatory tribes: themselves
+without cohesion, they could take no firm root in Italy. During the
+eighteen years of his reign no progress seems to have been made
+towards the re-organization of society; and the first real attempt to
+blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the
+hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous
+chieftain, the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the
+forerunner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
+The aim of his reign, though he professed allegiance to the Eastern
+court which had favoured his invasion[32], was the establishment of a
+national monarchy in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of
+Byzantium, he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and
+cultivated society and the principles by which it must be maintained;
+called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief over the plains of
+the Danube, he acquired along with the arts of command a sense of the
+superiority of his own people in valour and energy and truth. When the
+defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at his mercy, he
+sought no further conquest, easy as it would have been to tear away
+new provinces from the Eastern realm, but strove only to preserve and
+strengthen the ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying
+institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering the
+military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate by indulgence and
+gradually raise to the level of their masters the degenerate
+population of Italy. The Gothic nation appears from the first less
+cruel in war and more prudent in council than any of their Germanic
+brethren[33]: all that was most noble among them shone forth now in
+the rule of the greatest of the Amali. From his palace at Verona[34],
+commemorated in the song of the Nibelungs, he issued equal laws for
+Roman and Goth, and bade the intruder, if he must occupy part of the
+lands, at least respect the goods and the person of his
+fellow-subject. Jurisprudence and administration remained in native
+hands: two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other by the
+Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient state; and while
+agriculture and the arts revived in the provinces, Rome herself
+celebrated the visits of a master who provided for the wants of her
+people and preserved with care the monuments of her former splendour.
+With peace and plenty men's minds took hope, and the study of letters
+revived. The last gleam of classical literature gilds the reign of the
+barbarian. By the consolidation of the two races under one wise
+government, Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom
+and degradation. It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but
+toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox subjects:
+the Arian Goths were and remained strangers and enemies among the
+Catholic Italians. Scarcely had the sceptre passed from the hands of
+Theodoric to his unworthy offspring, when Justinian, who had viewed
+with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant, determined to
+assert his dormant rights over Italy; its people welcomed Belisarius
+as a deliverer, and in the struggle that followed the race and name of
+the Ostrogoths perished for ever. Thus again reunited in fact, as it
+had been all the while united in name, to the Roman Empire, the
+peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms, and obeyed the
+exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the Byzantine court, till the arrival of
+the Lombards in A.D. 568 drove him from some districts, and left him
+only a feeble authority in the rest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Transalpine provinces.]
+
+Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population had now ceased to seek
+help from the Eastern court, the Empire's rights still subsisted in
+theory, and were never legally extinguished. As has been said, they
+were admitted by the conquerors themselves: by Athaulf, when he
+reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and recovered Spain
+from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient masters; by the Visigothic
+kings of Spain, when they permitted the Mediterranean cities to send
+tribute to Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of
+the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities, had been
+overpowered or absorbed, he received with delight from the Eastern
+emperor Anastasius the grant of a Roman dignity to confirm his
+possession. Arrayed like a Fabius or Valerius in the consul's
+embroidered robe, the Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of
+Tours, while the shout of the provincials hailed him Augustus[35].
+They already obeyed him, but his power was now legalised in their
+eyes, and it was not without a melancholy pride that they saw the
+terrible conqueror himself yield to the spell of the Roman name, and
+do homage to the enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign[36].
+
+[Sidenote: Lingering influences of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Religion.]
+
+Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot by degrees their original
+unity. As in the breaking up of the old society, which we trace from
+the sixth to the eighth century, rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as
+language and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic
+settlers, as men's thoughts and hopes and interests were narrowed by
+isolation from their fellows, as the organization of the Roman
+province and the Germanic tribe alike dissolved into a chaos whence
+the new order began to shape itself, dimly and doubtfully as yet, the
+memory of the old Empire, its symmetry, its sway, its civilization,
+must needs wane and fade. It might have perished altogether but for
+the two enduring witnesses Rome had left--her Church and her Law. The
+barbarians had at first associated Christianity with the Romans from
+whom they learned it: the Romans had used it as their only bulwark
+against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders of the
+people, and the necessary councillors of the king. Their power grew
+with the extinction of civil government and the spread of
+superstition; and when the Frank found it too valuable to be abandoned
+to the vanquished people, he insensibly acquired the feelings and
+policy of the order he entered.
+
+[Sidenote: Jurisprudence.]
+
+As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms which the
+conquerors had founded themselves began to dissolve, the Church clung
+more closely to her unity of faith and discipline, the common bond of
+all Christian men. That unity must have a centre, that centre was
+Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs extended her influence
+(the sanctity and the writings of Gregory the Great were famous
+through all the West): never occupied by barbarians, she retained her
+peculiar character and customs, and laid the foundations of a power
+over men's souls more durable than that which she had lost over their
+bodies[37]. Only second in importance to this influence was that which
+was exercised by the permanence of the old law, and of its creature
+the municipality. The barbarian invaders retained the customs of their
+ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people, as we see them
+in the Salic law or in the ordinances of Ina and Alfred. But the
+subject population and the clergy continued to be governed by that
+elaborate system which the genius and labour of many generations had
+raised to be the most lasting monument of Roman greatness.
+
+The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and Southern Gaul, nor
+was it utterly forgotten even in the North, in Britain, on the borders
+of Germany. Revised editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the
+Visigothic and Burgundian princes. For some centuries it was the
+patrimony of the subject population everywhere, and in Aquitaine and
+Italy has outlived feudalism. The presumption in later times was that
+all men were to be judged by it who could not be proved to be subject
+to some other[38]. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety
+and precision, all recalled the strong and refined society which had
+produced it. Other motives, as well as those of kindness to their
+subjects, made the new kings favour it; for it exalted their
+prerogative, and the submission enjoined by it on one class of their
+subjects soon came to be demanded from the other, by their own laws
+the equals of the prince. Considering attentively how many of the old
+institutions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings of that
+time, as they are faintly preserved in its scanty records, it seems
+hardly too much to say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire
+still existed in the West: existed in men's minds as a power weakened,
+delegated, suspended, but not destroyed.
+
+It is easy for those who read the history of an age in the light of
+those that followed it, to perceive that in this men erred; that the
+tendency of events was wholly different; that society had entered on a
+new phase, wherein every change did more to localize authority and
+strengthen the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic.
+We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise for the
+distant future, had already begun to shew themselves: they--with no
+type of power or beauty, but that which had filled the imagination of
+their forefathers, and now loomed on them grander than ever through
+the mist of centuries--mistook, as it has been said of Rienzi in later
+days, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the renewal of its
+strength. Events were at hand by which these hopes seemed destined to
+be gratified.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] 'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.'--Tac.
+_Ann._ i. 2.
+
+[10] Tac. _Ann._ ii. 9.
+
+[11] Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself a
+Vandal by extraction.
+
+[12] Of course not the consulship itself, but the _ornamenta
+consularia_.
+
+[13] Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 28.
+
+[14] Tac. _Hist._ i. and iv.
+
+[15] 'Vester quidem est populus meus sed me plus servire vobis quam
+illi præesse delectat. Traxit istud a proavis generis mei apud vos
+decessoresque vestros semper animo Romana devotio, ut illa nobis magis
+claritas putaretur, quam vestra per militiæ titulos porrigeret
+celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus meis semper magis ambitum est quod a
+principibus sumerent quam quod a patribus attulissent. Cumque gentem
+nostram videamur regere, non aliud nos quam milites vestros credimus
+ordinari.... Per nos administratis remotarum spatia regionum: patria
+nostra vester orbis est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen orientis, et radius
+qui illis partibus oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem vobis
+divinitus præstitam obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum
+terminis diffusio felicium sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
+honore sit dictum.'--Letter printed among the works of Avitus, Bishop
+of Vienne. (Migne's _Patrologia_, vol. lix. p. 285.)
+
+This letter, as its style shews, is the composition not of Sigismund
+himself, but of Avitus, writing on Sigismund's behalf. But this makes
+it scarcely less valuable evidence of the feelings of the time.
+
+[16] 'Referre solitus est (_sc._ Ataulphus) se in primis ardenter
+inhiasse: ut obliterato Romanorum nomine Romanum omne solum Gothorum
+imperium et faceret et vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia
+quod Romania fuisset; fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod quondam Cæsar
+Augustus. At ubi multa experientia probavisset, neque Gothos ullo modo
+parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem, neque reipublicæ
+interdici leges oportere sine quibus respublica non est respublica;
+elegisse se saltem, ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum
+augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus quæreret, habereturque apud
+posteros Romanæ restitutionis auctor postquam esse non potuerat
+immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare paci
+nitebatur.'--Orosius, vii. 43.
+
+[17] Athaulf formed only to abandon it.
+
+[18] See, among other passages, Varro, _De lingua Latina_, iv. 34;
+Cic., _Pro Domo_, 33; and in the _Corpus Iuris Civilis_, Dig. i. 5,
+17; l. 1, 33; xiv. 2, 9; quoted by Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden_. The phrase 'urbs æterna' appears in a novel
+issued by Valentinian III.
+
+Tertullian speaks of Rome as 'civitas sacrosancta.'
+
+[19] Lact. _Divin. Instit._ vii. 25: 'Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum
+ruinamque rerum brevi fore: nisi quod incolumi urbe Roma nihil
+istiusmodi videtur esse metuendum. At vero cum caput illud orbis
+occident, et ῥύμη esse cœperit quod Sibyllæ fore aiunt, quis dubitet
+venisse iam finem rebus humanis, orbique terrarum? Illa, illa est
+civitas quæ adhuc sustentat omnia, precandusque nobis et adorandus est
+Deus cœli si tamen statuta eius et placita differri possunt, ne citius
+quam putemus tyrannus ille abominabilis veniat qui tantum facinus
+moliatur, ac lumen illud effodiat cuius interitu mundus ipse lapsurus
+est.'
+
+Cf. Tertull. _Apolog._ cap. xxxii: 'Est et alia maior necessitas nobis
+orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque
+Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam
+sæculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu
+scimus retardari.' Also the same writer, _Ad Scapulam_, cap. ii:
+'Christianus sciens imperatorem a Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut
+ipsum diligat et revereatur et honoret et salvum velit cum toto Romano
+imperio quousque sæculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit.' So too the
+author--now usually supposed to be Hilary the Deacon--of the
+Commentary on the Pauline Epistles ascribed to S. Ambrose: 'Non prius
+veniet Dominus quam regni Romani defectio fiat, et appareat
+antichristus qui interficiet sanctos, reddita Romanis libertate, sub
+suo tamen nomine.'--Ad II Thess. ii. 4, 7.
+
+[20] For example, by the 'restitutio natalium,' and the 'adrogatio per
+rescriptum principis,' or, as it is expressed, 'per sacrum oraculum.'
+
+[21] Even the Christian Emperors took the title of Pontifex Maximus,
+till Gratian refused it: ἀθέμιστον εἶναι Χριστιάνῳ τὸ σχῆμα
+νομίσας.--Zosimus, lib. iv. cap. 36.
+
+[22] 'Maiore formidine et callidiore timiditate Cæsarem observatis quam
+ipsum ex Olympo Iovem, et merito, si sciatis.... Citius denique apud
+vos per omnes Deos quam per unum genium Cæsaris peieratur.'--Tertull.
+_Apolog._ c. xxviii.
+
+Cf. Zos. v. 51: εἰ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τετυχήκει διδόμενος ὁρκὸς, ἦν
+ἂν ὡς εἰκὸς παριδεῖν ἐνδίδοντας τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ φιλανθρωπίᾳ τὴν ἐπὶ τῇ
+ἀσεβείᾳ συγγνώμην. ἐπεὶ δὲ κατὰ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ὀμωμόκεσαν κεφαλῆς,
+οὐκ εἶναι θεμιτὸν αὐτοῖς εἰς τὸν τοσοῦτον ὅρκον ἐξαμαρτεῖν.
+
+[23] Tac. _Ann._ i. 73; iii. 38, etc.
+
+[24] It is curious that this should have begun in the first years of
+the Empire. See, among other passages that might be cited from the
+Augustan poets, Virg. _Georg._ i. 42; iv. 462; Hor. _Od._ iii. 3, 11;
+Ovid, _Epp. ex Ponto_, iv. 9. 105.
+
+[25] Hence Vespasian's dying jest, 'Ut puto, deus fio.'
+
+[26] ὅπου ἂν ὁ βασιλεὺς ᾖ, ἐκεῖ ἡ Ῥώμη.--Herodian.
+
+[27] If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.
+
+[28] Odoacer or Odovaker, as it seems his name ought to be written, is
+usually, but incorrectly, described as a King of the Heruli, who led
+his people into Italy and overthrew the Empire of the West; others
+call him King of the Rugii, or Skyrri, or Turcilingi. The truth seems
+to be that he was not a king at all, but the son of a Skyrrian
+chieftain (Edecon, known as one of the envoys whom Attila sent to
+Constantinople), whose personal merits made him chosen by the
+barbarian auxiliaries to be their leader. The Skyrri were a small
+tribe, apparently akin to the more powerful Heruli, whose name is
+often extended to them.
+
+[29] Αὔγουστος ὁ Ὀρέστου υἱὸς ἀκούσας Ζήνωνα πάλιν τὴν βασιλείαν
+ἀνακεκτῆσθαι τῆς ἕω ... ἠνάγκασε τὴν βουλὴν ἀποστεῖλαι πρεσβεῖαν
+Ζήνωνι σημαίνουσαν ὡς ἰδίας μὲν αὐτοῖς βασιλείας οὐ δέοι, κοινὸς δὲ
+ἀποχρήσει μόνος ὢν αὐτοκράτωρ ἐπ' ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς πέρασι. τὸν μέντοι
+Ὀδόαχον ὑπ' αὐτῶν προβεβλῆσθαι ἱκανὸν ὄντα σώζειν τὰ παρ' αὐτοῖς
+πράγματα πολιτικὴν ἐχὼν νοῦν καὶ σύνεσιν ὁμοῦ καὶ μάχιμον. καὶ δεῖσθαι
+τοῦ Ζήνωνος πατρικίου τε αὐτῷ ἀποστεῖλαι ἀξίαν καὶ τὴν τῶν Ἰτάλων
+τουτῷ ἐφεῖναι διοίκησιν.--Malchus ap. Photium in _Corp. Hist. Byzant._
+
+[30] Not king of Italy, as is often said. The barbarian kings did not
+for several centuries employ territorial titles; the title 'king of
+France,' for instance, was first used by Henry IV. Jornandes tells us
+that Odoacer never so much as assumed the insignia of royalty.
+
+[31] Sismondi, _Histoire de la Chute de l'Empire Occidentale_.
+
+[32] 'Nil deest nobis imperio vestro famulantibus.'--Theodoric to
+Zeno: Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 57.
+
+[33] 'Unde et pæne omnibus barbaris Gothi sapientiores exstiterunt
+Græcisque pæne consimiles.'--Jorn. cap. 5.
+
+[34] Theodoric (Thiodorich) seems to have resided usually at Ravenna,
+where he died and was buried; a remarkable building which tradition
+points out as his tomb stands a little way out of the town, near the
+railway station, but the porphyry sarcophagus, in which his body is
+supposed to have lain, has been removed thence, and may be seen built
+up into the wall of the building called his palace, situated close to
+the church of Sant' Apollinare, and not far from the tomb of Dante.
+There does not appear to be any sufficient authority for attributing
+this building to Ostrogothic times; it is very different from the
+representation of Theodoric's palace which we have in the contemporary
+mosaics of Sant' Apollinare in urbe.
+
+In the German legends, however, Theodoric is always the prince of
+Verona (Dietrich von Berne), no doubt because that city was better
+known to the Teutonic nations, and because it was thither that he
+moved his court when transalpine affairs required his attention. His
+castle there stood in the old town on the left bank of the Adige, on
+the height now occupied by the citadel; it is doubtful whether any
+traces of it remain, for the old foundations which we now see may have
+belonged to the fortress erected by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[35] 'Igitur Chlodovechus ab imperatore Anastasio codicillos de
+consulatu accepit, et in basilica beati Martini tunica blatea indutus
+est et chlamyde, imponens vertici diadema ... et ab ea die tanquam
+consul aut (=et) Augustus est vocitatus.'--Gregory of Tours, ii. 58.
+
+[36] Sir F. Palgrave (_English Commonwealth_) considers this grant as
+equivalent to a formal ratification of Clovis' rule in Gaul. Hallam
+rates its importance lower (_Middle Ages_, note iii. to chap. i.).
+Taken in connection with the grant of south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
+by Justinian, it may fairly be held to shew that the influence of the
+Empire was still felt in these distant provinces.
+
+[37] Even so early as the middle of the fifth century, S. Leo the
+Great could say to the Roman people, 'Isti (sc. Petrus et Paulus) sunt
+qui te ad hanc gloriam provexerunt ut gens sancta, populus electus,
+civitas sacerdotalis et regia, per sacram B. Petri sedem caput orbis
+effecta latius præsideres religione divina quam dominatione
+terrena.'--_Sermon on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul._ (Opp. _ap._
+Migne tom. i. p. 336.)
+
+[38] 'Ius Romanum est adhuc in viridi observantia et eo iure
+præsumitur quilibet vivere nisi adversum probetur.'--Maranta, quoted
+by Marquard Freher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
+
+
+It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that the thoughts
+and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were
+constantly directed. Yet not from Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the
+exhausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we
+may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the
+Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the
+furthest corner of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within
+the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service
+of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
+heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which
+doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity almost divine.
+
+[Sidenote: The Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 486.]
+
+Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of Rome, that of the
+Franks was by far the greatest. In the third century they appear, with
+Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe
+leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was
+a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former
+hostility to Rome, and her future representatives were thenceforth,
+with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to
+high place: Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western
+provinces; Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and
+his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius
+against Attila in the great battle of Chalons; his countrymen
+endeavour in vain to save Gaul from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not
+till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the
+booty; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving
+his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances
+from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had
+entered it some sixty years before. Few conquerors have had a career
+of more unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius
+he was left master of the northern provinces: the Burgundian kingdom
+in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to dependence:
+last of all, the Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle,
+and Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frankish
+arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of
+Tolbiac led to the submission of the Alemanni: their allies the
+Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by
+Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the
+tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed,
+stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of
+course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor,
+although the widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
+a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom
+at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the
+predominance of a single nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul
+as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
+hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the
+middle of the eighth century a change began. Under the rule of Pipin
+of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the
+last feeble Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
+became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while
+establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength
+in projects of foreign ambition. The form those projects took arose
+from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not
+solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their
+past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited them, it was
+to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See.
+The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians,
+Lombards, had been most of them converted by Arian missionaries who
+proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian
+doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest
+converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the
+clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the
+hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
+Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of the
+priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian and
+Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively easy for them to blend
+with the Roman population in the provinces. They had done good service
+against the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface in
+his mission to the heathen of Germany[39]; and at length, as the most
+powerful among Catholic nations, they attracted the eyes of the
+ecclesiastical head of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy: the Lombards.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes.]
+
+Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication
+of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D.
+568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and
+founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the
+country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the
+Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than
+nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders
+were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met
+with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the
+spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we
+may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the
+Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their
+aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils.
+Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
+Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the
+Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of
+Ravenna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his
+confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the
+victims of his anger[40]. But as the city became more accustomed in
+independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet
+legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In
+the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom
+or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the
+orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
+deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished[41].
+
+[Sidenote: Iconoclastic controversy.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes appeal to the Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.]
+
+The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer
+faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of
+idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed
+fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
+sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in
+Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence
+of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain:
+the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and
+protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he
+could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the
+Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the
+champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he
+overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The
+Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a
+heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a
+Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for
+Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
+communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual
+ruler of the Frankish realm[42]. As the crisis becomes more pressing,
+Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to
+him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church[43].
+Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman
+people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain
+that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the
+rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political
+movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate
+sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son
+Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with
+Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a
+monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of
+Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock
+the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one
+then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an
+international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave
+to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto
+unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in
+raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem
+and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of
+Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was
+summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
+Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second
+time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter
+himself[44]. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed
+on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy,
+receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician[45].
+
+[Sidenote: Import of this title.]
+
+As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this
+title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time
+when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to
+be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank,
+the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually
+conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time
+also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish
+to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
+Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too
+in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian
+princes[46]. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice
+seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
+thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men
+take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an
+extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the
+duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It
+was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop
+bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
+for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the
+title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and
+defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always
+'_Patricius Romanorum_;' not, as in former times, '_Patricius_' alone:
+hence it is usually associated with the terms '_defensor_' and
+'_protector_.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of
+obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been
+conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority
+in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the
+Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the
+Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
+
+So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from
+their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal.
+But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
+menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or
+Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of
+Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself
+the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral
+part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his
+victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were
+to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian
+with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader
+and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that
+sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to
+bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the
+pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in
+the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and
+Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years
+before.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles and Hadrian.]
+
+It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that
+in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise
+the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The
+Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most
+powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by
+swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it
+might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their
+words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
+expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an
+indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless
+in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and
+passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the
+stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not
+defended, as almost inseparable from an intense and restless genius,
+which, be it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing them fix
+upon everything its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
+The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since
+the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the
+ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most
+abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of
+territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
+a sort of justification--for Rome, a city with neither trade nor
+industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to
+provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the
+purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did.
+It was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than for
+religion or the safety of the city--neither of which were really
+endangered by the Lombard attacks--that had prompted their passionate
+appeals to Charles Martel and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope
+of having these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's greater
+son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it
+was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the
+dawning prospect of an independent principality, that now began to
+seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is
+probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established,
+to which must be assigned the extraordinary forgery of the Donation of
+Constantine, whereby it was pretended that power over Italy and the
+whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope
+Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Pope Leo III, A.D. 796.]
+
+For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of
+Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it
+does not appear that he sent thither any official representative;
+while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
+admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the
+years of his reign to date documents. In A.D. 796, Leo the Third
+succeeded Pope Hadrian, and signalized his devotion to the Frankish
+throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of
+the holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter, asking
+that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the
+people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to
+seek the Patrician's help for himself. In A.D. 798 a sedition broke
+out: the Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to the
+church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men,
+headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was
+wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
+to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish lands. Charles
+had led his army against the revolted Saxons: thither Leo following
+overtook him at Paderborn in Westphalia. The king received with
+respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
+some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under the escort of
+Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers; promising to follow ere
+long in person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony, and in
+the autumn of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more, while Leo
+revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was
+now ripe.
+
+[Sidenote: Belief in the Roman Empire not extinct.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives of the Pope.]
+
+Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Cæsar of
+the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to
+his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the
+latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
+only during one brief interval between the death of Totila the last
+Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his
+power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul,
+Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire
+as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been
+admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been
+cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was
+dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days
+when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen
+the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system
+he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of
+consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
+Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant England the
+fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities,
+and before long began to call themselves _imperatores_ and _basileis_
+of Britain. Within the last century and a half the rise of
+Mohammedanism[47] had brought out the common Christianity of Europe
+into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one
+Empire, one Commander of the faithful: the Christian commonwealth
+needed more than ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
+could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing ever feebler
+and more alien to the West. The name of 'respublica,' permanent at the
+elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its
+government was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
+drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms of an Oriental
+despotism. Claudian had already sneered at 'Greek Quirites[48]:' the
+general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the
+difference of manners and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
+The Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes, who
+while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage
+Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years[49] had been contaminated
+by a heresy the more odious that it touched not speculative points of
+doctrine but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy their
+power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had asked their
+confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment of the intruding
+Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to
+confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights
+subsisted: they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
+must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman city. Nor could
+the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal: without
+the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary
+consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church[50]. For, as will be shewn
+more fully hereafter, men could not separate in fact what was
+indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with
+the great Christian state: they were but two names for the same thing.
+Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are
+said to have already contemplated[51], and towards which the events of
+the last fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The
+widowed empress Irene, equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and
+her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a woman,
+an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne of the world. By
+what right, it might well be asked, did the factions of Byzantium
+impose a master on the original seat of empire? It was time to provide
+better for the most august of human offices: an election at Rome was
+as valid as at Constantinople--the possessor of the real power should
+also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted
+where that possessor was to be found. The Frank had been always
+faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
+auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders,
+against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him
+the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
+was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations,
+Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to
+imitate his customs[52]. In Charles, the hero who united under one
+sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
+pontiff might well see--as later ages saw--the new golden head of a
+second image[53], erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and
+clay seemed crumbling to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks
+of Constantinople.
+
+[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles at Rome, A.D. 800.]
+
+At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The Pope's cause was heard;
+his innocence, already vindicated by a miracle, was pronounced by the
+Patrician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
+remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, A.D.
+800[54], he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. On the spot where
+now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the
+buildings of the modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as
+that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the
+oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less
+like than was this basilica to those northern cathedrals, shadowy,
+fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by
+clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of
+mediæval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious
+sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of
+Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness,
+its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman
+art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman character[55].
+Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar
+underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph as it
+was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising
+tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest,
+and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the
+bishop's throne[56], itself the curule chair of some forgotten
+magistrate[57]. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of
+the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles--who had exchanged his
+simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman
+patrician[58]--knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight
+of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem
+of the Cæsars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to
+the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of
+the world, 'Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori
+vita et victoria[59].' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without,
+was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its
+consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the
+civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from
+that moment modern history begins.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[39] 'Denique gens Francorum multos et fœcundissimos fructus Domino
+attulit, non solum credendo, sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'
+says the emperor Lewis II in A.D. 871.
+
+[40] Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.
+
+[41] A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks
+and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph
+Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), _De translatione Imperii
+Romani_ (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a
+revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the
+Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding,
+like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics
+(apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt)
+carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly,
+the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a
+rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning
+to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the
+earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to
+the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very
+existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth
+or ninth century altogether forgotten.
+
+[42] Anastasius, _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_ i. _ap._ Muratori.
+
+[43] Letter in _Codex Carolinus_, in Muratori's _Scriptores Rerum
+Italicarum_, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'
+
+[44] Letter in _Cod. Carol._ (Mur. _R. S. I._ iii. [2.] p. 96), a
+strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish
+pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod
+super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro
+exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus
+Vicarii mei commendavi.'
+
+[45] The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out.
+Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino,
+Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the _Chronicon Casinense_
+(Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be
+right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two
+documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is
+a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title
+was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted
+by him.
+
+[46] The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands
+in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard
+of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, _s.v._
+
+[47] After the _translatio ad Francos_ of A.D. 800, the two Empires
+corresponded exactly to the two Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.
+
+[48]
+
+ 'Plaudentem cerne senatum
+ Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'
+ _In Eutrop._ ii. 135.
+
+[49] Several Emperors during this period had been patrons of images,
+as was Irene at the moment of which I write: the stain nevertheless
+adhered to their government as a whole.
+
+[50] I should not have thought it necessary to explain that the
+sentence in the text is meant simply to state what were (so far as can
+be made out) the sentiments and notions of the ninth century, if a
+writer in the _Tablet_ (reviewing a former edition) had not understood
+it as an expression of the author's own belief.
+
+To a modern eye there is of course no necessary connection between the
+Roman Empire and a catholic and apostolic Church; in fact, the two
+things seem rather, such has been the impression made on us by the
+long struggle of church and state, in their nature mutually
+antagonistic. The interest of history lies not least in this, that it
+shews us how men have at different times entertained wholly different
+notions respecting the relation to one another of the same ideas or
+the same institutions.
+
+[51] Monachus Sangallensis, _De Gestis Karoli_; in Pertz, _Monumenta
+Germaniæ Historica_.
+
+[52] Monachus Sangallensis; _ut supra_. So Pope Gregory the Great two
+centuries earlier: 'Quanto cæteros homines regia dignitas antecedit,
+tanto cæterarum gentium regna regni Francorum culmen excellit.' Ep. v.
+6.
+
+[53] Alciatus, _De Formula imperii Romani_.
+
+[54] Or rather, according to the then prevailing practice of beginning
+the year from Christmas-day, A.D. 801.
+
+[55] An elaborate description of old St. Peter's may be found in
+Bunsen's and Platner's _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom_; with which
+compare Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome.
+
+[56] The primitive custom was for the bishop to sit in the centre of
+the apse, at the central point of the east end of the church (or, as
+it would be more correct to say, the end furthest from the door) just
+as the judge had done in those law courts on the model of which the
+first basilicas were constructed. This arrangement may still be seen
+in some of the churches of Rome, as well as elsewhere in Italy;
+nowhere better than in the churches of Ravenna, particularly the
+beautiful one of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and in the cathedral of
+Torcello, near Venice.
+
+[57] On this chair were represented the labours of Hercules and the
+signs of the zodiac. It is believed at Rome to be the veritable chair
+of the Apostle himself, and whatever may be thought of such an
+antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily traced back to the third
+or fourth century of Christianity. (The story that it is inscribed
+with verses from the Koran is, I believe, without foundation.) It is
+now enclosed in a gorgeous casing of gilded wood (some say, of
+bronze), and placed aloft at the extremity of St. Peter's, just over
+the spot where a bishop's chair would in the old arrangement of the
+basilica have stood. The sarcophagus in which Charles himself lay,
+till the French scattered his bones abroad, had carved on it the rape
+of Proserpine. It may still be seen in the gallery of the basilica at
+Aachen.
+
+[58] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_.
+
+[59] The coronation scene is described in all the annals of the time,
+to which it is therefore needless to refer more particularly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+EMPIRE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.
+
+
+The coronation of Charles is not only the central event of the Middle
+Ages, it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them
+singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of
+the world would have been different. In one sense indeed it has
+scarcely a parallel. The assassins of Julius Cæsar thought that they
+had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy came inevitable in the next
+generation. The conversion of Constantine changed the face of the
+world, but Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph
+was only a question of time. Had Columbus never spread his sails, the
+secret of the western sea would yet have been pierced by some later
+voyager: had Charles V broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice
+silenced at Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere.
+But if the Roman Empire had not been restored in the West in the
+person of Charles, it would never have been restored at all, and the
+inexhaustible train of consequences for good and for evil that
+followed could not have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining
+the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as through all the
+Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were striving for the mastery. The
+one was the instinct of separation, disorder, anarchy, caused by the
+ungoverned impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of
+mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the better minds for
+a formal unity of government, which had its historical basis in the
+memories of the old Roman Empire, and its most constant expression in
+the devotion to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency, as
+everything shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger, but the
+latter, used and stimulated by an extraordinary genius like Charles,
+achieved in the year 800 a victory whose results were never to be
+lost. When the hero was gone, the returning wave of anarchy and
+barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate
+the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck
+its roots too deep to be overthrown by force, and when it perished at
+last, perished from inner decay. It was just because men felt that no
+one less than Charles could have won such a triumph over the evils of
+the time, by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government,
+that the excitement and hope and joy which the coronation evoked were
+so intense. Their best evidence is perhaps to be found not in the
+records of that time itself, but in the cries of lamentation that
+broke forth when the Empire began to dissolve towards the close of the
+ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached themselves to
+the name of Charles the Emperor, a hero of whom any exploit was
+credible[60], in the devout admiration wherewith his German successors
+looked back to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but
+superhuman prototype.
+
+[Sidenote: Import of the coronation.]
+
+As the event of A.D. 800 made an unparalleled impression on those who
+lived at the time, so has it engaged the attention of men in
+succeeding ages, has been viewed in the most opposite lights, and
+become the theme of interminable controversies. It is better to look
+at it simply as it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in
+so many other cases, may be seen the errors into which jurists have
+been led by the want of historical feeling. In rude and unsettled
+states of society men respect forms and obey facts, while careless of
+rules and principles. In England, for example, in the eleventh and
+twelfth centuries, it signified very little whether an aspirant to the
+throne was next lawful heir, but it signified a great deal whether he
+had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong party. Regarding
+the matter thus, it is not hard to see why those who judged the actors
+of A.D. 800 as they would have judged their contemporaries should have
+misunderstood the nature of that which then came to pass. Baronius and
+Bellarmine, Spanheim and Conring, are advocates bound to prove a
+thesis, and therefore believing it; nor does either party find any
+lack of plausible arguments[61]. But civilian and canonist alike
+proceed upon strict legal principles, and no such principles can be
+found in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited by
+the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of priests to set up
+and pull down princes, nor those which shew the earlier Emperors
+controlling the bishops of Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted
+not as having alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of
+hereditary succession and the theory of popular election would have
+equally excluded such a claim; he was the spokesman of the popular
+will, which, identifying itself with the sacerdotal power, hated the
+Greeks and was grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more.
+The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly his work,
+and without him would never have been brought about at all. It was
+natural that a confusion of his secular functions as leader, and his
+spiritual as consecrating priest, should lay the foundation of the
+right claimed afterwards of raising and deposing monarchs at the will
+of Christ's vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout; he did not, as
+in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was received by the Pope and
+the people as a friend and ally. Rome no doubt became his capital, but
+it had already obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that
+stood out to posterity from the whole transaction was that the crown
+was bestowed, was at least imposed, by the hands of the pontiff. He
+seemed the trustee and depositary of the imperial authority[62].
+
+[Sidenote: Contemporary accounts.]
+
+The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives of those concerned in
+the transaction is to transcribe the narratives of three contemporary,
+or almost contemporary annalists, two of them German and one Italian.
+The Annals of Lauresheim say:--
+
+'And because the name of Emperor had now ceased among the Greeks, and
+their Empire was possessed by a woman, it then seemed both to Leo the
+Pope himself, and to all the holy fathers who were present in the
+selfsame council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that
+they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the Franks, who held
+Rome herself, where the Cæsars had always been wont to sit, and all
+the other regions which he ruled through Italy and Gaul and Germany;
+and inasmuch as God had given all these lands into his hand, it seemed
+right that with the help of God and at the prayer of the whole
+Christian people he should have the name of Emperor also. Whose
+petition king Charles willed not to refuse, but submitting himself
+with all humility to God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the
+whole Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus
+Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor, being consecrated by
+the lord Pope Leo[63].'
+
+Very similar in substance is the account of the Chronicle of Moissac
+(ad ann. 801):--
+
+'Now when the king upon the most holy day of the Lord's birth was
+rising to the mass after praying before the confession of the blessed
+Peter the Apostle, Leo the Pope, with the consent of all the bishops
+and priests and of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the
+Romans, set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also
+shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the
+Laudes, he was adored by the Pope after the manner of the emperors of
+old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said
+Emperor abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him, who said that
+the name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them
+the Empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid
+hold on her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the
+Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book of the
+Kings; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly of the bishops and
+priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the
+elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian
+people, that they should name Charles king of the Franks to be
+Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire where the
+Cæsars and Emperors were always used to sit; and that the heathen
+might not mock the Christians if the name of Emperor should have
+ceased among the Christians[64].'
+
+These two accounts are both from a German source: that which follows
+is Roman, written probably within some fifty or sixty years of the
+event. It is taken from the Life of Leo III in the _Vitæ Pontificum
+Romanorum_, compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.
+
+'After these things came the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus
+Christ, and all men were again gathered together in the aforesaid
+basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle: and then the gracious and
+venerable pontiff did with his own hands crown Charles with a very
+precious crown. Then all the faithful people of Rome, seeing the
+defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy Roman
+Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and of the blessed Peter,
+the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, cry with one accord
+with a loud voice, 'To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of
+God, the great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.' While
+he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, was
+invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed thrice, and he was chosen by
+all to be Emperor of the Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff
+anointed Charles with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to
+be king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; and
+when the mass was finished, then after the mass the most serene lord
+Emperor offered gifts[65].'
+
+[Sidenote: Impression which they convey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Later theories respecting the coronation.]
+
+In these three accounts there is no serious discrepancy as to the
+facts, although the Italian priest, as is natural, heightens the
+importance of the part played by the Pope, while the Germans are too
+anxious to rationalize the event, talking of a synod of the clergy, a
+consultation of the people, and a formal request to Charles, which the
+silence of Eginhard, as well as the other circumstances of the case,
+forbid us to accept as literally true. Similarly Anastasius passes
+over the adoration rendered by the Pope to the Emperor, upon which
+most of the Frankish records insist in a way which puts it beyond
+doubt. But the impression which the three narratives leave is
+essentially the same. They all shew how little the transaction can be
+made to wear a strictly legal character. The Frankish king does not of
+his own might seize the crown, but rather receives it as coming
+naturally to him, as the legitimate consequence of the authority he
+already enjoyed. The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any
+right of his own as head of the Church: he is merely the instrument of
+God's providence, which has unmistakeably pointed out Charles as the
+proper person to defend and lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman
+people do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause accept
+the chief who is presented to them. The act is conceived of as
+directly ordered by the Divine Providence which has brought about a
+state of things that admits of but one issue, an issue which king,
+priest, and people have only to recognise and obey; their personal
+ambitions, passions, intrigues, sinking and vanishing in reverential
+awe at what seems the immediate interposition of Heaven. And as the
+result is desired by all parties alike, they do not think of inquiring
+into one another's rights, but take their momentary harmony to be
+natural and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and
+conflicts which were to arise out of what seemed then so simple. And
+it was just because everything was thus left undetermined, resting not
+on express stipulation but rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a
+sympathy of beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event
+admitted of being afterwards represented in so many different lights.
+Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the
+mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct
+theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated
+by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some
+extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been
+won by their great predecessor as the prize of conquest, and drew the
+conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as
+against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to
+the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the
+voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created,
+he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of
+their authority. The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo
+imposed the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it was then
+his, and must always continue to be their right to give to whomsoever
+they would an office which was created to be the handmaid of their
+own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed,
+yet to an impartial eye it cannot claim, any more than do the two
+others, to contain the whole truth. Charles did not conquer, nor the
+Pope give, nor the people elect. As the act was unprecedented so was
+it illegal; it was a revolt of the ancient Western capital against a
+daughter who had become a mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of
+insurrection, justified by the weakness and wickedness of the
+Byzantine princes, hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction
+of Christ's representative, but founded upon no law, nor competent to
+create any for the future.
+
+[Sidenote: Was the coronation a surprise?]
+
+It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing question, how far the
+coronation scene, an act as imposing in its circumstances as it was
+momentous in its results, was prearranged among the parties. Eginhard
+tells us that Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not,
+even on so high a festival, have entered the church had he known of
+the Pope's intention. Even if the monarch had uttered, the secretary
+would hardly have recorded a falsehood long after the motive that
+might have prompted it had disappeared. Of the existence of that
+motive which has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent
+of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered, little or no
+proof can be brought from the records of the time, wherein the nation
+is represented as exulting in the new dignity of their chief as an
+accession of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that Charles's
+disavowal was meant to soothe the offended pride of the Byzantine
+princes, from whom he had nothing to fear, and who were none the more
+likely to recognise his dignity, if they should believe it to be not
+of his own seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a
+surprise; for it was the goal towards which the policy of the Frankish
+kings had for many years pointed, and Charles himself, in sending
+before him to Rome many of the spiritual and temporal magnates of his
+realm, in summoning thither his son Pipin from the war against the
+Lombards of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some more than
+ordinary result from this journey to the imperial city. Alcuin
+moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister of Charles in matters
+religious and literary, appears from one of his extant letters to have
+sent as a Christmas gift to his royal pupil a carefully corrected and
+superbly adorned copy of the Scriptures, with the words 'ad splendorem
+imperialis potentiæ.' This has commonly been taken for conclusive
+evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand, and such it would
+be were there not some reasons for giving the letter an earlier date,
+and looking upon the word 'imperialis' as a mere magniloquent
+flourish[66]. More weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments
+supplied by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his
+confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never have ventured on
+so momentous a step until previous conferences had assured him of the
+feelings of the king, nor could an act for which the assembly were
+evidently prepared have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the
+declaration of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down to
+mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the whole more
+reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied himself of the
+wishes of the Roman clergy and people as well as of the Frankish
+magnates, resolved to seize an occasion and place so eminently
+favourable to his long-cherished plan, while Charles, carried away by
+the enthusiasm of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet and
+instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which he might have
+wished to receive at some later time or in some other way. If,
+therefore, any positive conclusion be adopted, it would seem to be
+that Charles, although he had probably given a more or less vague
+consent to the project, was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden
+fulfilment which interrupted his own carefully studied designs. And
+although a deed which changed the history of the world was in any case
+no accident, it may well have worn to the Frankish and Roman
+spectators the air of a surprise. For there were no preparations
+apparent in the church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors
+in aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne: suddenly, at
+the very moment when he rose from the sacred hollow where he had knelt
+among the ever-burning lamps before the holiest of Christian
+relics--the body of the prince of the Apostles--the hands of that
+Apostle's representative placed upon his head the crown of glory and
+poured upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something in this
+to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine presence, and make
+them hail him whom that presence seemed almost visibly to consecrate,
+the 'pious and peace-giving Emperor, crowned of God.'
+
+[Sidenote: Theories of the motives of Charles.]
+
+The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial title is ascribed by
+Eginhard to a fear of the jealous hostility of the Greeks, who could
+not only deny his claim to it, but might disturb by their intrigues
+his dominions in Italy. Accepting this statement, the problem remains,
+how is this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his which
+clearly shew him aiming at the Roman crown? An ingenious and probable,
+if not certain solution, is suggested by a recent historian[67], who
+argues from a minute examination of the previous policy of Charles,
+that while it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown of
+the world, he foresaw at the same time the opposition of the Eastern
+Court, and the want of legality from which his title would in
+consequence suffer. He was therefore bent on getting from the
+Byzantines, if possible, a transference of their crown; if not, at
+least a recognition of his own: and he appears to have hoped to win
+this by the negotiations which had been for some time kept on foot
+with the Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation by
+Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, irritating the Eastern
+Court, and forcing Charles into the position of a rival who could not
+with dignity adopt a soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he
+seems not even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a peaceful
+recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him, if we may credit
+Theophanes[68], from seeking her hand in marriage. And when the
+project of thus uniting the East and West in a single Empire, baffled
+for a time by the opposition of her minister Ætius, was rendered
+impossible by her subsequent dethronement and exile, he did not
+abandon the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in
+rather than admission of his dignity had been won from the Byzantine
+sovereigns Michael and Nicephorus[69].
+
+[Sidenote: Defect in the title of the Teutonic Emperors.]
+
+Whether, supposing Leo to have been less precipitate, a cession of the
+crown, or an acknowledgment of the right of the Romans to confer it,
+could ever have been obtained by Charles is perhaps more than
+doubtful. But it is clear that he judged rightly in rating its
+importance high, for the want of it was the great blemish in his own
+and his successors' dignity. To shew how this was so, reference must
+be made to the events of A.D. 476. Both the extinction of the Western
+Empire in that year and its revival in A.D. 800 have been very
+generally misunderstood in modern times, and although the mistake is
+not, in a certain sense, of practical importance, yet it tends to
+confuse history and to blind us to the ideas of the people who acted
+on both occasions. When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus
+Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power,
+but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that
+from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a
+single undivided Roman Empire. In A.D. 800 the very memory of the
+separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius
+till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long since lost, and
+neither Leo nor Charles nor any one among their advisers dreamt of
+reviving it. They too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire
+to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the
+Frankish king not to proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to
+reverse the act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as
+well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name.
+Their deed was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it
+every semblance of legality: they professed and partly believed that
+they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign, but legitimately
+filling up the place of the deposed Constantine the Sixth; the people
+of the imperial city exercising their ancient right of choice, their
+bishop his right of consecration.
+
+Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could create but they
+could not destroy: they set up an Emperor of their own, whose
+representatives thenceforward ruled the West, but Constantinople
+retained her sovereigns as of yore; and Christendom saw henceforth two
+imperial lines, not as in the time before A.D. 476, the conjoint heads
+of a single realm, but rivals and enemies, each denouncing the other
+as an impostor, each professing to be the only true and lawful head of
+the Christian Church and people. Although therefore we must in
+practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till A.D. 1453,
+when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a
+Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one
+which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did
+repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to facts, they
+sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was
+always the same. Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not
+of Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius,
+and all the Eastern line; and hence it is that in all the annals of
+the time and of many succeeding centuries, the name of Constantine VI,
+the sixty-seventh in order from Augustus, is followed without a break
+by that of Charles, the sixty-eighth.
+
+[Sidenote: Government of Charles as Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: His authority in matters ecclesiastical.]
+
+The maintenance of an imperial line among the Greeks was a continuing
+protest against the validity of Charles's title. But from their enmity
+he had little to fear, and in the eyes of the world he seemed to step
+into their place, adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs
+to the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and Rome ceased for
+ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while the Eastern princes
+paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor--as the
+recognised head of Christendom--received from the patriarch of
+Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary;
+the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of
+the Persians[70]. Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great
+Khalif the romancers created a crusade. Within his own dominions his
+sway assumed a more sacred character. Already had his unwearied and
+comprehensive activity made him throughout his reign an ecclesiastical
+no less than a civil ruler, summoning and sitting in councils,
+examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the
+smallest points of church discipline and polity. A synod held at
+Frankfort in A.D. 794 condemned the decrees of the second council of
+Nicæa, which had been approved by Pope Hadrian, censured in violent
+terms the conduct of the Byzantine rulers in suggesting them, and
+without excluding images from churches, altogether forbade them to be
+worshipped or even venerated. Not only did Charles preside in and
+direct the deliberations of this synod, although legates from the Pope
+were present--he also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and
+urging its conclusions; he pressed Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a
+heretic for enouncing doctrines to which Hadrian had himself
+consented. There are letters of his extant in which he lectures Pope
+Leo in a tone of easy superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy
+canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts
+which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation of pagans
+and the establishment of sound doctrine throughout the Church. Nay,
+subsequent Popes themselves[71] admitted and applauded the despotic
+superintendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise,
+and which led some one to give him playfully a title that had once
+been applied to the Pope himself, 'Episcopus episcoporum.'
+
+[Sidenote: The imperial office in its ecclesiastical relations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Capitulary of A.D. 802.]
+
+Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be thought that
+Charles needed no further title to justify his power. The inference is
+in truth rather the converse of this. Upon what he had done already
+the imperial title must necessarily follow: the attitude of protection
+and control which he held towards the Church and the Holy See
+belonged, according to the ideas of the time, especially and only to
+an Emperor. Therefore his coronation was the fitting completion and
+legitimation of his authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it.
+We have, however, one remarkable witness to the importance that was
+attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement which he conceived
+his office to have received from it. In a great assembly held at
+Aachen, A.D. 802, the lately-crowned Emperor revised the laws of all
+the races that obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them,
+and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone[72]. All persons
+within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as civil, who have
+already sworn allegiance to him as king, are thereby commanded to
+swear to him afresh as Cæsar; and all who have never yet sworn, down
+to the age of twelve, shall now take the same oath. 'At the same time
+it shall be publicly explained to all what is the force and meaning of
+this oath, and how much more it includes than a mere promise of
+fidelity to the monarch's person. Firstly, it binds those who swear it
+to live, each and every one of them, according to his strength and
+knowledge, in the holy service of God; since the lord Emperor cannot
+extend over all his care and discipline. Secondly, it binds them
+neither by force nor fraud to seize or molest any of the goods or
+servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do no violence nor treason towards
+the holy Church, or to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that
+the lord Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord and his saints,
+the protector and defender of all such.' Then in similar fashion
+purity of life is prescribed to the monks; homicide, the neglect of
+hospitality, and other offences are denounced, the notions of sin and
+crime being intermingled and almost identified in a way to which no
+parallel can be found, unless it be in the Mosaic code. There God, the
+invisible object of worship, is also, though almost incidentally, the
+judge and political ruler of Israel; here the whole cycle of social
+and moral duty is deduced from the obligation of obedience to the
+visible autocratic head of the Christian state.
+
+In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly in the
+writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned the working of the
+same theocratic ideas. Among his intimate friends he chose to be
+called by the name of David, exercising in reality all the powers of
+the Jewish king; presiding over this kingdom of God upon earth rather
+as a second Constantine or Theodosius than in the spirit and
+traditions of the Julii or the Flavii. Among his measures there are
+two which in particular recall the first Christian Emperor. As
+Constantine founds so Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection
+of Church and State. Bishops and abbots are as essential a part of
+rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices are held under
+the same conditions of fealty and the service in war of their vassal
+tenants, not of the spiritual person himself: they have similar rights
+of jurisdiction, and are subject alike to the imperial _missi_. The
+monarch tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual
+duties; quells the insubordination of the monasteries; endeavours to
+bring the seculars into a monastic life by instituting and regulating
+chapters. But after granting wealth and power, the attempt was vain;
+his strong hand withdrawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by
+him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood had
+long been pleading, was made compulsory in Western Europe, and the
+support of the ministers of religion entrusted to the laws of the
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the imperial title in Germany and Gaul.]
+
+[Sidenote: Action of Charles on Europe.]
+
+In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the imperial title, a new
+position. Later jurists labour to distinguish his power as Roman
+Emperor from that which he held already as king of the Franks and
+their subject allies: they insist that his coronation gave him the
+capital only, that it is absurd to talk of a Roman Empire in regions
+whither the eagles had never flown[73]. In such expressions there
+seems to lurk either confusion or misconception. It was not the actual
+government of the city that Charles obtained in A.D. 800: that his
+father had already held as Patrician and he had constantly exercised
+in the same capacity: it was far more than the titular sovereignty of
+Rome which had hitherto been supposed to be vested in the Byzantine
+princes: it was nothing less than the headship of the world, believed
+to appertain of right to the lawful Roman Emperor, whether he reigned
+on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Rhine. As that headship, although
+never denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several centuries,
+its bestowal on the king of so vast a realm was a change of the first
+moment, for it made the coronation not merely a transference of the
+seat of Empire, but a renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing back of
+it from faith to sight, from the world of belief and theory to the
+world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave were
+autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all minor claims and
+dignities: the rights of Charles the Frankish king were merged in
+those of Charles the successor of Augustus, the lord of the world.
+That his imperial authority was theoretically irrespective of place is
+clear from his own words and acts, and from all the monuments of that
+time. He would not, indeed, have dreamed of treating the free Franks
+as Justinian had treated his half-Oriental subjects, nor would the
+warriors who followed his standard have brooked such an attempt. Yet
+even to German eyes his position must have been altered by the halo of
+vague splendour which now surrounded him; for all, even the Saxon and
+the Slave, had heard of Rome's glories, and revered the name of Cæsar.
+And in his effort to weld discordant elements into one body, to
+introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the Teutonic
+tendency to localization by his _missi_--officials commissioned to
+traverse each some part of his dominions, reporting on and redressing
+the evils they found--and by his own oft-repeated personal progresses,
+Charles was guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is
+the revival of order and culture, fusing the West into a compact
+whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to lose the marks of their
+connection and their half-Roman character, gathering up all that is
+left in Europe of spirit and wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with
+the new force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the
+masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East. Ruling the world by
+the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of the Romans and their
+Cæsar whom God had chosen to conquer it, he renews the original
+aggressive movement of the Empire: the civilized world has subdued her
+invader[74], and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence
+the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons,
+Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses
+and baptism the badge of submission. The overthrow of the
+Irminsûl[75], in the first Saxon campaign[76], sums up the changes of
+seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton destroys the monument of his
+country's freedom, for it is also the emblem of paganism and
+barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor.
+
+[Sidenote: His position as Frankish king.]
+
+This, however, is not the only side from which Charles's policy and
+character may be regarded. If the unity of the Church and the shadow
+of imperial prerogative was one pillar of his power, the other was the
+Frankish nation. The Empire was still military, though in a sense
+strangely different from that of Julius or Severus. The warlike Franks
+had permeated Western Europe; their primacy was admitted by the
+kindred tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemannians, and
+Burgundians; the Slavic peoples on the borders trembled and paid
+tribute; Alfonso of Asturias found in the Emperor a protector against
+the infidel foe. His influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the
+ocean: the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord[77]: the
+restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of Egbert to Wessex,
+might furnish a better ground for the claim of suzerainty than many to
+which his successors had afterwards recourse. As it was by Frankish
+arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial title adorned
+and legalized had been won, so was the government of Charles Roman in
+semblance rather than in fact. It was not by restoring the effete
+mechanism of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action
+and that of his great officers, that he strove to administer and
+reform. With every effort for a strong central government, there is no
+despotism; each nation retains its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its
+free popular assemblies. The conditions granted to the Saxons after
+such cruel warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century
+their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew how little he
+desired to make the Franks a dominant caste.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of his Empire.]
+
+He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe a Teutonic spirit into
+Roman forms. The conception was magnificent; great results followed
+its partial execution. Two causes forbade success. The one was the
+ecclesiastical, especially the Papal power, apparently subject to the
+temporal, but with a strong and undefined prerogative which only
+waited the occasion to trample on what it had helped to raise. The
+Pope might take away the crown he had bestowed, and turn against the
+Emperor the Church which now obeyed him. The other was to be found in
+the discordance of the component parts of the Empire. The nations were
+not ripe for settled life or extensive schemes of polity; the
+differences of race, language, manners, over vast and thinly-peopled
+lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection: and when
+once the spell of the great mind was withdrawn, the mutually repellent
+forces began to work, and the mass dissolved into that chaos out of
+which it had been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as
+they met, but having all of them undergone influences which continued
+to act when political connection had ceased. For the work of
+Charles--a genius pre-eminently creative--was not lost in the anarchy
+that followed: rather are we to regard his reign as the beginning of a
+new era, or as laying the foundations whereon men continued for many
+generations to build.
+
+[Sidenote: Personal habits and sympathies.]
+
+No claim can be more groundless than that which the modern French, the
+sons of the Latinized Kelt, set up to the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he
+might assume the chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his
+Frankish host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country, and
+was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their own character and
+habits[78]. Of strength and stature almost superhuman, in swimming and
+hunting unsurpassed, steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends
+gentle and condescending, he was a Roman, much less a Gaul, in nothing
+but his culture and his width of view, otherwise a Teuton. The centre
+of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen[79] and
+Engilenheim[80]; his army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn
+in the gathering of the old hero-lays[81], the composition of a German
+grammar, the ordinance against confining prayer to the three
+languages,--Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,--were all for the race from
+which he sprang, and whose advance, represented by the victory of
+Austrasia, the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aquitaine,
+spread a second Germanic wave over the conquered countries.
+
+[Sidenote: His Empire and character generally.]
+
+There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two
+from the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern
+civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to
+the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the
+conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still governed almost
+exclusively by viceroys and officers of Frankish blood. But the
+conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere
+mass of subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which rise
+and perish in a lifetime, the realms of Sesostris, or Attila, or
+Timur, was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not
+Teutonic but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and
+precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the
+system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human
+perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further
+progress. And the bond, too, by which the Empire was held together was
+Roman in its origin, although Roman in a sense which would have
+surprised Trajan or Severus, could it have been foretold them. The
+ecclesiastical body was already organized and centralized, and it was
+in his rule over the ecclesiastical body that the secret of Charles's
+power lay. Every Christian--Frank, Gaul, or Italian--owed loyalty to
+the head and defender of his religion: the unity of the Empire was a
+reflection of the unity of the Church.
+
+Into a general view of the government and policy of Charles it is not
+possible here to enter. Yet his legislation, his assemblies, his
+administrative system, his magnificent works, recalling the projects
+of Alexander and Cæsar[82], the zeal for education and literature
+which he shewed in the collection of manuscripts, the founding of
+schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters around him,
+cannot be appreciated apart from his position as restorer of the Roman
+Empire. Like all the foremost men of our race, Charles was all great
+things in one, and was so great just because the workings of his
+genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian warrior any
+more than he was an astute diplomatist; there is none of all his
+qualities which would not be forced out of its place were we to
+characterize him chiefly by it. Comparisons between famous men of
+different ages are generally as worthless as they are easy: the
+circumstances among which Charles lived do not permit us to institute
+a minute parallel between his greatness and that of those two to whom
+it is the modern fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
+could have become as profound a politician as Cæsar, as skilful a
+commander as Napoleon[83]. But neither to the Roman nor to the
+Corsican was he inferior in that one quality by which both he and they
+chiefly impress our imaginations--that intense, vivid, unresting
+energy which swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign, which
+sought a field for its workings in theology, science, literature, no
+less than in politics and war. As it was this wondrous activity that
+made him the conqueror of Europe, so was it by the variety of his
+culture that he became her civilizer. From him, in whose wide deep
+mind the whole mediæval theory of the world and human life mirrored
+itself, did mediæval society take the form and impress which it
+retained for centuries, and the traces whereof are among us and upon
+us to this day.
+
+The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that basilica which it had
+been the delight of his later years to erect and adorn with the
+treasures of ancient art. His tomb under the dome--where now we see an
+enormous slab, with the words 'Carolo Magno'--was inscribed, '_Magnus
+atque Orthodoxus Imperator_[84].' Poets, fostered by his own zeal,
+sang of him who had given to the Franks the sway of Romulus[85]. The
+gorgeous drapery of romance gradually wreathed itself round his name,
+till by canonization as a saint he received the highest glory the
+world or the Church could confer. For the Roman Church claimed then,
+as she claims still, the privilege which humanity in one form or
+another seems scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost
+divine its great departed; and as in pagan times temples had risen to
+a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated to St. Charlemagne.
+Between Sanctus Carolus and Divus Julius how strange an analogy and
+how strange a contrast!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[60] Before the end of the tenth century we find the monk Benedict of
+Soracte ascribing to Charles an expedition to Palestine, and other
+marvellous exploits. The romance which passes under the name of
+Archbishop Turpin is well known. All the best stories about
+Charles--and some of them are very good--may be found in the book of
+the Monk of St. Gall. Many refer to his dealings with the bishops,
+towards whom he is described as acting like a good-humoured
+schoolmaster.
+
+[61] Baronius, _Ann._, ad ann. 800; Bellarminus, _De translatione
+imperii Romani adversus Illyricum_; Spanhemius, _De ficta translatione
+imperii_; Conringius, _De imperio Romano Germanico_.
+
+[62] See especially Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, vol. iii. p. 109.
+
+[63] _Ann. Lauresb. ap._ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[64] _Apud_ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[65] _Vitæ Pontif._ in Mur. _S. R. I._ Anastasius in reporting the
+shout of the people omits the word 'Romanorum,' which the other
+annalists insert after 'imperatori.' The balance of probability is
+certainly in his favour.
+
+[66] Lorentz, _Leben Alcuins_. And cf. Döllinger, _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_.
+
+[67] See a very learned and interesting tract entitled _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_, recently published by Dr. v.
+Döllinger of Munich.
+
+[68] Ἀποκρισιάριοι παρὰ Καρούλλου καὶ Λέοντος αἰτούμενοι ζευχθῆναι
+αὐτὴν τῷ Καρούλλῳ πρὸς γάμον καὶ ἑνῶσαι τὰ Ἑωὰ καὶ τὰ
+Ἑσπερία.--Theoph. _Chron._ in _Corp. Scriptt. Hist. Byz._
+
+[69] Their ambassadors at last saluted him by the desired title
+'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum et basileum appellantes.' Eginh.
+_Ann._, ad ann. 812.
+
+[70] Harun er Rashid; Eginh. _Vita Karoli_, c. 16.
+
+[71] So Pope John VIII in a document quoted by Waitz, _Deutsche
+Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+
+[72] Pertz, _M. G. H._ iii. (legg. I.)
+
+[73] Pütter, _Historical Development of the German Constitution_; so
+too Conring, and esp. David Blondel, _Adv. Chiffletium_.
+
+[74] 'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit,' is repeated in this conquest
+of the Teuton by the Roman.
+
+[75] The notion that once prevailed that the Irminsûl was the 'pillar
+of Hermann,' set up on the spot of the defeat of Varus, is now
+generally discredited. Some German antiquaries take the pillar to be a
+rude figure of the native god Irmin; but nothing seems to be known of
+this alleged deity: and it is more probable that the name Irmin is
+after all merely an altered form of the Keltic word which appears in
+Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone (_Maen_, a stone). Thus the pillar,
+so far from being the monument of the great Teutonic victory, would
+commemorate a pre-Teutonic race, whose name for it the invading tribes
+adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott, of Westminster, to whose kindness I am
+indebted for this explanation, informs me that a rude ditty recording
+the destruction of the pillar by Charles was current on the spot a few
+years ago. It ran thus:--
+
+ 'Irmin slad Irmin
+ Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen
+ Der Kaiser wird kommen
+ Mit Hammer und Stangen
+ Wird Irmin uphangen.'
+
+[76] Eginhard, _Ann_.
+
+[77] Most probably the Scots of Ireland--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+16.
+
+[78] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 23.
+
+[79] Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz (_M. G. H._ ii.),
+beginning,--
+
+ 'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,
+ Sedes regni principalis,
+ Prima regum curia.'
+
+This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth
+century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English
+name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do
+not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name
+Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place
+is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing
+for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name.
+
+[80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine
+between Mentz and Bingen.
+
+[81] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 29.
+
+[82] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 17.
+
+[83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern
+French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been
+foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.
+
+[84] This basilica was built upon the model of the church of the Holy
+Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as it was the first church of any size
+that had been erected in those regions for centuries past, it excited
+extraordinary interest among the Franks and Gauls. In many of its
+features it greatly resembles the beautiful church of San Vitale, at
+Ravenna (also modelled upon that of the Holy Sepulchre) which was
+begun by Theodoric, and completed under Justinian. Probably San Vitale
+was used as a pattern by Charles's architects: we know that he caused
+marble columns to be brought from Ravenna to deck the church at
+Aachen. Over the tomb of Charles, below the central dome (to which the
+Gothic choir we now see was added some centuries later), there hangs a
+huge chandelier, the gift of Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+[85] 'Romuleum Francis præstitit imperium.'--Elegy of Ermoldus
+Nigellus, in Pertz; _M. G. H._, t. i. So too Florus the Deacon,--
+
+ 'Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Romula genti,
+ Regnorumque simul mater Roma inclyta cessit:
+ Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit
+ Munere apostolico, Christi munimine fretus.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis the Pious.]
+
+[Sidenote: Partition of Verdun, A.D. 843.]
+
+Lewis the Pious[86], left by Charles's death sole heir, had been some
+years before associated with his father in the Empire, and had been
+crowned by his own hands in a way which, intentionally or not,
+appeared to deny the need of Papal sanction. But it was soon seen that
+the strength to grasp the sceptre had not passed with it. Too mild to
+restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown by over-conscientiousness
+into the hands of the clergy, he had reigned few years when
+dissensions broke out on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to
+continue one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor, but with its
+several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia, Bavaria, each a kingdom
+held by a scion of the reigning house. A scheme dangerous in itself,
+and rendered more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of
+succession, could with difficulty have been managed by a wise and firm
+monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and
+Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed,
+and forced by the bishops to do penance; again restored, but without
+power, a tool in the hands of contending factions. On his death the
+sons flew to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern
+Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition
+treaty of Verdun which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal
+division among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission
+of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all three
+brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren
+precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he,
+as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result was the
+separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities. Their difference
+of feeling, shewn already in the support of Lewis the Pious by the
+Germans against the Gallo-Franks and the Church[87], took now a
+permanent shape: modern Germany proclaims the era of A.D. 843 the
+beginning of her national existence, and celebrated its thousandth
+anniversary twenty-seven years ago. To Charles the Bald was given
+Francia Occidentalis, that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to
+Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
+a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the
+Mediterranean, and including the northern half of Italy: Lewis
+(surnamed, from his kingdom, the German) received all east of the
+Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible
+supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these regions
+German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally
+removed from Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and
+having no national basis, was the weakest of the three, and soon
+dissolved into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy, and
+Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine.
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Carolingian Empire of the West, A.D. 888.]
+
+On the tangled history of the period that follows it is not possible
+to do more than touch. After passing from one branch of the
+Carolingian line to another[88], the imperial sceptre was at last
+possessed and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all the
+dominions of his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail
+himself of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring
+monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A.D. 887, and his death in 888
+has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the
+Carolingian Empire of the West. The Germans, still attached to the
+ancient line, chose Arnulf, an illegitimate Carolingian, for their
+king: he entered Italy and was crowned Emperor by his partizan Pope
+Formosus, in 894. But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no
+condition to maintain her power over the southern lands: Arnulf
+retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy
+independence.
+
+That time was indeed the nadir of order and civilization. From all
+sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was
+rushing down upon his empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean
+coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman swept the
+Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced France and Germany by their
+rivers, burning, slaying, carrying off into captivity: pouring through
+the Straits of Gibraltar, they fell upon Provence and Italy. By land,
+while Wends and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the German yoke and
+threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian bands, pressing in from the
+steppes of the Caspian, dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a
+new wave of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes to
+the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes the already loosened
+fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide
+organization: the strong built castles, the weak became their
+bondsmen, or took shelter under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot,
+or bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an
+independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned
+a distant and feeble suzerain. The grand vision of a universal
+Christian empire was utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism,
+the increasing localization of all powers: it might seem to have been
+but a passing gleam from an older and better world.
+
+[Sidenote: The German Kingdom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry the Fowler.]
+
+In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure. When
+the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians had ended in
+Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and
+the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the
+Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid
+the foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and
+Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly
+life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to
+claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had
+at least asserted by the demand of tribute; but death overtook him,
+and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great.]
+
+The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name in the sense which it commonly
+bore in later centuries, as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and
+Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great.
+Substantially, it is true, as well as technically, it was a
+prolongation of the Empire of Charles; and it rested (as will be shewn
+in the sequel) upon ideas essentially the same as those which brought
+about the coronation of A.D. 800. But a revival is always more or less
+a revolution: the one hundred and fifty years that had passed since
+the death of Charles had brought with them changes which made Otto's
+position in Germany and Europe less commanding and less autocratic
+than his predecessor's. With narrower geographical limits, his Empire
+had a less plausible claim to be the heir of Rome's universal
+dominion; and there were also differences in its inner character and
+structure sufficient to justify us in considering Otto (as he is
+usually considered by his countrymen) not a mere successor after an
+interregnum, but rather a second founder of the imperial throne in the
+West.
+
+Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something must be said
+of the condition of that country, where circumstances had again made
+possible the plan of Theodoric, permitted it to become an independent
+kingdom, and attached the imperial title to its sovereign.
+
+[Sidenote: Italian Emperors.]
+
+The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great was not really that
+'translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks,' which it
+was afterwards described as having been. It was not meant to settle
+the office in one nation or one dynasty: there was but an extension of
+that principle of the equality of all Romans which had made Trajan and
+Maximin Emperors. The '_arcanum imperii_,' whereof Tacitus speaks,
+'_posse principem alibi quam Romæ fieri_[89],' had long before become
+_alium quam Romanum_; and now, the names of Roman and Christian having
+grown co-extensive, a barbarian chieftain was, as a Roman citizen,
+eligible to the office of Roman Emperor. Treating him as such, the
+people and pontiff of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern
+throne asserted their ancient rights of election, and while attempting
+to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established the division of
+Valentinian. The dignity was therefore in strictness personal to
+Charles; in point of fact, and by consent, hereditarily transmissible,
+just as it had formerly become in the families of Constantine and
+Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by no means legally
+attached, though they might think it so; it had passed to their king
+only because he was the greatest European potentate, and might equally
+well pass to some stronger race, if any such appeared. Hence, when the
+line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles the Fat, the rights of
+Rome and Italy might be taken to revive, and there was nothing to
+prevent the citizens from choosing whom they would. At that memorable
+era (A.D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince had united fell
+asunder; West France, where Odo or Eudes then began to reign, was
+never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf;
+Burgundy[90] split up into two principalities, in one of which
+(Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other
+(Cisjurane with Provence) submitted to Boso[91]; while Italy was
+divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of
+Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the
+latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor
+by the Pope. Arnulf's descent chased them away and vindicated the
+claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German
+faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy,
+and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his
+fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title
+he retained through years of misery and exile, till A.D. 928[92]. None
+of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy;
+beyond it they were not so much as recognized. The crown had become a
+bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes
+whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their
+more honest supporters. The demoralization and confusion of Italy, the
+shameless profligacy of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were
+enough to prevent a true Italian kingdom from being built up on the
+basis of Roman choice and national unity. Italian indeed it can
+scarcely be called, for these Emperors were still in blood and manners
+Teutonic, and akin rather to their Transalpine enemies than their
+Romanic subjects. But Italian it might soon have become under a
+vigorous rule which should have organized it within and knit it
+together to resist attacks from without. And therefore the attempt to
+establish such a kingdom is remarkable, for it might have had great
+consequences; might, if it had prospered, have spared Italy much
+suffering and Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who from
+the summit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty plain the gleaming
+turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great arc from North to West, may
+well wonder that a land which nature has so severed from its
+neighbours should, since history begins, have been always the victim
+of their intrusive tyranny.
+
+[Sidenote: Adelheid Queen of Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's first expedition into Italy, A.D. 951.]
+
+[Sidenote: Invitation sent by the Pope to Otto.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives for reviving the Empire.]
+
+In A.D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After
+him Hugh of Burgundy, and Lothar his son, reigned as kings of Italy,
+if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called.
+Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic[93], who had
+renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the
+degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city. Lothar
+dying, his widow Adelheid[94] was sought in marriage by Adalbert son
+of Berengar II, the new Italian monarch. A gleam of romance is shed on
+the Empire's revival by her beauty and her adventures. Rejecting the
+odious alliance, she was seized by Berengar, escaped with difficulty
+from the loathsome prison where his barbarity had confined her, and
+appealed to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly virtue
+which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce brutality of the
+last age. He listened, descended into Lombardy by the Adige valley,
+espoused the injured queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as
+a vassal of the East Frankish crown. That prince was turbulent and
+faithless; new complaints reached ere long his liege lord, and envoys
+from the Pope offered Otto the imperial title if he would re-visit and
+pacify Italy. The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, as they
+had thought in the centuries before the Carolingians, that the Empire
+was suspended, not extinct; and the desire to see its effective power
+restored, the belief that without it the world could never be right,
+might seem better grounded than it had been before the coronation of
+Charles. Then the imperial name had recalled only the faint memories
+of Roman majesty and order; now it was also associated with the golden
+age of the first Frankish Emperor, when a single firm and just hand
+had guided the state, reformed the church, repressed the excesses of
+local power: when Christianity had advanced against heathendom,
+civilizing as she went, fearing neither Hun nor Paynim. One annalist
+tells us that Charles was elected 'lest the pagans should insult the
+Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
+Christians[95].' The motive would be bitterly enforced by the
+calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of disintegration,
+confusion, strife, all the longings of every wiser and better soul for
+unity, for peace and law, for some bond to bring Christian men and
+Christian states together against the common enemy of the faith, were
+but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman Empire[96]. These
+were the feelings that on the field of Merseburg broke forth in the
+shout of 'Henry the Emperor:' these the hopes of the Teutonic host
+when after the great deliverance of the Lechfeld they greeted Otto,
+conqueror of the Magyars, as 'Imperator Augustus, Pater Patriæ[97].'
+
+[Sidenote: Condition of Italy.]
+
+The anarchy which an Emperor was needed to heal was at its worst in
+Italy, desolated by the feuds of a crowd of petty princes. A
+succession of infamous Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the
+lovers and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the chair of
+the Apostle, and though Rome herself might be lost to decency, Western
+Christendom was roused to anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to
+satisfy their consciences by separating the person from the office.
+The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest confusion, and
+demands were raised for the renewal of that imperial authority which
+all admitted in theory[98], and which nothing but the resolute
+opposition of Alberic himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951.
+From the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once tempted to
+turn, nothing could be hoped; its dangers from foreign enemies were
+aggravated by the plots of the court and the seditions of the capital;
+it was becoming more and more alienated from the West by the Photian
+schism and the question regarding the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
+which that quarrel had started. Germany was extending and
+consolidating herself, had escaped domestic perils, and might think of
+reviving ancient claims. No one could be more willing to revive them
+than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging a bold and
+successful struggle against the turbulent magnates of his German
+realm, had engaged him in wars with the surrounding nations, and was
+now captivated by the vision of a wider sway and a loftier
+world-embracing dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer
+opened up less welcome to his people. Aachen, their capital, was the
+ancestral home of the house of Pipin: their sovereign, although
+himself a Saxon by race, titled himself king of the Franks, in
+opposition to the Frankish rulers of the Western branch, whose
+Teutonic character was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul; they
+held themselves in every way the true representatives of the
+Carolingian power, and accounted the period since Arnulf's death
+nothing but an interregnum which had suspended but not impaired their
+rights over Rome. 'For so long,' says a writer of the time, 'as there
+remain kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman
+Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its
+kings[99].' The recovery of Italy was therefore to German eyes a
+righteous as well as a glorious design: approved by the Teutonic
+Church which had lately been negotiating with Rome on the subject of
+missions to the heathen; embraced by the people, who saw in it an
+accession of strength to their young kingdom. Everything smiled on
+Otto's enterprise, and the connection which was destined to bring so
+much strife and woe to Germany and to Italy was welcomed by the wisest
+of both countries as the beginning of a better era.
+
+[Sidenote: Descent of Otto the Great into Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: His coronation at Rome, A.D. 962.]
+
+Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or not he felt that he was
+sacrificing, as modern writers have thought that he did sacrifice, the
+greatness of his German kingdom to the lust of universal dominion, he
+shewed no hesitation in his acts. Descending from the Alps with an
+overpowering force, he was acknowledged as king of Italy at
+Pavia[100]; and, having first taken an oath to protect the Holy See
+and respect the liberties of the city, advanced to Rome. There, with
+Adelheid his queen, he was crowned by John XII, on the day of the
+Purification, the second of February, A.D. 962. The details of his
+election and coronation are unfortunately still more scanty than in
+the case of his great predecessor. Most of our authorities represent
+the act as of the Pope's favour[101], yet it is plain that the consent
+of the people was still thought an essential part of the ceremony, and
+that Otto rested after all on his host of conquering Saxons. Be this
+as it may, there was neither question raised nor opposition made in
+Rome; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged between Emperor
+and Pope, the latter owning himself a subject, and the citizens swore
+for the future to elect no pontiff without Otto's consent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Usage has established this translation of 'Hludowicus Pius,' but
+'gentle' or 'kind-hearted' would better express the meaning of the
+epithet.
+
+[87] Von Ranke discovers in this early traces of the aversion of the
+Germans to the pretensions of the spiritual power.--_History of
+Germany during the Reformation_: Introduction.
+
+[88] Singularly enough, when one thinks of modern claims, the dynasty
+of France (Francia occidentalis) had the least share of it. Charles
+the Bald was the only West Frankish Emperor, and reigned a very short
+time.
+
+[89] Tac. _Hist._ i. 4.
+
+[90] For an account of the various applications of the name Burgundy,
+see Appendix, Note A.
+
+[91] The accession of Boso took place in A.D. 877, eleven years before
+Charles the Fat's death. But the new kingdom could not be considered
+legally settled until the latter date, and its establishment is at any
+rate a part of that general break-up of the great Carolingian empire
+whereof A.D. 888 marks the crisis. See Appendix A at the end.
+
+It is a curious mark of the reverence paid to the Carolingian blood,
+that Boso, a powerful and ambitious prince, seems to have chiefly
+rested his claims on the fact that he was husband of Irmingard,
+daughter of the Emperor Lewis II. Baron de Gingins la Sarraz quotes a
+charter of his (drawn up when he seems to have doubted whether to call
+himself king) which begins, 'Ego Boso Dei gratia id quod sum, et
+coniux mea Irmingardis proles imperialis.'
+
+[92] Lewis had been surprised by Berengar at Verona, blinded, and
+forced to take refuge in his own kingdom of Provence.
+
+[93] Alberic is called variously senator, consul, patrician, and
+prince of the Romans.
+
+[94] Adelheid was daughter of Rudolf, king of Trans-Jurane Burgundy.
+She was at this time in her nineteenth year.
+
+[95] _Chron. Moiss._, in Pertz; _M. G. H._ i. 305.
+
+[96] See especially the poem of Florus the Deacon (printed in the
+Benedictine collection and in Migne), a bitter lament over the
+dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. It is too long for quotation. I
+give four lines here:--
+
+ 'Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister,
+ Quos Rhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve,
+ Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos,
+ Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta fatigant.'
+
+[97] Witukind, _Annales_, in Pertz. It may, however, be doubted
+whether the annalist is not here giving a very free rendering of the
+triumphant cries of the German army.
+
+[98] Cf. esp. the '_Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma_,'
+in Pertz.
+
+[99] 'Licet videamus Romanorum regnum in maxima parte jam destructum,
+tamen quamdiu reges Francorum duraverint qui Romanum imperium tenere
+debent, dignitas Romani imperii ex toto non peribit, quia stabit in
+regibus suis.'--_Liber de Antichristo_, addressed by Adso, abbot of
+Moutier-en-Der, to queen Gerberga (circa A.D. 950).
+
+[100] From the money which Otto struck in Italy, it seems probable
+that he did occasionally use the title of king of Italy or of the
+Lombards. That he was crowned can hardly be considered quite certain.
+
+[101] 'A papa imperator ordinatur,' says Hermannus Contractus.
+'Dominum Ottonem, ad hoc usque vocatum regem, non solum Romano sed et
+pœne totius Europæ populo acclamante imperatorem consecravit
+Augustum.'--_Annal. Quedlinb._, ad ann. 962. 'Benedictionem a domno
+apostolico Iohanne, cuius rogatione huc venit, cum sua coniuge promeruit
+imperialem ac patronus Romanæ effectus est ecclesiæ.'--Thietmar.
+'Acclamatione totius Romani populi ab apostolico Iohanne, filio
+Alberici, imperator et Augustus vocatur et ordinatur.'--Continuator
+Reginonis. And similarly the other annalists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THEORY OF THE MEDIÆVAL EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Why the revival of the Empire was desired.]
+
+These were the events and circumstances of the time: let us now look
+at the causes. The restoration of the Empire by Charles may seem to be
+sufficiently accounted for by the width of his conquests, by the
+peculiar connection which already subsisted between him and the Roman
+Church, by his commanding personal character, by the temporary vacancy
+of the Byzantine throne. The causes of its revival under Otto must be
+sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents
+which have already been dwelt upon, there must have been some further
+influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Frankish
+kings, so far from home in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the
+Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
+the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it
+seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and
+necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of
+things. The empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life,
+yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the
+provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the attacks of the
+barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the
+course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual
+representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a
+profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all
+this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem
+the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were
+breasting it even while it was sweeping them ever faster and faster
+away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings,
+new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reformation was the
+illusion dispelled.
+
+[Sidenote: Mediæval theories.]
+
+The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during
+these centuries. The Middle Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas
+as familiar to the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas
+of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the
+people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government,
+were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their
+speculative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the
+one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism
+was a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence a
+political one. Yet the human mind, so far from being idle, was in
+certain directions never more active; nor was it possible for it to
+remain without general conceptions regarding the relation of men to
+each other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made an
+expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an
+induction of the past; they were partly inherited from the system that
+had preceded, partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
+theology which was ripening into scholasticism[102]. Now the two great
+ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed
+were those of a World-Monarchy and a World-Religion.
+
+[Sidenote: The World-Religion.]
+
+Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge of each
+other, with no experience of wide political union[103], had held
+differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly,
+religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national; and as
+there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and
+of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
+the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles,
+natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings, if keenest in the East,
+frequently shew themselves in the early records of Greece and Italy:
+in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in
+sacking the cities of the stranger[104]; the primitive Latins have the
+same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
+Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions of the
+belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between
+Greeks and barbarians as natural[105], and defend slavery on the same
+ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races
+that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech
+and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more
+effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety
+of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are
+equal[106].
+
+[Sidenote: Coincides with the World-Empire.]
+
+It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because divinity was
+divided, humanity had been divided likewise; the doctrine of the unity
+of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His
+image[107]. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was
+to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of
+race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new
+religion a community of the faithful, a Holy Empire, designed to
+gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold
+polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the
+Cæsars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that
+had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts of
+one great world-movement toward unity: the coincidence of their
+boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough
+after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names
+of Roman and Christian convertible[108]. Œcumenical councils, where
+the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the
+temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head, presented
+the most visible and impressive examples of their connection[109]. The
+language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
+sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his generation
+consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome,
+by describing to them its successor and representative, the 'city
+which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God[110].'
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of the unity of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mediæval Theology requires One Visible Catholic Church.]
+
+Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and that of the
+religious society, meeting in the higher unity of all Christians,
+which may be indifferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in
+that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which
+had been entrusted to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
+the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the firmness with
+which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to
+pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed
+from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing
+difficulty of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
+by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter
+every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more
+powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one
+body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that
+they can preserve it. Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
+may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the council of Trent,
+there had arisen the idea of supplementing revelation by tradition as
+a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and belief
+above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
+through the universal consciousness, represented by the sacerdotal
+order: principles still maintained by one branch of the Church, and
+for some at least of which far weightier reasons could be assigned
+then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the
+mass of the people, than any to which their modern advocates have
+recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it
+is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in
+the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the
+universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind
+to realize the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
+see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the
+doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the
+essential ceremony; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and
+saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could
+satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
+which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of
+the direct action of angels and devils: which expressed the strivings
+of the soul after purity by the search for the Holy Grail: which in
+the Crusades sent myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the
+sepulchre of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
+approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole
+fabric of mediæval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible
+Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To
+acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have
+appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized,
+contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius
+of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a
+temporary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties. Had
+this plan, on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later
+times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its adversity
+or to the dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
+rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan
+was one which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church
+was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of
+Christian men dispersed throughout the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Idea of political unity upheld by the clergy.]
+
+Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was the priesthood; and
+it was by them, in whom dwelt whatever of learning and thought was
+left in Europe, that the second great idea whereof mention has been
+made--the belief in one universal temporal state--was preserved. As a
+matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West, and it might
+seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, did not
+so calculate their interest. So far from feeling themselves opposed to
+the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came
+to do in the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
+that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They
+were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves living by the Roman
+law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of
+the historical connection of the two powers. And by them chiefly was
+that idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by none more
+earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles[111]. The
+limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice: bishops
+were princes, the chief ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the
+leaders of their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
+ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the metaphysics of the time upon the theory of
+a World-State.]
+
+But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a universal
+monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical basis, and may be
+traced up to those metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call
+Realism developed itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times
+were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
+system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that which was most
+desirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became a
+search after principles of classification; since simplicity and truth
+were held to consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
+nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a
+sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of the relations of classes
+as containing or excluding each other. These classes, genera or
+species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind
+from phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped
+under and called by some common name; they were real things, existing
+independently of the individuals who composed them, recognized rather
+than created by the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
+quality present in all men, and making them what they are: as regards
+it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between
+individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their
+being lies in the universal property, which alone has a permanent and
+independent existence. The common nature of the individuals thus
+gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual
+and the secular, by two persons, the World-Priest and the
+World-Monarch, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity.
+For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
+expression that a thought could then be apprehended[112]. Although it
+was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine
+and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the
+corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a
+social and public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and
+concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which rewarded
+or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as
+different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all
+Christian men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising through
+successive grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they were
+answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually
+irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily opposed to the
+Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had
+imagined, a communion of the saints without its expression in a
+visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood
+of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the
+image of a universal State[113]. In this, as in so much else, the men
+of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all
+their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the
+very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out
+in practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
+
+[Sidenote: The ideal state supposed to be embodied in the Roman
+Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantine's Donation.]
+
+Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never have risen to
+maturity nor sensibly affected the progress of events, had it not
+gained in the pre-existence of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape
+and a definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that
+this came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian Church was
+framing her organization on the model of the state which protected
+her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and improved the analogy
+between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that
+the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
+upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every
+century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before
+the Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that
+to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a
+holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had
+been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway[114].
+In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western
+countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
+power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still
+commanded, until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the
+ninth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the
+exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the
+hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of
+that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most
+stupendous of all the mediæval forgeries, which under the name of the
+Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the
+unquestioning belief of mankind[115]. Itself a portentous falsehood,
+it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of
+the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the
+eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine
+the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved,
+on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a
+new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
+government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he
+bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
+over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all,
+although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid
+audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the
+Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all
+of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
+same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The
+Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar,
+the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body
+of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
+receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians[116].
+
+[Sidenote: Interdependence of Papacy and Empire.]
+
+The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious
+society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of
+the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman
+clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than
+it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law was
+intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial
+jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and
+those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first
+to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title
+of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
+even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate
+and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it the necessary
+complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally
+imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II
+to break with the Byzantine princes[117], and the maintenance of their
+titular sovereignty till A.D. 800: hence the part which the Holy See
+played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of
+the West capable of fulfilling its duties; hence the grief with which
+its weakness under his successors was seen, the gladness when it
+descended to Otto as representative of the Frankish kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire revived in a new character.]
+
+Up to the era of A.D. 800 there had been at Constantinople a
+legitimate historical prolongation of the Roman Empire. Technically,
+as we have seen, the election of Charles, after the deposition of
+Constantine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old
+rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it
+not, did far more than effect a change of dynasty when he rejected
+Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always
+delusive. As well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
+orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human affairs
+which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new
+order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former
+ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
+unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Cæsar, nor the States-general of
+Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in
+1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles
+the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to A.D. 800, which bears the legend
+'Renovatio Romani Imperii[118],' expresses, more justly perhaps than
+was intended by its author, a second birth of the Roman Empire.
+
+It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this
+new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of
+fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one
+dynasty and country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
+character and claims, and was without the power that would have
+enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Great a
+new period begins, in which the ideas that have been described as
+floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the
+imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
+this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
+
+[Sidenote: Position and functions of the Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Correspondence and harmony of the spiritual and temporal
+powers.]
+
+The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion
+of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the
+World-State to be a monarchy; tradition, as well as the continuance of
+certain institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A
+king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the
+Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in
+older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilized world;
+the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
+of Christendom[119]. His functions will be seen most clearly if we
+deduce them from the leading principle of mediæval mythology, the
+exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the
+celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
+His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigned over
+the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as
+of heaven, so must he (the _Imperator cœlestis_[t]) be represented by
+a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor (_Imperator terrenus_[120]),
+whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this
+present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the
+body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's
+manifestation, so must there be a rule and care of men's bodies as
+well as of their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of
+that which is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem
+of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is
+presented to us throughout the Middle Ages[121]. The Pope, as God's
+vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the
+Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their
+dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed
+the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end
+of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is
+to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position
+is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by
+churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect
+their lands and lead their tenants in war[122]. The functions of
+Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to
+the priesthood, and to execute their decrees upon heretics and
+sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
+to use carnal weapons[123]. Thus does the Emperor answer in every
+point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank,
+created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been
+modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its
+details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and
+robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his
+own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a
+clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all
+narrowing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites
+every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their
+essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman
+Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
+the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism;
+that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality;
+manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two
+natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
+to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor,
+commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Union of Church and State.]
+
+In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the
+same, differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not
+whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular
+Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's
+life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore,
+on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
+papal. For, as has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
+not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven: as
+sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor.
+Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable,
+each being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation of both
+being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
+This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of
+Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits
+to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint
+government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the
+duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less
+than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which,
+granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two
+powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of
+strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions,
+in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to
+work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
+worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system which
+Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which culminated so
+triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each
+succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its
+brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who
+are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend
+or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
+
+The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this
+theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only
+at a few points in their history[124]. It was finally supplanted by
+another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development
+of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
+the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent
+churchmen[125]. Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the
+Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the
+Empire be held--held feudally, it was said by many--and it thereby
+thrust down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the sister
+of the spiritual[126]. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and
+under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander,
+of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government,
+required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save
+herself[127]. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
+pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to
+show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300,
+seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown,
+and sceptre, shouting aloud, 'I am Cæsar--I am Emperor[128].'
+
+[Sidenote: Proofs from mediæval documents.]
+
+The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus sketched cannot be
+definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and
+changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise
+us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds
+whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then
+too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines
+mediæval writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words,
+oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are
+present to the minds of the authors[129]. That which it is easiest to
+prove is the connection of the Empire with religion. From every
+record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and
+sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the
+faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, are
+represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart.
+The belief expressed by Lewis II, 'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
+voce sed in gloriosæ pietatis culmine consistit[130],' appears again
+in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to Conrad II[131], as Vicar
+of God; is reiterated by Frederick I[132], when he writes to the
+prelates of Germany, 'On earth God has placed no more than two powers,
+and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and
+one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church[133];' is
+echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V[134]. It
+was a doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the Holy
+See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make the transference
+(_translatio_) from the Greeks to the Germans appear entirely the
+Pope's work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling
+his rival's election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of
+the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his
+realm[135]. His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties
+already noticed. As the counterpart of the Mussulman Commander of the
+Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel
+foes, was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and in later
+times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering
+Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged
+to him to convoke General Councils, a right not without importance
+even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty
+when the object of the council was to settle a disputed election, or,
+as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coronation ceremonies.]
+
+No better illustrations can be desired than those to be found in the
+office for the imperial coronation at Rome, too long to be transcribed
+here, but well worthy of an attentive study[136]. The rites prescribed
+in it are rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
+besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power, receives a
+ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the
+Pope in celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
+communion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John
+Lateran. The oath to be taken by an elector begins, 'Ego N. volo regem
+Romanorum in Cæsarem promovendum, temporale caput populo Christiano
+eligere.' The Emperor swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
+Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
+'Deus qui ad prædicandum æterni regni evangelium Imperium Romanum
+præparasti, prætende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma cœlestia.'
+Among the Emperor's official titles there occur these: 'Head of
+Christendom,' 'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Temporal Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and of the
+Catholic Faith[137].'
+
+[Sidenote: The rights of the Empire proved from the Bible.]
+
+Very singular are the reasonings used by which the necessity and
+divine right of the Empire are proved out of the Bible. The mediæval
+theory of the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
+profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the
+Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his
+office was a derogation from the purity of the older system, appears
+divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate
+relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the
+authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
+was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined,
+every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to
+imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction
+which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the
+world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by
+paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no
+power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.'
+
+More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments
+were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical
+interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the
+belief formed itself that the Roman Empire--as the fourth beast of
+Daniel's vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's
+image--was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen
+and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned acceptance[138], and that
+not unnaturally. For no new power had arisen to extinguish the Roman,
+as the Persian monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
+realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic
+herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Burgundian, had
+cherished her memory and preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even
+the name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
+and diverse from all that were before it.' To these predictions, and
+to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the
+Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist[139]. He was to
+succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned
+that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the
+enemy and the end of the world[140]. It is not only when groping in
+the dark labyrinths of prophecy that mediæval authors are quick in
+detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in
+those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did
+it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom
+they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
+the sense they discovered was one which the language used would
+naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy
+was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple
+text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument
+all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which
+Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual and temporal powers,
+and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the
+Papacy[141]. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the
+seventy-second Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and
+moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon being of course,
+since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is
+the Popedom. Another quoting, 'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur[142],'
+with Augustine's explanation thereof[143], says, that when 'he who
+letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and
+the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race
+will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under
+Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
+symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the seven lamps
+burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Holy
+Empire[144].' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one
+lineage; how Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
+the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to
+reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the
+scriptural proof appear in the hands of mediæval churchmen, many
+holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we
+forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing
+institution what they found written already; we begin to fancy that
+the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the
+strength of words to which we attach in almost every case a wholly
+different meaning.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations from Mediæval Art.]
+
+It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass on from the
+theologians to the poets and artists of the Middle Ages, and endeavour
+to trace through their works the influence of the ideas which have
+been expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
+present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance with
+those works themselves such as only minute and long-continued study
+could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how
+much still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature and
+in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a
+piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the
+artist's thought or belief which are all the more precious that they
+are indirect or unconscious. Therefore a history of mediæval art which
+shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have
+any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in
+method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have
+been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in
+which the theory of the mediæval empire is unmistakeably set forth.
+One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence; every traveller in
+Italy may examine both for himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Mosaic of the Lateran Palace at Rome.]
+
+The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium,
+constructed by Pope Leo III about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of
+which, made by the order of Sextus V, may still be seen over against
+the façade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state
+banqueting-hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
+finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the
+green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the
+glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine
+Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the
+Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is
+extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax Vobis.'
+Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time
+sitting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the
+Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell,
+to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the
+opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle
+Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and
+Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
+Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an
+archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The
+inscription is, 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo
+regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,
+et in terra pax omnibus bonæ voluntatis.'
+
+The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently
+clear. First comes the revelation of the Gospel, and the divine
+commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at
+the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by
+which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed.
+Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who
+keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers
+on a new and firmer basis[145]. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy
+he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the
+banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause
+against heretics and infidels.
+
+[Sidenote: Fresco in S. Maria Novella at Florence.]
+
+The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the
+chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella[146] at
+Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been
+commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena,
+but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this
+view[147]. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350.
+It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and
+filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
+authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the
+time--Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it
+is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter--the
+Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
+side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a
+descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the
+Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king
+of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
+Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their
+feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves
+(heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the
+Dominicans[148]) combat and chase away. From this, the central
+foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a
+great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers:
+they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on
+through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the
+painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and
+Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and
+angels[149].
+
+[Sidenote: Anti-national character of the Empire.]
+
+Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect
+counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those
+who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of
+her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of
+her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to
+those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.
+
+A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and
+illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The
+idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight
+of God,--an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood,
+where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
+humblest curate,--and in the prevalence of one language for worship
+and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or
+rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to
+the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
+tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as
+solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the
+kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far
+from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the
+source and needful condition of their authority in their several
+territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The
+vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had
+concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the
+imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the
+kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an
+undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's
+minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that
+demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was
+or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they
+were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual
+helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending
+all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it.
+Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
+there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy
+of life.
+
+The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international;
+though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important
+aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely
+begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
+territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands,
+but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] I do not mean to say that the system of ideas which it is
+endeavoured to set forth in the following pages was complete in this
+particular form, either in the days of Charles or in those of Otto, or
+in those of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems to have been constantly
+growing and decaying from the fourth century to the sixteenth, the
+relative prominence of its cardinal doctrines varying from age to age.
+But, just as the painter who sees the ever-shifting lights and shades
+play over the face of a wide landscape faster than his brush can place
+them on the canvas, in despair at representing their exact position at
+any single moment, contents himself with painting the effects that are
+broadest and most permanent, and at giving rather the impression which
+the scene makes on him than every detail of the scene itself, so here,
+the best and indeed the only practicable course seems to be that of
+setting forth in its most self-consistent form the body of ideas and
+beliefs on which the Empire rested, although this form may not be
+exactly that which they can be asserted to have worn in any one
+century, and although the illustrations adduced may have to be taken
+sometimes from earlier, sometimes from later writers. As the doctrine
+of the Empire was in its essence the same during the whole Middle Age,
+such a general description as is attempted here may, I venture to
+hope, be found substantially true for the tenth as well as for the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[103] Empires like the Persian did nothing to assimilate the subject
+races, who retained their own laws and customs, sometimes their own
+princes, and were bound only to serve in the armies and fill the
+treasury of the Great King.
+
+[104] Od. iii. 72:--
+
+ ἢ μαψίδιως ἀλάλησθε,
+ οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ' ἀλόωνται
+ ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν =ἀλλοδαποῖσι= φέροντες;
+
+Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
+v. 214, ἀλλότριος φώς.
+
+[105] Plato, in the beginning of the Laws, represents it as natural
+between all states: πολεμὸς φύσει ὑπάρχει πρὸς ἁπάσας τὰς πόλεις.
+
+[106] See especially Acts xvii. 26; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.;
+iv. 3-6; Col. iii. 11.
+
+[107] This is drawn out by Laurent, _Histoire du Droit des Gens_; and
+Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[108] 'Romanos enim vocitant homines nostræ religionis.'--Gregory of
+Tours, quoted by Ægidi, from A. F. Pott, _Essay on the Words
+'Römisch,' 'Romanisch,' 'Roman,' 'Romantisch.'_ So in the Middle Ages,
+Ῥωμαῖοι is used to mean Christians, as opposed to Ἕλληνες, heathens.
+
+Cf. Ducange, 'Romani olim dicti qui alias Christiani vel etiam
+Catholici.'
+
+[109] As a reviewer in the _Tablet_ (whose courtesy it is the more
+pleasant to acknowledge since his point of view is altogether opposed
+to mine) has understood this passage as meaning that 'people imagined
+the Christian religion was to last for ever because the Holy Roman
+Empire was never to decay,' it may be worth while to say that this is
+far from being the purport of the argument which this chapter was
+designed to state. The converse would be nearer the truth:--'people
+imagined the Holy Roman Empire was never to decay, because the
+Christian religion was to last for ever.'
+
+The phenomen may perhaps be stated thus:--Men who were already
+disposed to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal for one set of
+reasons, came to believe the Christian Church to be eternal for
+another and, to them, more impressive set of reasons. Seeing the two
+institutions allied in fact, they took their alliance and connection
+to be eternal also; and went on for centuries believing in the
+necessary existence of the Roman Empire because they believed in its
+necessary union with the Catholic Church.
+
+[110] Augustine, in the _De Civitate Dei_. His influence, great
+through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on
+Charles.--'Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, præcipueque his
+qui De Civitate Dei prætitulati sunt.'--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+24.
+
+[111] 'Quapropter universorum precibus fidelium optandum est, ut in
+omnem gloriam vestram extendatur imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides
+... veraciter in una confessione cunctorum cordibus infigatur,
+quatenus summi Regis donante pietate eadem sanctæ pacis et perfectæ
+caritatis omnes ubique regat et custodiat unitas.' Quoted by Waitz
+(_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, ii. 182) from an unprinted letter
+of Alcuin.
+
+[112] A curious illustration of this tendency of mind is afforded by
+the descriptions we meet with of Learning or Theology (_Studium_) as a
+concrete existence, having a visible dwelling in the University of
+Paris. The three great powers which rule human life, says one writer,
+the Popedom, the Empire, and Learning, have been severally entrusted
+to the three foremost nations of Europe: Italians, Germans, French.
+'His siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio, tanquam
+tribus virtutibus, videlicet naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
+ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur, augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
+tribus, tanquam fundamento, pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia tanquam
+materialiter proficit. Et sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
+fundamento et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
+quatuor habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
+Arelatum, Mediolanum, Romam.'--_Jordanis Chronica_; _ap._ Schardius
+_Sylloge Tractatuum_. And see Döllinger, _Die Vergangenheit und
+Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie_, p. 8.
+
+[113] 'Una est sola respublica totius populi Christiani, ergo de
+necessitate erit et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublicæ,
+statutus et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
+dilatationem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augustinus
+(_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam fuit nec
+potuit nec poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
+qualitercumque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra
+fidem Catholicam et ecclesiam.'--Engelbert (abbot of Admont in Upper
+Austria), _De Ortu et Fine imperii Romani_ (circ. 1310).
+
+In this 'de necessitate' everything is included.
+
+[114] See note 37.
+
+[115] This is admirably brought out by Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach
+dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[116] See the original forgery (or rather the extracts which Gratian
+gives from it) in the _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, _Dist._ xcvi. cc. 13,
+14. 'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
+Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam
+nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri gloriose
+exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem et gloriæ dignitatem atque vigorem
+et honorificentiam imperialem.... Beato Sylvestro patri nostro summo
+pontifici et universali urbis Romæ papæ, et omnibus eius successoribus
+pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt
+sessuri, de præsenti contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
+deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium,
+necnon et superhumerale, verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream et tunicam
+coccineam, et omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et dignitatem imperialem
+præsidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra,
+simulque cuncta signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta imperialia et
+omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
+nostræ.... Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur ita et clerum sanctæ
+Romanæ ecclesiæ ornari decernimus.... Unde ut pontificalis apex non
+vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii dignitas gloria et potentia
+decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam urbem et omnes
+Italiæ seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates
+beatissimo papæ Sylvestro universali papæ contradimus atque
+relinquimus.... Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christianæ
+religionis caput ab imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, iustum non est
+ut illic imperator terrenus habeat potestatem.'
+
+The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imitation of
+the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German
+Emperors.
+
+[117] Döllinger has shewn in a recent work (_Die Papst-Fabeln des
+Mittelalters_) that the common belief that Gregory II excited the
+revolt against Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.
+
+So Anastasius, 'Ammonebat (_sc._ Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
+amore Romani imperii desisterent.'--_Vitæ Pontif. Rom._
+
+[118] Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure
+is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments
+of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond
+doubt; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour.
+See, among others, Le Blanc, _Dissertation historique sur quelques
+Monnoies de Charlemagne_, Paris, 1689; J. M. Heineccius, _De Veteribus
+Germanorum aliarumque nationum sigillis_, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
+_Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_, ed. Vignoli, Romæ, 1752; Götz,
+_Deutschlands Kayser-Münzen des Mittelalters_, Dresden, 1827; and the
+authorities cited by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+179, n. 4.
+
+[119] 'Præterea mirari se dilecta fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
+set Romanorum imperatores nos appellemus; set scire te convenit quia
+nisi Romanorum imperatores essemus, utique nec Francorum. A Romanis
+enim hoc nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus, apud quos profecto primum
+tantæ culmen sublimitatis effulsit,' &c--_Letter of the Emperor Lewis
+II to Basil the Emperor at Constantinople_, from _Chron. Salernit.
+ap._ Murat. _S. R. I._
+
+[120] 'Illam (_sc._ Romanam ecclesiam) solus ille fundavit, et super
+petram fidei mox nascentis erexit, qui beato æternæ vitæ clavigero
+terreni simul et cœlestis imperii iura commisit.'--_Corpus Iuris
+Canonici_, _Dist._ xxii. c. 1. The expression is not uncommon in
+mediæval writers. So 'unum est imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
+Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta in terris,' in Lewis II's
+letter.
+
+[121] 'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et
+sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
+videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex
+spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute
+animæ. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et
+operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem
+Petri et successorum eius.'--St. Thomas Aquinas, _De Regimine
+Principum_.
+
+[122] 'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
+et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
+certe sic.... Patronis vero concessum est ut prælatos in ecclesiis sui
+patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui
+tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote
+this from a curious document in Goldast's collection of tracts
+(_Monarchia Imperii_), entitled '_Letter of the four Universities,
+Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor
+Wenzel and Pope Urban_,' A.D. 1380. The title can scarcely be right,
+but if the document is, as in all probability it is, not later than
+the fifteenth century, its being misdescribed, or even its being a
+forgery, does not make it less valuable as an evidence of men's ideas.
+
+[123] So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's
+coronation: '... actum in præsentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi
+filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem
+sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ hodie Augustum sacravimus.'--Jaffé
+_Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, ad ann. 800.
+
+So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
+to the Emperor an almost papal authority over the Church itself:--
+
+ 'Cœli habet hic (_sc._ Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;
+ Tu regis ecclesiæ, nam regit ille poli;
+ Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,
+ Hic te cœlicolas ducet ad usque choros.'
+ In D. Bouquet, v. 415.
+
+[124] Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo;
+again under Otto III and his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester II;
+thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth.
+
+[125] _The Sachsenspiegel_ (_Speculum Saxonicum_, circ. A.D. 1240),
+the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God
+alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what
+has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the
+Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' _The
+Schwabenspiegel_, compiled half a century later, subordinates the
+prince to the pontiff: 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet
+der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er
+damit richte.'
+
+[126] So Boniface VIII in the bull _Unam Sanctam_, will have but one
+head for the Christian people. 'Igitur ecclesiæ unius et unicæ unum
+corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum.'
+
+[127] St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in
+consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesiæ
+vel ecclesiæ prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So in
+the _De Consideratione_: 'Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes
+utrumque,' of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority,
+quoted by Gieseler.
+
+[128] 'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite
+Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait:
+"Numquid ego summus sum pontifex? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
+possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Cæsar, ego sum imperator."'--Fr.
+Pipinus (ap. Murat. _S. R. I._ ix.) l. iv. c. 47. These words,
+however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface, when receiving the
+envoys of the emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to
+find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current
+story for what it is worth.
+
+It has been suggested that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene
+in a well-known passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):--
+
+ 'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo
+ Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada
+ Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
+ L' un l' altro ha spento, ed è giunta la spada
+ Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme
+ Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'
+
+
+[129] See especially Peter de Andlo (_De Imperio Romano_); Ralph
+Colonna (_De translatione Imperii Romani_); Dante (_De Monarchia_);
+Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_); Marsilius Patavinus (_De
+translatione Imperii Romani_); Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (_De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_); Zoannetus (_De Imperio Romano atque ejus
+Iurisdictione_); and the writers in Schardius's _Sylloge_, and in
+Goldast's Collection of Tracts, entitled _Monarchia Imperii_.
+
+[130] Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in _Chron.
+Salernit._ in Mur. _S. R. I._; also given by Baronius, _Ann. Eccl._ ad
+ann. 871.
+
+[131] 'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti: Vicarius es Christi.'--Wippo,
+_Vita Chuonradi_ (_ap._ Pertz), c. 3.
+
+[132] Letter in Radewic, _ap._ Murat, _S. R. I._
+
+[133] Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, 'Gentis humanæ,
+orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus præesse.'--Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius Illustratus_.
+
+[134] In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (A.D. 1529) the
+Emperor is called 'Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit.'
+Hieronymus Balbus, writing about the same time, puts the question
+whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things,
+as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and answers it by saying, 'Cum
+ambo ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et eadem semita incedant, de utroque
+idem puto sentiendum.'
+
+[135] 'Non magis ad Papam depositio seu remotio pertinet quam ad
+quoslibet regum prælatos, qui reges suos prout assolent, consecrant et
+inungunt.'--_Letter of Frederick II_ (lib. i. c. 3).
+
+[136] _Liber Ceremonialis Romanus_, lib. i. sect. 5; with which
+compare the _Coronatio Romana_ of Henry VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's
+Dissertation in vol. i. of the _Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi_.
+
+[137] See Goldast, _Collection of Imperial Constitutions_; and Moser,
+_Römische Kayser_.
+
+[138] The abbot Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_) quotes
+Origen and Jerome to this effect, and proceeds himself to explain,
+from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling away will precede the coming of
+Antichrist. There will be a triple 'discessio,' of the kingdoms of the
+earth from the Roman Empire, of the Church from the Apostolic See, of
+the faithful from the faith. Of these, the first causes the second;
+the temporal sword to punish heretics and schismatics being no longer
+ready to work the will of the rulers of the Church.
+
+[139] A full statement of the views that prevailed in the earlier
+Middle Age regarding Antichrist--as well as of the singular prophecy
+of the Frankish Emperor who shall appear in the latter days, conquer
+the world, and then going to Jerusalem shall lay down his crown on the
+Mount of Olives and deliver over the kingdom to Christ--may be found
+in the little treatise, _Vita Antichristi_, which Adso, monk and
+afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der, compiled (cir. 950) for the
+information of Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist is
+to be born a Jew of the tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), 'non de episcopo
+et monacha, sicut alii delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
+meretrice et crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in peccato concipietur, in
+peccato generabitur, in peccato nascetur.' His birthplace is Babylon:
+he is to be brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.
+
+Adso's book may be found printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.
+
+[140] S. Thomas explains the prophecy in a remarkable manner, shewing
+how the decline of the Empire is no argument against its fulfilment.
+'Dicendum quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in
+spirituale, ut dicit Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo
+discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a temporali sed
+etiam a spirituali, scilicit a fide Catholica Romanæ Ecclesiæ. Est
+autem hoc conveniens signum nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
+imperium omnibus dominabatur: ita e contra signum adventus Antichristi
+est discessio ab eo.'--_Comment. ad 2 Thess._ ii.
+
+[141] See note 149, page 119. The Papal party sometimes insisted that
+both swords were given to Peter, while the imperialists assigned the
+temporal sword to John. Thus a gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_ says,
+'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het nu de paves: dat andere
+hadde Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'
+
+[142] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
+
+[143] St. Augustine, however, though he states the view (applying the
+passage to the Roman Empire) which was generally received in the
+Middle Ages, is careful not to commit himself positively to it.
+
+[144] _Jordanis Chronica_ (written towards the close of the thirteenth
+century).
+
+[145] Compare with this the words which Pope Hadrian I. had used some
+twenty-three years before, of Charles as representative of
+Constantine: 'Et sicut temporibus Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
+a sanctæ recordationis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore, per eius
+largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
+atque exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiæ partibus largiri
+dignatus est, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
+nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati Petri apostoli germinet
+atque exsultet, ut omnes gentes quæ hæc audierint edicere valeant,
+'Domine salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die in qua invocaverimus
+te;' quia ecce novus Christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his
+temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanctæ suæ ecclesiæ beati
+apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est.'--_Letter XLIX of
+Cod. Carol._, A.D. 777 (in Mur. _Scriptores Rerum Italicarum_).
+
+This letter is memorable as containing the first allusion, or what
+seems an allusion, to Constantine's Donation.
+
+The phrase 'sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,' is worth
+noting.
+
+[146] The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's _Decameron_
+is laid.
+
+[147] So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs.
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their _New History of Painting in Italy_,
+vol. ii. pp. 85 _sqq._
+
+[148] Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.
+
+[149] There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture,
+which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a
+conspicuous figure.
+
+It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
+hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one
+else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a
+death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GERMAN KINGDOM.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Union of the Roman Empire with the German kingdom.]
+
+This was the office which Otto the Great assumed in A.D. 962. But it
+was not his only office. He was already a German king; and the new
+dignity by no means superseded the old. This union in one person of
+two characters, a union at first personal, then official, and which
+became at last a fusion of the two into something different from
+either, is the key to the whole subsequent history of Germany and the
+Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany and its monarchy.]
+
+Of the German kingdom little need be said, since it differs in no
+essential respect from the other kingdoms of Western Europe as they
+stood in the tenth century. The five or six great tribes or
+tribe-leagues which composed the German nation had been first brought
+together under the sceptre of the Carolingians; and, though still
+retaining marks of their independent origin, were prevented from
+separating by community of speech and a common pride in the great
+Frankish Empire. When the line of Charles the Great ended in A.D. 911,
+by the death of Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf), Conrad, duke of the
+Franconians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of the Saxons, was
+chosen to fill the vacant throne. By his vigorous yet conciliatory
+action, his upright character, his courage and good fortune in
+repelling the Hungarians, Henry laid deep the foundations of royal
+power: under his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's
+coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the realm did
+him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians, Suabians, Thuringians,
+and Lorrainers gathered round the Saxon monarch, is the inauguration
+of a true Teutonic realm, which, though it called itself not German
+but East Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of the
+Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency in many
+respects different.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism.]
+
+There had been under those princes a singular mixture of the old
+German organization by tribes or districts (the so-called
+Gauverfassung), such as we find in the earliest records, with the
+method introduced by Charles of maintaining by means of officials,
+some fixed, others moving from place to place, the control of the
+central government. In the suspension of that government which
+followed his days, there grew up a system whose seeds had been sown as
+far back as the time of Clovis, a system whose essence was the
+combination of the tenure of land by military service with a peculiar
+personal relation between the landlord and his tenant, whereby the one
+was bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and obedience.
+This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman
+soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into
+Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet
+under Pipin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the
+impress which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his
+successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be
+possible here to examine its social and moral influence. Politically
+it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of
+land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt
+thereon: an annexation of personal to territorial authority more
+familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive
+Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained,
+feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each
+tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants
+held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so
+uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly
+bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society
+that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have
+scarcely shaken off.
+
+[Sidenote: The feudal king.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Germanic feudal polity generally.]
+
+Now by the middle of the tenth century, Germany, less fully committed
+than France to feudalism's worst feature, the hopeless bondage of the
+peasantry, was otherwise thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality
+of all the freeborn save the sacred line which we find in the Germany
+of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation of ranks and a
+concentration of power in the hands of a landholding caste, so had the
+monarch lost his ancient character as leader and judge of the people,
+to become the head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of
+the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in arms and
+money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at pleasure declare war or
+make peace. But all these rights he exercised far less as sovereign of
+the nation than as standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal
+tenants, a relation in its origin strictly personal, and whose
+prominence obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And
+great as these rights might become in the hands of an ambitious and
+politic ruler, they were in practice limited by the corresponding
+duties he owed to his vassals, and by the difficulty of enforcing them
+against a powerful offender. The king was not permitted to retain in
+his own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he had held
+before coming to the throne; he could not interfere with the
+jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands, nor prevent them from
+waging war or forming leagues with each other like independent
+princes. Chief among the nobles stood the dukes, who, although their
+authority was now delegated, theoretically at least, instead of
+independent, territorial instead of personal, retained nevertheless
+much of that hold on the exclusive loyalty of their subjects which had
+belonged to them as hereditary leaders of the tribe under the ancient
+system. They were, with the three Rhenish archbishops, by far the
+greatest subjects, often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable
+to resist its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto made upon
+their privileges, especially through the institution of the Counts
+Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy, but not their importance. It was
+not till the thirteenth century that they disappeared with the rise of
+the second order of nobility. That order, at this period far less
+powerful, included the counts, margraves or marquises and landgraves,
+originally officers of the crown, now feudal tenants; holding their
+lands of the dukes, and maintaining against them the same contest
+which they in turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons
+and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen, the
+increasing one of serfs. The institutions of primitive Germany were
+almost all gone; supplanted by a new system, partly the natural result
+of the formation of a settled from a half-nomad society, partly
+imitated from that which had arisen upon Roman soil, west of the Rhine
+and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the Heerban of the whole
+nation, which had been wont to follow the king on foot in distant
+expeditions, but a cavalry militia of barons and their retainers,
+bound to service for a short period, and rendering it unwillingly
+where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent popular
+assemblies, whereof under the names of the Mallum, the Placitum, the
+Mayfield, we hear so much under Clovis and Charles, were now never
+summoned, and the laws that had been promulgated there were, if not
+abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council existed, save the
+Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and clerical, met their
+sovereign, sometimes to decide on foreign war, oftener to concur in
+the grant of a fief or the proscription of a rebel. Every district had
+its own rude local customs administered by the court of the local
+lord: other law there was none, for imperial jurisprudence had in
+these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place left empty
+by the disuse of the barbarian codes.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire and the German kingdom.]
+
+This condition of things was indeed better than that utter confusion
+which had gone before, for a principle of order had begun to group and
+bind the tossing atoms; and though the union into which it drove men
+was a hard and narrow one, it was something that they should have
+learnt to unite themselves at all. Yet nascent feudality was but one
+remove from anarchy; and the tendency to isolation and diversity
+continued, despite the efforts of the Church and the Carolingian
+princes, to be all-powerful in Western Europe. The German kingdom was
+already a bond between the German races, and appears strong and united
+when we compare it with the France of Hugh Capet, or the England of
+Ethelred II; yet its history to the twelfth century is little else
+than a record of disorders, revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless
+struggle on the part of the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a
+resistance by his vassals equally obstinate and more frequently
+successful. What the issue of the contest might have been if Germany
+had been left to take her own course is matter of speculation, though
+the example of every European state except England and Norway may
+incline the balance in favour of the crown. But the strife had
+scarcely begun when a new influence was interposed: the German king
+became Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more unlike than those
+whose headship became thus vested in one person: the one centralized,
+the other local; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the
+rude offspring of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands
+of an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights and
+authorizing resistance to his commands; the one demanding the equality
+of all citizens as creatures equal before Heaven, the other bound up
+with an aristocracy the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the
+most exact, that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant could
+not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if they met must
+strive till one swallowed up the other. It was not so. In the fusion
+which began from the first, though it was for a time imperceptible,
+each of the two characters gave and each lost some of its attributes:
+the king became more than German, the Emperor less than Roman, till,
+at the end of six centuries, the monarch in whom two 'persons' had
+been united, appeared as a third different from either of the former,
+and might not inappropriately be entitled 'German Emperor[150].' The
+nature and progress of this change will appear in the after history of
+Germany, and cannot be described here without in some measure
+anticipating subsequent events. A word or two may indicate how the
+process of fusion began.
+
+[Sidenote: Results of this union in one person.]
+
+It was natural that the great mass of Otto's subjects, to whom the
+imperial title, dimly associated with Rome and the Pope, sounded
+grander than the regal, without being known as otherwise different,
+should in thought and speech confound them. The sovereign and his
+ecclesiastical advisers, with far clearer views of the new office and
+of the mutual relation of the two, found it impossible to separate
+them in practice, and were glad to merge the lesser in the greater.
+For as lord of the world, Otto was Emperor north as well as south of
+the Alps. When he issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his
+Teutonic subjects in both capacities; when as Emperor he led the
+armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the standard of their
+feudal superior that his armed vassals followed; when he founded
+churches and appointed bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal
+lands, partly as protector of the faith, charged to guide the Church
+in matters temporal. Thus the assumption of the imperial crown brought
+to Otto as its first result an apparent increase of domestic
+authority; it made his position by its historical associations more
+dignified, by its religious more hallowed; it raised him higher above
+his vassals and above other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in
+ecclesiastical affairs, and by necessary consequence gave to
+ecclesiastics a more important place at court and in the
+administration of government than they had enjoyed before. Great as
+was the power of the bishops and abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it
+stood nowhere so high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double
+position, as head both of Church and State, required the two
+organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh century a full
+half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small part of its
+military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen: their influence
+predominated in the Diet; the archchancellorship of the Empire,
+highest of all offices, belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz,
+as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
+must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy
+was thus advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the
+aristocracy by raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have
+been so, and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the
+clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than those whom
+they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's judgment, historians
+have often forgotten in what position he stood to the Church, and how
+it behoved him, according to the doctrine received, to establish in
+her an order like in all things to that which he found already
+subsisting in the State.
+
+[Sidenote: Changes in title.]
+
+The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire thus to merge the king
+in the Emperor[151]. Charles had called himself 'Imperator Cæsar
+Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus;' and again, 'Carolus serenissimus
+Augustus, Pius, Felix, Romanorum gubernans Imperium, qui et per
+misericordiam Dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.' Otto and his
+first successors, who until their coronation at Rome had used the
+titles of 'Rex Francorum,' or 'Rex Francorum Orientalium,' or oftener
+still 'Rex' alone, discarded after it all titles save the highest of
+'Imperator Augustus;' seeming thereby, though they too had been
+crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of Cæsar through
+all their dominions. Tracing as we are the history of a title, it is
+needless to dwell on the significance of the change[152]. Charles, son
+of the Ripuarian allies of Probus, had been a Frankish chieftain on
+the Rhine; Otto, the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan Arminius, would
+rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed from the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Imperial power feudalized.]
+
+Nevertheless, the imperial element did not in every respect
+predominate over the royal. The monarch might desire to make good
+against his turbulent barons the boundless prerogative which he
+acquired with his new crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and
+they, disputing neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right to
+wear it, refused with good reason to let their own freedom be
+infringed upon by any act of which they had not been the authors. So
+far was Otto from embarking on so vain an enterprise, that his rule
+was even more direct and more personal than that of Charles had been.
+There was no scheme of mechanical government, no claim of absolutism;
+there was only the resolve to make the energetic assertion of the
+king's feudal rights subserve the further aims of the Emperor. What
+Otto demanded he demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as
+king; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial office was
+itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas. Feudality needing, to
+make its theory complete, a lord paramount of the world, from whose
+grant all ownership in land must be supposed to have emanated, and
+finding such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord of
+all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch, himself, as it
+was expressed, 'holding' the world from God. There were not wanting
+Roman institutions to which these notions could attach themselves.
+Constantine, imitating the courts of the East, had made the
+dignitaries of his household great officials of the State: these were
+now reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal, the
+chamberlain of the Empire, so soon to become its electoral princes.
+The holding of land on condition of military service was Roman in its
+origin: the divided ownership of feudal law found its analogies in the
+Roman tenure of emphyteusis. Thus while Germany was Romanized the
+Empire was feudalized, and came to be considered not the antagonist
+but the perfection of an aristocratic system. And it was this
+adaptation to existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to
+assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they
+seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism (if
+one may use a now perverted word) and that of feudalism a deep and
+lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a
+measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman
+government had been, but from the necessities of their position,
+raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects,
+surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus
+were they driven to reduce local independence, and assimilate the
+various races through their vast territories. It was Otto who made the
+Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding
+them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its
+collective greatness to the consciousness of national life, never
+thenceforth to be extinguished.
+
+[Sidenote: The Commons.]
+
+One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy which Roman
+traditions as well as present needs might have suggested, it was
+scarcely possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship
+of the Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of
+freemen, which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the
+population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did
+not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the
+most part, after the Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the
+Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean that free democratic
+communities maintained themselves. Town-life there was none, till
+Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in
+fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher
+class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state.
+But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of
+its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the
+crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses
+upon both, the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people.
+More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial name
+invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of
+its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet
+lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to
+Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint
+of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[150] Although this was of course never his legal title. Till 1806 he
+was 'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus;' 'Römischer Kaiser.'
+
+[151] Pütter, _Dissertationes de Instauratione Imperii Romani_; cf.
+Goldast's _Collection of Constitutions_; and the proclamations and
+other documents collected in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. I.
+
+[152] Pütter (_De Instauratione Imperii Romani_) will have it that
+upon this mistake, as he calls it, of Otto's, the whole subsequent
+history of the Empire turned; that if Otto had but continued to style
+himself 'Francorum Rex,' Germany would have been spared all her
+Italian wars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately
+amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every
+step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent
+theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are
+stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which,
+even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity
+of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people
+must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would
+be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions
+conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and
+how many things there are which he believes without realizing:
+believes sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
+governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of
+theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more
+violent and their conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in
+modern society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
+spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they
+would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that
+while everyone believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of
+divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or
+interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed
+was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated
+to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative
+any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
+limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in
+Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where
+therefore he was forced to rule merely as emperor, and not also as
+king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from
+insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account
+of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome is a not unfitting
+comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in
+the history of the Apostolic Chair.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great in Rome.]
+
+After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the
+partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves
+in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who
+found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
+renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even
+scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade
+Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of
+the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most
+profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But
+he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony,
+'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however,
+Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a
+party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope,
+but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the
+nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
+they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled into the Campagna
+to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's.
+Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by
+inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
+tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy.
+Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list
+of them:--'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen
+the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of
+Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him
+ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They
+said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the
+pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting;
+had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
+houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and
+hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had
+drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked
+the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
+matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making
+the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not
+speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is
+to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret
+for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they
+had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the
+clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope hath not
+committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and
+even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles,
+the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and
+opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be
+bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on
+the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart
+from us, for we will not know Thy ways."'
+
+The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the
+council: a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms,
+recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear
+to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of
+compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.
+
+'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the
+bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope: if
+you do this, by Almighty God I excommunicate you, so that you may not
+have power to perform mass or to ordain no one[153].'
+
+[Sidenote: Deposition of John XII.]
+
+To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of humorous
+expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his
+Latin. But the messenger who bore it could not find John: he had
+repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by
+going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had
+been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto,
+who still led their deliberations, demanded the condemnation of the
+Pope; the assembly deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his
+reprobate life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
+in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a
+layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Revolt of the Romans.]
+
+Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than
+that of any of his predecessors. Within little more than a year from
+his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of
+Charles himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
+installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves
+to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy
+See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his crown
+which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn
+engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the
+Emperor's consent[154]. But he had yet to learn what this obedience
+and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the
+expulsion of John; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified
+to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual
+licence of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
+privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the
+strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not
+sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly
+turned to rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
+dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms,
+blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and
+his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed
+over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter;
+yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time,
+after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth
+returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily
+closed by the sword of an injured husband[155], the people chose a new
+Pope in defiance of the Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued
+and again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third time, in
+A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant.
+Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the
+consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the
+government of the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
+not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up any claims to
+independence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of
+his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an
+authority which must be exercised according to the discretion of his
+sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
+papal elections in A.D. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII,
+a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed
+that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be
+read in the collections of the canon law[156]. The vigorous exercise
+of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the
+apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that
+the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the
+city are a type of those which his successors were destined to
+experience. Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
+enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not all the efforts
+of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they
+were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they
+must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of
+strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity under the sun of
+Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna[157]. Rome soon resumed
+her turbulent independence.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's rule in Italy.]
+
+Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes from gaining a firm
+footing throughout Italy. Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for
+the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
+substantial authority there. The _missi dominici_ had ceased to
+traverse the country; the local governors had thrown off control, a
+crowd of petty potentates had established principalities by
+aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great
+nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the
+cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a
+republican system, could traces of political order be found, or the
+arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror,
+ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less
+submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
+progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something to still
+the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization
+for which her natural features are not less answerable than the
+mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was
+wildest, that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
+nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly on the use
+of a common language and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes
+of thought. But though already jealous of the Tedescan, national
+feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
+cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself
+of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened
+the existence of his empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with
+Germany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
+keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor
+sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his
+government[158].
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's foreign policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Towards Byzantium.]
+
+The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman crown urged him to
+resume the plans of foreign conquest which had lain neglected since
+the days of Charles: the growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now
+definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
+era of the Marks--Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his
+hands a force to execute those plans which his predecessors had
+wanted. In this, as in his other enterprises, the great Emperor was
+active, wise, successful. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and
+unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to
+annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the
+vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace
+them in arms. Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
+legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as
+Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the
+princess Theophano. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in
+an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new
+Empires[159]. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they
+preserved the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd
+as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by
+reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title altogether;
+and when the Pope had, in a letter addressed '_Imperatori Græcorum_,'
+asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Romans,
+the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,' said he, 'but wretched
+Lombards: what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome
+migrated hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans,
+while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name,
+and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master.
+'"Roman" is the most contemptuous name we can use--it conveys the
+reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be
+expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus? to his asylum
+were gathered the offscourings of the nations: thence came these
+κοσμοκράτορες.' Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province of Rome as
+the price of compliance[160]; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and
+Theophano became the bride of Otto II.
+
+[Sidenote: Towards the West Franks.]
+
+Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate
+the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant
+that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it
+by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
+feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the
+same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis
+d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul.
+These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by
+arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
+instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been.
+The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising
+greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed
+itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast
+absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger.
+Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987,
+and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally
+admitted.
+
+[Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.]
+
+Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
+Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The
+former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king,
+Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as
+mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto,
+and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a
+separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification
+of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
+Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
+itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for
+thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son
+of Rudolf II).
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.]
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor
+of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed
+Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes
+were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
+free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he
+forced to forsake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear
+of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over
+more distant lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
+the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the Saxon name,
+may have wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea[162], and
+it was perhaps partly with this intent that he gained for Otto the
+hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of
+supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when,
+exaggerating the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors, he
+called himself 'Basileus and imperator of Britain[163],' thereby
+seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the nations of the island
+similar to that which the Roman Emperor claimed over the states of
+Christendom.
+
+[Sidenote: Extent of Otto's Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Comparison between it and that of Charles.]
+
+This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the
+Carolingian, was in many respects different. It was less wide,
+including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds
+of Italy; or counting in subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy,
+Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character was
+less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of
+his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the
+heathen: he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
+Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
+administration: he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and
+did not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It
+was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that
+name anything more than the right to universal dominion and a certain
+oversight of matters spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be
+treading in the steps of the Cæsars. He could not speak Latin, he had
+few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied
+cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles.
+Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not
+permit similar attempts at wide organization. The local potentates
+would have submitted to no _missi dominici_; separate laws and
+jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
+_placita_ at which those laws were framed or published would not have
+been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he
+did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions,
+he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left
+everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
+became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle
+among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome
+and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy
+stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture
+hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany
+became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who
+trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their
+arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived
+Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West
+had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and
+more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had
+wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as
+it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to
+represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power
+to unite and civilize Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.]
+
+[Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of
+Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.]
+
+The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era
+of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly
+dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad,
+full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
+princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through
+the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed
+the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the
+dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
+accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous
+blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of
+Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era
+of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of
+the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire,
+victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as
+Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by
+the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany
+rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the
+age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
+government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the
+turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in
+whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving
+the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes
+entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
+extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating
+successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert,
+whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of
+Constantine: Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and
+learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own
+soul, purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last
+carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the
+profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy
+which raised it from the abyss of the tenth century to the point where
+Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power
+by their most disinterested acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Schemes of Otto III: Changes of style and usage.]
+
+With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him, Otto laboured
+on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense
+religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world--in his
+proclamations he calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of
+Jesus Christ[165]'--together with the ambitious antiquarianism of a
+fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he
+represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange
+mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. 'We have ordained
+this,' says an edict, 'in order that, the church of God being freely
+and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our
+knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman people may be extended
+and the commonwealth be restored; so may we be found worthy after
+living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from
+the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
+exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '_Romanorum
+Imperator_' instead of the simple '_Imperator_' of his predecessors.
+His seals bear a legend resembling that used by Charles, '_Renovatio
+Imperii Romanorum_;' even the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that
+name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be
+re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
+healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular
+administrative system of government for his capital--naming a
+patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges, who were commanded to
+recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has
+been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy
+of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city
+and the whole world.' He introduced into the simple German court the
+ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
+many of his followers[166]. His father's wish to draw Italy and
+Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the
+chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining
+a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue
+with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and
+far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived
+to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that
+whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in
+the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a Greek
+than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with no such tight hand
+as his grandfather had been wont to do; he neglected the schemes of
+northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of
+tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than
+conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,' as his own
+generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the
+victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of
+Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and
+slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with
+laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the pages of monkish
+chroniclers, and buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen
+some fifty paces from the tomb of Charles beneath the central dome.
+Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to
+Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting
+on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open
+before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the
+neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire
+from his Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his acts,
+Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or
+came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city
+again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece
+to their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so forgot
+the present to live in the light of the ancient order; no other soul
+was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the
+glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the mediæval Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy independent.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry II Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Southern Italy.]
+
+The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks
+might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II[167], Italy was nowise
+affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom
+could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes
+placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved
+partly by the growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more by
+the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since
+Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
+him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited
+Henry[168]; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he
+received the imperial crown, A.D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
+that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously to
+Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently
+attempted to recover their independence. For the former had often
+little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
+home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery
+and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was irresistible, and the
+disunion of Italy promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial
+vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once
+their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted
+to their former condition, and Tuscany was little more dependent than
+France. In Southern Italy the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome
+was an outpost instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious
+evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
+Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the
+Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually
+date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople[169], seldom
+mentioning the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him the
+Western becomes _Imperator_, the Greek, appearing more rarely, is
+_Imperator Constantinopolitanus_. Assailed by the Saracens, masters
+already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to
+Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of
+returning under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the Greeks
+in the South favoured the rise of the Norman kingdom, so did the
+liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the
+Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were
+only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of
+them self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the rural
+nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the
+Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad II.]
+
+The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the great Franconian
+line, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or,
+as it is after this time more often called, the kingdom of Arles[170].
+Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
+and the states were at length persuaded to consent to its reunion to
+the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent
+dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On
+Rudolf's death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured to
+seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from which he was
+dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty. Unlike Italy, it became an
+integral member of the Germanic realm: its prelates and nobles sat in
+imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
+Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however,
+seldom effective in these outlying territories, exposed always to the
+intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry III.]
+
+[Sidenote: His reform of the Popedom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV, A.D. 1056-1106.]
+
+Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire attained the meridian of
+its power. At home Otto the Great's prerogative had not stood so high.
+The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
+vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself
+retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some
+years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine
+feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
+the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by
+conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was
+enforced by war, the country made almost a province, and compelled to
+pay tribute. In Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A
+disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had
+shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and
+appointed their successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
+constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges
+of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further
+authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod
+passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
+pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of
+the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant corruption
+of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their
+bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and so
+pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than
+the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to
+himself, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call
+it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly
+in A.D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were
+gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[153] 'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
+audivimus dicere quia vos vultis alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
+da Deum omnipotentem excommunico vos, ut non habeatis licentiam missam
+celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'--Liudprand, _ut supra_. The 'da' is
+curious, as shewing the progress of the change from Latin to Italian.
+The answer sent by Otto and the council takes exception to the double
+negative.
+
+[154] 'Cives fidelitatem promittunt hæc addentes et firmiter iurantes
+nunquam se papam electuros aut ordinaturos præter consensum atque
+electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis Cæsaris Augusti filiique ipsius
+Ottonis.'--Liudprand, _Gesta Ottonis_, lib. vi.
+
+[155] 'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo est percussus ut infra dierum octo
+spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,' says the chronicler, crediting
+with but little of his wonted cleverness the supposed author of John's
+death, who well might have desired a long life for so useful a
+servant.
+
+He adds a detail too characteristic of the time to be omitted--'Sed
+eucharistiæ viaticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
+percepit.'
+
+[156] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii., '_In synodo_.' A decree
+which is probably substantially genuine, although the form in which we
+have it is evidently of later date.
+
+[157] Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines--
+
+ 'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,
+ Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,
+ Romanæ febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'
+
+[158] There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
+kingdom of Burgundy.
+
+[159] Liudprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_.
+
+[160] 'Sancti imperii nostri olim servos principes, Beneventanum
+scilicet, tradat,' &c. The epithet is worth noticing.
+
+[161] Liudprand calls the Eastern Franks 'Franci Teutonici' to
+distinguish them from the Romanized Franks of Gaul or 'Francigenæ,' as
+they were frequently called. The name 'Frank' seems even so early as
+the tenth century to have been used in the East as a general name for
+the Western peoples of Europe. Liudprand says that the Greek Emperor
+included 'sub Francorum nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.' Probably
+this use dates from the time of Charles.
+
+[162] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[163] Basileus was a favourite title of the English kings before the
+Conquest. Titles like this used in these early English charters prove,
+it need hardly be said, absolutely nothing as to the real existence of
+any rights or powers of the English king beyond his own borders. What
+they do prove (over and above the taste for florid rhetoric in the
+royal clerks) is the impression produced by the imperial style, and by
+the idea of the emperor's throne as supported by the thrones of kings
+and other lesser potentates.
+
+[164] The coins of Crescentius are said to exhibit the insignia of the
+old Empire.--Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. 715. But probably
+some at least of them are forgeries.
+
+[165] Proclamation in Pertz, _M. G. H._ ii.
+
+[166] 'Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem iam ex magna parte
+deletam suis cupiens renovare temporibus multa faciebat quæ diversi
+diverse sentiebant.'--Thietmar, _Chron._ ix.; ap. Pertz, _M. G. H._ t.
+iii.
+
+[167] _Annales Quedlinb._, ad ann. 1002.
+
+[168] Henry had already entered Italy in 1004.
+
+[169] _Annales Beneventani_, in Pertz, _M. G. H._
+
+[170] See Appendix, Note A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+STRUGGLE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY.
+
+
+Reformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees, the Papacy had
+resumed in the middle of the eleventh century the schemes of polity
+shadowed forth by Nicholas I, and which the degradation of the last
+age had only suspended. Under the guidance of her greatest mind,
+Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Rome, she now advanced to their
+completion, and proclaimed that war of the ecclesiastical power
+against the civil power in the person of the Emperor, which became the
+centre of the subsequent history of both. While the nature of the
+struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their previous
+connection, the vastness of the subject warns one from the attempt to
+draw even its outlines, and restricts our view to those relations of
+Popedom and Empire which arise directly out of their respective
+positions as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal Christian
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of the Papal power.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+The eagerness of Christianity in the age immediately following her
+political establishment to purchase by submission the support of the
+civil power, has been already remarked. The change from independence
+to supremacy was gradual. The tale we smile at, how Constantine,
+healed of his leprosy, granted the West to bishop Sylvester, and
+retired to Byzantium that no secular prince might interfere with the
+jurisdiction or profane the neighbourhood of Peter's chair, worked
+great effects through the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay
+more, its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat of
+government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus that made the Pope the
+greatest personage in the city, and in the prostration after Alaric's
+invasion he was seen to be so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and
+effective, though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to the
+revived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as Augustus and
+Tiberius had been to the faint continuance of their earlier
+prototypes. Pope Leo the First asserted the universal jurisdiction of
+his see[171], and his persevering successors slowly enthralled Italy,
+Illyricum, Gaul, Spain, Africa, dexterously confounding their
+undoubted metropolitan and patriarchal rights with those of œcumenical
+bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his writings and the
+fame of his personal sanctity, by the conversion of England and the
+introduction of an impressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than
+any other pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority. Yet his
+tone to Maurice of Constantinople was deferential, to Phocas
+adulatory; his successors were not consecrated till confirmed by the
+Emperor or the Exarch; one of them was dragged in chains to the
+Bosphorus, and banished thence to Scythia. When the iconoclastic
+controversy and the intervention of Pipin broke the allegiance of the
+Popes to the East, the Franks, as patricians and Emperors, seemed to
+step into the position which Byzantium had lost[172]. At Charles's
+coronation, says the Saxon poet,
+
+ 'Et summus eundem
+ Præsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim
+ Principibus fuit antiquis.'
+
+[Sidenote: Temporal power of the Popes.]
+
+Their relations were, however, no longer the same. If the Frank
+vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of free gift. What Christendom
+saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook as
+his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Roman
+Church. The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even
+more favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who
+summoned him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath of
+fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the Emperor, the
+pontiff, and the people--represented by their senate and consuls, or
+by the demagogue of the hour--the most steady, prudent, and
+far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no
+minorities, as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its
+own army--the host of churchmen through Europe. Boniface's conversion
+of Germany under its direct sanction, gave it a hold on the rising
+hierarchy of the greatest European state; the extension of the rule of
+Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and
+pretensions. The first disputes turned on the right of the prince to
+confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have
+been granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as
+'_Hadrianus Papa_[173].' This '_ius eligendi et ordinandi summum
+pontificem_,' which Lewis I appears as yielding by the '_Ego
+Ludovicus_[174],' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt
+themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the
+troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto
+the Great by his nominee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in
+the purest spirit, by Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of
+all, and most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there had
+grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal chair to be itself the
+source of the imperial dignity. In submitting to a fresh coronation,
+Lewis the Pious admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed
+one: Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John
+VIII[175], that to him alone the Emperor owed his crown; and the
+council of Pavia[176], when it chose him king of Italy, repeated the
+assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better than to apply to the chiefs of
+Saxon and Franconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian had
+not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon was only hid
+behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the
+moment should come. There were also two other great steps which papal
+power had taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals
+it had provided itself with a legal system suited to any emergency,
+and which gave it unlimited authority through the Christian world in
+causes spiritual and over persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical
+ingenuity found it easy in one way or another to make this include all
+causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is always and wrong is often
+sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect the clergy.
+On the gift of Pipin and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
+Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable
+authority of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to the
+sovereignty of Rome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the
+exarchate. Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant by
+the donors to convey full dominion over the districts--that belonged
+to the head of the Empire--but only as in the case of other church
+estates, a perpetual usufruct or _dominium utile_. They were, in fact,
+mere endowments. Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into
+possession: the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of
+the neighbouring barons. They were not, however, denied, and might be
+made a formidable engine of attack: appealing to them, the Pope could
+brand his opponents as unjust and impious; and could summon nobles and
+cities to defend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better
+original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of Naples
+and Sicily.
+
+The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial power at Henry the
+Third's death was externally respectful. The right of a German king to
+the crown of the city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful
+subject. Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil
+magistrate. But the secret of the pontiff's strength lay in this: he,
+and he alone, could confer the crown, and had therefore the right of
+imposing conditions on its recipient. Frequent interregna had weakened
+the claim of the Transalpine monarch and prevented his power from
+taking firm root; his title was never by law hereditary: the holy
+Church had before sought and might again seek a defender elsewhere.
+And since the need of such defence had originated this transference of
+the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the
+Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope's duty as well as his
+right to see that the candidate was capable of fulfilling his task, to
+degrade him if he rejected or misperformed it.
+
+[Sidenote: Hildebrandine reforms.]
+
+The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution of the
+Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the supreme pontiff. This
+Nicholas II did in A.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV
+and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses
+and depravity of the last century, advanced apace. It had two main
+objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on the secular
+clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the
+extinction of simony. In the former, the Emperors and a large part of
+the laity were not unwilling to join: the latter no one dared to
+defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for
+the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a
+layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to
+the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of
+the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots,
+who would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass under that
+of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be
+impossible.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV and Gregory VII.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 1077.]
+
+Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other: after this decree war
+was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at
+Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor[177] replied by
+convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the
+dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on
+which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Supported by
+his own princes, the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no
+external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place
+had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the
+signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through all Germany the
+Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of
+disaffection. Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what
+seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince,
+titular lord of the world, a suppliant before the successor of the
+Apostle. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him;
+driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an
+anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had
+raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered life a
+power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless had all other
+humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess
+Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent standing barefoot and
+woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who
+sat within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark a decisive
+change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased.
+Its wearer could no more, with the same lofty confidence, claim to be
+the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone.
+Gregory had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of
+the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so sternly;
+proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all mankind are subject,
+and all rulers responsible: so that he, the giver of the crown, may
+also excommunicate and depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he
+says[178]: 'For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at
+different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed the sun
+and the moon, lights that outshine all others; so lest the creature
+whom His goodness hath formed after His own image in this world should
+be drawn astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic
+and royal dignities the means of ruling it through divers offices....
+If I, therefore, am to answer for thee on the dreadful day of judgment
+before the just Judge who cannot lie, the creator of every creature,
+bethink thee whether I must not very diligently provide for thy
+salvation, and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not
+without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the land of the
+living.'
+
+Gregory was not the inventor nor the first propounder of these
+doctrines; they had been long before a part of mediæval Christianity,
+interwoven with its most vital doctrines. But he was the first who
+dared to apply them to the world as he found it. His was that rarest
+and grandest of gifts, an intellectual courage and power of
+imaginative belief which, when it has convinced itself of aught,
+accepts it fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from
+acting at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end of his
+own career proved, for men were found less ready than he had thought
+them to follow out with unswerving consistency like his the principles
+which all acknowledged. But it was the very suddenness and boldness of
+his policy that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing men's
+minds and making that seem realized which had been till then a vague
+theory. His premises once admitted,--and no one dreamt of denying
+them,--the reasonings by which he established the superiority of
+spiritual to temporal jurisdiction were unassailable. With his
+authority, in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell, whose word
+can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other
+earthly authority can compete or interfere: if his power extends into
+the infinite, how much more must he be supreme over things finite? It
+was thus that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue: the
+wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were not obeyed
+more implicitly. In the second sentence of excommunication which
+Gregory passed upon Henry the Fourth are these words:--
+
+'Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes,
+Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye
+are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on
+earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away
+empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and
+the possessions of all men. For if ye judge spiritual things, what
+must we believe to be your power over worldly things? and if ye judge
+the angels who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to
+their slaves?'
+
+[Sidenote: Results of the struggle.]
+
+Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at all temporal
+governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces of later days slow
+to apply them so. On the Empire, however, the blow fell first and
+heaviest. As when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken,
+Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution
+dishonoured and helpless; allegiance was no longer undivided, for who
+could presume to fix in each case the limits of the civil and
+ecclesiastical jurisdictions? The potentates of Europe beheld in the
+Papacy a force which, if dangerous to themselves, could be made to
+repel the pretensions and baffle the designs of the strongest and
+haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the Teutonic
+conqueror by gaining the papal sanction for the leagues of her cities.
+The German princes, anxious to narrow the prerogative of their head,
+were the natural allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more
+terrible than their own lances, could enable them to depose an
+aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions they desired.
+Their altered tone is marked by the promise they required from Rudolf
+of Swabia, whom they set up as a rival to Henry, that he would not
+endeavour to make the throne hereditary.
+
+[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms, A.D. 1122.]
+
+It is not possible here to dwell on the details of the great struggle
+of the Investitures, rich as it is in the interest of adventure and
+character, momentous as were its results for the future. A word or two
+must suffice to describe the conclusion, not indeed of the whole
+drama, which was to extend over centuries, but of what may be called
+its first act. Even that act lasted beyond the lives of the original
+performers. Gregory the Seventh passed away at Salerno in A.D. 1087,
+exclaiming with his last breath 'I have loved justice and hated
+iniquity, therefore I die in exile.' Nineteen years later, in A.D.
+1106, Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son whom the hatred of
+a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against him. But that
+son, the emperor Henry the Fifth, so far from conceding the points in
+dispute, proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his
+father. He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics
+that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his coronation in
+Rome, A.D. 1112, Pope Paschal II refused to complete the rite until he
+should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and cardinals and
+compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which
+he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his
+extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years
+longer, until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel
+between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in
+A.D. 1122, was in form a compromise, designed to spare either party
+the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy remained master of the
+field. The Emperor retained but one-half of those rights of
+investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the
+position of Henry III; his wishes or intrigues might influence the
+proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference.
+He had entered the strife in the fulness of dignity; he came out of it
+with tarnished glory and shattered power. His wars had been hitherto
+carried on with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble;
+now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant, and had
+enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates of his realm.
+At any moment his sceptre might be shivered in his hand by the bolt of
+anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from every convent and
+cathedral.
+
+[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
+
+Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.
+The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of
+all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war
+against the enemies of the faith, to head the church militant in her
+carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife,
+this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into
+being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first
+three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the
+theory of the mediæval Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never
+again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe.
+Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have
+used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had
+belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV's proscription
+excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise
+have led--nay, more, committed it to the guidance of his foes. The
+religious feeling which the Crusades evoked--a feeling which became
+the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the
+two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the
+opponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of
+the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century
+and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against
+the Emperor himself.
+
+Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of that fear and
+hatred wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard
+the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by
+the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers
+of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to
+resist Italian priestcraft.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitations of imperial prerogative.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lothar II, 1125-1138.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad III, 1138-1152.]
+
+The changes in the internal constitution of Germany which the long
+anarchy of Henry IV's reign had produced are seen when the nature of
+the prerogative as it stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first
+Franconian Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V's death. All
+fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be granted afresh only
+by consent of the States; the jurisdiction of the crown is less wide;
+the idea is beginning to make progress that the most essential part of
+the Empire is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes and
+barons. The greatest triumph of these feudal magnates is in the
+establishment of the elective principle, which when confirmed by the
+three free elections of Lothar II, Conrad III, and Frederick I, passes
+into an undoubted law. The Prince-Electors are mentioned in A.D. 1156
+as a distinct and important body[179]. The clergy, too, whom the
+policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had raised, are now not less
+dangerous than the dukes, whose power it was hoped they would balance;
+possibly more so, since protected by their sacred character and their
+allegiance to the Pope, while able at the same time to command the
+arms of their countless vassals. Nor were the two succeeding Emperors
+the men to retrieve those disasters. The Saxon Lothar the Second is
+the willing minion of the Pope; performs at his coronation a menial
+service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath to defend the
+Holy See, that he may purchase its support against the Swabian faction
+in his own dominions. Conrad the Third, the first Emperor of the great
+house of Hohenstaufen[180], represents the anti-papal party; but
+domestic troubles and an unfortunate crusade prevented him from
+effecting anything in Italy. He never even entered Rome to receive the
+crown.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[171] 'Roma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta.'--See note _i_,
+p. 32.
+
+[172] 'Claves tibi _ad regnum_ dimisimus.'--Pope Stephen to Charles
+Martel, in _Codex Carolinus_, ap. Muratori, _S. R. I._ iii. Some,
+however, prefer to read 'ad rogum.'
+
+[173] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii. c. 22.
+
+[174] Dist. lxiii. c. 30. This decree is, however, in all probability
+spurious.
+
+[175] 'Nos elegimus merito et approbavimus una cum annisu et voto
+patrum amplique senatus et gentis togatæ,' &c., ap. Baron. _Ann.
+Eccl._, ad ann. 876.
+
+[176] 'Divina vos pietas B. principum apostolorum Petri et Pauli
+interventione per vicarium ipsorum dominum Ioannem summum pontificem
+... ad imperiale culmen S. Spiritus iudicio provexit.'--_Concil.
+Ticinense_, in Mur., _S. R. I._ ii.
+
+[177] Strictly speaking, Henry was at this time only king of the
+Romans: he was not crowned Emperor at Rome till 1084.
+
+[178] Letter of Gregory VII to William I, A.D. 1080. I quote from
+Migne, t. cxlviii. p. 568.
+
+[179] 'Gradum statim post Principes Electores.'--Frederick I's
+Privilege of Austria, in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[180] Hohenstaufen is a castle in what is now the kingdom of
+Würtemberg, about four miles from the Göppingen station of the railway
+from Stuttgart to Ulm. It stands, or rather stood, on the summit of a
+steep and lofty conical hill, commanding a boundless view over the
+great limestone plateau of the Rauhe Alp, the eastern declivities of
+the Schwartzwald, and the bare and tedious plains of western Bavaria.
+Of the castle itself, destroyed in the Peasants' War, there remain
+only fragments of the wall-foundations: in a rude chapel lying on the
+hill slope below are some strange half-obliterated frescoes; over the
+arch of the door is inscribed 'Hic transibat Cæsar.' Frederick
+Barbarossa had another famous palace at Kaiserslautern, a small town
+in the Palatinate, on the railway from Mannheim to Treves, lying in a
+wide valley at the western foot of the Hardt mountains. It was
+destroyed by the French and a house of correction has been built upon
+its site; but in a brewery hard by may be seen some of the huge
+low-browed arches of its lower story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE EMPERORS IN ITALY: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick of Hohenstaufen, 1152-1189.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the First, better known under his Italian
+surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant in the annals of the Empire.
+Its territory had been wider under Charles, its strength perhaps
+greater under Henry the Third, but it never appeared in such pervading
+vivid activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under the
+prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of their national
+heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic type of Teutonic
+character, honoured by picture and statue, in song and in legend,
+through the breadth of the German lands. The reverential fondness of
+his annalists and the whole tenour of his life go far to justify this
+admiration, and dispose us to believe that nobler motives were joined
+with personal ambition in urging him to assert so haughtily and carry
+out so harshly those imperial rights in which he had such unbounded
+confidence. Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its greatest
+effort to subdue the two antagonists which then threatened and were
+fated in the end to destroy it--Italian nationality and the Papacy.
+
+[Sidenote: His relations to the Popedom.]
+
+Even before Gregory VII's time it might have been predicted that two
+such potentates as the Emperor and the Pope, closely bound together,
+yet each with pretensions wide and undefined, must ere long come into
+collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing, the
+unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining, the supremacy
+of clerical authority, inspired their supporters with a zeal and
+courage which more than compensated the advantages of the Emperor in
+defending rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred was
+soon very bitter. But even had men's passions permitted a
+reconciliation, it would have been found difficult to bring into
+harmony adverse principles, each irresistible, mutually destructive.
+As the spiritual power, in itself purer, since exercised over the soul
+and directed to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was
+entitled to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy; so the
+spiritual person, to whom, according to the view then universally
+accepted, there had been imparted by ordination a mysterious sanctity,
+could not without sin be subject to the lay magistrate, be installed
+by him in office, be judged in his court, and render to him any
+compulsory service. Yet it was no less true that civil government was
+indispensable to the peace and advancement of society; and while it
+continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could not be suffered to
+interfere with its workings, nor one-half of the people be altogether
+removed from its control. Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced
+into hostility as champions of opposite systems, however fully each
+might admit the strength of his adversary's position, however bitterly
+he might bewail the violence of his own partisans. There had also
+arisen other causes of quarrel, less respectable but not less
+dangerous. The pontiff demanded and the monarch refused the lands
+which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Holy See;
+Frederick claiming them as feudal suzerain, the Pope eager by their
+means to carry out those schemes of temporal dominion which
+Constantine's donation sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation
+of the sovereignty of Rome had done much to encourage. As feudal
+superior of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily, as protector of the
+towns and barons of North Italy who feared the German yoke, the
+successor of Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate.
+
+[Sidenote: Contest with Hadrian IV.]
+
+No man was less likely than Frederick to submit to these
+encroachments. He was a sort of imperialist Hildebrand, strenuously
+proclaiming the immediate dependence of his office on God's gift, and
+holding it every whit as sacred as his rival's. On his first journey
+to Rome, he refused to hold the Pope's stirrup[181], as Lothar had
+done, till Pope Hadrian the Fourth's threat that he would withhold the
+crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising not long after on some
+other ground, the Pope exhorted Frederick by letter to shew himself
+worthy of the kindness of his mother the Roman Church, who had given
+him the imperial crown, and would confer on him, if dutiful, benefits
+still greater. This word benefits--_beneficia_--understood in its
+usual legal sense of 'fief,' and taken in connection with the picture
+which had been set up at Rome to commemorate Lothar's homage, provoked
+angry shouts from the nobles assembled in diet at Besançon; and when
+the legate answered, 'From whom, then, if not from our Lord the Pope,
+does your king hold the Empire?' his life was not safe from their
+fury. On this occasion Frederick's vigour and the remonstrances of the
+Transalpine prelates obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious
+word, and remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed by
+other causes, and came to centre itself round the Pope's demand that
+Rome should be left entirely to his government. Frederick, in reply,
+appeals to the civil law, and closes with the words, 'Since by the
+ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in
+nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the
+Roman city be wrested from my hands.' That such a claim should need
+assertion marks the change since Henry III; how much more that it
+could not be enforced. Hadrian's tone rises into defiance; he mingles
+the threat of excommunication with references to the time when the
+Germans had not yet the Empire. 'What were the Franks till Zacharias
+welcomed Pipin? What is the Teutonic king now till consecrated at Rome
+by holy hands? The chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its
+gifts.'
+
+[Sidenote: With Pope Alexander III.]
+
+The schism that followed Hadrian's death produced a second and more
+momentous conflict. Frederick, as head of Christendom, proposed to
+summon the bishops of Europe to a general council, over which he
+should preside, like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite
+text of the two swords, 'On earth,' he continues, 'God has placed no
+more than two powers: above there is but one God, so here one Pope and
+one Emperor. The Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire as a remedy against continued schism[182].' The plan failed;
+and Frederick adopted the candidate whom his own faction had chosen,
+while the rival claimant, Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence
+which the issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen
+throughout Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty years
+that followed, while apparently a dispute between rival Popes, was in
+substance an effort by the secular monarch to recover his command of
+the priesthood; not less truly so than that contemporaneous conflict
+of the English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with which it
+was constantly involved. Unsupported, not all Alexander's genius and
+resolution could have saved him: by the aid of the Lombard cities,
+whose league he had counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of
+Rome, by which the conquering German host was suddenly annihilated, he
+won a triumph the more signal, that it was over a prince so wise and
+so pious as Frederick. At Venice, who, inaccessible by her position,
+maintained a sedulous neutrality, claiming to be independent of the
+Empire, yet seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two
+powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced to meet by the
+mediation of the doge Sebastian Ziani. Three slabs of red marble in
+the porch of St. Mark's point out the spot where Frederick knelt in
+sudden awe, and the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the
+kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given
+an undeserved currency[183], tells how the pontiff set his foot on the
+neck of the prostrate king, with the words, 'The lion and the dragon
+shalt thou trample under feet[184].' It needed not this exaggeration
+to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning
+for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd
+that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation
+by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life
+had been devoted: it was the abandonment by the secular power of a
+contest in which it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not
+renew under more favourable conditions.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of the study of the civil law.]
+
+Authority maintained so long against the successor of Peter would be
+far from indulgent to rebellious subjects. For it was in this light
+that the Lombard cities appeared to a monarch bent on reviving all the
+rights his predecessors had enjoyed: nay, all that the law of ancient
+Rome gave her absolute ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a
+re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never perished from
+Gaul and Italy, had been the groundwork of some codes, and the whole
+substance, modified only by the changes in society, of many others.
+The Church excepted, no agent did so much to keep alive the memory of
+Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld the study
+cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge and ardour,
+expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First in Italy and the schools of
+the South, then in Paris and Oxford, they were expounded, commented
+on, extolled as the perfection of human wisdom, the sole, true, and
+eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought expended from
+that time to this in the elucidation of the civil law, the most
+competent authorities declare that in acuteness, in subtlety, in all
+those branches of learning which can subsist without help from
+historical criticism, these so-called Glossatores have been seldom
+equalled and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers of the
+canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of the civilian, and
+were accustomed to recur to his books where their own were silent,
+spread through Europe the fame and influence of the Roman
+jurisprudence; while its own professors were led both by their feeling
+and their interest to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and
+the fullest application. Men just emerging from barbarism, with minds
+unaccustomed to create and blindly submissive to authority, viewed
+written texts with an awe to us incomprehensible. All that the most
+servile jurists of Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes
+was directly transferred to the Cæsarean majesty who inherited their
+name. He was 'Lord of the world,' absolute master of the lives and
+property of all his subjects, that is, of all men; the sole fountain
+of legislation, the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines,
+which the great Bolognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and
+others who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied, as
+matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of
+the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and
+Italian partisans. 'To the Emperor belongs the protection of the whole
+world,' says bishop Otto of Freysing. 'The Emperor is a living law
+upon earth[185].' To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop of Milan
+speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy: 'Do and ordain
+whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law; as it is written, "Quicquid
+principi placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne
+suum imperium et potestatem concesserit[186]." The Hohenstaufen
+himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of
+dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according
+to law rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a
+more vehement assertion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by
+what seemed a divine ordinance.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick in Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rome under Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy. The Emperors might
+appear to consider it a conquered country without privileges to be
+respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets,
+and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the
+Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs
+whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the
+banks of the Rhine might be adorned but could not be influenced by the
+presence of barons from the southern kingdom[187]. In practice,
+however, the imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for
+it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the personal
+vigour and present armed support of each invader. The theoretic
+sovereignty of the Emperor-king was nowise disputed: in the cities
+toll and tax were of right his: he could issue edicts at the Diet, and
+require the tenants in chief to appear with their vassals. But the
+revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV's time, was felt
+as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, proud of
+riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany or the
+kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a
+turbulent independence. For republicanism and popular freedom
+Frederick had little sympathy. At Rome the fervent Arnold of Brescia
+had repeated, but with far different thoughts and hopes, the part of
+Crescentius[188]. The city had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and
+a commonwealth under consuls and senate professed to emulate the
+spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic. Its
+leaders had written to Conrad III[189], asking him to help them to
+restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian;
+but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of
+the Pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they
+repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from
+Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language
+on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing
+the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner
+hardly consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city.
+Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: 'Is this your Roman
+wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your
+honours and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls,
+senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto
+that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by
+their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the
+same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the
+people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate[190].' This
+was Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire[191].'
+
+[Sidenote: The Lombard Cities.]
+
+He who had been so stern to his own capital was not likely to deal
+more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by
+which Frederick is chiefly known to history, he is commonly painted as
+the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor[192],
+crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and
+industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the
+despot liberty is always licence; yet Frederick was the advocate of
+admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours;
+the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his
+officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of
+oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself[193].
+Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we
+recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization. Their resistance
+was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the
+enforcement of imposts less offensive in former days than now, and by
+long dereliction apparently obsolete[194]. Republican principles were
+not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of
+the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave them clearer
+notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope
+was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the
+barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The Church' ere long
+their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual
+support by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed.
+Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the
+last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government--freedom little
+understood and terribly abused, self-government which the cities who
+claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of
+them, through their divine power of stimulating effort and quickening
+sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal
+monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose above the slavish
+Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were
+resisting a Transalpine invader without its effect; there was as yet
+no distinct national feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as
+rural nobles, fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of
+liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased
+that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter
+justification.
+
+[Sidenote: Temporary success of Frederick.]
+
+The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was taken, Milan razed
+to the ground, her name apparently lost: greater obstacles had been
+overcome, and a fuller authority was now exercised than in the days of
+the Ottos or the Henrys. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror
+were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his admirers
+to the hero whose canonization he had procured, and whom he strove in
+all things to imitate[195]. 'He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only
+to Charles in piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: 'Ut
+ad Caroli imitationem ius ecclesiarum statum reipublicæ et legum
+integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus[196].' But the hold
+the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in
+which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better
+witnesses than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings[197]:--
+
+ 'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici
+ Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici;
+ Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici
+ Repræsentat Karolum dextera victrici.'
+
+The diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over the
+re-establishment of order by the destruction of the dens of unruly
+burghers.
+
+[Sidenote: Victory of the Lombard league.]
+
+This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless ashes uprose
+Milan; Cremona, scorning old jealousies, helped to rebuild what she
+had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to an all but hopeless
+strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the
+Empire's banner went down before the carroccio[198] of the free city.
+Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled at the
+distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation had arisen, slowly
+reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds
+conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of
+nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that
+grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a
+delusive name. Frederick, though harsh in war, and now balked of his
+most cherished hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it was
+beyond his power to change: he signed cheerfully and kept dutifully
+the peace of Constance, which left him little but a titular supremacy
+over the Lombard towns.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick as German king.]
+
+At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so much respected and so
+generally prosperous. Uniting in his person the Saxon and Swabian
+families, he healed the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates
+were faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel disturbed
+the public peace. Germany was proud of a hero who maintained her
+dignity so well abroad, and he crowned a glorious life with a happy
+death, leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman.
+Frederick, the greatest of the Crusaders, is the noblest type of
+mediæval character in many of its shadows, in all its lights.
+
+[Sidenote: The German cities.]
+
+Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost absolute, the government
+of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly
+by the difficulty of coercing refractory vassals. All depended on the
+monarch's character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick
+could generally lead the majority with him and terrify the rest. A
+false impression of the real strength of his prerogative might be
+formed from the readiness with which he was obeyed. He repaired the
+finances of the kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more
+splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by
+multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards the 'college of
+princes,' and by trying to substitute the civil law and Lombard feudal
+code for the old Teutonic customs, different in every province. If not
+successful in this project, he fared better with another. Since Henry
+the Fowler's day towns had been growing up through Southern and
+Western Germany, especially where rivers offered facilities for trade.
+Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Nürnberg, Ulm, Regensburg,
+Augsburg, were already considerable cities, not afraid to beard their
+lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance the
+power of the territorial oligarchy. Policy or instinct led Frederick
+to attach them to the throne, enfranchising many, granting, with
+municipal institutions, an independent jurisdiction, conferring
+various exemptions and privileges; while receiving in turn their
+good-will and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should
+come. His immediate successors trode in his steps, and thus there
+arose in the state a third order, the firmest bulwark, had it been
+rightly used, of imperial authority; an order whose members, the Free
+Cities, were through many ages the centres of German intellect and
+freedom, the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest hope
+of future peace and union. In them national congresses to this day
+sometimes meet: from them aspiring spirits strive to diffuse those
+ideas of Germanic unity and self-government, which they alone have
+kept alive. Out of so many flourishing commonwealths, four[199] have
+been spared by foreign conquerors and faithless princes. To the
+primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing out of the towns,
+except in Swabia and Switzerland, Frederick further commended himself
+by allowing them to be admitted to knighthood, by restraining the
+licence of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice in
+every way more accessible and impartial. To the south-west of the
+green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of
+the Untersberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to
+the glen and lake of Berchtesgaden. There, far up among its limestone
+crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of
+the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and
+tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted
+sleep[200], waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover
+round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend
+with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age of peace
+and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fall
+of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and
+anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day
+when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his
+shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of
+help to the poor and the oppressed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[181] A great deal of importance seems to have been attached to this
+symbolic act of courtesy. See Art. I of the Sachsenspiegel.
+
+[182] Letter to the German bishops in Radewic; Mur., _S. R. I._, t.
+vi. p. 833.
+
+[183] A picture in the great hall of the ducal palace (the Sala del
+Maggio Consiglio) represents the scene. See Rogers' Italy.
+
+[184] Psalm xci.
+
+[185] Document of 1230, quoted by Von Raumer, v. p. 81.
+
+[186] Speech of archbishop of Milan, in Radewic; Mur. vi.
+
+[187] Frederick's election (at Frankfort) was made 'non sine quibusdam
+Italiæ baronibus.'--Otto Fris. i. But this was the exception.
+
+[188] See also _post_, Chapter XVI.
+
+[189] 'Senatus Populusque Romanus urbis et orbis totius domino
+Conrado.'
+
+[190] Otto of Freysing.
+
+[191] Later in his reign, Frederick condescended to negotiate with
+these Roman magistrates against a hostile Pope, and entered into a
+sort of treaty by which they were declared exempt from all
+jurisdiction but his own.
+
+[192] See the first note to Shelley's _Hellas_. Sismondi is mainly
+answerable for this conception of Barbarossa's position.
+
+[193] They say rebelliously, says Frederick, 'Nolumus hunc regnare
+super nos ... at nos maluimus honestam mortem quam ut,' &c.--Letter in
+Pertz. _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[194]
+
+ 'De tributo Cæsaris nemo cogitabat;
+ Omnes erant Cæsares, nemo censum dabat;
+ Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat,
+ Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.'
+
+Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by
+Grimm.
+
+[195] Charles the Great was canonized by Frederick's anti-pope and
+confirmed afterwards.
+
+[196] _Acta Concil. Hartzhem._ iii., quoted by Von Raumer, ii. 6.
+
+[197] Poems relating to Frederick I, _ut supra_.
+
+[198] The carroccio was a waggon with a flagstaff planted on it, which
+served the Lombards for a rallying-point in battle.
+
+[199] Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfort.
+
+[Since this was first written Frankfort has been annexed by Prussia,
+and her three surviving sisters have, by their entrance into the North
+German confederation, lost something of their independence.]
+
+[200] The legend is one which appears under various forms in many
+countries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.
+
+
+The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest point at which to
+turn aside from the narrative history of the Empire to speak shortly
+of the legal position which it professed to hold to the rest of
+Europe, as well as of certain duties and observances which throw a
+light upon the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of its
+greatest power: that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously the era
+when its ideal dignity stood highest: for that remained scarcely
+impaired till three centuries had passed away. But it was under the
+Hohenstaufen, owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of
+that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy of the
+Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical influence of the
+Empire most fully coincided. There can therefore be no better
+opportunity for noticing the titles and claims by which it announced
+itself the representative of Rome's universal dominion, and for
+collecting the various instances in which they were (either before or
+after Frederick's time) more or less admitted by the other states of
+Europe.
+
+The territories over which Barbarossa would have declared his
+jurisdiction to extend may be classed under four heads:--
+
+First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone, the Emperor
+was, up till the death of Frederick the Second, effective sovereign.
+
+Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire, where the Emperor
+was acknowledged as sole monarch, but in practice little regarded.
+
+Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to the Empire, but
+governed by kings of their own.
+
+Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while in most cases
+admitting the superior rank of the Emperor, were virtually independent
+of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Limits of the Empire.]
+
+Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy Empire were included
+only districts coming under the first and second of the above classes,
+i.e. Germany, the northern half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy
+or Arles--that is to say, Provence, Dauphiné, the Free County of
+Burgundy (Franche Comté), and Western Switzerland. Lorraine, Alsace,
+and a portion of Flanders were of course parts of Germany. To the
+north-east, Bohemia and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and
+Pomerania were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather
+dependent outliers. Beyond the march of Brandenburg, from the Oder to
+the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians or Prussians[201], free till the
+establishment among them of the Teutonic knights.
+
+[Sidenote: Hungary.]
+
+Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days of Otto I.
+Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the Holy See; Frederick wished
+to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the
+reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered
+from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years
+that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the
+Constitution of Augsburg, A.D. 1566[202].
+
+[Sidenote: Poland.]
+
+Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the Great, and
+continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the
+beginning of the Great Interregnum (as it is called) in 1254. Its duke
+was present at the election of Richard, A.D. 1258. Thereafter
+Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the
+country became independent, though some of its provinces were long
+afterwards reunited to the German state. Silesia, originally Polish,
+was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, and so became part of the
+Empire; Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, A.D.
+1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland
+remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the
+twelfth century[203].
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark.]
+
+Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the Danish king Harold, on
+his baptism at Mentz, A.D. 826; Otto the Great's victories over Harold
+Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the march of
+Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but the boundary
+soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the
+inscription,--
+
+ 'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'
+
+King Peter[204] attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage,
+and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his own crown. Since the
+Interregnum Denmark has been always free[205].
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty the French kings
+had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their
+attempts to enforce it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the
+Fair, offered the French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to
+Albert I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize. The
+precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated
+Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest. Blondel denies the
+Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in A.D. 1648 the French envoys
+at Münster refused for some time to admit what no other European state
+disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves,
+'Archicancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,' preserved the
+memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of
+France might seem to have reversed.
+
+[Sidenote: Sweden.]
+
+No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us that Sweden was
+granted by Frederick I to Waldemar the Dane[206]; the fact is
+improbable, and we do not hear that such pretensions were ever put
+forth before or after.
+
+[Sidenote: Spain.]
+
+Nor does it appear that authority was ever exercised by any Emperor in
+Spain. Nevertheless the choice of Alfonso X by a section of the German
+electors, in A.D. 1258, may be construed to imply that the Spanish
+kings were members of the Empire. And when, A.D. 1053, Ferdinand the
+Great of Castile had, in the pride of his victories over the Moors,
+assumed the title of 'Hispaniæ Imperator,' the remonstrance of Henry
+III declared the rights of Rome over the Western provinces indelible,
+and the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was forced to
+resign the usurped dignity[207].
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been done by any of the
+Emperors in England, though as heirs of Rome they might be thought to
+have better rights over it than over Poland or Denmark[208]. There
+was, however, a vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms,
+must depend on the Empire: a notion which appears in Conrad III's
+letter to John of Constantinople[209]; and which was countenanced by
+the submissive tone in which Frederick I was addressed by the
+Plantagenet Henry II[210]. English independence was still more
+compromised in the next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden,
+'Consilio matris suæ deposuit se de regno Angliæ et tradidit illud
+imperatori (Henrico VIto) sicut universorum domino.' But as Richard
+was at the same time invested with the kingdom of Arles by Henry VI,
+his homage may have been for that fief only; and it was probably in
+that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire, at the
+election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel in the claims of
+England over the Scottish king, doubtful, to say the least, as regards
+the domestic realm of the latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he
+had long held from the Southern crown[211]. But Germany had no Edward
+I. Henry VI is said at his death to have released Richard from his
+submission (this too may be compared with Richard's release to the
+Scottish William the Lion), and Edward II declared, 'regnum Angliæ ab
+omni subiectione imperiali esse liberrimum[212].' Yet the idea
+survived: the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when he named Edward III his
+vicar in the great French war, demanded, though in vain, that the
+English monarch should kiss his feet[213]. Sigismund[214], visiting
+Henry V at London, before the meeting of the council of Constance, was
+met by the Duke of Gloucester, who, riding into the water to the ship
+where the Emperor sat, required him, at the sword's point, to declare
+that he did not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in
+the realm of England[215]. One curious pretension of the imperial
+crown called forth many protests. It was declared by civilians and
+canonists that no public notary could have any standing, or attach any
+legality to the documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma
+from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a doctrine so
+injurious was issued by the parliament of Scotland under James
+III[216].
+
+[Sidenote: Naples.]
+
+The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although of course claimed as a part
+of the Empire, was under the Norman dynasty (A.D. 1060-1189) not
+merely independent, but the most dangerous enemy of the German power
+in Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, obtained
+possession of it by marrying Constantia the last heiress of the Norman
+kings. But both he and Frederick II treated it as a separate
+patrimonial state, instead of incorporating it with their more
+northerly dominions. After the death of Conradin, the last of the
+Hohenstaufen, it passed away to an Angevin, then to an Aragonese
+dynasty, continuing under both to maintain itself independent of the
+Empire, nor ever again, except under Charles V, united to the Germanic
+crown.
+
+[Sidenote: Venice.]
+
+One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity of situation
+enabled her through long centuries of obscurity and weakness, slowly
+ripening into strength, to maintain her freedom unstained by any
+submission to the Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in
+deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from Aquileia in
+the days of Attila: it is at least probable that her population never
+received an intermixture of Teutonic settlers, and continued during
+the ages of Lombard and Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine
+sovereigns as the representatives of their ancient masters. In the
+tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they had said, 'We
+wish to be the servants of the Emperors of the Romans' (the
+Constantinopolitan), and though they overthrew this very Eastern
+throne in A.D. 1204, the pretext had served its turn, and had aided
+them in defying or evading the demands of obedience made by the
+Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics, Venice never,
+down to her extinction by France and Austria in A.D. 1796, recognized
+within her walls any secular authority save her own.
+
+[Sidenote: The East.]
+
+The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI to confess themselves
+his vassals and ask his help. Over remote Eastern lands, where
+Frankish foot had never trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the
+indestructible rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to
+Saladin, amusing from its absolute identification of his own Empire
+with that which had sent Crassus to perish in Parthia, and had blushed
+to see Mark Antony 'consulum nostrum'[217] at the feet of Cleopatra,
+is preserved by Hoveden: it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the
+dominions of Rome, else will she, with her new Teutonic defenders, of
+whom a pompous list follows, drive him from them with all her ancient
+might.
+
+[Sidenote: The Byzantine Emperors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry of the two Empires.]
+
+Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western Europe to admit the
+territorial supremacy of the Emperor, the proudest among them never
+refused, until the end of the Middle Ages, to recognize his precedence
+and address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very different was
+the attitude of the Byzantine princes, who denied his claim to be an
+Emperor at all. The separate existence of the Eastern Church and
+Empire was not only, as has been said above, a blemish in the title of
+the Teutonic sovereigns; it was a continuing and successful protest
+against the whole system of an Empire Church of Christendom, centering
+in Rome, ruled by the successor of Peter and the successor of
+Augustus. Instead of the one Pope and one Emperor whom mediæval theory
+presented as the sole earthly representatives of the invisible head of
+the Church, the world saw itself distracted by the interminable feud
+of rivals, each of whom had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy
+for the Latins to call the Easterns schismatics and their Emperor an
+usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone him or reduce
+them to obedience: while even in controversy no one could treat the
+pretensions of communities who had been the first to embrace
+Christianity and retained so many of its most ancient forms, with the
+contempt which would have been felt for any Western sectaries.
+Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the Greeks seems to us
+to affect the claims of the Teutonic Empire, calling in question its
+legitimacy and marring its pretended universality, those who lived at
+the time seem to have troubled themselves little about it, finding
+themselves in practice seldom confronted by the difficulties it
+raised. The great mass of the people knew of the Greeks not even by
+name; of those who did, the most thought of them only as perverse
+rebels, Samaritans who refused to worship at Jerusalem, and were
+little better than infidels. The few ecclesiastics of superior
+knowledge and insight had their minds preoccupied by the established
+theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to suffer anything
+else to come into collision with it: they do not seem to have even
+apprehended all that was involved in this one defect. Nor, what is
+still stranger, in all the attacks made upon the claims of the
+Teutonic Empire, whether by its Papal or its French antagonists, do we
+find the rival title of the Greek sovereigns adduced in argument
+against it. Nevertheless, the Eastern Church was then, as she is to
+this day, a thorn in the side of the Papacy; and the Eastern Emperors,
+so far from uniting for the good of Christendom with their Western
+brethren, felt towards them a bitter though not unnatural jealousy,
+lost no opportunity of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to
+deny their right to the imperial name. The coronation of Charles was
+in their eyes an act of unholy rebellion; his successors were
+barbarian intruders, ignorant of the laws and usages of the ancient
+state, and with no claim to the Roman name except that which the
+favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves
+long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more
+than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued
+to call themselves Romans, and preserved most of the titles and
+ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian.
+They were weak, although by no means so weak as modern historians have
+been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the
+higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon
+the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial
+splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified
+their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes.
+Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the
+name of 'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an
+emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, _Basileus_ was only the
+Greek for _rex_, and need not mean 'Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would
+not call Otto I anything but 'King of the Lombards[218],' Conrad III
+was addressed by Calo-Johannes as 'amice imperii mei Rex[219];' Isaac
+Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief prince of
+Alemannia[220].' The great Emperor, half-resentful, half-contemptuous,
+told the envoys that he was 'Romanorum imperator,' and bade their
+master call himself 'Romaniorum' from his Thracian province. Though
+these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness,
+the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former
+capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of
+the conquering Manuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the
+heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his
+rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously
+declined[221]. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much
+alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have
+seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the
+victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.
+
+[Sidenote: Dignities and titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The four crowns.]
+
+Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save
+their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities were happily
+not yet in being), they did not therefore endeavour to unite their
+several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct
+coronations at the four capitals of their Empire[222]. These are
+concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of
+Frederick's household[223]:--
+
+ 'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post hæc Arelati,
+ Inde Modoetiæ regali sede locari
+ Post solet Italiæ summa corona dari:
+ Cæsar Romano cum vult diademate fungi
+ Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'
+
+By the crowning at Aachen, the old Frankish capital, the monarch
+became 'king;' formerly 'king of the Franks,' or, 'king of the Eastern
+Franks;' now, since Henry II's time, 'king of the Romans, always
+Augustus.' At Monza, (or, more rarely, at Milan) in later times, at
+Pavia in earlier times, he became king of Italy, or of the
+Lombards[224]; at Rome he received the double crown of the Roman
+Empire, 'double,' says Godfrey, as 'urbis et orbis:'--
+
+ 'Hoc quicunque tenet, summus in orbe sedet;'
+
+though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown, it typifies
+spiritual as well as secular authority. The crown of Burgundy[225] or
+the kingdom of Arles, first gained by Conrad II, was a much less
+splendid matter, and carried with it little effective power. Most
+Emperors never assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life,
+when an interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These four
+crowns[226] furnish matter of endless discussion to the old writers;
+they tell us that the Roman was golden, the German silver, the Italian
+iron, the metal corresponding to the dignity of each realm[227].
+Others say that that of Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and
+give elaborate reasons why it should be so[228]. There seems to be no
+doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all three crowns
+were of gold, though in that of Italy there was and is inserted a
+piece of iron, a nail, it was believed, of the true Cross.
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the four coronations.]
+
+Why, it may well be asked, seeing that the Roman crown made the
+Emperor ruler of the whole habitable globe, was it thought necessary
+for him to add to it minor dignities which might be supposed to have
+been already included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial
+office was conceived of as something different in kind from the regal,
+and as carrying with it not the immediate government of any particular
+kingdom, but a general suzerainty over and right of controlling all.
+Of this a pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of
+Frederick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the famous jurists
+who surrounded him whether it was really true that he was 'lord of the
+world,' one of them simply assented, another, Bulgarus, answered, 'Not
+as respects ownership.' In this dictum, which is evidently conformable
+to the philosophical theory of the Empire, we have a pointed
+distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty, which supposes the
+prince original owner of the soil of his whole kingdom, and imperial
+sovereignty, which is irrespective of place, and exercised not over
+things but over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor, as
+has been said already, was also the East Frankish king, uniting in
+himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct 'persons,' and
+hence he might acquire more direct and practically useful rights over
+a portion of his dominions by being crowned king of that portion, just
+as a feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships whereof he
+was already feudal superior; or, to take a better illustration, just
+as a bishop may hold livings in his own diocese. That the Emperors,
+while continuing to be crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call
+themselves kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably
+merely because these titles seemed insignificant compared to that of
+Roman Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Emperor' not assumed till the Roman coronation.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin and results of this practice.]
+
+In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours were blent
+and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the German king to assume it
+till actually crowned at Rome by the Pope[229]. Matters of phrase and
+title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and
+superstitiously antiquarian: and this restriction had the most
+important consequences. The first barbarian kings had been
+tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion which was universal,
+yet in a sense territorial, they could not separate their title from
+the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose
+name they ruled. 'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing
+that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress
+of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since
+she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she
+ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth[230].' The
+crown was therefore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the
+supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital.
+Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for instance, or
+Otto's, this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each successive
+transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic,
+strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is
+incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free
+discussion. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a
+forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed
+to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII[231], which
+prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor
+till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so
+favourable to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy; Hadrian
+IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and through the efforts of the
+clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed
+into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till
+the Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to depend on his
+will, enabled him to exact conditions from every candidate, and gave a
+colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every
+honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine
+commission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must
+not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom
+even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived
+considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and
+other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232]
+authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party:
+first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the
+picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the
+followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in
+Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,--
+
+ 'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.'
+
+Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that this
+dependence of the imperial name on a coronation in the city injured
+the German sovereign[234]. With strange inconsistency it was not
+pretended that the Emperor's rights were any narrower before he
+received the rite: he could summon synods, confirm papal elections,
+exercise jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown itself
+could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents,
+be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of
+the German nation to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral
+princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master.
+The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they
+could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which the poet who
+sang the glories of Barbarossa[235], describes the result of the
+conquest of Charles the Great:--
+
+ 'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum
+ Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo
+ Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni
+ Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem
+ Præficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma
+ Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.'
+
+But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the
+pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his reign each Emperor undertook
+a long and dangerous expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and
+ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved
+conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home.
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Holy Empire.']
+
+At this epoch appears another title, of which more must be said. To
+the accustomed 'Roman Empire' Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of
+'Holy.' Of its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Salic), which some
+have supposed[236], there is no documentary trace, though there is
+also no proof to the contrary[237]. So far as is known it occurs first
+in the famous Privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick in the fourth
+year of his reign, the second of his empire, 'terram Austriæ quæ
+clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur[238]:' then afterwards,
+in other manifestos of his reign; for example, in a letter to Isaac
+Angelus of Byzantium[239], and in the summons to the princes to help
+him against Milan: 'Quia ... urbis et orbis gubernacula tenemus ...
+sacro imperio et divæ reipublicæ consulere debemus[240];' where the
+second phrase is a synonym explanatory of the first. Used occasionally
+by Henry VI and Frederick II, it is more frequent under their
+successors, William, Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV's time it
+becomes habitual, for the last few centuries indispensable. Regarding
+the origin of so singular a title many theories have been advanced.
+Some declared it a perpetuation of the court style of Rome and
+Byzantium, which attached sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus
+David Blondel, contending for the honour of France, calls it a mere
+epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his government[241].
+Others saw in it a religious meaning, referring to Daniel's prophecy,
+or to the fact that the Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or
+to Christ's birth under it[242]. Strong churchmen derived it from the
+dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There were not wanting
+persons to maintain that it meant nothing more than great or splendid.
+We need not, however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning and
+purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person, the palace, the
+letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so common in the later ages
+of Rome, had been partly retained in the German court. Liudprand calls
+Otto 'imperator sanctissimus[243].' Still this sanctity, which the
+Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is something
+personal, is nothing more than the divinity that always hedges a king.
+Far more intimate and peculiar was the relation of the revived Roman
+Empire to the church and religion. As has been said already, it was
+neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its secular
+side, the Christian society organized as a state under a form divinely
+appointed, and therefore the name 'Holy Roman Empire' was the needful
+and rightful counterpart to that of 'Holy Catholic Church.' Such had
+long been the belief, and so the title might have had its origin as
+far back as the tenth or ninth century, might even have emanated from
+Charles himself. Alcuin in one of his letters uses the phrase
+'imperium Christianum.' But there was a further reason for its
+introduction at this particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had
+claimed for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme
+jurisdiction, the papal party had not ceased to speak of the civil
+power as being, compared with that of their own chief, merely secular,
+earthly, profane. It may be conjectured that to meet this reproach, no
+less injurious than insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use
+in public documents the expression 'Holy Empire;' thereby wishing to
+assert the divine institution and religious duties of the office he
+held. Previous Emperors had called themselves 'Catholici,'
+'Christiani,' 'ecclesiæ defensores[244];' now their State itself is
+consecrated an earthly theocracy. 'Deus Romanum imperium adversus
+schisma ecclesiæ præparavit[245],' writes Frederick to the English
+Henry II. The theory was one which the best and greatest Emperors,
+Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III, had most striven to carry out; it
+continued to be zealously upheld when it had long ceased to be
+practicable. In the proclamations of mediæval kings there is a
+constant dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an age of
+violence sought to justify while it enforced its commands, to make
+brute force less brutal by appeals to a higher sanction. This is seen
+nowhere more than in the style of the German sovereigns: they delight
+in the phrases 'maiestas sacrosancta[246],' 'imperator divina
+ordinante providentia,' 'divina pietate,' 'per misericordiam Dei;'
+many of which were preserved till, like those used now by other
+European kings, like our own 'Defender of the Faith,' they had become
+at last more grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the end
+of the eighteenth century, was 'Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Vicar of Christ,' 'Imperial head of the faithful,' 'Leader of the
+Christian army,' 'Protector of Palestine, of general councils, of the
+Catholic faith[247].'
+
+The title, if it added little to the power, yet certainly seems to
+have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by consequence the
+jealousy of other states, of France especially. This did not, however,
+go so far as to prevent its recognition by the Pope and the French
+king[248], and after the sixteenth century it would have been a breach
+of diplomatic courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been
+wanting[249]: witness such titles as 'Most Christian king,' 'Catholic
+king,' 'Defender of the Faith[250].'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[201] 'Pruzzi,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'quorum Deus est
+venter et avaritia iuncta cum morte.'--_M. G. H._ t. iv.
+
+It is curious that this non-Teutonic people should have given their
+name to the great German kingdom of the present.
+
+[202] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_. It is hardly necessary to observe
+that the connection of Hungary with the Hapsburgs is of comparatively
+recent origin, and of a purely dynastic nature. The position of the
+archdukes of Austria as kings of Hungary had nothing to do legally
+with the fact that many of them were also chosen Emperors, although
+practically their possession of the imperial crown had greatly aided
+them in grasping and retaining the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia.
+
+[203] Cf. Pfeffel, _Abrégé Chronologique_.
+
+[204] Letter of Frederick I to Otto of Freising, prefixed to the
+latter's History. This king is also called Sweyn.
+
+[205] See Appendix, Note B.
+
+[206] Albertus Stadensis apud Conringium, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[207] There is an allusion to this in the poems of the Cid. Arthur
+Duck, _De Usu et Authoritate Iuris Civilis_, quotes the view of some
+among the older jurists, that Spain having been, as far as the Romans
+were concerned, a _res derelicta_, recovered by the Spaniards
+themselves from the Moors, and thus acquired by _occupatio_, ought not
+to be subject to the Emperors.
+
+[208] One of the greatest of English kings appears performing an act
+of courtesy to the Emperor which was probably construed into an
+acknowledgment of his own inferior position. Describing the Roman
+coronation of the Emperor Conrad II, Wippo (c. 16) tells us 'His ita
+peractis in duorum regum præsentia Ruodolfi regis Burgundiæ et
+Chnutonis regis Anglorum divino officio finito imperator duorum regum
+medius ad cubiculum suum honorifice ductus est.'
+
+[209] Letter in Otto Fris. i.: 'Nobis submittuntur Francia et
+Hispania, Anglia et Dania.'
+
+[210] Letter in Radewic says, 'Regnum nostrum vobis exponimus....
+Vobis imperandi cedat auctoritas, nobis non deerit voluntas
+obsequendi.'
+
+[211] The alleged instances of homage by the Scots to the Saxon and
+early Norman kings are almost all complicated in some such way. They
+had once held also the earldom of Huntingdon from the English crown,
+and some have supposed (but on no sufficient grounds) that homage was
+also done by them for Lothian.
+
+[212] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii.
+
+[213] Edward refused upon the ground that he was '_rex inunctus_.'
+
+[214] Sigismund had shortly before given great offence in France by
+dubbing knights.
+
+[215] Sigismund answered, 'Nihil se contra superioritatem regis
+prætexere.'
+
+[216] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii. Nevertheless,
+notaries in Scotland, as elsewhere, continued for a long time to style
+themselves 'Ego M. auctoritate imperiali (or papali) notarius.'
+
+[217] It is not necessary to prove this letter to have been the
+composition of Frederick or his ministers. If it be (as it doubtless
+is) contemporary, it is equally to the purpose as an evidence of the
+feelings and ideas of the age. As a reviewer of a former edition of
+this book has questioned its authenticity, I may mention that it is to
+be found not only in Hoveden, but also in the 'Itinerarium regis
+Ricardi,' in Ralph de Diceto, and in the 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae.'
+[See Mr. Stubbs' edition of Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 356.]
+
+[218] Liutprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_. Nicephorus says, 'Vis
+maius scandalum quam quod se imperatorem vocat.'
+
+[219] Otto of Freising, i.
+
+[220] 'Isaachius a Deo constitutus Imperator, sacratissimus,
+excellentissimus, potentissimus, moderator Romanorum, Angelus totius
+orbis, heres coronæ magni Constantini, dilecto fratri imperii sui,
+maximo principi Alemanniæ.' A remarkable speech of Frederick's to the
+envoys of Isaac, who had addressed a letter to him as 'Rex Alemaniæ'
+is preserved by Ansbert (_Historia de Expeditione Friderici
+Imperatoris_):--'Dominus Imperator divina se illustrante gratia
+ulterius dissimulare non valens temerarium fastum regis (_sc._
+Græcorum) et usurpantem vocabulum falsi imperatoris Romanorum, hæc
+inter cætera exorsus est:--"Omnibus qui sanæ mentis sunt constat, quia
+unus est Monarchus Imperator Romanorum, sicut et unus est pater
+universitatis, pontifex videlicet Romanus; ideoque cum ego Romani
+imperii sceptrum plusquam per annos XXX absque omnium regum vel
+principum contradictione tranquille tenuerim et in Romana urbe a summo
+pontifice imperiali benedictione unctus sim et sublimatus, quia
+denique Monarchiam prædecessores mei imperatores Romanorum plusquam
+per CCCC annos etiam gloriose transmiserint, utpote a Constantinopolitana
+urbe ad pristinam sedem imperii, caput orbis Romam, acclamatione
+Romanorum et principum imperii, auctoritate quoque summi pontificis et
+S. catholicæ ecclesiæ translatam, propter tardum et infructuosum
+Constantinopolitani imperatoris auxilium contra tyrannos ecclesiæ,
+mirandum est admodum cur frater meus dominus vester Constantinopolitanus
+imperator usurpet inefficax sibi idem vocabulum et glorietur stulte
+alieno sibi prorsus honore, cum liquido noverit me et nomine dici et
+re esse Fridericum Romanorum imperatorem semper Augustum."'
+
+Isaac was so far moved by Frederick's indignation that in his next
+letter he addressed him as 'generosissimum imperatorem Alemaniæ,' and
+in a third thus:--
+
+'Isaakius in Christo fidelis divinitus coronatus, sublimis, potens,
+excelsus, hæres coronæ magni Constantini et Moderator Romeon Angelus
+nobilissimo Imperatori antiquæ Romæ, regi Alemaniæ et dilecto fratri
+imperii sui, salutem,' &c., &c. (Ansbert, _ut supra_.)
+
+[221] Baronius, ad ann.
+
+[222] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[223] Godefr. Viterb., _Pantheon_, in Mur., _S. R. I._, tom. vii.
+
+[224] Dönniges, _Deutsches Staatsrecht_, thinks that the crown of
+Italy, neglected by the Ottos, and taken by Henry II, was a
+recognition of the separate nationality of Italy. But Otto I seems to
+have been crowned king of Italy, and Muratori (_Ant. It._ Dissert.
+iii.) believes that Otto II and Otto III were likewise.
+
+[225] See Appendix, note A.
+
+[226] Some add a fifth crown, of Germany (making that of Aachen
+Frankish), which they say belonged to Regensburg--Marquardus Freherus.
+
+[227] 'Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar kronet men mit der Yseren Krone, so
+is he Konig over alle Dudesche Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de is
+Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen. Dy drüdde is tho Rome; dy is guldin,
+so is he Keyser over alle dy Werlt.'--Gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_,
+quoted by Pfeffinger. Similarly Peter de Andlo.
+
+[228] Cf. Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu imperii Romani_. One would expect
+some ingenious allegorizer to have discovered that the crown of
+Burgundy must be, and therefore is, of copper or bronze, making the
+series complete, like the four ages of men in Hesiod. But I have not
+been able to find any such.
+
+[229] Hence the numbers attached to the names of the Emperors are
+often different in German and Italian writers, the latter not
+reckoning Henry the Fowler nor Conrad I. So Henry III (of Germany)
+calls himself 'Imperator Henricus Secundus;' and all distinguish the
+years of their _regnum_ from those of the _imperium_. Cardinal
+Baronius will not call Henry V anything but Henry III, not recognizing
+Henry IV's coronation, because it was performed by an antipope.
+
+[230] Life of S. Adalbert (written at Rome early in the eleventh
+century, probably by a brother of the monastery of SS. Boniface and
+Alexius) in Pertz, _M. G. H._ iv.
+
+[231] Given by Glaber Rudolphus. It is on the face of it a most
+impudent forgery: 'Ne quisquam audacter Romani Imperii sceptrum
+præpostere gestare princeps appetat neve Imperator dici aut esse
+valeat nisi quem Papa Romanus morum probitate aptum elegerit, eique
+commiserit insigne imperiale.'
+
+[232] Universal and undisputed in the West, which, for practical
+purposes, meant the world. The denial of the supreme jurisdiction of
+Peter's chair by the eastern churches affected very slightly the
+belief of Latin Christendom, just as the existence of a rival emperor
+at Constantinople with at least as good a legal title as the Teutonic
+Cæsar, was readily forgotten or ignored by the German and Italian
+subjects of the latter.
+
+[233] Odious especially for the inscription,--
+
+ 'Rex venit ante fores nullo prius urbis honore;
+ Post homo fit Papæ, sumit quo dante coronam.'--Radewic.
+
+[234] Mediæval history is full of instances of the superstitious
+veneration attached to the rite of coronation (made by the Church
+almost a sacrament), and to the special places where, or even utensils
+with which it was performed. Everyone knows the importance in France
+of Rheims and its sacred _ampulla_; so the Scottish king must be
+crowned at Scone, an old seat of Pictish royalty--Robert Bruce risked
+a great deal to receive his crown there; so no Hungarian coronation
+was valid unless made with the crown of St. Stephen; the possession
+whereof is still accounted so valuable by the Austrian court.
+
+Great importance seems to have been attached to the imperial globe
+(Reichsapfel) which the Pope delivered to the Emperor at his
+coronation.
+
+[235] Whether the poem which passes under the name of Gunther
+Ligurinus be his work or that of some scholar in a later age is for
+the present purpose indifferent.
+
+[236] Zedler, _Universal Lexicon_, s. v. _Reich_.
+
+[237] It does not occur before Frederick I's time in any of the
+documents printed by Pertz; and this is the date which Boeclerus also
+assigns in his treatise, _De Sacro Imperio Romano_, vindicating the
+terms 'sacrum' and 'Romanum' against the aspersions of Blondel.
+
+[238] Pertz, _M. G. H._, tom. iv. (legum ii.)
+
+[239] Ibid. iv.
+
+[240] Radewic. _ap._ Pertz.
+
+[241] Blondellus adv. Chiffletium. Most of these theories are stated
+by Boeclerus. Jordanes (_Chronica_) says, 'Sacri imperii quod non est
+dubium sancti Spiritus ordinatione, secundum qualitatem ipsam et
+exigentiam meritorum humanorum disponi.'
+
+[242] Marquard Freher's notes to Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii.
+
+[243] So in the song on the capture of the Emperor Lewis II by
+Adalgisus of Benevento, we find the words, 'Ludhuicum comprenderunt
+sancto, pio, Augusto.' (Quoted by Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt
+Rom im Mittelalter_, iii. p. 185.)
+
+[244] Goldast, _Constitutiones_.
+
+[245] Pertz, _M. G. H._, legg. ii.
+
+[246] 'Apostolic majesty' was the proper title of the king of Hungary.
+The Austrian court has recently revived it.
+
+[247] Moser, _Römische Kayser_.
+
+[248] Urban IV used the title in 1259: Francis I (of France) calls the
+Empire 'sacrosanctum.'
+
+[249] Cf. 'Holy Russia.'
+
+[250] It is almost superfluous to observe that the beginning of the
+title 'Holy' has nothing to do with the beginning of the Empire
+itself. Essentially and substantially, the Holy Roman Empire was, as
+has been shewn already, the creation of Charles the Great. Looking at
+it more technically, as the monarchy, not of the whole West, like that
+of Charles, but of Germany and Italy, with a claim, which was never
+more than a claim, to universal sovereignty, its beginning is fixed by
+most of the German writers, whose practice has been followed in the
+text, at the coronation of Otto the Great. But the title was at least
+one, and probably two centuries later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.
+
+
+In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has been described in
+what is not only the most brilliant but the most momentous period of
+its history; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief
+place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with
+the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no
+less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors
+influenced the development of European politics. The reform of the
+Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his
+successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts
+of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the grand period of the
+Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and
+creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to
+speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious,
+during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry III's
+purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's attempt to subject
+all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of
+the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing
+pretensions of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although destined in
+the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect of this struggle
+was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling; and, in
+opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate
+wonderfully their power of political organization. It was this impulse
+that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping
+forth as the rightful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve
+their own ends: it was thus too that they struck the alliance--strange
+as such an alliance seems now--with the rebellious cities of Lombardy,
+and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the
+third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the
+thirteenth century. In the foundation of the two great orders of
+ecclesiastical knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans
+and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated:
+in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her
+in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself
+exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow,
+following with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and glory
+which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VI, 1190-1197.]
+
+[Sidenote: Philip, 1198-1208.]
+
+[Sidenote: Innocent III and Otto IV.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto IV, 1208 (1198)-1212.]
+
+It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing,
+the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed
+likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and
+successor of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited all his
+father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his
+marriage with Constance, the heiress of the Norman kings, he had
+become master of Naples and Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of
+what had been hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest
+enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north,
+Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the
+history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to
+lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the
+Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no
+further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should
+pronounce the crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest
+importance would have followed this change, which Henry advocated by
+setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant
+to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong
+in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the
+Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services,
+and built up a firm centralized system, like that which was already
+beginning to develope itself in France. First, however, the Saxon
+princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed
+the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to
+content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second
+chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was
+set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick
+and Philip of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the
+Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an
+opportunity of extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist.
+The Pope moved heaven and earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had
+been the constant rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself
+willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's personal
+merits and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived
+the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while
+it seemed to vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party
+without a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the
+whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne
+more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he
+had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline,
+anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman
+Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and
+Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical
+supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the
+Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the
+champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and
+extinguish his house.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick the Second, 1212-1250.]
+
+Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Emperor and Pope
+girded themselves up for the last time, the narrative of Frederick the
+Second's career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of
+marvellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a
+curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even
+possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the
+fortunes of the German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy,
+but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to
+Italian history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself.
+Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is,
+with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a
+frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton[251].
+There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of
+his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these,
+and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from
+his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the
+orange-groves of Palermo--a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect
+refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable
+it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the
+outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the
+curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary
+personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a
+politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth
+fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while
+himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and
+ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one
+cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and
+succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon
+the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the
+terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled
+from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But
+while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy
+threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the
+imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce
+deliver to the flames of hell[252].
+
+[Sidenote: Struggle of Frederick with the Papacy.]
+
+Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible for its head not to
+be involved in war with the constantly aggressive Popedom--aggressive
+in her claims of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was
+Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over
+him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful
+enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk,
+and his delay to fulfil the vow was branded as impious neglect.
+Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and
+was excommunicated for going: having concluded an advantageous peace,
+he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for
+returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled,
+but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon
+the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth while to
+descant: the real causes were always the same, and could only be
+removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them
+was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which
+Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his
+son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for
+some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the
+Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his
+rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the
+means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But
+although the struggle was far more of a territorial and political one
+than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former
+source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the
+spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and Hildebrand, of
+Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again the unquenchable hatred of
+Italian factions: the pontiff asserted the transference of the Empire
+as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two
+keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law,
+to the indelible rights of Cæsar; and denounced his foe as the
+antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's second vicar whom
+he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice
+of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity
+not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and
+heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to
+the heir of Denmark, to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in
+raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Yet
+throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the
+Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the
+hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence,
+whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from
+the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the
+possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of
+strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the
+false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as
+the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no
+profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death
+than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor;
+their heritage destroyed him.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad IV, 1250-1254.]
+
+With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the
+greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a
+long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could
+never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the
+last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its
+strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at
+last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin--a
+hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any
+other foe--was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was
+done by the minions of Charles of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy lost to the Empire.]
+
+The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's armies and
+the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming
+population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that
+South Italy too had passed away from a German line--first to an
+Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty--it was plain that the
+peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should
+they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse
+than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a
+Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would
+be all the greater in a narrower sphere.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of imperial power in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Great Interregnum]
+
+[Sidenote: Double election, of Richard of England and Alfonso of
+Castile.]
+
+[Sidenote: State of Germany during the Interregnum.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1272-1292.]
+
+So indeed it might once have been, but now it was too late. The German
+kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be
+universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political
+existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes
+with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the
+support of their own princes, the ease with which in their absence the
+magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found
+in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and
+set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these
+were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that
+territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of
+the Great Interregnum[253]. Frederick II had by two Pragmatic
+Sanctions, A.D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather confirmed, rights
+already customary, such as to give the bishops and nobles legal
+sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the
+Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became
+restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately
+dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became
+altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of
+the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to
+fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father
+Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field, but
+rejected by the Swabian party: on his death a new election was called
+for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his
+brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not
+strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the
+Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry
+III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and
+was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that his
+bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and
+chose Alfonso X of Castile[254], who, shrewder than his competitor,
+continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his
+title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now
+and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was
+frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than
+the prætorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the
+outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate
+of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by
+war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery
+of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had
+not been seen for centuries. Things were even worse than under the
+Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been
+in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the
+extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only
+in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had
+already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and maintained a
+struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal
+brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt
+that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no
+courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was
+the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved
+the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany
+beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the
+electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose,
+in A.D. 1272, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of the house of
+Austria[255].
+
+[Sidenote: Change in the position of the Empire.]
+
+From this point there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire
+revived in A.D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to
+his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A.D. 962, on the
+narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the
+Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line
+of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to
+make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy
+and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally
+and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with
+resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been more
+decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The
+Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was
+concerned, ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor could it
+have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen.
+That it did not so expire, but lived on six hundred years more, till
+it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than
+ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it
+was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing
+partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary
+part of the world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
+this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans had
+confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long, and had
+grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose
+possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe,
+that it was now too late for them to separate the local from the
+universal monarch. If a German king was to be maintained at all, he
+must be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must still be. Deeply,
+nay, mortally wounded as the event proved his power to have been by
+the disasters of the Empire to which it had been linked, the time was
+by no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state of
+society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates, no force
+save feudalism was able to hold society together; and its efficacy for
+that purpose depended, as the anarchy of the recent interregnum
+shewed, upon the presence of the recognized feudal head.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of the regal power in Germany as compared with
+France and England.]
+
+That head, however, was no longer what he had been. The relative
+position of Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that
+which they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as
+conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III of France, as the
+Franconian Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian
+Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had
+been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the
+monarch, even in England not to diminish it: in Germany alone had
+political union become weaker, and the independence of the princes
+more confirmed. The causes of this change are not far to seek. They
+all resolve themselves into this one, that the German king attempted
+too much at once. The rulers of France, where manners were less rude
+than in the other Transalpine lands, and where the Third Estate rose
+into power more quickly, had reduced one by one the great feudataries
+by whom the first Capetians had been scarcely recognized. The English
+kings had annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had obtained a
+prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and exercised no doubtful sway
+through every corner of their country. Both had won their successes by
+the concentration on that single object of their whole personal
+activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby their feudal
+rights, personal, judicial, and legislative, could be applied to
+fetter the vassal. Meantime the German monarch, whose utmost efforts
+it would have needed to tame his fierce barons and maintain order
+through wide territories occupied by races unlike in dialect and
+customs, had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the Normans
+of South Italy, and had been for full two centuries the object of the
+unrelenting enmity of the Roman pontiff. And in this latter contest,
+by which more than by any other the fate of the Empire was decided, he
+fought under disadvantages far greater than his brethren in England
+and France. William the Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus
+had resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry the Fourth and Barbarossa
+had to cope with prelates who were Hildebrand and Anselm in one; the
+spiritual heads of Christendom as well as the primates of their
+special realm, the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of
+Germany were a body more formidable from their possessions than those
+of any other European country, and enjoying far larger privileges, the
+Emperor could not, or could with far less effect, win them over by
+invoking against the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of
+Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+After repeated defeats, each more crushing than the last, the imperial
+power, so far from being able to look down on the papal, could not
+even maintain itself on an equal footing. Against no pontiff since
+Gregory VII had the monarch's right to name or confirm a pope,
+undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III, been made good.
+It was the turn of the Emperor to repel a similar claim of the Holy
+See to the function of reviewing his own election, examining into his
+merits, and rejecting him if unsound, that is to say, impatient of
+priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was the first to make
+this demand in terms, was inserted by Gregory IX in his digest of the
+Canon Law, the inexhaustible armoury of the churchman, and continued
+to be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the sixteenth
+century[256]. It was not difficult to find grounds on which to base
+such a doctrine. Gregory VII deduced it with characteristic boldness
+from the power of the keys, and the superiority over all other
+dignities which must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal
+weal or woe. Others took their stand on the analogy of clerical
+ordination, and urged that since the Pope in consecrating the Emperor
+gave him a title to the obedience of all Christian men, he must have
+himself the right of approving or rejecting the candidate according to
+his merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament, shewed how
+Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David in his room, and argued that
+the Pope now must have powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew
+prophets. But the ascendancy of the doctrine dates from the time of
+Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an historical
+basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared, that the Empire
+was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person
+of Charles[257], and the authority which Leo then exercised as God's
+representative must abide thenceforth and for ever in his successors,
+who can therefore at any time recall the gift, and bestow it on a
+person or a nation more worthy than its present holders. This is the
+famous theory of the Translation of the Empire, which plays so large a
+part in controversy down till the seventeenth century[258], a theory
+with plausibility enough to make it generally successful, yet one
+which to an impartial eye appears far removed from the truth of the
+facts[259]. Leo III did not suppose, any more than did Charles
+himself, that it was by his sole pontifical authority that the crown
+was given to the Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by
+any of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory VII in
+particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his prerogative,
+appeals to the substitution by papal interference of Pipin for the
+last Merovingian king, and even goes back to cite the case of
+Theodosius humbling himself before St. Ambrose, but says never a word
+about this 'translatio,' excellently as it would have served his
+purpose.
+
+Sound or unsound, however, these arguments did their work, for they
+were urged skilfully and boldly, and none denied that it was by the
+Pope alone that the crown could be lawfully imposed[260]. In some
+instances the rights claimed were actually made good. Thus Innocent
+III withstood Philip and overthrew Otto IV; thus another haughty
+priest commanded the electors to choose the Landgrave of Thuringia
+(A.D. 1246), and was by some of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled
+the recognition of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes to the
+vicariate of the Empire during interregna the Germans never
+admitted[261]. Still their place was now generally felt to be higher
+than that of the monarch, and their control over the three spiritual
+electors and the whole body of the clergy was far more effective than
+his. A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the
+exactions and shameless subservience to France of the papal court at
+Avignon[262]; and the infant democracy of industry and intelligence
+represented by the cities and by the English Franciscan Occam,
+supported Lewis IV in his conflict with John XXII, till even the
+princes who had risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose
+him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of Constance, but the
+imperial power which might have floated onwards and higher on the
+turning tide of popular opinion lacked men equal to the occasion: the
+Hapsburg Frederick the Third, timid and superstitious, abased himself
+before the Romish court, and his house has generally adhered to the
+alliance then struck.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[251] I quote from the Liber Augustalis printed among Petrarch's works
+the following curious description of Frederick: 'Fuit armorum
+strenuus, linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, epicurus, nihil
+curans vel credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus Romanae ecclesiae.'
+
+As Otto III had been called 'mirabilia mundi,' so Frederick II is
+often spoken of in his own time as 'stupor mundi Fridericus.'
+
+[252] 'Quà entro è lo secondo Federico.'--_Inferno_, canto x.
+
+[253] The interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before
+Richard's election; by others, as the whole period from the death of
+Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in
+1273.
+
+[254] Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, 'the Wise.'
+
+[255] Hapsburg is a castle in the Aargau on the banks of the Aar, and
+near the line of railway from Olten to Zürich, from a point on which a
+glimpse of it may be had. 'Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,'
+says Gibbon, 'the castle of Hapsburg, the abbey of Königsfeld, and the
+town of Bruck have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may
+compare the monuments of Roman conquests, of feudal or Austrian
+tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be
+truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and happiness of his
+own time.'
+
+[256] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_: 'Ius et authoritas examinandi personam electam in regem
+et promovendam ad imperium, ad nos spectat, qui eum inungimus,
+consecramus, et coronamus.'
+
+[257] 'Illis principibus,' writes Innocent, 'ius et potestatem
+eligendi regem [Romanorum] in imperatorem postmodum promovendum
+recognoscimus, ad quos de iure ac antiqua consuetudine noscitur
+pertinere, præsertim quum ad eos ius et potestas huiusmodi ab
+apostolica sede pervenerit, quæ Romanum imperium in persona magnifici
+Caroli a Græcis transtulit in Germanos.'--Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_.
+
+[258] Its influence, however, as Döllinger (_Das Kaiserthum Karls des
+Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_) remarks, first became great when this
+letter, some forty or fifty years after Innocent wrote it, was
+inserted in the digest of the canon law.
+
+[259] Vid. supra, pp. 52-58.
+
+[260] Upon this so-called 'Translation of the Empire,' many books
+remain to us: many more have probably perished. A good although far
+from impartial summary of the controversy may be found in Vagedes, _De
+Ludibriis Aulæ Romanæ in transferendo Imperio Romano_.
+
+[261] 'Vacante imperio Romano, cum in illo ad sæcularem iudicem
+nequeat haberi recursus, ad summum pontificem, cui in persona B. Petri
+terreni simul et cœlestis imperii iura Deus ipse commisit, imperii
+prædicti iurisdictio regimen et dispositio devolvitur.'--Bull _Si
+fratrum_ (of John XXI, in A.D. 1316), in _Bullar. Rom._ So again:
+'Attendentes quod Imperii Romani regimen cura et administratio tempore
+quo illud vacare contingit ad nos pertinet, sicut dignoscitur
+pertinere.' So Boniface VIII, refusing to recognize Albert I, because
+he was ugly and one-eyed ('est homo monoculus et vultu sordido, non
+potest esse Imperator'), and had taken a wife from the serpent brood
+of Frederick II ('de sanguine viperali Friderici'), declared himself
+Vicar of the Empire, and assumed the crown and sword of Constantine.
+
+[262] Avignon was not yet in the territory of France: it lay within
+the bounds of the kingdom of Arles. But the French power was nearer
+than that of the Emperor; and pontiffs many of them French by
+extraction sympathized, as was natural, with princes of their own
+race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Territorial Sovereignty of the Princes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adolf, 1292-1298.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert I, 1298-1308.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, 1308-1314.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis IV, 1314-1347.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic
+power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the
+Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made
+the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the
+Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify
+their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to
+coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
+Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign
+of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the
+civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival
+claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
+successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these
+circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the
+crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now
+became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
+jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
+privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were
+without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The
+numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the
+crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of
+Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single
+tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it
+was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed
+themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
+were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this
+last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors,
+already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and
+forming for themselves the first considerable principalities.
+Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states
+before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics
+almost from its beginning.
+
+[Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]
+
+The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his
+present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown
+entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to
+confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of
+Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it
+from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect
+all their present immunities, including those which they had just
+extorted as the price of their votes; they checked all his attempts to
+recover lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
+anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor sought
+only to make the most of his short tenure, using his position to
+aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown estates and
+privileges. His individual action and personal relation to the subject
+was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he represented order
+and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the
+political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned:
+unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when they
+assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without
+the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty-seven
+years.
+
+[Sidenote: Power of the cities.]
+
+[Sidenote: Financial distress.]
+
+How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn
+by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign potentates, who could
+not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not
+to speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was proposed
+against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against
+Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad,
+king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a
+Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support
+of the cities. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had
+increased wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness: the
+Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed
+the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the Rhine formed great
+commercial leagues, maintained regular wars against the
+counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an
+alliance with the Swiss, on the point of turning West Germany into a
+federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however, was still too
+strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and
+the thoughtless Wenzel let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the
+losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past
+redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts. The
+Empire was poor. The crown lands, which had suffered heavily under
+Frederick II, were further usurped during the confusion that followed;
+till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who
+sought only their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and
+fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian
+Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights,
+the second fiscal resource, had fared no better--tolls, customs,
+mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were
+either seized or granted away: even the advowsons of churches had been
+sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an
+inglorious traffic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under
+Rudolf that the electors refused to make his son Albert king of the
+Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which
+with difficulty supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at
+the same time[263]. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio
+spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniæ principibus
+successurus esset, qui præter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud
+eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum[264].' Patritius,
+the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the
+Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors[265]. Poverty
+such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater
+after each election, not only involved the failure of the attempts
+which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights[266], but put
+every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a
+jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors,
+princes, and cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence
+selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from
+dying of inanition.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles IV (A.D. 1347-1378), and his electoral
+constitution.]
+
+The changes thus briefly described were in progress when Charles the
+Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that blind king John of Bohemia who
+fell at Cressy, and grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
+ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy aimed at settling
+what he perhaps despaired of reforming, and the famous instrument
+which, under the name of the Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of
+the Germanic constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of
+the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous
+defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections,
+followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which
+Charles set himself to redress.
+
+[Sidenote: German kingdom not originally elective.]
+
+The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic
+invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the
+elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had,
+as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from
+among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose
+the bravest or the most popular as king[267]. That the German crown
+came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England,
+and most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary
+succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in
+three successive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles,
+who, since they were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard
+the royal power, did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the
+churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own
+law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to
+gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto
+which they claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial
+office as one too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal,
+transmissible by blood. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms,
+remained merely local, feudal, and national, it would without doubt
+have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by
+the Roman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race
+being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could
+not be confined to any family, nor pass like a private estate by the
+ordinary rules of descent.
+
+[Sidenote: Electoral body in primitive times.]
+
+The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest ages, to
+the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which must have been very
+irregularly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but
+the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to
+complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and St.
+Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke were chosen[268]. Though even
+tradition might have commemorated what extant records place beyond a
+doubt, it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth
+century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the
+privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory
+V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as 'lex a pontifice de
+imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in
+posterum esset[269].' St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from the times
+of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V
+established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the
+holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged
+expedient for Christ's faithful people[270].' Since it tended to exalt
+the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt honestly
+accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And indeed, like so many
+other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto
+III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
+succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the nation,
+and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end
+become hereditary[271].
+
+[Sidenote: Encroachments of the great nobles.]
+
+Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was
+theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers
+being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to
+an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of
+these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the
+father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it
+might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by
+the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II,
+A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the
+so-called right of prætaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
+future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their
+approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will
+and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further
+exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the
+Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient
+constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic
+throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely
+elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry
+VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the
+keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of
+prætaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election,
+vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility
+being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the
+double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was
+as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor
+afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts
+and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
+
+[Sidenote: The Seven Electors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]
+
+The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate and obscure.
+It is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a
+distinct body; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in
+A.D. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom
+the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the
+seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and
+Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz,
+Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees,
+represented the German church: the other four ought, according to the
+ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations,
+Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the
+four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms
+the two first named were now extinct, and their place and power in the
+state, as well as the household offices they had held, had descended
+upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
+Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon
+duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and
+office of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would
+have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and
+the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the great house of
+Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed
+so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to
+the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king
+of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince[274], might on
+the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the
+electors. The dispute between these rival claimants, as well as all
+the rules and requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
+Fourth in the Golden Bull, thenceforward a fundamental law of the
+Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king;
+fixed Frankfort as the place of election; named the archbishop of
+Mentz convener of the electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to
+the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A
+majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each
+electorate there was attached a great office, it was supposed that
+this was the title by which the vote was possessed; though it was in
+truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were
+archchancellors of Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
+Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony marshal, and
+Brandenburg chamberlain[275].
+
+[Sidenote: Eighth Electorate.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ninth Electorate.]
+
+These arrangements, under which disputed elections became far less
+frequent, remained undisturbed till A.D. 1618, when on the breaking
+out of the Thirty Years' War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an
+unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick
+(king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of
+England) of his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own
+partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace of Westphalia the
+Palsgrave was reinstated as an eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her
+place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple
+was felt in making further changes. In A.D. 1692, the Emperor Leopold
+I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Lüneburg,
+which was then in possession of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to
+the throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in A.D. 1708, the assent of
+the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings
+came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
+
+It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues
+to entitle himself Elector[276] should be one who never did (and of
+course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under
+the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A.D. 1803,
+Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
+procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves,
+annexing their territories to France, and gave the title of Elector,
+as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Würtemburg, the
+Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop
+of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
+title became meaningless.
+
+As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy
+not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to
+consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character
+of elective monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
+and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain
+class of political theorists.
+
+[Sidenote: Objects of an elective monarchy: how far attained in
+Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Choice of the fittest.]
+
+First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult, one might
+almost say impossible, it was found to maintain in practice the
+elective principle. In point of law, the imperial throne was from the
+tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely open to any orthodox
+Christian candidate. But as a matter of fact, the competition was
+confined to a few very powerful families, and there was always a
+strong tendency for the crown to become hereditary in some one of
+these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from A.D. 1024 till 1125,
+the Hohenstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
+century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of Bohemia) enjoyed it
+through three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it
+fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain
+it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished
+out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme
+of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest
+man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even
+then rather by good fortune than design.
+
+[Sidenote: Restraint of the sovereign.]
+
+No such objection can be brought against the second ground on which an
+elective system has sometimes been advocated, its operation in
+moderating the power of the crown, for this was attained in the
+fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the
+fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house
+swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not
+moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to
+purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to
+his predecessors, and must repeat the same shameful policy later in
+his reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the same time
+that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated
+it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make
+out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the
+strength of their position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert
+an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have
+aspired to.
+
+[Sidenote: Recognition of the popular will.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conception of the electoral function.]
+
+Modern political speculation supposes the method of appointing a ruler
+by the votes of his subjects, as opposed to the system of hereditary
+succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the
+ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that
+he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the
+Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This will best appear
+when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its
+history is compared with the corresponding changes in the composition
+of the electoral body which have been described as in progress from
+the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe
+chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble
+family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power
+circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the
+tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the
+hands of the magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
+the same measure had the relation of prince and subject taken a new
+aspect. We must not expect to find, in such rude times, any very clear
+apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne
+had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election
+was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded,
+not as a delegation of authority by the nobles and people, with a
+power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of
+themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and
+ill-defined prerogative. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn
+above, the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout of the
+host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral
+princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established,
+and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a
+majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
+conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
+penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign did
+not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right, but by the choice
+of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration
+of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is
+nevertheless a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
+They only named the person who was to receive what it was not theirs
+to give. God, say the mediæval writers, not deigning to interfere
+visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven
+princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged
+to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
+in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself that the
+authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have no relation towards
+him except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when
+the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the
+belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
+of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any
+notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of Charles IV's policy.]
+
+Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the institutions of Charles
+IV, which removed one fruitful cause of civil war. But these seven
+electoral princes acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked
+and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full
+regalian rights in their territories[277]; causes were not to be
+evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied:
+their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their
+persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the
+Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon
+gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular reverence, as well as
+that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German
+Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
+unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and
+to them, while appearing to exalt by elaborate ceremonies its ideal
+dignity, he deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The
+object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
+Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden
+Bull, whose seal bears the legend,--
+
+ 'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi[278],'
+
+there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany he was indirectly
+a benefactor, by the foundation of the University of Prague, the
+mother of all her schools: otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy,
+and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
+ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election of his son
+Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been
+amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what
+lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy
+the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome
+with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate
+of an Avignonese Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the
+last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he
+could now despise.
+
+Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically
+powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority
+that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and
+tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he
+claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[263] Quoted by Moser, _Römische Kayser_, from _Chron. Hirsang._:
+'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contritæ vix uni alendo regi
+sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'
+
+[264] At Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased
+greatly, there were, we are told, many bishops better off than the
+Emperor.
+
+[265] 'Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix
+suppetant.'--Quoted by Moser.
+
+[266] Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the
+grasp of the Rhenish electors.
+
+[267] The Æthelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, and
+the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achæmenids of
+Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.
+
+[268] Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says,
+'Inter confinia Moguntiæ et Wormatiæ convenerunt cuncti primates et,
+ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni.' So Bruno says that Henry IV was
+elected by the '_populus_.' So Gunther Ligurinus of Frederick I's
+election:--
+
+ 'Acturi sacræ de successione coronæ
+ Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'
+
+So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his
+election, says, 'Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi
+et aliis Italiæ dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum ex
+Transalpino regno.'--Quoted by Mur. _Antiq._ Diss. iii. And see many
+other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius illustratus_.
+
+[269] Alciatus, _De Formula Romani Imperii_. He adds that the Gauls
+and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too
+Radulfus de Columna.
+
+[270] Quoted by Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu Sacri Imperii Romani_,
+himself a violent advocate of Gregory's decree, though living as late
+as the days of Ferdinand II. As late as A.D. 1648 we find Pope
+Innocent X maintaining that the sacred number _Seven_ of the electors
+was 'apostolica auctoritate olim præfinitus.' Bull _Zelo domus_ in
+_Bullar. Rom._
+
+[271] Sometimes we hear of a decree made by Pope Sergius IV and his
+cardinals (of course equally fabulous with Otto's). So John Villani,
+iv. 2.
+
+[272] In 1152 we read, 'Id iuris Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur ut
+non per sanguinis propaginem sed per principum electionem reges
+creentur.'--Otto Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing not much later, says
+(quoted by Freher),--
+
+ 'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum
+ Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum
+ Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'
+
+[273] Innocent III, during the contest between Philip and Otto IV,
+speaks of 'principes ad quos principaliter spectat regis Romani
+electio.'
+
+[274] 'Rex Bohemiæ non eligit, quia non est Teutonicus,' says a writer
+early in the fourteenth century.
+
+[275] The names and offices of the seven are concisely given in these
+lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, _De Imperio
+Romano_:--
+
+ 'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,
+ Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;
+ Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,
+ Marchio præpositus cameræ, pincerna Bohemus,
+ Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per sæcula summum.'
+
+It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's
+ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of
+Rudolf is described:--
+
+ 'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
+ Im alterthümlichen Saale,
+ Sass König Rudolphs heilige Macht
+ Beim festlichen Krönungsmahle.
+ Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,
+ Es schenkte der Böhme des perlenden Weins,
+ Und alle die Wähler, die Sieben,
+ Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,
+ Umstanden geschäftig den Herrscher der Welt,
+ Die Würde des Amtes zu üben.'
+
+It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to
+bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home,
+mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war.
+
+[276] The electoral prince (Kurfürst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention
+of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily
+to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy
+(Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the
+above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system
+has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866,
+and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants,
+whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to
+the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of
+Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer
+to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the
+historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to
+associate with the Austrian house.]
+
+[277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the
+splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_
+a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the
+territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express
+concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:--
+
+ 'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,
+ Berg-, Salz- und Münz-regal euch angehören soll.'
+
+[278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Theory of the Roman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries.]
+
+That the Roman Empire survived the seemingly mortal wound it had
+received at the era of the Great Interregnum, and continued to put
+forth pretensions which no one was likely to make good where the
+Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its identification
+with the German kingdom, in which some life was still left. But this
+was far from being the only cause which saved it from extinction. It
+had not ceased to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
+by the same singular theory which had in the ninth and tenth been
+strong enough to re-establish it in the West. The character of that
+theory was indeed somewhat changed, for if not positively less
+religious, it was less exclusively so. In the days of Charles and
+Otto, the Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition
+from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that with the
+visible Church there must be coextensive a single Christian state
+under one head and governor. But now that the Emperor's headship had
+been repudiated by the Pope, and his interference in matters of
+religion denounced as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that the
+memory of mutual injuries had kindled an unquenchable hatred between
+the champions of the ecclesiastical and those of the civil power, it
+was natural that the latter, while they urged, fervently as ever, the
+divine sanction given to the imperial office, should at the same time
+be led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its claims.
+What that basis was, and how they were guided to it, will best appear
+when a word or two has been said on the nature of the change that had
+passed on Europe in the course of the three preceding centuries, and
+the progress of the human mind during the same period.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of learning and literature, A.D. 1100-1400.]
+
+Such has been the accumulated wealth of literature, and so rapid the
+advances of science among us since the close of the Middle Ages, that
+it is not now possible by any effort fully to enter into the feelings
+with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in
+them their only possession. It is indeed true that modern art and
+literature and philosophy have been produced by the working of new
+minds upon old materials: that in thought, as in nature, we see no new
+creation. But with us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the
+new till its origin is forgotten: to them ancient books were the only
+standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the only stimulus to
+reflection. Hence it was that the most learned man was in those days
+esteemed the greatest: hence the creative energy of an age was exactly
+proportioned to its knowledge of and its reverence for the written
+monuments of those that had gone before. For until they can look
+forward, men must look back: till they should have reached the level
+of the old civilization, the nations of mediæval Europe must continue
+to live upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common dream of
+all mankind had power; but to them, as to the ancient world, that
+golden age which seems now to glimmer on the horizon of the future was
+shrouded in the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries that we are accustomed to assign that new birth of
+the human spirit--if it ought not rather to be called a renewal of its
+strength and quickening of its sluggish life--with which the modern
+time begins. And the date is well chosen, for it was then first that
+the transcendently powerful influence of Greek literature began to
+work upon the world. But it must not be forgotten that for a long time
+previous there had been in progress a great revival of learning, and
+still more of zeal for learning, which being caused by and directed
+towards the literature and institutions of Rome, might fitly be called
+the Roman Renaissance. The twelfth century saw this revival begin with
+that passionate study of the legislation of Justinian, whose influence
+on the doctrines of imperial prerogative has been noticed already. The
+thirteenth witnessed the rapid spread of the scholastic philosophy, a
+body of systems most alien, both in subject and manner, to anything
+that had arisen among the ancients, yet one to whose development Greek
+metaphysics and the theology of the Latin fathers had largely
+contributed, and the spirit of whose reasonings was far more free than
+the presumed orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the
+fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great masters of
+painting and song; and the literature of the new languages, springing
+into the fulness of life in the Divina Commedia, adorned not long
+after by the names of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place
+as a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.
+
+[Sidenote: Growing freedom of spirit.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of thought upon the arrangements of society.]
+
+Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused by, partly causing
+it, there had been also a wonderful stirring and uprising in the mind
+of Europe. The yoke of church authority still pressed heavily on the
+souls of men; yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more
+murmured in secret. The tendency was one which shewed itself in
+various and sometimes apparently opposite directions. The revolt of
+the Albigenses, the spread of the Cathari and other so-called
+heretics, the excitement created by the writings of Wickliffe and
+Huss, witnessed to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the
+dominant theology. It was present, however skilfully disguised, among
+those scholastic doctors who busied themselves with proving by natural
+reason the dogmas of the Church: for the power which can forge fetters
+can also break them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more
+direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated from
+Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and corruptions of the
+clergy, and above all of the papal court. For the agitation was not
+merely speculative. There was beginning to be a direct and rational
+interest in life, a power of applying thought to practical ends, which
+had not been seen before. Man's life among his fellows was no longer a
+mere wild beast struggle; man's soul no more, as it had been, the
+victim of ungoverned passion, whether it was awed by supernatural
+terrors or captivated by examples of surpassing holiness. Manners were
+still rude, and governments unsettled; but society was learning to
+organize itself upon fixed principles; to recognize, however faintly,
+the value of order, industry, equality; to adapt means to ends, and
+conceive of the common good as the proper end of its own existence. In
+a word, Politics had begun to exist, and with them there had appeared
+the first of a class of persons whom friends and enemies may both,
+though with different meanings, call ideal politicians; men who,
+however various have been the doctrines they have held, however
+impracticable many of the plans they have advanced, have been
+nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest interests of
+humanity, and have frequently been derided as theorists in their own
+age to be honoured as the prophets and teachers of the next.
+
+[Sidenote: Separation of the peoples of Europe into hostile kingdoms:
+consequent need of an international power.]
+
+Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes and sympathies of
+these political speculators as well as of the jurists and poets of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were constantly directed. The cause
+may be gathered from the circumstances of the time. The most
+remarkable event in the history of the last three hundred years had
+been the formation of nationalities, each distinguished by a peculiar
+language and character, and by steadily increasing differences of
+habits and institutions. And as upon this national basis there had
+been in most cases established strong monarchies, Europe was broken up
+into disconnected bodies, and the cherished scheme of a united
+Christian state appeared less likely than ever to be realized. Nor was
+this all. Sometimes through race-hatred, more often by the jealousy
+and ambition of their sovereigns, these countries were constantly
+involved in war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with
+more destructive results than in time past the peace of the religious
+community; while each of them was at the same time torn within by
+frequent insurrections, and desolated by long and bloody civil wars.
+The new nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that by
+their extinction a remedy might be applied to these evils. They had
+grown up in spite of the Empire and the Church, and were not likely to
+yield in their strength what they had won in their weakness. But it
+still appeared possible to soften, if not to overcome, their
+antagonism. What might not be looked for from the erection of a
+presiding power common to all Europe, a power which, while it should
+oversee the internal concerns of each country, not dethroning the
+king, but treating him as an hereditary viceroy, should be more
+especially charged to prevent strife between kingdoms, and to maintain
+the public order of Europe by being not only the fountain of
+international law, but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer
+of its sentences?
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes as international Judges.]
+
+To such a position had the Popes aspired. They were indeed excellently
+fitted for it by the respect which the sacredness of their office
+commanded; by their control of the tremendous weapons of
+excommunication and interdict; above all, by their exemption from
+those narrowing influences of place, or blood, or personal interest,
+which it would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there
+had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were worthy of their
+exalted office, and whose interference was gratefully remembered by
+those who found no other helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by
+its conduct as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even when
+its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most pure, one motive
+had always biassed its decisions--a partiality to the most submissive.
+During the greater part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon
+the willing tool of France: in the pursuit of a temporal principality
+it had mingled in and been contaminated by the unhallowed politics of
+Italy; its supreme council, the college of cardinals, was distracted
+by the intrigues of two bitterly hostile factions. And while the power
+of the Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the days of
+Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great prelates and the vices
+of the inferior clergy had provoked throughout Western Christendom a
+reaction against the pretensions of all sacerdotal authority. As there
+is no theory at first sight more attractive than that which entrusts
+all government to a supreme spiritual power, which, knowing what is
+best for man, shall lead him to his true good by appealing to the
+highest principles of his nature, so there is no disappointment more
+bitter than that of those who find that the holiest office may be
+polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder; that craft and
+hypocrisy lead while fanaticism follows; that here too, as in so much
+else, the corruption of the best is worst. Some such disappointment
+there was in Europe now, and with it a certain disposition to look
+with favour on the secular power: a wish to escape from the unhealthy
+atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of positive law, harsher,
+it might be, yet surely less corrupting. Espousing the cause of the
+Roman Empire as the chief opponent of priestly claims, this tendency
+found it, with shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in
+some respects for the office of an international judge and mediator
+than it had been as a great national power. For though far less widely
+active, it was losing that local character which was fast gathering
+round the Papacy. With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and
+removed, except in his patrimonial lands, from direct contact with the
+subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously a German
+and a feudal king, and occupied an ideal position far less marred by
+the incongruous accidents of birth and training, of national and
+dynastic interests.
+
+[Sidenote: Duties attributed to the Empire by the developed theory.]
+
+[Sidenote: Divine right of the Emperor.]
+
+To that position three cardinal duties were attached. He who held it
+must typify spiritual unity, must preserve peace, must be a fountain
+of that by which alone among imperfect men peace is preserved and
+restored, law and justice. The first of these three objects was sought
+not only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for a wider
+brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever since the barrier between
+Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations
+of the higher minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed
+in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one
+body, reminding them of their common faith, their common blood, their
+common interest in each other's welfare. And he was therefore above
+all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the representative of
+the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and to redress the
+injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each other; to punish
+offenders against the public order of Christendom; to maintain through
+the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and
+quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither
+arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and
+flourish. The mediæval Empire was in its essence what the modern
+despotisms that mimic it profess themselves: the Empire was
+peace[279]: the oldest and noblest title of its head was 'Imperator
+pacificus[280].' And that he might be the peacemaker, he must be the
+expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment,
+positive law; chief legislator and supreme judge of appeal, like his
+predecessor the compiler of the Corpus Iuris, the one and only source
+of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and
+administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, Lord
+of the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same sense in
+which the soil of France or England belongs to their respective kings:
+he is the steward of Him who has received the heathen for his
+possession and the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance.
+It is, therefore, by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired
+not by force but by legitimate devolution from those whom God himself
+had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an external and
+positive basis for that idea is a problem which it has at all times
+been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing
+to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by
+reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire historically how
+its existing arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt to represent
+human government as an emanation from divine: a view from which all
+the similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine
+right which have prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been
+said already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor
+reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of the people,
+for such a theory would have seemed to the men of the middle ages an
+absurd and wicked perversion of the true order. Nor do his powers come
+to him from those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral
+princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having such an origin, his
+rights exist irrespective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary
+abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them. Boniface the
+Eighth[281] reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till
+the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like other
+princes, is of right and must ever remain subject to the Roman
+Emperor. And the sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the
+Emperor in language, and yield to him a precedence, which admitted the
+inferiority of their own position[282].
+
+There was in this theory nothing that was absurd, though much that was
+impracticable. The ideas on which it rested are still unapproached in
+grandeur and simplicity, still as far in advance of the average
+thought of Europe, and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply
+them, as when they were promulgated five hundred years ago. The
+practical evil which the establishment of such a universal monarchy
+was intended to meet, that of wars and hardly less ruinous
+preparations for war between the states of Europe, remains what it was
+then. The remedy which mediæval theory proposed has been in some
+measure applied by the construction and reception of international
+law; the greater difficulty of erecting a tribunal to arbitrate and
+decide, with the power of enforcing its decisions, is as far from a
+solution as ever.
+
+[Sidenote: Roman Empire why an international power.]
+
+It is easy to see how it was to the Roman Emperor, and to him only,
+that the duties and privileges above mentioned could be attributed.
+Being Roman, he was of no nation, and therefore fittest to judge
+between contending states, and appease the animosities of race. His
+was the imperial tongue of Rome, not only the vehicle of religion and
+law, but also, since no other was understood everywhere in Europe, the
+necessary medium of diplomatic intercourse. As there was no Church but
+the Holy Roman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him that
+the communion of the saints in its outward form, its secular side, was
+represented, and to his keeping that the sanctity of peace must be
+entrusted. As direct heir of those who from Julius to Justinian had
+shaped the existing law of Europe[283], he was, so to speak, legality
+personified[284]; the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of
+power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer upon others
+rights equally valid. And as he claimed to perpetuate the greatest
+political system the world had known, a system which still moves the
+wonder of those who see before their eyes empires as much wider than
+the Roman as they are less symmetrical, and whose vast and complex
+machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth century possessed or
+could hope to establish, it was not strange that he and his government
+(assuming them to be what they were entitled to be) should be taken as
+the ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Right of creating Kings.]
+
+Of the many applications and illustrations of these doctrines which
+mediæval documents furnish, it will suffice to adduce two or three. No
+imperial privilege was prized more highly than the power of creating
+kings, for there was none which raised the Emperor so much above them.
+In this, as in other international concerns, the Pope soon began to
+claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then separate and
+independent. But the older and more reasonable view assigned it, as
+flowing from the possession of supreme secular authority, to the
+Emperor; and it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia,
+Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the regal title[285].
+The prerogative was his in the same manner in which that of conferring
+titles is still held to belong to the sovereign in every modern
+kingdom. And so when Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy,
+proposed to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was from
+Frederick III that he sought permission to do so. The Emperor,
+however, was greedy and suspicious, the Duke uncompliant; and when
+Frederick found that terms could not be arranged between them, he
+stole away suddenly, and left Charles to carry back, with
+ill-concealed mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had
+brought ready-made to the place of interview.
+
+[Sidenote: Chivalry.]
+
+In the same manner, as representing what was common to and valid
+throughout all Europe, nobility, and more particularly knighthood,
+centred in the Empire. The great Orders of Chivalry were international
+institutions, whose members, having consecrated themselves a military
+priesthood, had no longer any country of their own, and could
+therefore be subject to no one save the Emperor and the Pope. For
+knighthood was constructed on the analogy of priesthood, and knights
+were conceived of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly
+what priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to it in
+its religious aspect: to the one body was given the sword of the
+flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit; each was universal, each
+had its autocratic head[286]. Singularly, too, were these notions
+brought into harmony with the feudal polity. Cæsar was lord paramount
+of the world: its countries great fiefs whose kings were his tenants
+in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him homage, fealty, and
+military service against the infidel.
+
+[Sidenote: Persons eligible as Emperors.]
+
+One illustration more of the way in which the empire was held to be
+something of and for all mankind, cannot be omitted. Although from the
+practical union of the imperial with the German throne none but
+Germans were chosen to fill it[287], it remained in point of law
+absolutely free from all restrictions of country or birth. In an age
+of the most intense aristocratic exclusiveness, the highest office in
+the world was the only secular one open to all Christians. The old
+writers, after debating at length the qualifications that are or may
+be desirable in an Emperor, and relating how in pagan times Gauls and
+Spaniards, Moors and Pannonians, were thought worthy of the purple,
+decide that two things, and no more, are required of the candidate for
+Empire: he must be free-born, and he must be orthodox[288].
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the new learning.]
+
+[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Empire's rights and functions never
+carried out in fact.]
+
+It is not without a certain surprise that we see those who were
+engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt indirectly their
+stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of the Roman Empire. Still
+more difficult is it to estimate the respective influence exerted by
+each of the three revivals which it has been attempted to distinguish.
+The spirit of the ancient world by which the men who led these
+movements fancied themselves animated, was in truth a pagan, or at
+least a strongly secular spirit, in many respects inconsistent with
+the associations which had now gathered round the imperial office. And
+this hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning of
+the sixteenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance, a direct and
+for the time irresistible sway was exercised by the art and literature
+of Greece, when the mythology of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that
+which had fired the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of
+St. Francis; when men forsook the image of the saint in the cathedral
+for the statue of the nymph in the garden; when the uncouth jargon of
+scholastic theology was equally distasteful to the scholars who formed
+their style upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their
+inspiration from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity did
+ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire, was due partly
+indeed to the false notions that were entertained regarding the early
+Cæsars, yet still more to the common hostility of both sects to the
+Papacy. It was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her
+traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide a dominion; yet
+no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his republicans arise, claiming
+liberty in the name of the ancient constitution of the republic, than
+they found in the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned for help to
+the secular monarch against the clergy. With similar aversion did the
+Romish court view the revived study of the ancient jurisprudence, so
+soon as it became, in the hands of the school of Bologna and
+afterwards of the jurists of France, a power able to assert its
+independence and resist ecclesiastical pretensions. In the ninth
+century, Pope Nicholas the First had himself judged in the famous case
+of Teutberga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law: in the
+thirteenth, his successors[289] forbade its study, and the canonists
+strove to expel it from Europe[290]. And as the current of educated
+opinion among the laity was beginning, however imperceptibly at first,
+to set against sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Empire would
+find sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost position.
+Thus the Emperors became, or might have become had they seen the
+greatness of the opportunity and been strong enough to improve it, the
+exponents and guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part
+at least, of the Reformation. But the revival came too late to arrest,
+if not to adorn, the decline of their office. The growth of a national
+sentiment in the several countries of Europe, which had already gone
+too far to be arrested, and was urged on by forces far stronger than
+the theories of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the
+resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts of political
+freedom, that form of narrowly local patriotism which they still
+retain. It can hardly be said that upon any occasion, except the
+gathering of the council of Constance by Sigismund, did the Emperor
+appear filling a truly international place. For the most part he
+exerted in the politics of Europe no influence greater than that of
+other princes. In actual resources he stood below the kings of France
+and England, far below his vassals the Visconti of Milan[291]. Yet
+this helplessness, such was men's faith or their timidity, and such
+their unwillingness to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent
+his dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language by
+writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo of traditional
+glory which surrounded it.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the men of letters.]
+
+We are thus brought back to ask, What was the connection between
+imperialism and the literary revival?
+
+[Sidenote: Petrarch.]
+
+To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the heathen persecuting
+power, it is strange to find it depicted as the model of a Christian
+commonwealth. It is stranger still that the study of antiquity should
+have made men advocates of arbitrary power. Democratic Athens,
+oligarchic Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus: the moderns who
+have striven to catch their spirit have been men like Algernon Sidney,
+and Vergniaud, and Shelley. The explanation is the same in both
+cases[292]. The ancient world was known to the earlier middle ages by
+tradition, freshest for what was latest, and by the authors of the
+Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty despotism and a
+civilization brilliant far beyond their own. Writings of the fourth
+and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us, were to them authorities as
+high as Tacitus or Livy; yet Virgil and Horace too had sung the
+praises of the first and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of
+poetry and law, Rome meant universal monarchy[293]; to those of
+religion, her name called up the undimmed radiance of the Church under
+Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch, the apostle of the dawning
+Renaissance, is excited by the least attempt to revive even the shadow
+of imperial greatness: as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV
+into Italy, and execrates his departure. The following passage is
+taken from his letter to the Roman people asking them to receive back
+Rienzi:--'When was there ever such peace, such tranquillity, such
+justice, such honour paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the
+good and punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely
+guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one head, and that
+head Rome; the very time wherein God deigned to be born of a virgin
+and dwell upon earth. To every single body there has been given a
+head; the whole world therefore also, which is called by the poet a
+great body, ought to be content with one temporal head. For every
+two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more horrible and hideous a
+portent must be a creature with a thousand different heads, biting and
+fighting against one another! If, however, it is necessary that there
+be more heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought to
+be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the peace of the
+whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly both in heaven and in earth
+the sovereignty of one has always been best.'
+
+[Sidenote: Dante.]
+
+His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and the ordered peace to
+which it brought the world, is the centre of Dante's political hopes:
+he is no more an exiled Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid
+imagination sees a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its
+rightful lord. Italy, the spoil of so many Teutonic conquerors, is the
+garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome the mourning
+widow, whom Albert is denounced for neglecting[294]. Passing through
+purgatory, the poet sees Rudolf of Hapsburg seated gloomily apart,
+mourning his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy[295]. In
+the deepest pit of hell's ninth circle lies Lucifer, huge,
+three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches between his
+teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to Christ, in the others the
+two traitors to the first Emperor of Rome, Brutus and Cassius[296]. To
+multiply illustrations from other parts of the poem would be an
+endless task; for the idea is ever present in Dante's mind, and
+displays itself in a hundred unexpected forms. Virgil himself is
+selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and purgatory,
+not so much as being the great poet of antiquity, as because he 'was
+born under Julius and lived beneath the good Augustus;' because he was
+divinely charged to sing of the Empire's earliest and brightest
+glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be the glory of
+another. For Virgil's melancholy panegyrics upon the destroyer of the
+republic are no more like Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of
+Italy than is Cæsar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Jurists.]
+
+The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded by the more
+sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror, theologian, and jurist,
+Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his
+enduring work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's
+creed[297]: the phrases 'legibus solutus,' 'lex regia,' whatever else
+tended in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative of
+him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name
+of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of
+the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to
+be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and
+observe every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be
+connected with her representative.
+
+[Sidenote: Imitations of old Rome.]
+
+Of the many instances that might be collected, it would be tedious to
+enumerate more than a few. The offices of the imperial household,
+instituted by Constantine the Great, were attached to the noblest
+families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation
+at Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and
+Livia[298]; a bare sword was borne before them by the prætorian
+prefect; their processions were adorned by the standards, eagles,
+wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or
+Theodosius[299]. The constant title of the Emperor himself, according
+to the style introduced by Probus, was 'semper Augustus,' or
+'perpetuus Augustus,' which erring etymology translated 'at all times
+increaser of the Empire[300].' Edicts issued by a Franconian or
+Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels[301] in the Corpus Juris, in
+the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The
+_pontificatus maximus_ of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be
+preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's
+at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen[302]. Sometimes we even find him
+talking of his consulship[303]. Annalists invariably number the place
+of each sovereign from Augustus downwards[304]. The notion of an
+uninterrupted succession, which moves the stranger's wondering smile
+as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the
+portraits of the Cæsars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from
+Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was
+to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial
+was inconceivable.
+
+[Sidenote: Reverence for ancient forms and phrases in the Middle
+Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of the idea of change or progress.]
+
+And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call it, which
+gathers round the Empire, is but one instance, though the most
+striking, of that eager wish to cling to the old forms, use the old
+phrases, and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of
+mediæval Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions,
+as when a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, _Tribu moti
+sunt_, or talks of the 'senate and people of the Franks,' when he
+means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked
+warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on
+Roman precedents; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a
+different source, represented the old _collegia_; villenage was the
+offspring of the system of _coloni_ under the later Empire. Even in
+remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns, and stamped
+their coins with Roman devices; called themselves 'Basileis' and
+'Augusti[305].' Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her
+most lasting boon to the conquered, municipal self-government; those
+of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others
+who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zürich and Augsburg, could trace back
+their institutions to the _coloniæ_ and _municipia_ of the first
+centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Nürnberg[306] the traveller
+still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words 'Senatus
+populusque Norimbergensis,' and is borne in thought from the quiet
+provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages:
+thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater prototype. For, in
+truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages,
+men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as
+they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay
+between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to
+look back. We who are centuries removed can see that there had passed
+a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature,
+and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is
+to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive
+basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless
+varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each
+generation felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that
+perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed from year to
+year; while the few who had learning enough to study antiquity through
+its contemporary records, were prevented by the utter want of
+criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing
+how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they
+admired. There is nothing more modern than the critical spirit which
+dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in
+another; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and
+judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit
+was, before the last century or two, wholly foreign to art as well as
+to metaphysics. The converse and the parallel of the fashion of
+calling mediæval offices by Roman names, and supposing them therefore
+the same, is to be found in those old German pictures of the siege of
+Carthage or the battle between Porus and Alexander, where in the
+foreground two armies of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging
+each other like Crusaders, lance, in rest, while behind, through the
+smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers of the
+beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember that the notion of
+progress and development, and of change as the necessary condition
+thereof, was unwelcome or unknown in mediæval times, we may better
+understand, though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting
+that the political system of antiquity had descended to them, modified
+indeed, yet in substance the same, should have believed that the
+Frank, the Saxon, and the Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which
+seems to us not less fantastic than that fabled charter whereby
+Alexander the Great[307] bequeathed his empire to the Slavic race for
+the love of Roxolana.
+
+It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which the history of
+the Middle Ages is full, that this belief had hardly any influence on
+practical politics. The more abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so
+much the more sonorous is the language in which the dignity of his
+crown is described. His power, we are told, is eternal, the provinces
+having resumed their allegiance after the barbarian irruptions[308];
+it is incapable of diminution or injury: exemptions and grants by him,
+so far as they tend to limit his own prerogative, are invalid[309]:
+all Christendom is still of right subject to him, though it may
+contumaciously refuse obedience[310]. The sovereigns of Europe are
+solemnly warned that they are resisting the power ordained of
+God[311]. No laws can bind the Emperor, though he may choose to live
+according to them: no court can judge him, though he may condescend to
+be sued in his own: none may presume to arraign the conduct or
+question the motives of him who is answerable only to God[312]. So
+writes Æneas Sylvius, while Frederick the Third, chased from his
+capital by the Hungarians, is wandering from convent to convent, an
+imperial beggar; while the princes, whom his subserviency to the Pope
+has driven into rebellion, are offering the imperial crown to
+Podiebrad the Bohemian king.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, A.D. 1308-1313.]
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Henry VII.]
+
+But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is the most remarkable
+illustration of the Emperor's position: and imperialist doctrines are
+set forth most strikingly in the treatise which the greatest spirit of
+the age wrote to herald the advent of that hero, the _De Monarchia_ of
+Dante[313]. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, none of them
+crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the Italian Ghibelines who
+battled away in the name of their throne. Concerned only to restore
+order and aggrandize his house, and thinking apparently that nothing
+more was to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content never to
+receive it, and purchased the Pope's goodwill by surrendering his
+jurisdiction in the capital, and his claims over the bequest of the
+Countess Matilda. Henry the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course;
+urged perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps in
+despair at effecting anything with his slender resources against the
+princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian dominions with a
+scanty following of knights, and descending from the Cenis upon Turin,
+he found his prerogative higher in men's belief after sixty years of
+neglect than it had stood under the last Hohenstaufen. The cities of
+Lombardy opened their gates; Milan decreed a vast subsidy; Guelf and
+Ghibeline exiles alike were restored, and imperial vicars appointed
+everywhere: supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the
+restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV, Henry had
+the interdict of the Church as well as the ban of the Empire at his
+command. But the illusion of success vanished as soon as men,
+recovering from their first impression, began to be again governed by
+their ordinary passions and interests, and not by an imaginative
+reverence for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts broke out
+in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples held St. Peter's, and the
+coronation must take place in St. John Lateran, on the southern bank
+of the Tiber. The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the
+Florentines, Guelfs even against the Pope, obliged Henry to depart
+from his impartial and republican policy, and to purchase the aid of
+the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them the government of cities. With
+few troops, and encompassed by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained
+an unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in A.D. 1313, he sank
+beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan summer. His German followers
+believed, nor has history wholly rejected the tale, that poison was
+given him by a Dominican monk, in sacramental wine.
+
+[Sidenote: Later Emperors in Italy.]
+
+Others after him descended from the Alps, but they came, like Lewis
+the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, at the behest of a faction, which found
+them useful tools for a time, then flung them away in scorn; or like
+Charles the Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions of a
+French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh ends the history of
+the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a
+prophecy. A sketch of its argument will convey a notion of the
+feelings with which the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the
+spirit in which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: Dante's feelings and theories.]
+
+Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, of the factions
+within every city against each other, seeing municipal freedom, the
+only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic
+tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still the
+tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but
+to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless
+Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic: he is
+alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician:
+the poet of the Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed
+energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a
+glowing metaphor.
+
+[Sidenote: The 'De Monarchia.']
+
+Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful form of
+government. Men's objects are best attained during universal peace:
+this is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the
+Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to
+God. There must, in every system of forces, be a 'primum mobile;' to
+be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is
+gathered, by which all is controlled[314]. Justice is best secured by
+a supreme arbiter of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since
+his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and
+happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist for one's own
+sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us;
+other forms of government are perverted[315], and exist for the
+benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that
+very end appointed[316].
+
+Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history. Since the world
+began there has been but one period of perfect peace, and but one of
+perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord's birth,
+under the sceptre of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and
+the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against
+their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince[317]. The universal
+dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved
+to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt
+Rome shewn through her whole history[318]. Her virtues deserved
+honour: Virgil is quoted to prove those of Æneas, who by descent and
+marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia through Assaracus
+and Creusa; of Africa by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of
+Atlas) and Dido; of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was
+approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous
+deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after
+Cannæ. Justice is also the advantage of the state: that advantage was
+the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes
+of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and
+therefore justly, as Cicero attests[319]; so that their sway was not
+so much 'imperium' as 'patrocinium orbis terrarum.' Nature herself,
+the fountain of all right, had, by their geographical position and by
+the gift of a genius so vigorous, marked them out for universal
+dominion:--
+
+ 'Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,
+ Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
+ Orabunt causas melius, cœlique meatus
+ Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
+ Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
+ Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
+ Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
+
+Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and death under
+Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires
+that the procurator should have been a lawful judge[320], which he was
+not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.
+
+The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and
+the passages of Scripture (tradition being rejected), to which the
+advocates of the Papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The
+argument from the sun and moon[321] does not hold, since both lights
+existed before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless,
+he needed no controlling powers. Else _accidentia_ would have preceded
+_propria_ in creation. The moon, too, does not receive her being nor
+all her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more
+effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided
+in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult
+text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and Judah, Samuel and
+Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi[322]; the two swords,
+the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine's
+donation was illegal: no single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the
+everlasting foundations of their respective thrones: the one had no
+right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third
+gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: '_usurpatio iuris non facit
+ius_.' It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one
+individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in
+kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom
+the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter's see, and
+was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Cæsar. The temporal power
+of the Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine
+ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against its own Form and
+Essence, the life of Christ, who said, 'My kingdom is not of this
+world.'
+
+Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incorruptible: he has
+therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the enjoyment of the
+sight of God hereafter; the one to be attained by practice conformed
+to the precepts of philosophy, the other by the theological virtues.
+Hence two guides are needed, the pontiff and the Emperor, the latter
+of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the
+teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must preserve
+universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained
+of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the
+secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiff, since
+earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. 'Let Cæsar, therefore,
+shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honours his
+father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favour, he
+may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule
+of which he has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both
+spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor.' So ends the treatise.
+
+Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions. No suspicion is
+breathed against Constantine's donation; no proof is adduced, for no
+doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate
+continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian.
+Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected
+of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[279] See esp. Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_,
+and the passages by him quoted.
+
+[280] The archbishop of Mentz addresses Conrad II on his election
+thus: 'Deus quum a te multa requirat tum hoc potissimum desiderat ut
+facias iudicium et iustitiam et pacem patriæ quæ respicit ad te, ut
+sis defensor ecclesiarum et clericorum, tutor viduarum et
+orphanorum.'--Wippo, Vita Chuonradi, c. 3, _ap._ Pertz. So Pope Urban
+IV writes to Richard: 'Ut consternatis Imperii Romani inimicis, in
+pacis pulchritudine sedeat populus Christianus et requie opulenta
+quiescat.' Compare also the 'Edictum de crimine læsæ maiestatis'
+issued by Henry VII in Italy: 'Ad reprimenda multorum facinora qui
+ruptis totius debitæ fidelitatis habenis adversus Romanum imperium, in
+cuius tranquillitate totius orbis regularitas requiescit, hostili
+animo armati conentur nedum humana, verum etiam divina præcepta,
+quibus iubetur quod omnis anima Romanorum principi sit subiecta,
+scelestissimis facinoribus et rebellionibus demoliri,' &c.--Pertz, _M.
+G. H._, legg. ii. p. 544.
+
+See also a curious passage in the Life of St. Adalbert, describing the
+beginning of the reign at Rome of the Emperor Otto III, and his cousin
+and nominee Pope Gregory V: 'Lætantur cum primatibus minores
+civitatis: cum afflicto paupere exultant agmina viduarum, quia novus
+imperator dat iura populis; dat iura novus papa.'
+
+[281] 'Imperator est monarcha omnium regum et principum terrenorum ...
+nec insurgat superbia Gallicorum quæ dicat quod non recognoscit
+superiorem, mentiuntur, quia de iure sunt et esse debent sub rege
+Romanorum et Imperatore.'--Speech of Boniface VIII. It is curious to
+compare with this the words addressed nearly five centuries earlier by
+Pope John VIII to Lewis, king of Bavaria: 'Si sumpseritis Romanum
+imperium, omnia regna vobis subiecta existent.'
+
+[282] So Alfonso, king of Naples, writes to Frederick III: 'Nos reges
+omnes debemus reverentiam Imperatori, tanquam summo regi, qui est
+Caput et Dux regum.'--Quoted by Pfeffinger, _Vitriarius illustratus_,
+i. 379. And Francis I (of France), speaking of a proposed combined
+expedition against the Turks, says, 'Cæsari nihilominus principem ea
+in expeditione locum non gravarer ex officio cedere.'--For a long time
+no European sovereign save the Emperor ventured to use the title of
+'Majesty.' The imperial chancery conceded it in 1633 to the kings of
+England and Sweden; in 1641 to the king of France.--Zedler, _Universal
+Lexicon_, _s. v._ Majestät.
+
+[283] For with the progress of society and the growth of commerce the
+old feudal customs were through the greater part of Western Europe,
+and especially in Germany, either giving way to or being remodelled
+and supplemented by the civil law.
+
+[284] 'Imperator est animata lex in terris.'--Quoted by Von Raumer, v.
+81.
+
+[285] Thus we are told of the Emperor Charles the Bald, when he
+confirmed the election of Boso, king of Burgundy and Provence, 'Dedit
+Bosoni Provinciam (_sc._ Carolus Calvus), et corona in vertice capitis
+imposita, eum regem appellari iussit, ut more priscorum imperatorum
+regibus videretur dominari.'--_Regin. Chron._ Frederick II made his
+son Enzio (that famous Enzio whose romantic history every one who has
+seen Bologna will remember) king of Sardinia, and also erected the
+duchy of Austria into a kingdom, although for some reason the title
+seems never to have been used; and Lewis IV gave to Humbert of
+Dauphiné the title of King of Vienne, A.D. 1336.
+
+[286] It is probably for this reason that the _Ordo Romanus_ directs
+the Emperor and Empress to be crowned (in St. Peter's) at the altar of
+St. Maurice, the patron saint of knighthood.
+
+[287] See especially Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad Auream Bullam_;
+and Augustinus Stenchus, _De Imperio Romano_; quoted by Marquard
+Freher. It was keenly debated, while Charles V and Francis I (of
+France) were rival candidates, whether any one but a German was
+eligible. By birth Charles was either a Spaniard or a Fleming; but
+this difficulty his partisans avoided by holding that he had been,
+according to the civil law, _in potestate_ of Maximilian his
+grandfather. However, to say nothing of the Guidos and Berengars of
+earlier days, the examples of Richard and Alfonso are conclusive as to
+the eligibility of others than Germans. Edward III of England was, as
+has been said, actually elected; Henry VIII was a candidate. And
+attempts were frequently made to elect the kings of France.
+
+[288] The mediæval practice seems to have been that which still
+prevails in the Roman Catholic Church--to presume the doctrinal
+orthodoxy and external conformity of every citizen, whether lay or
+clerical, until the contrary be proved. Of course when heresy was rife
+it went hard with suspected men, unless they could either clear
+themselves or submit to recant. But no one was required to pledge
+himself beforehand, as a qualification for any office, to certain
+doctrines. And thus, important as an Emperor's orthodoxy was, he does
+not appear to have been subjected to any test, although the Pope
+pretended to the right of catechizing him in the faith and rejecting
+him if unsound. In the _Ordo Romanus_ we find a long series of
+questions which the Pontiff was to administer, but it does not appear,
+and is in the highest degree unlikely, that such a programme was ever
+carried out.
+
+The charge of heresy was one of the weapons used with most effect
+against Frederick II.
+
+[289] Honorius II in 1229 forbade it to be studied or taught in the
+University of Paris. Innocent IV published some years later a still
+more sweeping prohibition.
+
+[290] See Von Savigny, _History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol.
+iii. pp. 81, 341-347.
+
+[291] Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a potentate incomparably
+stronger than the Emperor Frederick III from whom he sought the regal
+title.
+
+[292] Cf. Sismondi, _Républiques Italiennes_, iv. chap. xxvii.
+
+[293] See Dante, _Paradiso_, canto vi.
+
+[294]
+
+ 'Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piange
+ Vedova, sola, e di e notte chiama:
+ "Cesare mio, perchè non m' accompagne?"'
+ _Purgatorio_, canto vi.
+
+[295] _Purgatorio_, canto vii.
+
+[296] _Inferno_, canto xxxiv.
+
+[297] Not that the doctors of the civil law were necessarily political
+partisans of the Emperors. Savigny says that there were on the
+contrary more Guelfs than Ghibelines among the jurists of
+Bologna.--_Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol. iii. p. 80.
+
+[298] Cf. Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, vol. ii. (of Otto and
+Adelheid). The _Ordo Romanus_ talks of a 'Camera Iuliæ' in the Lateran
+palace, reserved for the Empress.
+
+[299] See notes to _Chron. Casin._ in Muratori, _S. R. I._ iv. 515.
+
+[300] Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des Reichs.
+
+[301] _Novellæ Constitutiones_.
+
+[302] Marquard Freher. The question whether the seven electors vote as
+_singuli_ or as a _collegium_, is solved by shewing that they have
+stepped into the place of the senate and people of Rome, whose duty it
+was to choose the Emperor, though (it is naïvely added) the soldiers
+sometimes usurped it.--Peter de Andlo, _De Imperio Romano_.
+
+[303] Thus Charles, in a capitulary added to a revised edition of the
+Lombard law issued in A.D. 801, says, 'Anno consulatus nostri primo.'
+So Otto III calls himself 'Consul Senatus populique Romani.'
+
+[304] Francis II, the last Emperor, was one hundred and twentieth from
+Augustus. Some chroniclers call Otto the Great Otto II, counting in
+Salvius Otho, the successor of Galba.
+
+[305] See p. 45 and note to p. 143.
+
+[306] Nürnberg herself was not of Roman foundation. But this makes the
+imitation all the more curious. The fashion even passed from the
+cities to rural communities like some of the Swiss cantons. Thus we
+find 'Senatus populusque Uronensis.'
+
+[307] See Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. p. 379.
+
+[308] Æneas Sylvius, _De Ortu et Authoritate Imperii Romani_.
+
+[309] Thus some civilians held Constantine's Donation null; but the
+canonists, we are told, were clear as to its legality.
+
+[310] 'Et idem dico de istis aliis regibus et principibus, qui negant
+se esse subditos regi Romanorum, ut rex Franciæ, Angliæ, et similes.
+Si enim fatentur ipsum esse Dominum universalem, licet ab illo
+universali domino se subtrahant ex privilegio vel ex præscriptione vel
+consimili, non ergo desunt esse cives Romani, per ea quæ dicta sunt.
+Et per hoc omnes gentes quæ obediunt S. matri ecclesiæ sunt de populo
+Romano. Et forte si quis diceret dominum Imperatorem non esse dominum
+et monarcham totius orbis, esset hæreticus, quia diceret contra
+determinationem ecclesiæ et textum S. evangelii, dum dicit, "Exivit
+edictum a Cæsare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis." Ita et
+recognovit Christus Imperatorem ut dominum.'--Bartolus, _Commentary on
+the Pandects_, xlviii. i. 24; _De Captivis et postliminio reversis_.
+
+[311] Peter de Andlo, _multis locis_ (see esp. cap. viii.), and other
+writings of the time. Cf. Dante's letter to Henry VII: 'Romanorum
+potestas nec metis Italiæ nec tricornis Siciliæ margine coarctatur.
+Nam etsi vim passa in angustum gubernacula sua contraxit undique,
+tamen de inviolabili iure fluctus Amphitritis attingens vix ab inutili
+unda Oceani se circumcingi dignatur. Scriptum est enim
+
+ "Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Cæsar,
+ Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris."'
+
+So Fr. Zoannetus, in the sixteenth century, declares it to be a mortal
+sin to resist the Empire, as the power ordained of God.
+
+[312] Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II), _De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_. Cf. Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad
+Auream Bullam_.
+
+[313] It has hitherto been the common opinion that the _De Monarchia_
+was written in the view of Henry's expedition. But latterly weighty
+reasons have been advanced for believing that its date must be placed
+some years later.
+
+[314] Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the
+Areopagite.
+
+[315] Quoting Aristotle's _Politics_.
+
+[316] 'Non enim cives propter consules nec gens propter regem, sed e
+converso consules propter cives, rex propter gentem.'
+
+[317] 'Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur
+Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi,' having quoted 'Quare
+fremuerunt gentes.'
+
+[318] Especially in the opportune death of Alexander the Great.
+
+[319] Cic., _De Off._, ii. 'Ita ut illud patrocinium orbis terrarum
+potius quam imperium poterat nominari.'
+
+[320] 'Si Pilati imperium non de iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non
+fuit adeo punitum.'
+
+[321] There is a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV (figured in J. M.
+Heineccius, _De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum
+sigillis_), on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of
+the Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot explain it, but there seems to
+be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord
+of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the
+accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favoured candidate of
+Pope Innocent III.
+
+The analogy between the lights of heaven and the princes of earth is
+one which mediæval writers are very fond of. It seems to have
+originated with Gregory VII.
+
+[322] Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by
+distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which his Vicar can
+rightfully demand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+
+'It is related,' says Sozomen in the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical
+History, 'that when Alaric was hastening against Rome, a holy monk of
+Italy admonished him to spare the city, and not to make himself the
+cause of such fearful ills. But Alaric answered, "It is not of my own
+will that I do this; there is One who forces me on, and will not let
+me rest, bidding me spoil Rome[323]."'
+
+Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohemian Woitech, famous in
+after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook his bishopric of Prague to
+journey into Italy, and settled himself in the Roman monastery of
+Sant' Alessio. After some few years passed there in religious
+solitude, he was summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and
+laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen. Soon, however,
+the old longing came over him: he resought his cell upon the brow of
+the Aventine, and there, wandering among the ancient shrines, and
+taking on himself the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily
+for a space. At length the reproaches of his metropolitan, the
+archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of Pope Gregory the
+Fifth, drove him back over the Alps, and he set off in the train of
+Otto the Third, lamenting, says his biographer, that he should no more
+enjoy his beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the
+Apostles, golden Rome. A few months later he died a martyr among the
+pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic[324].
+
+Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after the time of
+Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his friend John Colonna:--
+
+'Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which there has
+never been any like nor ever shall be; which even an enemy called a
+city of kings; of whose people it hath been written, "Great is the
+valour of the Roman people, great and terrible their name;" concerning
+whose unexampled glory and incomparable empire, which was, and is, and
+is to be, divine prophets have sung; where are the tombs of the
+apostles and martyrs and the bodies of so many thousands of the saints
+of Christ[325]?'
+
+It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the warrior, the monk,
+and the scholar towards the mystical city which was to mediæval Europe
+more than Delphi had been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the
+Jerusalem of Christianity, the city which had once ruled the earth,
+and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits[326]. For there was
+then, as there is now, something in Rome to attract men of every
+class. The devout pilgrim came to pray at the shrine of the Prince of
+the Apostles, too happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the
+forests of Saxony or by the bleak Atlantic shore the bone of some holy
+martyr; the lover of learning and poetry dreamed of Virgil and Cicero
+among the shattered columns of the Forum; the Germanic kings, in spite
+of pestilence, treachery and seditions, came with their hosts to seek
+in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of temporal dominion.
+Nor has the spell yet wholly lost its power. To half the Christian
+nations Rome is the metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of
+art. In her streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world, may
+every form of human speech be heard: she is more glorious in her decay
+and desolation than the stateliest seats of modern power.
+
+But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome herself?
+
+The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome, when he has
+looked out upon the Campagna from the summit of St. Peter's, paced the
+chilly corridors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of
+the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and
+republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the
+twelve hundred years that lie between Constantine and Pope Julius the
+Second. 'Where,' he asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of
+Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so
+many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence came the
+commands at which kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the
+brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne
+and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of
+Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of Venice?'
+
+To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has
+scarcely a building to commemorate those times, for to her they were
+times of turmoil and misery, times in which the shame of the present
+was embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless a
+minute scrutiny may still discover, hidden in dark corners or
+disguised under an unbecoming modern dress, much that carries us back
+to the mediæval town, and helps us to realize its social and political
+condition. Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the
+Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments which the
+visitor may still examine for himself, may not be without its use, and
+is at any rate no unfitting pendant to an account of the institution
+which drew from the city its name and its magnificent pretensions.
+Moreover, as will appear more fully in the sequel, the history of the
+Roman people is an instructive illustration of the influence of those
+ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as well in their weakness
+as in their strength[327].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the rapid decay of the city.]
+
+It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from the more
+destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, that the material and
+social ruin of Rome must be dated, but rather from the repeated sieges
+which she sustained in the war of Belisarius with the Ostrogoths. This
+struggle however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have proved
+so fatal had the previous condition of the city been sound and
+healthy. Her wealth and population in the middle of the fifth century
+were probably little inferior to what they had been in the most
+prosperous days of the imperial government. But this wealth was
+entirely gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate
+aristocracy. The crowd that filled her streets was composed partly of
+poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from
+political rights; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves,
+gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than
+their masters. There was no middle class, and no system of municipal
+institutions, for although the senate and consuls with many of the
+lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for centuries enjoyed
+no effective power, and were nowise fitted to lead and rule the
+people. Hence it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent
+inroads of the Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the
+framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced. In a state
+rotten to the core there was no vital force left for reconstruction.
+The old forms of political activity had been too long dead to be
+recalled to life: the people wanted the moral force to produce new
+ones, and all the authority that could be said to exist in the midst
+of anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new religious
+society.
+
+[Sidenote: Peculiarities in the position of Rome.]
+
+So far Rome's condition was like that of the other great towns of
+Italy and Gaul. But in two points her case differed from theirs, and
+to these the difference of her after fortunes may be traced. Her
+bishop had no temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check
+his ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away at
+Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal election or
+punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition. Her population
+received an all but imperceptible infusion of that Teutonic blood and
+those Teutonic customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of
+northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere the old
+institutions had perished of decay: in Rome alone there was nothing
+except the ecclesiastical system out of which new ones could arise.
+Her condition was therefore the most pitiable in which a community can
+find itself, one of struggle without purpose or progress. The citizens
+were divided into three orders: the military class, including what was
+left of the ancient aristocracy; the clergy, a host of priests, monks
+and nuns, attached to the countless churches and convents; and the
+people or _plebs_, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble
+without trade, without industry, without any municipal organization to
+bind them together. Of these two latter classes the Pope was the
+natural leader, the first was divided into factions headed by some
+three or four of the great families, whose quarrels kept the town in
+incessant bloodshed. The internal history of Rome from the sixth to
+the twelfth century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest of
+these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as a whole with
+the slowly growing power of the Church.
+
+[Sidenote: Her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries.]
+
+The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East,
+followed as it was by the reception of the Franks as patricians and
+emperors, is an event of the highest importance in the history of
+Italy and of the popedom. In the domestic constitution of Rome it made
+little change. With the instinct of a profound genius, Charles the
+Great saw that Rome, though it might be ostensibly the capital, could
+not be the real centre of his dominions. He continued to reside in
+Germany, and did not even build a palace at Rome. For a time the awe
+of his power, the presence of his _missus_ or lieutenant, and the
+occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II to the city,
+repressed her internal disorders. But after the death of the prince
+last named, and still more after the dissolution of the Carolingian
+Empire itself, Rome relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism
+to which, even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism
+which had inherited all the vices of civilization without any of its
+virtues. The papal office in particular seems to have lost its
+religious character, as it had certainly lost all claim to moral
+purity. For more than a century the chief priest of Christendom was no
+more than a tool of some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal
+means had raised him to the throne; violence, sometimes going the
+length of mutilation or murder, deprived him of it. The marvel is, a
+marvel in which papal historians have not unnaturally discovered a
+miracle, that after sinking so low, the Papacy should ever have risen
+again. Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was
+accomplished not by the Romans but by the efforts of the Transalpine
+Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon and Franconian Emperors. Yet
+even the religious reform did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was
+not till the twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in
+politics, which ennobled if it could not heal the sufferings of the
+Roman people.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of a republican feeling: hostility to the Popes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Short-sighted policy of the Emperors.]
+
+Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had revolted against the
+haughty behaviour of the Teutonic emperors. From still earlier times
+they had been jealous of sacerdotal authority, and now watched with
+alarm the rapid extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth
+century gave these feelings a definite direction. It was the time of
+the struggle of the Investitures, in which Hildebrand and his
+disciples had been striving to draw all the things of this world as
+well as of the next into their grasp. It was the era of the revived
+study of Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions of the
+decretalists could be resisted. The Lombard and Tuscan towns had
+become flourishing municipalities, independent of their bishops, and
+at open war with their Emperor. While all these things were stirring
+the minds of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform,
+denouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps, like some
+others of the so-called schismatics of his time, denying the need of a
+sacerdotal order, but at any rate urging its restriction to purely
+spiritual duties. On the minds of the Romans such teaching fell like
+the spark upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope[328],
+drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate and the
+equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their own coins, and
+professed to treat the German Emperors as their nominees and
+dependants. To have successfully imitated the republican constitution
+of the cities of northern Italy would have been much, but with this
+they were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way that there had
+been a Roman republic before there was a Roman empire, they fed their
+vanity with visions of a renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw
+in fancy their senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills
+and ruling over the kings of the earth. Stepping, as it were, into the
+arena where Pope and Emperor were contending for the headship of the
+world, they rejected the one as a priest, and declaring the other to
+be only their creature, they claimed as theirs the true and lawful
+inheritance of the world-dominion which their ancestors had won.
+Antiquity was in one sense on their side, and to us now it seems less
+strange that the Roman people should aspire to rule the earth than
+that a German barbarian should rule it in their name. But practically
+the scheme was absurd, and could not maintain itself against any
+serious opposition. As a modern historian aptly expresses it, 'they
+were setting up ruins:' they might as well have raised the broken
+columns that strewed their Forum and hoped to rear out of them a
+strong and stately temple. The reverence which the men of the Middle
+Ages felt for Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place,
+nowise to the people. As for power, they had none: so far from holding
+Italy in subjection, they could scarcely maintain themselves against
+the hostility of Tusculum. But it would have been well worth the while
+of the Teutonic Emperors to have made the Romans their allies, and
+bridled by their help the temporal ambition of the Popes. The offer
+was actually made to them, first to Conrad the Third, who seems to
+have taken no notice of it; and afterwards, as has been already
+stated, to Frederick the First, who repelled in the most contumelious
+fashion the envoys of the senate. Hating and fearing the Pope, he
+always respected him: towards the Romans he felt all the contempt of a
+feudal king for burghers, and of a German warrior for Italians. At the
+demand of Pope Hadrian, whose foresight thought no heresy so dangerous
+as one which threatened the authority of the clergy, Arnold of Brescia
+was seized by the imperial prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast
+into the Tiber, lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But
+the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes of his
+followers. The republican constitution continued to exist, and rose
+from time to time, during the weakness or the absence of the Popes,
+into a brief and fitful activity[329]. Once awakened, the idea,
+seductive at once to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of
+the Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries after
+Arnold's time it found a more brilliant if less disinterested exponent
+in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.
+
+[Sidenote: Character and career of the tribune Rienzi.]
+
+The career of this singular personage is misunderstood by those who
+suppose him to have been possessed of profound political insight, a
+republican on modern principles. He was indeed, despite his
+overweening conceit, and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a
+patriot and a man of genius, in temperament a poet, filled with
+soaring ideas. But those ideas, although dressed out in gaudier
+colours by his lively fancy, were after all only the old ones,
+memories of the long-faded glories of the heathen republic, and a
+series of scornful contrasts levelled at her present oppressors, both
+of them shewing no vista of future peace except through the revival of
+those ancient names to which there were no things to correspond. It
+was by declaiming on old texts and displaying old monuments that the
+tribune enlisted the support of the Roman populace, not by any appeal
+to democratic principles; and the whole of his acts and plans, though
+they astonished men by their boldness, do not seem to have been
+regarded as novel or impracticable[330]. In the breasts of men like
+Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they hated her people, the
+enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic echo: others scorned and
+denounced him as an upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends
+and enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as natural his
+feelings and designs, which were altogether those of his age. Being,
+however, a mere matter of imagination, not of reason, having no
+anchor, so to speak, in realities, no true relation to the world as it
+then stood, these schemes of republican revival were as transient and
+unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour. As the
+authority of the Popes became consolidated, and free municipalities
+disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy, the dream of a renovated Rome
+at length withered up and fell and died. Its last struggle was made in
+the conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas the
+Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question of the
+supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the struggle for independence.]
+
+It is never without a certain regret that we watch the disappearance
+of a belief, however illusive, around which the love and reverence for
+mankind once clung. But this illusion need be the less regretted that
+it had only the feeblest influence for good on the state of mediæval
+Rome. During the three centuries that lie between Arnold of Brescia
+and Porcaro, the disorders of Rome were hardly less violent than they
+had been in the Dark Ages, and to all appearance worse than those of
+any other European city. There was a want not only of fixed authority,
+but of those elements of social stability which the other cities of
+Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lombardy and Tuscany the
+bulk of the population were artizans, hard working orderly people;
+while above them stood a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in
+commerce, and having in their system of trade-guilds an organization
+both firm and flexible. It was by foreign trade that Genoa, Venice,
+and Pisa became great, as it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing
+industry that enabled Milan and Florence to overcome and incorporate
+the territorial aristocracies which surrounded them.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal condition of the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: The people.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The bishop.]
+
+Rome possessed neither source of riches. She was ill-placed for trade;
+having no market she produced no goods to be disposed of, and the
+unhealthiness which long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made
+its fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands now, lonely
+and isolated, a desert at her very gates. As there was no industry, so
+there was nothing that deserved to be called a citizen class. The
+people were a mere rabble, prompt to follow the demagogue who
+flattered their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of
+danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national pride, but
+they lived too near sacred things to feel much reverence for them:
+they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to
+their shrines: they were probably the only community in Europe who
+sent no recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and all
+the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court formed a large
+part of the population; while of the rest many were supported in a
+state of half mendicancy by the countless religious foundations,
+themselves enriched by the gifts or the plunder of Latin Christendom.
+The noble families were numerous, powerful, ferocious; they were
+surrounded by bands of unruly retainers, and waged a constant war
+against each other from their castles in the adjoining country or in
+the streets of the city itself. Had things been left to take their
+natural course, one of these families, the Colonna, for instance, or
+the Orsini, would probably have ended by overcoming its rivals, and
+have established, as was the case in the republics of Romagna and
+Tuscany, a 'signoria' or local tyranny, like those which had once
+prevailed in the cities of Greece. But the presence of the sacerdotal
+power, as it had hindered the growth of feudalism, so also it stood in
+the way of such a development as this, and in so far aggravated the
+confusion of the city. Although the Pope was not as yet recognized as
+legitimate sovereign, he was not only the most considerable person in
+Rome, but the only one whose authority had anything of an official
+character. But the reign of each pontiff was short; he had no military
+force, he was frequently absent from his see. He was, moreover, very
+often a member of one of the great families, and, as such, no better
+than a faction leader at home, while venerated by the rest of Europe
+as the universal priest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Visits of the Emperors to Rome.]
+
+It remains only to speak of the person who should have been to Rome
+what the national king was to the cities of France, or England, or
+Germany, that is to say, of the Emperor. As has been said already, his
+power was a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext to
+the Colonna and other Ghibeline chieftains for their opposition to the
+papal party. Even his abstract rights were matter of controversy. The
+Popes, whose predecessors had been content to govern as the
+lieutenants of Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a
+spiritual city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction, and
+that she was therefore no part of the Roman Empire, though at the same
+time its capital. Not only, it was urged, had Constantine yielded up
+Rome to Sylvester and his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his
+coronation formally renounced his sovereignty by doing homage to the
+pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The Popes felt then as
+they feel now, that their dignity and influence would suffer if they
+should even appear to admit in their place of residence the
+jurisdiction of a civil potentate, and although they could not secure
+their own authority, they were at least able to exclude any other.
+Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an Emperor came to them
+to be crowned, that they raised up difficulties in his path, and
+endeavoured to be rid of him as soon as possible. And here something
+must be said of the programme, as one may call it, of these imperial
+visits to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the Germans
+left behind them, remembering always that after the time of Frederick
+the Second it was rather the exception than the rule for an Emperor to
+be crowned in his capital at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Their approach.]
+
+The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he most commonly
+does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in by the railway before he is
+aware, is huddled into a vehicle at the terminus, and set down at his
+hotel in the middle of the modern town before he has seen anything at
+all. If he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road that
+passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he has indeed from
+the slopes of the Ciminian range a splendid prospect of the sea-like
+Campagna, girdled in by glittering hills, but of the city he sees no
+sign, save the pinnacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls.
+Far otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers of every
+grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new-made archbishop who came in
+the pomp of a lengthy train to receive from the Pope the pallium of
+his office, approached from the north or north-east side; following a
+track along the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until
+they halted on the brow of Monte Mario[331]--the Mount of Joy--and saw
+the city of their solemnities lie spread before them, from the great
+pile of the Lateran far away upon the Cœlian hill, to the basilica of
+St. Peter's at their feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy
+cupolas, but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick
+towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin, then larger
+far than now; while over all rose those two monuments of the best of
+the heathen Emperors, monuments that still look down, serenely
+changeless, on the armies of new nations and the festivals of a new
+religion--the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
+
+[Sidenote: Their entrance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hostility of Pope and people to the Germans.]
+
+From Monte Mario the Teutonic host descended, when they had paid their
+orisons, into the Neronian field, the piece of flat land that lies
+outside the gate of St. Angelo. Here it was the custom for the elders
+of the Romans to meet the elected Emperor, present their charters for
+confirmation, and receive his oath to preserve their good
+customs[332]. Then a procession was formed: the priests and monks, who
+had come out with hymns to greet the Emperor, led the way; the knights
+and soldiers of Rome, such as they were, came next; then the monarch,
+followed by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into the
+city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope, surrounded by his
+clergy, stood on the great staircase of the basilica to welcome and
+bless the Roman king. On the next day came the coronation, with
+ceremonies too elaborate for description[333], ceremonies which, we
+may well believe, were seldom duly completed. Far more usual were
+other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no mention, unless they
+are to be counted among the 'good customs of the Romans;' the clang of
+war bells, the battle cry of German and Italian combatants. The Pope,
+when he could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, required him to
+leave the bulk of his host without the walls, and if foiled in this,
+sought his safety in raising up plots and seditions against his too
+powerful friend. The Roman people, on the other hand, violent as they
+often were against the Pope, felt nevertheless a sort of national
+pride in him. Very different were their feelings towards the Teutonic
+chieftain, who came from a far land to receive in their city, yet
+without thanking them for it, the ensign of a power which the prowess
+of their forefathers had won. Despoiled of their ancient right to
+choose the universal bishop, they clung all the more desperately to
+the belief that it was they who chose the universal prince; and were
+mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously scouted
+their claims, and paraded before their eyes his rude barbarian
+cavalry. Thus it was that a Roman sedition was the all but invariable
+accompaniment of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto
+the Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the Third, in
+spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was met by the same
+faithlessness and hatred, and departed at last in despair at the
+failure of his attempts at conciliation[334]. A century afterwards
+Henry the Fifth's coronation produced violent tumults, which ended in
+his seizing the Pope and cardinals in St. Peter's, and keeping them
+prisoners till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this, Pope
+Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of Frederick
+Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the rapidity of their
+movements disconcerted his plans and anticipated the resistance of the
+Roman populace. Having established himself in the Leonine city[335],
+Frederick barricaded the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned
+in St. Peter's. But the rite was scarcely finished when the Romans,
+who had assembled in arms on the Capitol, dashed over the bridge, fell
+upon the Germans, and were with difficulty repulsed by the personal
+efforts of Frederick. Into the city he did not venture to pursue them,
+nor was he at any period of his reign able to make himself master of
+the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled, his successors
+at last accepted their position, and were content to take the crown on
+the Pope's conditions and depart without further question.
+
+[Sidenote: Memorials of the Germanic Emperors in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Third.]
+
+Coming so seldom and remaining for so short a time, it is not
+wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors should, in the seven centuries
+from Charles the Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of
+their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer
+and less considerable even than those which tradition attributes to
+those whom it calls Servius Tullius and the elder Tarquin. Those
+monuments which do exist are just sufficient to make the absence of
+all others more conspicuous. The most important dates from the time of
+Otto the Third, the only Emperor who attempted to make Rome his
+permanent residence. Of the palace, probably nothing more than a
+tower, which he built on the Aventine, no trace has been discovered;
+but the church, founded by him to receive the ashes of his friend the
+martyred St. Adalbert, may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber.
+Having received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of
+Bartholomew the Apostle[336], it became dedicated to that saint, and
+is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola, whose quaintly
+picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now grey with extreme age, looks
+out from among the orange trees of a convent garden over the
+swift-eddying yellow waters of the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Second.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Frederick the Second.]
+
+Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, died at Rome, and lies buried
+in the crypt of St. Peter's, the only Emperor who has found a
+resting-place among the graves of the Popes[337]. His tomb is not far
+from that of his nephew Pope Gregory the Fifth: it is a plain one of
+roughly chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus
+in which he lay for a time now serves as the great font of St.
+Peter's, and may be seen in the baptismal chapel, on the left of the
+entrance of the church, not far from the tombs of the Stuarts. Last of
+all must be mentioned a curious relic of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second, the prince whom of all others one would least expect to see
+honoured in the city of his foes. It is an inscription in the palace
+of the Conservators upon the Capitoline hill, built into the wall of
+the great staircase, and relates the victory of Frederick's army over
+the Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio[338] of the rebel city,
+which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans. These are all or
+nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords that Rome has preserved
+till now. Pictures indeed there are in abundance, from the mosaic of
+the Scala Santa at the Lateran[339] and the curious frescoes in the
+church of Santi Quattro Incoronati[340], down to the paintings of the
+Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the Vatican, where the
+triumphs of the Popedom over all its foes are set forth with matchless
+art and equally matchless unveracity. But these are mostly long
+subsequent to the events they describe, and these all the world knows.
+
+Associations of the highest interest would have attached to the
+churches in which the imperial coronation was performed--a ceremony
+which, whether we regard the dignity of the performers or the
+splendour of the adjuncts, was probably the most imposing that modern
+Europe has known. But old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of the
+fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman coronation, that of
+Frederick the Third, while the basilica of St. John Lateran, in which
+Lothar the Saxon and Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so
+wofully modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as the
+same building[341].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the want of mediæval monuments in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barbarism of the aristocracy.]
+
+Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Rome during the
+middle ages, it becomes easier to understand the architectural
+barrenness which at first excites the visitor's surprise. Rome had no
+temporal sovereign, and there were therefore only two classes who
+could build at all, the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former
+had seldom the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled
+them to construct palaces graceful as the Venetian or massively grand
+as the Florentine and Genoese. Moreover, the constant practice of
+domestic war made defence the first object of a house, beauty and
+convenience the second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted
+ancient edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials
+those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still frown over the
+narrow streets in the older parts of Rome. We may judge of their
+number from the statement that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one
+hundred and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one exception,
+that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these towers are the only
+domestic buildings in the city older than the middle of the fifteenth
+century. The vast palaces to which strangers now flock for the sake of
+the picture galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in
+the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, some even later. Among the
+earliest is that Palazzo Cenci[342], whose gloomy low-browed arch so
+powerfully affected the imagination of Shelley.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy.]
+
+It was no want of wealth that hampered the architectural efforts of
+the clergy, for vast revenues flowed in upon them from every corner of
+Christendom. A good deal was actually spent upon the erection or
+repairs of churches and convents, although with a less liberal hand
+than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of Lincoln or
+Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always needed money for their
+projects of ambition, and in times when disorder or corruption were at
+their height the work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that
+after the time of the Carolingians scarcely a church was erected until
+the beginning of the twelfth century, when the reforms of Hildebrand
+had breathed new zeal into the priesthood. The Babylonish captivity of
+Avignon, as it was called, with the great schism of the West that
+followed upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission,
+which lasted nearly a century and a half.
+
+[Sidenote: Tendency of the Roman builders to adhere to the ancient
+manner.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of Gothic in Rome.]
+
+At every time, however, even when his work went on most briskly, the
+labours of the Roman architect took the direction of restoring and
+readorning old churches rather than of erecting new ones. While the
+Transalpine countries, except in a few favoured spots, such as
+Provence and part of the Rhineland, remained during several ages with
+few and rudely built stone churches, Rome possessed, as the
+inheritance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion of houses
+of worship, some of them still unsurpassed in splendour, and far more
+than adequate to the needs of her diminished population. In repairing
+these from time to time, their original form and style of work were
+usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing new ones,
+the abundance of models beautiful in themselves and hallowed as well
+by antiquity as by religious feeling, enthralled the invention of the
+workman, bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and forbade
+him to deviate at pleasure from the old established manner. Thus it
+befel that while his brethren throughout the rest of Europe were
+passing by successive steps from the old Roman and Byzantine styles to
+Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect
+scarcely departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive
+basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little of Gothic
+work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque like that of Pisa. What
+there is appears chiefly in the pointed window, more rarely in the
+arch, seldom or never in spire or tower or column. Only one of the
+existing churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the
+Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built by foreign
+monks. In some of the other churches, and especially in the cloisters
+of the convents, instances may be observed of the same style: in
+others slight traces, by accident or design almost obliterated[343].
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction and alteration of the old buildings:]
+
+[Sidenote: By invaders.]
+
+[Sidenote: By the Romans of the Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: By modern restorers of churches.]
+
+The mention of obliteration suggests a third cause of the comparative
+want of mediæval buildings in the city--the constant depredations and
+changes of which she has been the subject. Ever since the time of
+Constantine Rome has been a city of destruction, and Christians have
+vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the fatal work.
+Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard[344], the ally of Hildebrand
+against Henry the Fourth, was far more ruinous than the attacks of the
+Goths or Vandals: and itself yields in atrocity to the sack of Rome in
+A.D. 1526 by the soldiers of the Catholic king and most pious Emperor
+Charles the Fifth[345]. Since the days of the first barbarian
+invasions the Romans have gone on building with materials taken from
+the ancient temples, theatres, law-courts, baths and villas, stripping
+them of their gorgeous casings of marble, pulling down their walls for
+the sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels on
+the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus it has been with
+the memorials of paganism: a somewhat different cause has contributed
+to the disappearance of the mediæval churches. What pillage, or
+fanaticism, or the wanton lust of destruction did in the one case, the
+ostentatious zeal of modern times has done in the other. The era of
+the final establishment of the Popes as temporal sovereigns of the
+city, is also that of the supremacy of the Renaissance style in
+architecture. After the time of Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff
+against whom, it will be remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom
+made its last struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built
+in Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique produced a
+corresponding dislike to everything mediæval, a dislike conspicuous in
+men like Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur
+of modern Rome may be said to begin. Not long after their time the
+great religious movement of the sixteenth century, while triumphing in
+the north of Europe, was in the south met and overcome by a
+counter-reformation in the bosom of the old church herself, and the
+construction or restoration of ecclesiastical buildings became again
+the passion of the devout[346]. No employment, whether it be called an
+amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to the court and
+aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent; wealthy, and fond of
+displaying their wealth; full of good taste, and anxious, especially
+when advancing years had chased away youth's pleasures, to be full of
+good works also. Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great
+families vied with one another in building new churches and restoring
+or enlarging those they found till little of the old was left; raising
+over them huge cupolas, substituting massive pilasters for the
+single-shafted columns, adorning the interior with a profusion of rare
+marbles, of carving and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the
+best masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None but a
+bigoted mediævalist can refuse to acknowledge the warmth of tone, the
+repose, the stateliness, of the churches of modern Rome; but even in
+the midst of admiration the sated eye turns away from the wealth of
+ponderous ornament, and we long for the clear pure colour, the simple
+yet grand proportions that give a charm to the buildings of an earlier
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: Existing relics of the Dark and Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Mosaics.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Bell-towers.]
+
+Few of the ancient churches have escaped untouched; many have been
+altogether rebuilt. There are also some, however, in which the
+modernizers of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries have spared two
+features of the old structure, its round apse or tribune and its
+bell-tower. The apse has its interior usually covered with mosaics,
+exceedingly interesting, both from the ideas they express and as the
+only monuments of pictorial art that remain to us from the Dark Ages.
+To speak of them, however, as they deserve to be spoken of, would
+involve a digression for which there is no space here. The campanile
+or bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of no great
+height, usually standing detached from the church, and having in its
+topmost, sometimes also in its other upper stories, several arcade
+windows, divided by tiny marble pillars[347]. What with these
+campaniles, then far more numerous than they are now, and with the
+huge brick fortresses of the nobles, towers must have held in the
+landscape of the mediæval city very much the part which domes do now.
+Although less imposing, they were probably more picturesque, the
+rather as in the earlier part of the Middle Ages the houses and
+churches, which are now mostly crowded together on the flat of the
+Campus Martius, were scattered over the heights and slopes of the
+Cœlian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills[348]. Modern Rome lies chiefly
+on the opposite or north-eastern side of the Capitol, and the change
+from the old to the new site of the city, which can hardly be said to
+have distinctly begun before the destruction of the south-western part
+of the town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until the sixteenth
+century. In A.D. 1536 the Capitol was rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in
+anticipation of the entry of Charles the Fifth, upon foundations that
+had been laid by the first Tarquin; and the palace of the Senator, the
+greatest municipal edifice of Rome, which had hitherto looked towards
+the Forum and the Coliseum, was made to front in the direction of St.
+Peter's and the modern town.
+
+[Sidenote: Changed aspect of the city of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Analogy between her architecture and her civil and
+ecclesiastical constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of an antique character in both.]
+
+The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of Rienzi than she is to
+the city of Trajan; just as the Roman church of the nineteenth century
+differs profoundly, however she may strive to disguise it, from the
+church of Hildebrand. But among all their changes, both church and
+city have kept themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion of
+foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have faithfully preserved
+at all times something of an old Roman character. Latin Christianity
+inherited from the imperial system of old that firmly knit yet
+flexible organization, which was one of the grand secrets of its
+power: the great men whom mediæval Rome gave to or trained up for the
+Papacy were, like their progenitors, administrators, legislators,
+statesmen; seldom enthusiasts themselves, but perfectly understanding
+how to use and guide the enthusiasm of others--of the French and
+German crusaders, of men like Francis of Assisi and Dominic and
+Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism in Germany or
+England there was always, as there is still, a very perceptible
+difference. So also, if the analogy be not too fanciful, was it with
+Rome the city. Socially she seemed always drifting towards feudalism;
+yet she never fell into its grasp. Materially, her architecture was at
+one time considerably influenced by Gothic forms, yet Gothic never
+became, as in the rest of Europe, the dominant style. It approached
+Rome late, and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice its
+presence, and seem to pass almost without a break from the old
+Romanesque[349] to the Græco-Roman of the Renaissance. Thus regarded,
+the history of the city, both in her political state and in her
+buildings, is seen to be intimately connected with that of the Holy
+Empire itself. The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed
+the idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient world;
+Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully preserved their
+traditions: the names of her magistracies, the character of her
+buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and gave it a strange and shadowy
+life in the midst of new races and new forms of faith.
+
+[Sidenote: Relation of the City and the Empire.]
+
+In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the unity of
+mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman dominion by which the
+old nationalities had been destroyed, with the addition of the
+Christian element which had created a new nationality that was also
+universal. By the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects
+heathen Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively, even the
+local dwelling-place of the civilized races of man. By the theology of
+the time Christian Rome had been made the mystical type of humanity,
+the one flock of the faithful scattered over the whole earth, the holy
+city whither, as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should
+come up to worship. She was not merely an image of the mighty world,
+she was the mighty world itself in miniature. The pastor of her local
+church is also the universal bishop; the seven suffragans who
+consecrate him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium, and
+the like, towns lying close round Rome: the cardinal priests and
+deacons who join these seven in electing him derive their title to be
+princes of the Church, the supreme spiritual council of the Christian
+world, from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts of
+the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is ruler of mankind; he
+is chosen by the acclamations of her people[350]: he can be lawfully
+crowned nowhere but in one of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem of
+old, the mother of us all.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Florentine republic, A.D. 1530.]
+
+There is yet another way in which the record of the domestic contests
+of Rome throws light upon the history of the Empire. From the eleventh
+century to the fifteenth her citizens ceased not to demand in the name
+of the old republic their freedom from the tyranny of the nobles and
+the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large. These
+efforts--selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet men like Petrarch
+did not disdain to them their sympathy--issued from the same theories
+and were directed to the same ends as those which inspired Otto the
+Third and Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness to the
+same incapacity to form any ideal for the future except a revival of
+the past; the same belief that one universal state is both desirable
+and possible, but possible only through the means of Rome: the same
+refusal to admit that a right which has once existed can ever be
+extinguished. In the days of the Renaissance these notions were
+passing silently away: the succeeding century brought with it
+misfortunes that broke the spirit of the nation. Italy was the
+battle-field of Europe: her wealth became the prey of a rapacious
+soldiery: the last and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an
+unfeeling Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a selfish
+Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence had been lost, the people
+turned away from politics to live for art and literature, and found,
+before many generations had passed, how little such exclusive devotion
+could compensate for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit,
+and the activity of civic life. A century after the golden days of
+Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become frigid and
+affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the modern Italians towards Rome.]
+
+At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters were
+troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless contentment under the
+paternal sway of the Popes, received new ideas from the advent of the
+revolutionary armies of France, and have found the Papal system, since
+its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic
+despotism, far less tolerable than it was of yore. Our own days have
+seen the name of Rome become again a rallying-cry for the patriots of
+Italy, but in a sense most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of
+Arnold and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to universal
+domination: their descendants, more wisely, yet not more from
+patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek only to be the
+capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed for a monarchy of the
+world, a reign of peace and Christian brotherhood: those who invoke
+his name as the earliest prophet of their creed strive after an idea
+that never crossed his mind--the national union of Italy[351].
+
+Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do not understand
+this passion for Rome as a capital, and think it their duty to lecture
+the Italians on their flightiness. The latter do not themselves
+pretend that the shores of the Tiber are a suitable site for a
+capital: Rome is lonely, unhealthy, and in a bad strategical position;
+she has no particular facilities for trade: her people, with some fine
+qualities, are less orderly and industrious than the Tuscans or the
+Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy cries with one voice for Rome,
+firmly believing that national life can never thrill with a strong and
+steady pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation's
+heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome--Rome pagan as well as
+Christian--that they once played so grand a part in the drama of
+European history, and that they have now been able to attain that
+fervid sentiment of unity which has brought them at last together
+under one government. Whether they are right, whether if right they
+are likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it
+deserves to be noted that this enthusiasm for a famous name--for it is
+nothing more--is substantially the same feeling as that which created
+and hallowed the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the
+last few years on both sides of the Atlantic have proved that men are
+not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly governed by
+calculations of material profit and loss. Sentiments, fancies,
+theories, have not lost their power; the spirit of poetry has not
+wholly passed away from politics. And strange as seems to us the
+worship paid to the name of mediæval Rome by those who saw the sins
+and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an intenser
+feeling than is the imaginative reverence wherewith the Italians of
+to-day look on the city whence, as from a fountain, all the streams of
+their national life have sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they
+are all again to mingle.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[323] Hist. Eccl. l. ix. c. 6: τὸν δὲ φάναι, ὡς οὐχ ἑκὼν τάδε
+ἐπιχειρεῖ, ἀλλά τις συνεχῶς ἐνοχλῶν αὐτὸν βιάζεται, καὶ ἐπιτάττει τὴν
+Ῥώμην πορθεῖν.
+
+[324] See the two Lives of St. Adalbert in Pertz, _M. G. H._, iv.,
+evidently compiled soon after his death.
+
+[325] Another letter of Petrarch's to John Colonna, written
+immediately after his arrival in the city, deserves to be quoted, it
+is so like what a stranger would now write off after his first day in
+Rome:--'In præsens nihil est quod inchoare ausim, miraculo rerum
+tantarum et stuporis mole obrutus ... præsentia vero, mirum dictu,
+nihil imminuit sed auxit omnia: vere maior fuit Roma maioresque sunt
+reliquiæ quam rebar: iam non orbem ab hac urbe domitum sed tam sero
+domitum miror. Vale.'
+
+[326] The idea of the continuance of the sway of Rome under a new
+character is one which mediæval writers delight to illustrate. In
+Appendix, Note D, there is quoted as a specimen a poem upon Rome, by
+Hildebert (bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours),
+written in the beginning of the twelfth century.
+
+[327] In writing this chapter I have derived much assistance from the
+admirable work of Ferdinand Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im
+Mittelalter_. Unfortunately no English translation of it exists; but I
+am informed by the author that one is likely ere long to appear.
+
+[328] Republican forms of some sort had existed before Arnold's
+arrival, but we hear the name of no other leader mentioned; and
+doubtless it was by him chiefly that the spirit of hostility to the
+clerical power was infused into the minds of the Romans.
+
+[329] The series of papal coins is interrupted (with one or two slight
+exceptions) from A.D. 984 (not long after the time of Alberic) to A.D.
+1304. In their place we meet with various coins struck by the
+municipal authorities, some of which bear on the obverse the head of
+the Apostle Peter, with the legend Roman. Pricipe: on the reverse the
+head of the Apostle Paul, legend, Senat. Popul. Q. R. Gregorovius, _ut
+supra_.
+
+[330] Rienzi called himself Augustus as well as tribune; 'tribuno
+Augusto de Roma.' (He pretended, or his friends pretended for him--it
+was at any rate believed--that he was an illegitimate son of the
+Emperor Henry the Seventh.) He cited, on his appointment, the Pope and
+cardinals to appear before the people of Rome and give an account of
+their conduct; and after them the Emperor. 'Ancora citao lo Bavaro
+(Lewis the Fourth). Puoi citao li elettori de lo imperio in Alemagna,
+e disse "Voglio vedere che rascione haco nella elettione," che
+trovasse scritto che passato alcuno tempo la elettione recadeva a li
+Romani.'--_Vita di Cola di Rienzi_, c. xxvi (written by a
+contemporary). I give the spelling as it stands in Muratori's edition.
+
+[331] The Germans called this hill, which is the highest in or near
+Rome, conspicuous from a beautiful group of stone-pines upon its brow,
+Mons Gaudii; the origin of the Italian name, Monte Mario, is not
+known, unless it be, as some think, a corruption of Mons Malus.
+
+It was on this hill that Otto the Third hanged Crescentius and his
+followers.
+
+[332] I quote this from the _Ordo Romanus_ as it stands in Muratori's
+third Dissertation in the _Antiquitates Italiæ medii ævi_.
+
+[333] Great stress was laid on one part of the procedure,--the holding
+by the Emperor of the Pope's stirrup for him to mount, and the leading
+of his palfrey for some distance. Frederick Barbarossa's omission of
+this mark of respect when Pope Hadrian IV met him on his way to Rome,
+had nearly caused a breach between the two potentates, Hadrian
+absolutely refusing the kiss of peace until Frederick should have gone
+through the form, which he was at last forced to do in a somewhat
+ignominious way.
+
+[334] A remarkable speech of expostulation made by Otto III to the
+Roman people (after one of their revolts) from the tower of his house
+on the Aventine has been preserved to us. It begins thus: 'Vosne estis
+mei Romani? Propter vos quidem meam patriam, propinquos quoque
+reliqui; amore vestro Saxones et cunctos Theotiscos, sanguinem meum,
+proieci; vos in remotas partes imperii nostri adduxi, quo patres
+vestri cum orbem ditione premerent numquam pedem posuerunt; scilicet
+ut nomen vestrum et gloriam ad fines usque dilatarem; vos filios
+adoptavi: vos cunctis prætuli.'--_Vita S. Bernwardi_; in Pertz, _M. G.
+H._, t. iv.
+
+(It is from this form 'Theotiscus' that the Italian 'Tedesco' seems to
+have been derived.)
+
+[335] The Leonine city, so called from Pope Leo IV, lay between the
+Vatican and St. Peter's and the river.
+
+[336] It would seem that Otto was deceived, and that in reality they
+are the bones of St. Paulinus of Nola.
+
+[337] The only other of the Teutonic Emperors buried in Italy were, so
+far as I know, Lewis the Second (whose tomb, with an inscription
+commemorating his exploits, is built into the wall of the north aisle
+of the famous church of S. Ambrose at Milan), Henry the Sixth and
+Frederick the Second, who lie at Palermo, Conrad IV, buried at Foggia,
+and Henry the Seventh, whose sarcophagus may be seen in the Campo
+Santo of Pisa, a city always conspicuous for her zeal on the imperial
+side.
+
+Six Emperors lie buried at Speyer, three or four at Prague, two at
+Aachen, two at Bamberg, one at Innsbruck, one at Magdeburg, one at
+Quedlinburg, two at Munich, and most of the later ones at Vienna.
+
+[338] See note 198, p. 178.
+
+[339] See p. 117.
+
+[340] These highly curious frescoes are in the chapel of St. Sylvester
+attached to the very ancient church of Quattro Santi on the Cœlian
+hill, and are supposed to have been executed in the time of Pope
+Innocent III. They represent scenes in the life of the Saint, more
+particularly the making of the famous donation to him by Constantine,
+who submissively holds the bridle of his palfrey.
+
+[341] The last imperial coronation, that of Charles the Fifth, took
+place in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna, Pope Clement VII
+being unwilling to receive Charles in Rome. It is a grand church, but
+the choir, where the ceremony took place, seems to have been
+'restored,' that is to say modernized, since Charles' time.
+
+[342] The name of Cenci is a very old one at Rome: it is supposed to
+be an abbreviation of Crescentius. We hear in the eleventh century of
+a certain Cencius, who on one occasion made Gregory VII prisoner.
+
+[343] Thus in the church of San Lorenzo without the walls there are
+several pointed windows, now bricked up; and similar ones may be seen
+in the church of Ara Cœli on the summit of the Capitol. So in the apse
+of St. John Lateran there are three or four windows of Gothic form:
+and in its cloister, as well as in that of St. Paul without the walls,
+a great deal of beautiful Lombard work. The elegant porch of the
+church of Sant' Antonio Abate is Lombard. In the apse of the church of
+San Giovanni e Paolo on the Cœlian hill there is an external arcade
+exactly like those of the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are these the only
+instances.
+
+The ruined chapel attached to the fortress of the Caetani family--the
+family to which Boniface the Eighth belonged, and whose head is now
+the first of the Roman nobility--is a pretty little building, more
+like northern Gothic than anything within the walls of Rome. It stands
+upon the Appian Way, opposite the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, which the
+Caetani used as a stronghold.
+
+[344] A good deal of the mischief done by Robert Guiscard, from which
+the parts of the city lying beyond the Coliseum towards the river and
+St. John Lateran never recovered, is attributed to the Saracenic
+troops in his service. Saracen pirates are said to have once before
+sacked Rome. Genseric was not a heathen, but he was a furious Arian,
+which, as far as respect to the churches of the orthodox went, was
+nearly the same thing. He is supposed to have carried off the
+seven-branched candlestick and other vessels of the Temple, which
+Titus had brought from Jerusalem to Rome.
+
+[345] We are told that one cause of the ferocity of the German part of
+the army of Charles was their anger at the ruinous condition of the
+imperial palace.
+
+[346] Under the influence, partly of this anti-pagan spirit, partly of
+his own restless vanity, partly of a passion to be doing something,
+Pope Sixtus the Fifth did a great deal of mischief in the way of
+destroying or spoiling the monuments of antiquity.
+
+[347] These campaniles are generally supposed to date from the ninth
+and tenth centuries. I am informed, however, by Mr. J. H. Parker, of
+Oxford, whose antiquarian skill is well known, that he is led to
+believe by an examination of their mouldings that few or none, unless
+it be that of San Prassede, are older than the twelfth century.
+
+This of course applies only to the existing buildings. The type of
+tower may be, and indeed no doubt is, older.
+
+Somewhat similar towers may be observed in many parts of the Italian
+Alps, especially in the wonderful mountain land north of Venice, where
+such towers are of all dates from the eleventh or twelfth down to the
+nineteenth century, the ancient type having in these remote valleys
+been adhered to because the builder had no other models before him. In
+the valley of Cimolais I have seen such a campanile in course of
+erection, precisely similar to others in the neighbouring villages
+some eight centuries old.
+
+The very curious round towers of Ravenna, some four or five of which
+are still standing, seem to have originally had similar windows,
+though these have been all, or nearly all, stopped up. The Roman
+towers are all square.
+
+[348] The Palatine hill seems to have been then, as it is for the most
+part now, a waste of stupendous ruins. In the great imperial palace
+upon its northern and eastern sides was the residence of an official
+of the Eastern court in the beginning of the eighth century. In the
+time of Charles, some seventy years later, this palace was no longer
+habitable.
+
+[349] Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica
+form.
+
+[350] It was thus that most of the earlier Teutonic Emperors, and
+notably Charles and Otto, professed to have obtained the crown;
+although practically it was partly a matter of conquest and partly of
+private arrangement with the Pope. In later times, the seven Germanic
+princes were recognized as the legally qualified electoral body, but
+their appearance on the stage was a result of the confusion of the
+German kingdom with the Roman Empire, and in strictness they had
+nothing to do with the Roman crown at all. The right to bestow it
+could only--on principle--belong to some Roman authority, and those
+who felt the difficulty were driven to suppose a formal cession of
+their privilege by the Roman people to the seven electors. See p. 227
+_supra_: and cf. Matthew Villani (iv. 77), 'Il popolo Romano, non da
+se, ma la chiesa per lui, concedette la elezione degli Imperadori a
+sette principi della Magna.'
+
+[351] That which Dante, Arnold of Brescia, and the rest really have in
+common with the modern Italian 'party of movement' is their hostility
+to the temporal power of the Popes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Wenzel, 1378-1400.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rupert, 1400-1410.]
+
+[Sidenote: Sigismund, 1410-1438.]
+
+[Sidenote: Council of Constance.]
+
+In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its lowest point. It
+had shot forth a fitful gleam under Sigismund, who in convoking and
+presiding over the council of Constance had revived one of the highest
+functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the first great
+œcumenical councils, and especially of the council of Nicæa, had
+established the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more
+properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from
+the whole Christian world[352]. The tenet commended itself to the
+reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the chancellor of
+Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith,
+to correct the abuses which had grown up in discipline and government,
+and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general
+councils, to whom there was now attributed an immunity from error
+superior even to that which resided in the successor of Peter. And
+although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian
+people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious
+consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing of that
+fuller freedom which was soon to follow. The existence of the Holy
+Empire and the existence of general councils were, as has been already
+remarked, necessary parts of one and the same theory[353], and it was
+therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion on which the
+whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single
+commonwealth[354] was also the last on which that commonwealth's
+lawful temporal head appeared in the exercise of his international
+functions. Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything
+more than a German monarch.
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness of Germany as compared with the other states of
+Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert II. 1438-1440. Frederick III. 1440-1493.]
+
+It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain a monarch at all.
+When in A.D. 1493 the calamitous reign of Frederick the Third ended,
+it was impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the condition
+into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire.
+The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had been protected
+rather by the weakness of their enemies than by their own strength.
+From France there had been little to fear while the English menaced
+her on one side and the Burgundian dukes on the other: from England
+still less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lancaster. But
+now throughout Western Europe the power of the feudal oligarchies was
+broken; and its chief countries were being, by the establishment of
+fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the
+larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and aggressive
+military monarchies. Thus Spain became a great state by the union of
+Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in
+England there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus France,
+enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successors,
+began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe
+which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her
+people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition of her
+rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding century. Meantime
+there had appeared in the far East a foe still more terrible. The
+capture of Constantinople gave Turks a firm hold on Europe, and
+inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what
+Abderrahman and his Saracens had so nearly effected in the eighth--of
+establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed
+the Western as well as the Eastern Cæsars. The navies of the Ottoman
+Sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well-appointed armies pierced
+Hungary and threatened Vienna.
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen without: the
+frontiers of Germany herself were exposed by the loss of those
+adjoining territories which had formerly owned allegiance to the
+Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the
+interregnum, and had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the
+Teutonic knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck deeper
+roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the privileges she had
+obtained from Charles the Fourth, and the subsequent acquisition of
+Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless
+Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent
+inroads on her eastern border.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy.]
+
+Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Henry the Seventh.
+Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of
+Florence; Frederick the Third received the Lombard crown, but it no
+longer conveyed the slightest power. In the beginning of the
+fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country
+from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty years later
+Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any
+purpose south of the Alps[355]. Nevertheless the phantom of imperial
+authority lingers on for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline
+tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic
+neighbours: even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet
+venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its
+exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of
+Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to have any sense or meaning; the Pope
+was no longer the protector nor the Emperor the assailant of municipal
+freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared. But
+the old war-cries of the Church and the Empire were still repeated as
+they had been three centuries before, and the rival principles that
+had once enlisted the noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side
+had now sunk into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere
+unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long before in Greece was
+seen to be true here; the spirit of faction outlived the cause of
+faction, and became itself the new and prolific source of a useless,
+endless strife.
+
+[Sidenote: Burgundy.]
+
+After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in Rome, and almost
+the only trace of that connection between Germany and Italy to
+maintain which so much had been risked and lost, was to be found in
+the obstinate belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims,
+though often purely dynastic and personal, could be enforced by an
+appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors. Because
+Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy with a Transalpine host they fancied
+themselves entitled to demand duchies for themselves and their
+relatives, and to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but
+their own was involved.
+
+The kingdom of Arles, if it had never added much strength to the
+Empire, had been useful as an outwork against France. And thus its
+loss--Dauphiné passing over, partly in A.D. 1350, finally in 1457,
+Provence in 1486--proved a serious calamity, for it brought the French
+nearer to Switzerland, and opened to them a tempting passage into
+Italy. The Emperors did not for a time expressly renounce their feudal
+suzerainty over these lands, but if it was hard to enforce a feudal
+claim over a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how much harder to
+control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in Europe.
+
+On the north-west frontier, the fall in A.D. 1477 of the great
+principality which the dukes of French Burgundy were building up, was
+seen with pleasure by the Rhinelanders whom Charles the last duke had
+incessantly alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave
+France and Germany directly confronting each other, and it was soon
+seen that the balance of strength lay on the side of the less numerous
+but better organized and more active nation.
+
+[Sidenote: Switzerland.]
+
+Switzerland, too, could no longer be considered a part of the Germanic
+realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons, in A.D. 1313, was against the
+oppressions practised in the name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather
+than against the legitimate authority of Albert the Emperor. But
+although several subsequent sovereigns, and among them conspicuously
+Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured the Swiss liberties, yet
+while the antipathy between the Confederates and the territorial
+nobility gave a peculiar direction to their policy, the accession of
+new cantons to their body, and their brilliant success against Charles
+the Bold in A.D. 1477, made them proud of a separate national
+existence, and not unwilling to cast themselves loose from the
+stranded hulk of the Empire. Maximilian tried to reconquer them, but
+after a furious struggle, in which the valleys of Western Tyrol were
+repeatedly laid waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to
+give way, and in A.D. 1500 recognized them by treaty as practically
+independent. Not, however, till the peace of Westphalia, in A.D. 1648,
+was the Swiss Confederation in the eye of public law a sovereign
+state, and even after that date some of the towns continued to stamp
+their coins with the double eagle of the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal weakness.]
+
+If those losses of territory were serious, far more serious was the
+plight in which Germany herself lay. The country had now become not so
+much an empire as an aggregate of very many small states, governed by
+sovereigns who would neither remain at peace with each other nor
+combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an
+Emperor who had little lawful authority, and could not exert what he
+had[356].
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the theory of the Empire as an international
+power upon the Germanic constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Emperor in Germany, compared with that of
+his predecessors in Europe.]
+
+There was another cause, besides those palpable and obvious ones
+already enumerated, to which this state of things must be ascribed.
+That cause is to be found in the theory which regarded the Empire as
+an international power, supreme among Christian states. From the day
+when Otto the Great was crowned at Rome, the characters of German king
+and Roman Emperor were united in one person, and it has been shewn how
+that union tended more and more to become a fusion. If the two
+offices, in their nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by
+different persons, the Roman Empire would most probably have soon
+disappeared, while the German kingdom grew into a robust national
+monarchy. Their connection gave a longer life to the one and a feebler
+life to the other, while at the same time it transformed both. So long
+as Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed beneath their
+sceptre it was possible for the Emperors, though we need not suppose
+they troubled themselves with speculations on the matter, to
+distinguish their imperial authority, as international and more than
+half religious, from their royal, which was, or was meant to be,
+exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed bounds of
+Germany these international functions had ceased to have any meaning,
+when the rulers of England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hungary, Poland,
+Italy, Burgundy, had in succession repudiated their control, and the
+Lord of the World found himself obeyed by none but his own people, he
+would not sink from being lord of the world into a simple Teutonic
+king, but continued to play in the more contracted theatre the part
+which had belonged to him in the wider. Thus did Germany instead of
+Europe become the sphere of his international jurisdiction; and her
+electors and princes, originally mere vassals, no greater than a Count
+of Champagne in France, or an Earl of Chester in England, stepped into
+the place which it had been meant that the several monarchs of
+Christendom should fill. If the power of their head had been what it
+was in the eleventh century, the additional dignity so assigned to
+them might have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and
+justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation to
+the sovereign had a great though at the time scarcely perceptible
+influence in changing the German Empire, as we may now begin to call
+it, from a state into a sort of confederation or body of states,
+united indeed for some of the purposes of government, but separate and
+independent for others more important. Thus, and that in its
+ecclesiastical as well as its civil organization, Germany became a
+miniature of Christendom[357]. The Pope, though he retained the wider
+sway which his rival had lost, was in an especial manner the head of
+the German clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity: the three Rhenish
+prelates sat in the supreme college beside the four temporal electors:
+the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots was as essential a part of
+the constitution and as influential in the deliberations of the Diet
+as were the dukes, counts, and margraves of the Empire. The
+world-embracing Christian state was to have been governed by a
+hierarchy of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority
+should exactly correspond with those of the temporal magistracy, who
+were to be like them endowed with worldly wealth and power, and to
+enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate although distinct. This system, which
+it was in vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh
+and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which prevailed
+in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth century onwards. And
+conformably to the analogy which may be traced between the position of
+the archdukes of Austria in Germany and the place which the four Saxon
+and the two first Franconian Emperors had held in Europe, both being
+recognized as leaders and presidents in all that concerned the common
+interest, in the one case of the Christian, in the other of the whole
+German people, while neither of them had any power of direct
+government in the territories of local kings and lords; so the plan by
+which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to strengthen their
+national monarchy was in substance that which the Popes had followed
+when they conferred the crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The
+pontiffs then, like the electors now, finding that they could not give
+with the title the power which its functions demanded, were driven to
+the expedient of selecting for the office persons whose private
+resources enabled them to sustain it with dignity. The first Frankish
+and the first Saxon Emperors were chosen because they were already the
+mightiest potentates in Europe; Maximilian because he was the
+strongest of the German princes. The parallel may be carried one step
+further. Just as under Otto and his successors the Roman Empire was
+Teutonized, so now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the
+sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the Teutonic Empire tends more
+and more to lose itself in an Austrian monarchy.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of the Hapsburg influence in Germany.]
+
+Of that monarchy and of the power of the house of Hapsburg, Maximilian
+was, even more than Rudolph his ancestor, the founder[358]. Uniting in
+his person those wide domains through Germany which had been dispersed
+among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming by his
+marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories of Charles the
+Bold, he was a prince greater than any who had sat on the Teutonic
+throne since the death of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke
+of Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Carinthia, feudal
+superior of lands, in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, that he was
+great, not as Roman Emperor. For just as from him the Austrian
+monarchy begins, so with him the Holy Empire in its old meaning ends.
+That strange system of doctrines, half religious half political, which
+had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete, and the
+theory which had wrought such changes on Germany and Europe, passed
+ere long so completely from remembrance that we can now do no more
+than call up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have
+been.
+
+[Sidenote: Character of the epoch of Maximilian.]
+
+[Sidenote: The discovery of America.]
+
+For it is not only in imperial history that the accession of
+Maximilian is a landmark. That time--a time of change and movement in
+every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and
+books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were
+replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing
+the face of war--was especially marked by one event, to which the
+history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery
+of America. The cloud which from the beginning of things had hung
+thick and dark round the borders of civilization was suddenly lifted:
+the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm
+plain of earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer,
+vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an
+insignificant globe, which, so far from being the centre of the
+universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of
+its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto prevailed
+regarding the life of man and his relations to nature and the
+supernatural, were rudely shaken by the knowledge that was soon gained
+of tribes in every stage of culture and living under every variety of
+condition, who had developed apart from all the influences of the
+Eastern hemisphere. In A.D. 1453 the capture of Constantinople and
+extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal blow to the
+prestige of tradition and an immemorial name: in A.D. 1492 there was
+disclosed a world whither the eagles of all-conquering Rome had never
+winged their flight. No one could now have repeated the arguments of
+the _De Monarchia_.
+
+[Sidenote: The Renaissance.]
+
+Another movement, too, widely different, but even more momentous, was
+beginning to spread from Italy beyond the Alps. Since the barbarian
+tribes settled in the Roman provinces, no change had come to pass in
+Europe at all comparable to that which followed the diffusion of the
+new learning in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Enchanted by
+the beauty of the ancient models of art and poetry, more particularly
+those of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion and contempt all
+that had been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those of
+Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the writers who lived
+after Tacitus was debased: the architecture of the Middle Ages was
+barbarous: the scholastic philosophy was an odious and unmeaning
+jargon: Aristotle himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had been
+for three centuries more than a prophet or an apostle, was hurled from
+his throne, because his name was associated with the dismal quarrels
+of Scotists and Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical
+or sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular, for it is more or less
+all of these--the spirit which was the exact antithesis of mediæval
+mysticism, had swept in and carried men away, with all the force of a
+pent-up torrent. People were content to gratify their tastes and their
+senses, caring little for worship, and still less for doctrine: their
+hopes and ideas were no longer such as had made their forefathers
+crusaders or ascetics: their imagination was possessed by associations
+far different from those which had inspired Dante: they did not revolt
+against the church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had
+enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and graceful and intelligible. From
+all that was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of feudalism or
+monkery, they turned away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so, in
+the midst of the Renaissance, so, under the consciousness that former
+things were passing from the earth, and a new order opening, so, with
+the other beliefs and memories of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights
+of the Roman Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here and
+there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy its universal
+supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless hearers on its duty to
+protect the Holy See; but to Germany it had become an ancient device
+for holding together the discordant members of her body, to its
+possessors an engine for extending the power of the house of Hapsburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Empire henceforth German.]
+
+Henceforth, therefore, we must look upon the Holy Roman Empire as lost
+in the German; and after a few faint attempts to resuscitate
+old-fashioned claims, nothing remains to indicate its origin save a
+sounding title and a precedence among the states of Europe. It was not
+that the Renaissance exerted any direct political influence either
+against the Empire or for it; men were too busy upon statues and coins
+and manuscripts to care what befel Popes or Emperors. It acted rather
+by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines upon which the
+Empire had rested, and thus leaving it, since it had previously no
+support but that of opinion, without any support at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Attempts to reform the Germanic Constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the projects of reform.]
+
+During Maximilian's eventful reign several efforts were made to
+construct a new constitution, but it is to German, rather than to
+imperial history that they properly belong. Here, indeed, the history
+of the Holy Empire might close, did not the title unchanged beckon us
+on, and were it not that the events of these later centuries may in
+their causes be traced back to times when the name of Roman was not
+wholly a mockery. It may be enough to remark that while the
+preservation of peace and the better administration of justice were in
+some measure attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber,
+established in A.D. 1495, schemes still more important failed through
+the bad constitution of the Diet, and the unconquerable jealousy of
+the Emperor and the Estates. Maximilian refused to have his
+prerogative, indefinite though weak, restricted by the appointment of
+an administrative council[359], and when the Estates extorted it from
+him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet, which consisted
+of three colleges, electors, princes, and cities, the lower nobility
+and knights of the Empire were unrepresented, and resented every
+decree that affected their position, refusing to pay taxes in voting
+which they had no voice. The interests of the princes and the cities
+were often irreconcilable, while the strength of the crown would not
+have been sufficient to make its adhesion to the latter of any effect.
+The policy of conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried,
+succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content to gain their
+point by raising factions among the territorial magnates, and so to
+stave off the unwelcome demand for reform. After many earnest attempts
+to establish a representative system, such as might resist the
+tendency to local independence and cure the evils of separate
+administration, the hope so often baffled died away. Forces were too
+nearly balanced: the sovereign could not extend his personal control,
+nor could the reforming party limit him by a strong council of
+government, for such a measure would have equally trenched on the
+independence of the states. So ended the first great effort for German
+unity, interesting from its bearing on the events and aspirations of
+our own day; interesting, too, as giving the most convincing proof of
+the decline of the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not
+propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian the
+authority his predecessors had once enjoyed, but by setting up a body
+which would resemble far more nearly the senate of a federal state
+than the administrative council which surrounds a monarch. The
+existing system developed itself further: relieved from external
+pressure, the princes became more despotic in their own territories:
+distinct codes were framed, and new systems of administration
+introduced: the insurgent peasantry were crushed down with more
+confident harshness. Already had leagues of princes and cities been
+formed[360] (that of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in
+Germany, and often the monarch's firmest support); now alliances begin
+to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a direction of
+formidable import from the rivalry which the pretensions on Naples and
+Milan of Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled
+between their house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have
+friends in the heart of the enemy's country, such as French intrigue
+found in the Elector Palatine and the count of Würtemberg.
+
+[Sidenote: Germanic nationality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Change of Titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Imperator Electus.']
+
+Nevertheless this was also the era of the first conscious feeling of
+German nationality, as distinct from imperial. Driven in on all hands,
+with Italy and the Slavic lands and Burgundy hopelessly lost,
+Teutschland learnt to separate itself from Welschland[361]. The Empire
+became the representative of a narrower but more practicable national
+union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this date there appear
+several notable changes of style. 'Nationis Teutonicæ' (Teutscher
+Nation) is added to the simple 'sacrum imperium Romanum.' The title of
+'Imperator electus,' which Maximilian obtains leave from Pope Julius
+the Second to assume, when the Venetians prevent him from reaching his
+capital, marks the severance of Germany from Rome. No subsequent
+Emperor received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the Fifth
+was indeed crowned by the Pope's hands, but the ceremony took place at
+Bologna, and was therefore of at least questionable validity); each
+assumed after his German coronation[362] the title of Emperor
+Elect[363], and employed this in all documents issued in his name. But
+the word 'elect' being omitted when he was addressed by others, partly
+from motives of courtesy, partly because the old rules regarding the
+Roman coronation were forgotten, or remembered only by antiquaries, he
+was never called, even when formality was required, anything but
+Emperor. The substantial import of another title now first introduced
+is the same. Before Otto the First, the Teutonic king had called
+himself either 'rex' alone, or 'Francorum orientalium rex,' or
+'Francorum atque Saxonum rex:' after A.D. 962, all lesser dignities
+had been merged in the 'Romanorum Imperator[364].' To this Maximilian
+appended 'Germaniæ rex,' or, adding Frederick the Second's
+bequest[365], 'König in Germanien und Jerusalem.' It has been thought
+that from a mixture of the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor,
+has been formed the phrase 'German Emperor,' or less correctly,
+'Emperor of Germany[366].' But more probably the terms 'German
+Emperor' and 'Emperor of Germany' are nothing but convenient
+corruptions of the technical description of the Germanic
+sovereign[367].
+
+That the Empire was thus sinking into a merely German power cannot be
+doubted. But it was only natural that those who lived at the time
+should not discern the tendency of events. Again and again did the
+restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery of Burgundy and
+Italy,--his last scheme was to adjust the relations of Papacy and
+Empire by becoming Pope himself: nor were successive Diets less
+zealous to check private war, still the scandal of Germany, to set
+right the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial officials
+permanent, and their administration uniform throughout the country.
+But while they talked the heavens darkened, and the flood came and
+destroyed them all.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[352] See Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the History of the Eastern
+Church_, Lecture II.
+
+[353] It is not without interest to observe that the council of Basel
+shewed signs of reciprocating imperial care by claiming those very
+rights over the Empire to which the Popes were accustomed to pretend.
+
+[354] The councils of Basel and Florence were not recognized from
+first to last by all Europe, as was the council of Constance. When the
+assembly of Trent met, the great religious schism had already made a
+general council, in the true sense of the word, impossible.
+
+[355] 'E pero venendo gl'imperadori della Magna col supremo titolo, e
+volendo col senno e colla forza della Magna reggiere gli Italiani, non
+lo fanno e non lo possono fare.'--M. Villani, iv. 77.
+
+Matthew Villani's etymology of the two great faction names of Italy is
+worth quoting, as a fair sample of the skill of mediævals in such
+matters:--'La Italia tutta e divisa mistamente in due parti, l'una che
+seguita ne' fatti del mondo la santa chiesa--e questi son dinominati
+Guelfi; cioè, guardatori di fè. E l'altra parte seguitano lo 'mperio o
+fedele o enfedele che sia delle cose del mondo a santa chiesa. E
+chiamansi Ghibellini, quasi guida belli; cioè, guidatori di
+battaglie.'
+
+[356] 'Nam quamvis Imperatorem et regem et dominum vestrum esse
+fateamini, precario tamen ille imperare videtur: nulla ei potentia
+est; tantum ei paretis quantum vultis, vultis autem minimum.'--Æneas
+Sylvius to the princes of Germany, quoted by Hippolytus a Lapide.
+
+[357] See Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_; a book
+which throws more light than any other with which I am acquainted on
+the inner nature of the Empire.
+
+[358] The two immediately preceding Emperors, Albert II (1438-1439)
+and Frederick III, father of Maximilian (1439-1493), had been
+Hapsburgs. It is nevertheless from Maximilian that the ascendancy of
+that family must be dated.
+
+[359] Reichsregiment.
+
+[360] Wenzel had encouraged the leagues of the cities, and incurred
+thereby the hatred of the nobles.
+
+[361] The Germans, like our own ancestors, called foreign, _i. e._
+non-Teutonic nations, Welsh. Yet apparently not all such nations, but
+only those which they in some way associated with the Roman Empire,
+the Cymry of Roman Britain, the Romanized Kelts of Gaul, the Italians,
+the Roumans or Wallachs of Transylvania and the Principalities. It
+does not appear that either the Magyars or any Slavonic people were
+called by any form of the name Welsh.
+
+[362] The German crown was received at Aachen, the ancient Frankish
+capital, where may still be seen, in the gallery of the basilica, the
+marble throne on which the Emperors from the days of Charles to those
+of Ferdinand I were crowned. It was upon this chair that Otto III had
+found the body of Charles seated, when he opened his tomb in A.D.
+1001. After Ferdinand I, the coronation as well as the election took
+place at Frankfort. An account of the ceremony may be found in
+Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_. Aachen, though it remained and
+indeed is still a German town, lay in too remote a corner of the
+country to be a convenient capital, and was moreover in dangerous
+proximity to the West Franks, as stubborn old Germans continue to call
+them. As early as A.D. 1353 we find bishop Leopold of Bamberg
+complaining that the French had arrogated to themselves the honours of
+the Frankish name, and called themselves 'reges Franciæ,' instead of
+'reges Franciæ occidentalis.'--Lupoldus Bebenburgensis, apud
+Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[363] Erwählter Kaiser. See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[364] Romanorum rex (after Henry II) till the coronation at Rome.
+
+[365] But the Emperor was only one of many claimants to this kingdom;
+they multiplied as the prospect of regaining it died away.
+
+[366] The latter does not occur, even in English books, till
+comparatively recent times. English writers of the seventeenth century
+always call him 'The Emperor,' pure and simple, just as they
+invariably say 'the French king.' But the phrase 'Empereur d'Almayne'
+may be found in very early French writers.
+
+[367] See Moser, _Römische Kayser_; Goldast's and other collections of
+imperial edicts and proclamations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of course not as a
+religious movement, but as the cause of political changes, which still
+further rent the Empire, and struck at the root of the theory by which
+it had been created and upheld. Luther completed the work of
+Hildebrand. Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the
+German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic; the very Diet
+of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg proclaimed to an astonished
+church and Emperor that the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had
+framed and presented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central
+council of government. The great religious schism put an end to all
+such hopes, for it became a source of political disunion far more
+serious and permanent than any that had existed before, and it taught
+the two factions into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard
+each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile nations.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Charles V (1519-1558).]
+
+The breach came at the most unfortunate time possible. After an
+election, more memorable than any preceding, an election in which
+Francis the First of France and Henry the Eighth of England had been
+his competitors, a prince had just ascended the imperial throne who
+united dominions vaster than any Europe had seen since the days of his
+great namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders, and other parts of the
+Burgundian lands, as well as large regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed
+Charles: he drew inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the
+Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute and profound
+than that of Maximilian his grandfather, might have well been able,
+despite the stringency of his coronation engagements[368], and the
+watchfulness of the electors[369], to override their usurped
+privileges, and make himself practically as well as officially the
+head of the nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of his
+manner[370] and his Flemish speech never a favourite among the
+Germans, was in point of fact far stronger than Maximilian or any
+other Emperor who had reigned for three centuries. In Italy he
+succeeded, after long struggles with the Pope and the French, in
+rendering himself supreme: England he knew how to lead, by flattering
+Henry and cajoling Wolsey: from no state but France had he serious
+opposition to fear. To this strength his imperial dignity was indeed a
+mere accident: its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of
+Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once achieved, might
+could lose itself in right; and as an earlier Charles had veiled the
+terror of the Frankish sword under the mask of Roman election, so
+might his successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name of
+Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion as wide and more
+enduring.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of Charles towards the religious movement.]
+
+One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had Charles
+espoused the reforming cause. His reverence for the Pope's person is
+sufficiently seen in the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement;
+the traditions of his office might have led him to tread in the steps
+of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even the timid Lewis the
+Fourth and the unstable Sigismund had sometimes ventured; the
+awakening zeal of the German people, exasperated by the exactions of
+the Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and enabled him,
+while moderating the excesses of change, to fix his throne on the deep
+foundations of national love. It may well be doubted--Englishmen at
+least have reason for the doubt--whether the Reformation would not
+have lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled in the
+meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside Charles's personal
+leaning to the old faith, and forgetting that he was king of the most
+bigoted race of Europe, his position as Emperor made him almost
+perforce the Pope's ally. The Empire had been called into being by
+Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic See as its highest
+earthly privilege, had latterly been wont, especially in Hapsburg
+hands, to lean on the papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on
+prescription and the traditions of immemorial reverence, how could it
+abandon the cause which the longest prescription and the most solemn
+authority had combined to consecrate? With the German clergy, despite
+occasional quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the lay
+aristocracy; their heads had been the chief ministers of the crown;
+the advocacies of their abbeys were the last source of imperial
+revenue to disappear. To turn against them now, when furiously
+assailed by heretics; to abrogate claims hallowed by antiquity and a
+hundred laws, would be to pronounce its own sentence, and the fall of
+the eternal city's spiritual dominion must involve the fall of what
+still professed to be her temporal. Charles would have been glad to
+see some abuses corrected; but a broad line of policy was called for,
+and he cast in his lot with the Catholics[371].
+
+[Sidenote: Ultimate failure of the repressive policy of Charles.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand I, 1558-1564.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maximilian II, 1564-1576.]
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction of the Germanic state-system.]
+
+Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed here. The
+reconstruction of the old imperial system, upon the basis of Hapsburg
+power, proved in the end impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed
+actually accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league had been dissolved
+and its leaders captured, the whole country lay prostrate before
+Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg by the Spanish soldiery: he
+forced formularies of doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set
+up and pulled down whom he would throughout Germany, amid the muttered
+discontent of his own partisans. Then, as in the beginning of the year
+1552, he lay at Innsbruck, fondly dreaming that his work was done,
+waiting the spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic
+fathers had again met to settle the world's faith for it, news was
+suddenly brought that North Germany was in arms, and that the revolted
+Maurice of Saxony had seized Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the
+Bavarian Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled
+southwards over the snows of the Brenner, then eastwards, under the
+blood-red cliffs of dolomite that wall in the Pusterthal, far away
+into the valleys of Carinthia: the council of Trent broke up in
+consternation: Europe saw and the Emperor acknowledged that in his
+fancied triumph over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than
+block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When this last effort
+to produce religious uniformity by violence had failed as hopelessly
+as the previous devices of holding discussions of doctrine and calling
+a general council, a sort of armistice was agreed to in 1554, which
+lasted in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years. Four
+years after this disappointment of the hopes and projects which had
+occupied his busy life, Charles, weighed down by cares and with the
+shadow of coming death already upon him, resigned the sovereignty of
+Spain and the Indies, of Flanders and Naples, into the hands of his
+son Philip the Second; while the imperial sceptre passed to his
+brother Ferdinand, who had been some time before chosen King of the
+Romans. Ferdinand was content to leave things much as he found them,
+and the amiable Maximilian II, who succeeded him, though personally
+well inclined to the Protestants, found himself fettered by his
+position and his allies, and could do little or nothing to quench the
+flame of religious and political hatred. Germany remained divided into
+two omnipresent factions, and so further than ever from harmonious
+action, or a tightening of the long-loosened bond of feudal
+allegiance. The states of either creed being gathered into a league,
+there could no longer be a recognized centre of authority for judicial
+or administrative purposes. Least of all could a centre be sought in
+the Emperor, the leader of the papal party, the suspected foe of every
+Protestant. Too closely watched to do anything of his own authority,
+too much committed to one party to be accepted as a mediator by the
+other, he was driven to attain his own objects by falling in with the
+schemes and furthering the selfish ends of his adherents, by becoming
+the accomplice or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes
+addressed themselves to reduce a power of which they had still an
+over-sensitive dread, and found when they exacted from each successive
+sovereign engagements more stringent than his predecessor's, that in
+this, and this alone, their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to
+join them. Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient
+privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little influence on
+the government except that which his intrigues might exercise. Nay, it
+became almost impossible to maintain a government at all. For when the
+Reformers found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they declared that in
+matters of religion a majority ought not to bind a minority. As the
+measures were few which did not admit of being reduced to this
+category, for whatever benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic
+prince injured the Protestants, nothing could be done save by the
+assent of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce anything was
+done; and even the courts of justice were stopped by the disputes that
+attended the appointment of every judge or assessor.
+
+[Sidenote: Alliance of the Protestants with France.]
+
+In the foreign politics of Germany another result followed. Inferior
+in military force and organization, the Protestant princes at first
+provided for their safety by forming leagues among themselves. The
+device was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch himself
+before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous forms of the
+imperial system. Soon they began to look beyond the Vosges, and found
+that France, burning heretics at home, was only too happy to smile on
+free opinions elsewhere. The alliance was easily struck; Henry the
+Second assumed in 1552 the title of 'Protector of the Germanic
+liberties,' and a pretext for interference was never wanting in
+future.
+
+[Sidenote: The Reformation spirit, and its influence upon the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of the Reformation on the doctrines regarding the
+Visible Church.]
+
+These were some of the visible political consequences of the great
+religious schism of the sixteenth century. But beyond and above them
+there was a change far more momentous than any of its immediate
+results. There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented
+in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has been called
+a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races
+against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the
+universal monarchy of the Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of
+long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold
+abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a renewal of the youth of
+the church by a return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these
+indeed to some extent it was; but it was also something more profound,
+and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its
+essence the assertion of the principle of individuality--that is to
+say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto the personal consciousness
+had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obedience had
+been held the first of religious duties; truth had been conceived as a
+something external and positive, which the priesthood who were its
+stewards were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving
+virtue lay not in its being felt and known by him to be truth, but in
+a purely formal and unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which
+mediæval Christianity still cherished were obscured by the limited,
+rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been forced on them in times of
+ignorance and barbarism. That which was in its nature abstract, had
+been able to survive only by taking a concrete expression. The
+universal consciousness became the Visible Church: the Visible Church
+hardened into a government and degenerated into a hierarchy. Holiness
+of heart and life was sought by outward works, by penances and
+pilgrimages, by gifts to the poor and to the clergy, wherein there
+dwelt often little enough of a charitable mind. The presence of divine
+truth among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence on
+earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope; under another, by the
+reception of the present Deity in the sacrifice of the mass; in a
+third, by the doctrine that the priest's power to remit sins and
+administer the sacraments depended upon a transmission of miraculous
+gifts which can hardly be called other than physical. All this system
+of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the church as a
+worldly and therefore obstructive power, have expanded, renewed, and
+purified itself during the four centuries that had elapsed since its
+completion[372], and thus remained in harmony with the growing
+intelligence of mankind, was suddenly rent in pieces by the convulsion
+of the Reformation, and flung away by the more religious and more
+progressive peoples of Europe. That which was external and concrete,
+was in all things to be superseded by that which was inward and
+spiritual. It was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it
+continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless an
+independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force, and was to be
+in all things active rather than passive. Truth was no longer to be
+truth to the soul until it should have been by the soul recognized,
+and in some measure even created; but when so recognized and felt, it
+is able under the form of faith to transcend outward works and to
+transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes the living
+principle within each man's breast, infinite itself, and expressing
+itself infinitely through his thoughts and acts. He who as a spiritual
+being was delivered from the priest, and brought into direct relation
+with the Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, to be enrolled a member
+of a visible congregation of his fellows, that he might live a pure
+and useful life among them. Thus by the Reformation the Visible Church
+as well as the priesthood lost that paramount importance which had
+hitherto belonged to it, and sank from being the depositary of all
+religious tradition, the source and centre of religious life, the
+arbiter of eternal happiness or misery, into a mere association of
+Christian men, for the expression of mutual sympathy and the better
+attainment of certain common ends. Like those other doctrines which
+were now assailed by the Reformation, this mediæval view of the nature
+of the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be said,
+necessarily developed between the third and the twelfth century, and
+must therefore have represented the thoughts and satisfied the wants
+of those times. By the Visible Church the flickering lamp of knowledge
+and literary culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended
+through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the whole
+theological fabric of which it formed a part, it was now hard and
+unfruitful, identified with its own worst abuses, capable apparently
+of no further development, and unable to satisfy minds which in
+growing stronger had grown more conscious of their strength. Before
+the awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and lifeless
+system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked the free activity of
+thought, whose bestowal of worldly power and wealth on spiritual
+pastors drew them away from their proper duties, and which by
+maintaining alongside of the civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival
+government, maintained also that separation of the spiritual element
+in man from the secular, which had been so complete and so pernicious
+during the Middle Ages, which debases life, and severs religion from
+morality.
+
+[Sidenote: Consequent effect upon the Empire.]
+
+The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement: and it is
+the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The
+distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is but another name for
+the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how mediæval theory
+constructed the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman Empire
+was the shadow of the Popedom--designed to rule men's bodies as the
+pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground
+that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One
+government[373]. And, therefore, since it was this very principle of
+Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became a revolt
+against despotism of every kind; it erected the standard of civil as
+well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though
+needed in a different measure, for the worthy development of the
+individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the
+antagonist of popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth,
+far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of
+Germany. But submission, and submission on the ground of indefeasible
+transmitted right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the duty
+of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as
+the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant
+claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Cæsar it had passed
+through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a
+constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights.
+And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the
+province of government and exalt the privileges of the subject was as
+plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of
+private judgment was to the pretensions of the Papacy and the
+priesthood.
+
+[Sidenote: Immediate influence of the Reformation on political and
+religious liberty.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conduct of the Protestant States.]
+
+The remark must not be omitted in passing, how much less than might
+have been expected the religious movement did at first actually effect
+in the way of promoting either political progress or freedom of
+conscience. The habits of centuries were not to be unlearnt in a few
+years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and
+activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time. By a few
+inflammable minds liberty was carried into antinomianism, and produced
+the wildest excesses of life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects
+arose, refusing to conform to the ordinary rules without which human
+society could not subsist. But these commotions neither spread widely
+nor lasted long. Far more pervading and more remarkable was the other
+error, if that can be called an error which was the almost unavoidable
+result of the circumstances of the time. The principles which had led
+the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have
+taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from
+the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with
+the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have
+enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own
+shewing, had no value save when it was freely given. A church which
+does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of
+the truth may possibly be with its adversaries: a church which permits
+or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right
+first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not
+convinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had
+done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they
+welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that
+religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with
+politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the
+greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or
+more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy
+continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost
+every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself
+with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages,
+while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It
+was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the
+several countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to
+the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be
+co-extensive with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and
+exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive
+powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of
+theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest,
+for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical
+transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any
+one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could
+not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it
+may be worth, '_Securus iudicat orbis terrarum_.' But in practice
+these difficulties were soon got over, for the dominant party in each
+state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it
+was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to
+nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England,
+or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland,
+imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the
+practices of mediæval intolerance without their justification.
+Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic
+and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those
+who were not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their
+neighbours, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and
+venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to
+others. If union with the visible church by participation in a
+material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be
+held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
+heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be
+possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external
+forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the
+intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than
+those practised by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible;
+for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives
+of political expediency, or, more often, the mere headstrong passion
+of a ruler or a faction to silence the expressions of any opinions but
+their own. To enlarge upon this theme, did space permit it, would not
+be to digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the
+Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far less an
+institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is not too much to
+say, that the ideas which have but recently ceased to prevail
+regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uniformity in doctrine
+and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which
+that doctrine established between the Roman Church and the Roman
+Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Reformation on the name and associations
+of the Empire.]
+
+Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the Empire have been
+now described: its immediate political results, and its far more
+profound doctrinal importance, as implanting new ideas regarding the
+nature of freedom and the province of government. A third, though
+apparently almost superficial, cannot be omitted. Its name and its
+traditions, little as they retained of their former magic power, were
+still such as to excite the antipathy of the German reformers. The
+form which the doctrine of the supreme importance of one faith and one
+body of the faithful had taken was the dominion of the ancient capital
+of the world through her spiritual head, the Roman bishop, and her
+temporal head, the Emperor. As the names of Roman and Christian had
+been once convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and
+Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts what had hitherto
+been one conception, attacked Romanism but not Catholicity, and formed
+religious communities which, while continuing to call themselves
+Christian, repudiated the form with which Christianity had been so
+long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded upon the
+assumption that the limits of Church and State are exactly
+co-extensive, a change which withdrew half of its subjects from the
+one body while they remained members of the other, transformed it
+utterly, destroyed the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and
+forced the Emperor into a strange and incongruous position. To his
+Protestant subjects he was merely the head of the administration, to
+the Catholics he was also the Defender and Advocate of their church.
+Thus from being chief of the whole state he became the chief of a
+party within it, the Corpus Catholicorum, as opposed to the Corpus
+Evangelicorum; he lost what had been hitherto his most holy claim to
+the obedience of the subject; the awakened feeling of German
+nationality was driven into hostility to an institution whose title
+and history bound it to the centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting
+for seven centuries in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic
+nations cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors had
+resisted Julius Cæsar and Germanicus. Two mutually repugnant systems
+could not exist side by side without striving to destroy one another.
+The instincts of theological sympathy overcame the duties of political
+allegiance, and men who were subjects both of the Empire and of their
+local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who espoused their
+doctrines and protected their worship. For in North Germany, princes
+as well as people were mostly Lutheran: in the southern and especially
+the south-eastern lands, where the magnates held to the old faith,
+Protestants were scarcely to be found except in the free cities. The
+same causes which injured the Emperor's position in Germany swept away
+the last semblance of his authority through other countries. In the
+great struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and France,
+of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of
+the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he of whom it had been believed a
+century before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of
+Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines
+either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The
+earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany was felt through Europe; its
+states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners,
+and with the Empire's expiring power vanished that united Christendom
+it had been created to lead[374].
+
+[Sidenote: Troubles of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf II, 1576-1612.]
+
+[Sidenote: Matthias, 1612-1619.]
+
+Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew themselves as early as
+that famous Diet of Worms, from Luther's appearance at which, in A.D.
+1521, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the
+end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier
+than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the
+Edict of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than a century
+of doubtful strife that the new order of things was fully and finally
+established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most
+treaties on the basis of _uti possidetis_, were no better than a
+hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken.
+The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors
+urged the Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing ground
+of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of its antagonists
+sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of
+worship, and the smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the
+troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.
+
+[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand II, A.D. 1619-37.]
+
+[Sidenote: Plans of Ferdinand II.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand III, 1637-1658.]
+
+[Sidenote: The peace of Westphalia.]
+
+The imperial sceptre had now passed from the indolent and vacillating
+Rudolf II (1576-1612), the corrupt and reckless policy of whose
+ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds of
+the Protestants, into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second[375].
+Jealous, bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing his
+plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in action, the house
+of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more unpopular leader in
+their second attempt to turn the German Empire into an Austrian
+military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the
+accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Leagued
+with Spain, backed by the Catholics of Germany, served by such a
+leader as Wallenstein, Ferdinand proposed nothing less than the
+extension of the Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his
+crown's full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland
+were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be reconquered with the
+help of Spain: Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded
+with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general
+was all but master of Northern Germany when the successful resistance
+of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (A.D.
+1630), Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an
+impending reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings
+had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he
+had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the
+Empire: he had transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated
+the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned
+out at his pleasure; had unsettled all possession by requiring the
+restitution of church property occupied since A.D. 1555. The
+Protestants were helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of
+the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it:
+the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four
+campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor;
+devastated his lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at last so
+enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again
+formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the
+Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and
+the Calvinist party--some, like the Saxon elector, most inglorious of
+his inglorious house, bribed by the cunning Austrian; others afraid to
+stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his
+vengeance--that the issue of the long protracted contest would have
+gone against them but for the interference of France. It was the
+leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of
+Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited: hence he fostered Protestantism
+abroad while trampling it down at home. The triumph he did not live to
+see was sealed in A.D. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the
+combatants, and the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück were
+thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[368] The so-called 'Wahlcapitulation.'
+
+[369] The electors long refused to elect Charles, dreading his great
+hereditary power, and were at last induced to do so only by their
+overmastering fear of the Turks.
+
+[370] Nearly all the Hapsburgs seem to have wanted that sort of genial
+heartiness which, apt as it is to be stifled by education in the
+purple, has nevertheless been possessed by several other royal lines,
+greatly contributing to their vitality; as for instance by more than
+one prince of the houses of Brunswick and Hohenzollern.
+
+[371] See this brought out with great force in the very interesting
+work of Padre Tosti, _Prolegomeni alla Storia Universale della
+Chiesa_, from which I quote one passage, which bears directly on the
+matter in hand: 'Il grido della riforma clericale aveva un eco
+terribile in tutta la compagnia civile dei popoli: essa percuoteva le
+cime del laicale potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la gerarchia sociale.
+Se l'imperadore Sigismondo nel concilio di Costanza non avesse
+fiutate queste consequenze nella eresia di Hus e di Girolamo di Praga,
+forse non avrebbe con tanto zelo mandati alle fiamme que' novatori.
+Rotto da Lutero il vincolo di suggezione al Papa ed ai preti in fatti
+di religione, avvenne che anche quello che sommetteva il vassallo al
+barone, il barone al imperadore si allentasse. Il popolo con la Bibbia
+in mano era prete, vescovo, e papa; e se prima contristato della
+prepotenza di chi gli soprastava, ricorreva al successore di San
+Pietro, ora ricorreva a se stesso, avendogli commesse Fra Martino le
+chiavi del regno dei Cieli.'--vol. ii. pp. 398, 9.
+
+[372] It was not till the end of the eleventh century that
+transubstantiation was definitely established as a dogma.
+
+[373] See the passages quoted in note 113, p. 98; and note 132, p. 110.
+
+[374] Henry VIII of England when he rebelled against the Pope called
+himself King of Ireland (his predecessors had used only the title
+'Dominus Hiberniæ') without asking the Emperor's permission, in order
+to shew that he repudiated the temporal as well as the spiritual
+dominion of Rome.
+
+So the Statute of Appeals is careful to deny and reject the authority
+of 'other foreign potentates,' meaning, no doubt, the Emperor as well
+as the Pope.
+
+[375] Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the exception perhaps
+of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, the most important of those
+attempts to reconstruct by diplomacy the European states-system which
+have played so large a part in modern history. It is important,
+however, not as marking the introduction of new principles, but as
+winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the revolt
+of Luther, sealing its results, and closing definitively the period of
+the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious
+movement called into being had now been at work for more than a
+hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became
+necessary to establish a system which should represent the altered
+relations of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous
+peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
+Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things
+already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new
+importance. To all parties alike the result of the Thirty Years' War
+was thoroughly unsatisfactory: to the Protestants, who had lost
+Bohemia, and still were obliged to hold an inferior place in the
+electoral college and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced
+to permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the church
+lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers: to the princes, who could
+not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who
+could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other conclusion
+was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and
+no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war
+continued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial
+advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal
+recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be
+placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the
+maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last
+preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified
+as rightful and necessary. For while the political situation, to use a
+current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the
+eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their
+fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or Lombard
+republicans in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and
+Swabian Cæsars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings,
+or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant
+jurists of the sixteenth or rather of the seventeenth century were the
+first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the
+world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German
+monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need
+prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for
+themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections
+made him the friend of their enemies.
+
+[Sidenote: The treatise of Hippolytus a Lapide.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rights of the Emperor and the Diet, as settled in A.D.
+1648.]
+
+It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or Peter de Andlo
+to a book published shortly before A.D. 1648, under the name of
+Hippolytus a Lapide[376], and notice the matter-of-fact way, the
+almost contemptuous spirit in which, disregarding the traditional
+glories of the Empire, he comments on its actual condition and
+prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz
+assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous, that the Germanic
+constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth: that the
+'lex regia' (so much discussed and so often misunderstood) and the
+whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperor had used so
+dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely
+incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz
+examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing
+contests of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral that
+the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more
+dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective
+against the policy of the Hapsburgs, an invective which the ambition
+and harshness of the late Emperor made only too plausible. The one
+real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states
+concisely--'domus Austriacæ extirpatio:' but, failing this, he would
+have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in every way, and provide
+means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which
+seem to have made a profound impression in Germany, that the states,
+or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the
+negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster. By extorting a full recognition
+of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants
+alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from
+any direct interference with the administration, either in particular
+districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public importance,
+including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions,
+raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws,
+were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The
+Aulic Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial
+oppression, and always of imperial intrigue, was so restricted as to
+be harmless for the future. The 'reservata' of the Emperor were
+confined to the rights of granting titles and confirming tolls. In
+matters of religion, an exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality
+was established between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and the
+right of 'Itio in partes,' that is to say, of deciding questions in
+which religion was involved by amicable negotiations between the
+Protestant and Catholic states, instead of by a majority of votes in
+the Diet, was definitely conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
+declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic
+prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped,
+the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed
+was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its
+members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy
+Roman Church; and its constitution admitted schismatics to a full
+share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of
+the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the
+communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was
+therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory
+of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in
+this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth, who commanded
+his legate to protest against it, and subsequently declared it void by
+the bull 'Zelo domus Dei[377].'
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+The transference of power within the Empire, from its head to its
+members, was a small matter compared with the losses which the Empire
+suffered as a whole. The real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia
+were those who had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the
+Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac, the Austrian part of
+Alsace, and the lands of the three bishoprics in Lorraine--Metz, Toul,
+and Verdun, which her armies had seized in A.D. 1552: to Sweden,
+northern Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however, this
+difference between the position of the two, that whereas Sweden became
+a member of the German Diet for what she received (as the king of
+Holland was, until 1866-7, a member for Dutch Luxemburg, and as the
+kings of Denmark, up till the accession of the present sovereign, were
+for Holstein), the acquisitions of France were delivered over to her
+in full sovereignty, and for ever severed from the Germanic body. And
+as it was by their aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been
+won, these two states obtained at the same time what was more valuable
+than territorial accessions--the right of interfering at imperial
+elections, and generally whenever the provisions of the treaties of
+Osnabrück and Münster, which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to
+be endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further narrowed by the
+final separation of two countries, once integral parts of Germany, and
+up to this time legally members of her body. Holland and Switzerland
+were, in A.D. 1648, declared independent.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany after the Peace.]
+
+[Sidenote: Number of petty independent states: effects of such a
+system on Germany.]
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly
+marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of
+Frederick the Second. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a
+mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name
+Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title purely
+and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an
+Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For
+it had no common treasury, no efficient common tribunals[378], no
+means of coercing a refractory member[379]; its states were of
+different religions, were governed according to different forms, were
+administered judicially and financially without any regard to each
+other. The traveller in Central Germany now is amused to find, every
+hour or two, by the change in the soldiers' uniforms, and the colour
+of the stripes on the railway fences, that he has passed out of one
+and into another of its miniature kingdoms. Much more surprised and
+embarrassed would he have been a century ago, when, instead of the
+present thirty-two there were three hundred petty principalities
+between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own
+courts (in which the ceremonious pomp of Versailles was faintly
+reproduced), its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and
+custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
+officials, presided over by a prime minister who was generally the
+unworthy favourite of his prince and the pensioner of some foreign
+court. This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature,
+and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some
+time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of
+Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had
+made them despots in their own territories. The impoverishment of the
+inferior nobility and the decline of the commercial cities caused by a
+war that had lasted a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to
+the power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism supreme
+just where absolutism wants all its justification, in states too small
+to have any public opinion, states in which everything depends on the
+monarch, and the monarch depends on his favourites. After A.D. 1648
+the provincial estates or parliaments became obsolete in most of these
+principalities, and powerless in the rest. Germany was forced to drink
+to its very dregs the cup of feudalism, feudalism from which all the
+feelings that once ennobled it had departed.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism in France, England, Germany.]
+
+It is instructive to compare the results of the system of feudality in
+the three chief countries of modern Europe. In France, the feudal head
+absorbed all the powers of the state, and left to the aristocracy only
+a few privileges, odious indeed, but politically worthless. In
+England, the mediæval system expanded into a constitutional monarchy,
+where the oligarchy was still strong, but the commons had won the full
+recognition of equal civil rights. In Germany, everything was taken
+from the sovereign, and nothing given to the people; the
+representatives of those who had been fief-holders of the first and
+second rank before the Great Interregnum were now independent
+potentates; and what had been once a monarchy was now an aristocratic
+federation. The Diet, originally an assembly of magnates meeting from
+time to time like our early English Parliaments, became in A.D. 1654 a
+permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities were
+represented by their envoys. In other words, it was now not a national
+council, but an international congress of diplomatists.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the continuance of the Empire.]
+
+Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal, rights to state
+rights was so complete, we may wonder that the farce of an Empire
+should have been retained at all. A mere German Empire would probably
+have perished; but the Teutonic people could not bring itself to
+abandon the venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans were of
+all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suffering; and as,
+if the Empire had fallen, something must have been erected in its
+place, they preferred to work on with the clumsy machine so long as it
+would work at all. Properly speaking, it has no history after this;
+and the history of the particular states of Germany which takes its
+place is one of the dreariest chapters in the annals of mankind. It
+would be hard to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French
+Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise; a
+single sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance in
+which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of
+their princes. The military history of those times will always be read
+with interest; but free and progressive countries have a history of
+peace not less rich and varied than that of war; and when we ask for
+an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century,
+we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling
+of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the Balance of power.]
+
+Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it was not without its
+importance to the neighbouring countries, with whose fortunes it had
+been linked by the Peace of Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the
+political system of Europe was to revolve: the scales, so to speak,
+which marked the equipoise of power that had become the grand object
+of the policy of all states. This modern caricature of the plan by
+which the theorists of the fourteenth century had proposed to keep the
+world at peace, used means less noble and attained its end no better
+than theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is desirable to
+prevent a universal monarchy in Europe. But it may be asked whether a
+system can be considered successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia
+to seize Silesia, which did not check the aggressions of Russia and
+France upon their neighbours, which was for ever bartering and
+exchanging lands in every part of Europe without thought of the
+inhabitants, which permitted and has never been able to redress that
+greatest of public misfortunes, the partitionment of Poland. And if it
+be said that bad as things have been under this system, they would
+have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain from asking whether
+any evils could have been greater than those which the people of
+Europe have suffered through constant wars with each other, and
+through the withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of
+their population from useful labour to be wasted in maintaining a
+standing army.
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Empire in Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness and stagnation of Germany.]
+
+The result of the extended relations in which Germany now found
+herself to Europe, with two foreign kings never wanting an occasion,
+one of them never the wish, to interfere, was that a spark from her
+set the Continent ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to
+spread hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or created
+so many thrones abroad. The Duke of Holstein acquired Denmark, the
+Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector of Saxony Poland, the Elector of
+Hanover England, the Archduke of Austria Hungary and Bohemia, while
+the Elector (originally Margrave) of Brandenburg obtained, on the
+strength of non-imperial territories to the north-eastward which had
+come into his hands, the style and title of King of Prussia. Thus the
+Empire seemed again about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far
+different from that which those words would have expressed under
+Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half is a dismal
+list of losses and disgraces. The chief external danger was from
+French influence, for a time supreme, always menacing. For though
+Lewis the Fourteenth, on whom, in A.D. 1658, half the electoral
+college wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end of his
+life an object of intense hatred, officially entitled 'Hereditary
+enemy of the Holy Empire[380],' France had nevertheless a strong party
+among the princes always at her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian
+electors were her favourite tools. The '_réunions_' begun in A.D.
+1680, a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added
+Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comté to
+the monarchy of Lewis, and brought him nearer the heart of the Empire;
+his ambition and cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by
+the devastation of the Rhine countries; the ultimate though
+short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when Marshal Belleisle
+dictated the election of Charles VII in A.D. 1742. In the Turkish
+wars, when the princes left Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski,
+the Empire's weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There
+was, indeed, a complete loss of hope and interest in the old system.
+The princes had been so long accustomed to consider themselves the
+natural foes of a central government, that a request made by it was
+sure to be disregarded; they aped in their petty courts the pomp and
+etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should be required
+to garrison the great frontier fortresses which alone protected them
+from an encroaching neighbour. The Free Cities had never recovered the
+famines and sieges of the Thirty Years' War: Hanseatic greatness had
+waned, and the southern towns had sunk into languid oligarchies. All
+the vigour of the people in a somewhat stagnant age either found its
+sphere in rising states like the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or
+turned away from politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had
+become contemptible from the slowness with which it moved, and its
+tedious squabbles on matters the most frivolous. Many sittings were
+consumed in the discussion of a question regarding the time of keeping
+Easter, more ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western
+churches in the seventh century, the Protestants refusing to reckon by
+the reformed calendar because it was the work of a Pope. Collective
+action through the old organs was confessed impossible, when the
+common object of defence against France was sought by forming a league
+under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European congresses the
+Empire was not represented at all[381]. No change could come from the
+Emperor, whom the capitulation of A.D. 1658 deposed _ipso facto_ if he
+violated its provisions. As Dohm[382] said, to keep him from doing
+harm, he was kept from doing anything.
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold I, 1658-1705.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph I, 1705-1711.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VI, 1711-1742.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Hapsburg Emperors and their policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the long retention of the throne by Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VII, 1742-1745.]
+
+[Sidenote: Francis I, 1745-1765.]
+
+[Sidenote: Seven Years' War.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph II, 1765-1790.]
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold II, 1790-1792. Last phase of the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Diet.]
+
+Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have been hoped
+from his action? From the election of Albert the Second, A.D. 1437, to
+the death of Charles the Sixth, A.D. 1742, the sceptre had remained in
+the hands of one family. So far from being fit subjects for
+undistinguishing invective, the Hapsburg Emperors may be contrasted
+favourably with the contemporary dynasties of France, Spain, or
+England. Their policy, viewed as a whole from the days of Rudolf
+downwards, had been neither conspicuously tyrannical, nor faltering,
+nor dishonest. But it had been always selfish. Entrusted with an
+office which might, if there be any power in those memories of the
+past to which the champions of hereditary monarchy so constantly
+appeal, have stirred their sluggish souls with some enthusiasm for the
+heroes on whose throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and
+the happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought nothing,
+used the Empire as an instrument for nothing but the attainment of
+their own personal or dynastic ends. Placed on the eastern verge of
+Germany, the Hapsburgs had added to their ancient lands in Austria
+proper and Tyrol, non-German territories far more extensive, and had
+thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent state. They
+endeavoured to reconcile its interests with the interests of the
+Empire, so long as it seemed possible to recover part of the old
+imperial prerogative. But when such hopes were dashed by the defeats
+of the Thirty Years' War, they hesitated no longer between an elective
+crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported
+themselves thenceforth in European politics not as the representatives
+of Germany, but as heads of the great Austrian monarchy. There would
+have been nothing culpable in this had they not at the same time
+continued to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no concern:
+to waste her strength in tedious combats with the Turks, or plunge her
+into a new struggle with France, not to defend her frontiers or
+recover the lands she had lost, but that some scion of the house of
+Hapsburg might reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of
+their foreign policy, marking how in A.D. 1736 they had bartered away
+Lorraine for Tuscany, a German for a non-German territory, and seeing
+how at home they opposed every scheme of reform which could in the
+least degree trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to
+obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should interfere with their own
+Aulic council, men were driven to separate the body of the Empire from
+the imperial office and its possessors[383], and when plans for
+reinvigorating the one failed, to leave the others to their fate.
+Still the old line clung to the crown with that Hapsburg gripe which
+has almost passed into a proverb. Odious as Austria was, no one could
+despise her, or fancy it easy to shake her commanding position in
+Europe. Her alliances were fortunate: her designs were steadily
+pursued: her dismembered territories always returned to her. Though
+the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible not to be
+influenced by long prescription. Projects were repeatedly formed to
+set the Hapsburgs aside by electing a prince of some other line[384],
+or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or four,
+successive Emperors of the same house. France[385] ever and anon
+renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing
+from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family.
+But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and
+that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to
+be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes
+possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose
+size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were
+Protestants, and so excluded both by the connexion of the imperial
+office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the
+electoral college[386], who, however jealous they might be of Austria,
+were led both by habit and sympathy to rally round her in moments of
+peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were disregarded
+shewed their force. On the extinction of the male line of Hapsburg in
+the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy,
+Marshal Belleisle, procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
+who stood first among the Catholic princes. His reign was a succession
+of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven from Munich by the Austrians,
+the head of the Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of
+France, cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought the
+miseries of a protracted war[387]. The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis
+of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen of
+Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the crown to the only
+power capable of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her
+son, it again rested on the brow of a Hapsburg[388]. In the war of the
+Austrian succession, which followed on the death of Charles the Sixth,
+the Empire as a body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole
+might broke in vain against one resolute member. Under Frederick the
+Great Prussia approved herself at least a match for France and Austria
+leagued against her, and the semblance of unity which the predominance
+of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the
+avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the
+Second, a sort of philosopher-king, than whom few have more narrowly
+missed greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right,
+striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the
+Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant policy of his
+ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope[389], and presumed to visit Rome,
+whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three
+centuries, 'Evviva il nostro imperatore! Siete a casa vostra: siete il
+padrone[390].' But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen
+resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was
+not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which
+Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His
+successor, Leopold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a
+calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon Germany.
+The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects:
+there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal investiture now
+and then at Vienna (real feudal rights were obsolete[391]); a
+concourse of solemn old lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable
+suits[392]; and some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg[393], the
+relics of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a
+Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad barons, had
+issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic[394].
+The solemn triflings of this so-called 'Diet of Deputation' have
+probably never been equalled elsewhere[395]. Questions of precedence
+and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs
+of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less
+honourable green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver,
+how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on
+May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not
+to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed
+that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now crushed under a mountain of
+rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained.
+It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its
+substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which
+they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our
+timidity, not seeing that whatever is false must be also bad,
+maintains in being what once was good long after it has become
+helpless and hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century,
+strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which
+Charles had founded, and Frederick adorned, and Dante sung.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the German people.]
+
+The German mind, just beginning to put forth the blossoms of its
+wondrous literature, turned away in disgust from the spectacle of
+ceremonious imbecility more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed
+gone from princes and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one
+else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love of
+country I have no conception: it appears to me at best a heroic
+weakness which I am right glad to be without[396].' The Emperor Joseph
+II writes to his brother of France: 'You must know that the
+annihilation of German nationality is a necessary leading principle of
+my policy[397].' There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal
+such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul.
+Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of Prussia to
+preserve the existing condition of things, Johannes von Müller
+writes[398]: 'If the German Union serves for nothing better than to
+maintain the _status quo_, it is against the eternal order of God, by
+which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in
+the _status quo_, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist
+without law or justice, without security from arbitrary imposts,
+doubtful whether we can preserve from day to day our honours, our
+liberties, our rights, our lives, helpless before superior force,
+without a beneficial connexion between our states, without a national
+spirit at all, this is the _status quo_ of our nation. And it was this
+that the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and nothing more,
+then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would not hearken,
+the people gave answer to the king and spake, "What portion have we in
+David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O
+Israel: David, see to thine own house." See then to your own houses,
+ye princes.'
+
+Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse brought forth from
+some Egyptian sepulchre, ready to crumble at a touch, there seemed no
+reason why it should not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind,
+and slew it in the light.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[376] _De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico_.
+
+[377] Even then the Roman pontiffs had lapsed into that scolding,
+anile tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of Hildebrand, or the stern
+precision of Innocent III) which is now seldom absent from their
+public utterances. Pope Innocent the Tenth pronounces the provisions
+of the treaty, 'ipso iure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta,
+damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque et effectu vacua, omnino
+fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore.' In spite of which they were observed.
+
+This bull may be found in vol. xvii. of the _Bullarium_. It bears date
+Nov. 20th, A.D. 1648.
+
+[378] The Imperial Chamber (Kammergericht) continued, with frequent
+and long interruptions, to sit while the Empire lasted. But its
+slowness and formality passed that of any other legal body the world
+has yet seen, and it had no power to enforce its sentences. The Aulic
+council was little more efficient, and was generally disliked as the
+tool of imperial intrigue.
+
+[379] The 'matricula' specifying the quota of each state to the
+imperial army could not be any longer employed.
+
+[380] _Erbfeind des heiligen Reichs._
+
+[381] Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in
+1713.
+
+[382] Quoted by Ludwig Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_.
+
+[383] The distinction is well expressed by the German 'Reich' and
+'Kaiserthum,' to which we have unfortunately no terms to correspond.
+
+[384] So the Elector of Saxony proposed in 1532 that Albert II,
+Frederick III, and Maximilian having been all of one house, Charles
+V's successor should be chosen from some other.--Moser, _Römische
+Kayser_. See the various attempts of France in Moser. The coronation
+engagements (Wahlcapitulation) of every Emperor bound him not to
+attempt to make the throne hereditary in his family.
+
+[385] In 1658 France offered to subsidize the Elector of Bavaria if he
+would become Emperor.
+
+[386] Whether an Evangelical was eligible for the office of Emperor
+was a question often debated, but never actually raised by the
+candidature of any but a Roman Catholic prince. The 'exacta æqualitas'
+conceded by the Peace of Westphalia might appear to include so
+important a privilege. But when we consider that the peculiar relation
+in which the Emperor stood to the Holy Roman Church was one which no
+heretic could hold, and that the coronation oaths could not have been
+taken by, nor the coronation ceremonies (among which was a sort of
+ordination) performed upon a Protestant, the conclusion must be
+unfavourable to the claims of any but a Catholic.
+
+[387]
+
+ 'The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
+ Tries the dread summits of Cæsarian power.
+ With unexpected legions bursts away,
+ And sees defenceless realms receive his sway....
+ The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom
+ Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom;
+ His foes' derision and his subjects' blame,
+ And steals to death from anguish and from shame.'
+ JOHNSON, _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
+
+[388] The following nine reasons for the long continuance of the
+Empire in the House of Hapsburg are given by Pfeffinger (_Vitriarius
+Illustratus_), writing early in the eighteenth century:--
+
+ 1. The great power of Austria.
+
+ 2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.
+
+ 3. The majority of Catholics among the electors.
+
+ 4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances.
+
+ 5. Her moderation.
+
+ 6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.
+
+ 7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
+ the blood of former Cæsars.
+
+ 8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were
+ deprived of the crown.
+
+ 9. Her own eagerness to have it.
+
+[389] The Pope undertook a journey to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and
+met with a sufficiently cold reception. When he saw the famous
+minister Kaunitz and gave him his hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and
+shook it.
+
+[390] 'You are in your own house: be the master.'
+
+[391] Joseph II was foiled in his attempt to assert them.
+
+[392] Goethe spent some time in studying law at Wetzlar among those
+who practised in the Kammergericht.
+
+[393] Cf. Pütter, _Historical Developement of the Political
+Constitution of the German Empire_, vol. iii.
+
+[394] Frederick the Great said of the Diet, 'Es ist ein Schattenbild,
+eine Versammlung aus Publizisten die mehr mit Formalien als mit Sachen
+sich beschäftigen, und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.'
+
+[395] Cf. Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Introduction.
+
+[396] Quoted by Haüsser.
+
+[397] Rotteck and Welcker, _Staats Lexikon_, s. v. 'Deutsches Reich.'
+
+[398] _Deutschlands Erwartungen vom Fürstenbunde_, quoted in the
+_Staats Lexikon_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis II, 1792-1806.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon, Emperor of the West.]
+
+[Sidenote: Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of
+Charlemagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon.]
+
+Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his
+childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the
+Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till
+space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the
+Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled.
+Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little
+cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with
+storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days
+of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin,
+and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should
+rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify
+religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the
+West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive
+the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It
+were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute
+historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the
+parallel between the heir of a long line of fierce Teutonic
+chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the
+monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican
+lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute
+profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
+ideas of the Encyclopædists, swept up into the seat of absolute power
+by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more
+unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper
+of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in
+this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
+conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity
+between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike
+nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods,
+the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and
+seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
+Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if
+it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and
+highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the
+kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
+so the other thought to model himself after Cæsar and Charlemagne.
+For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of
+the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to
+be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a
+connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no
+studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon to remind his
+subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who
+reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as
+he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the
+centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne
+and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe
+from Paris, as the Cæsars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this
+belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
+receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he
+talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had
+formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed
+the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to
+Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and
+inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he
+summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten
+centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last
+Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of
+the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at
+Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the
+Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French
+Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he
+bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the
+Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention
+to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead.
+Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the
+position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which
+Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was
+curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his
+ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the
+Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he
+had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard
+enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings
+wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,'
+and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First
+with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the
+principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
+that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is
+much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for
+catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the
+protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and
+gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].
+
+[Sidenote: The French Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.]
+
+[Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.]
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Empire.]
+
+A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
+preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign
+of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title
+when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire
+Française.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and,
+by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French
+Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
+states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
+the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi
+Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions
+had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission
+by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come.
+He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia,
+claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had
+in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
+Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
+sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of
+that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court
+presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after
+what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so
+redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the
+Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
+name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the
+rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a
+code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him
+were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution,
+and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission--a mission more
+beneficent in its result than in its means[409]--to break up in
+Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken
+the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete
+feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and
+better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo
+Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of
+destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the
+Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with
+France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the
+arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated
+by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected,
+electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized,
+the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
+potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the
+dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the
+old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a
+spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
+partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to
+meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name
+of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself
+'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his
+former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may
+more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the
+traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of
+ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the
+Confederation[411] of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
+Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all,
+withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
+August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that
+his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate
+princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the
+Second resolved at once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
+declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
+His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of
+things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he
+considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic
+body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
+retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title
+of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
+(_Deutsches Reich_) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of
+Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid
+down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of
+its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo
+the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and
+fifty-eight years after Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy
+Roman Empire came to its end.
+
+[Sidenote: Congress of Vienna.]
+
+There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that
+the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change
+that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed.
+No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new
+order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's
+universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves
+again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the
+Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was
+indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover,
+representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still
+appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency
+of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining
+peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms,
+Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia,
+elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have
+disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to
+resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
+and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore
+made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting
+Germany by a federative bond[415], and the Congress of Vienna was
+decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
+was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is
+itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a
+mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and
+useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of
+liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes
+after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the
+restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the
+Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a
+head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such
+plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear
+than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[399] _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book i. The Römer Saal is still one of
+the sights of Frankfort. The portraits, however, which one now sees in
+it, seem to be all or nearly all of them modern; and few have any
+merit as works of art.
+
+[400] _Jordanis Chronica_, ap. Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[401] In an address by Napoleon to the Senate in 1804, bearing date
+10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the words, 'Mes descendans conserveront
+longtemps ce trône, le premier de l'univers.' Answering a deputation
+from the department of the Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, 'La Providence, qui
+a voulu que je rétablisse le trône de Charlemagne, vous a fait
+naturellement rentrer, avec la Hollande et les villes anséatiques,
+dans le sein de l'Empire.'--_Œuvres de Napoléon_, tom. v. p. 521.
+
+'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne, parce que, comme Charlemagne, je
+réunis la couronne de France à celle des Lombards, et que mon Empire
+confine avec l'Orient.' (Quoted by Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii.
+417.)
+
+'Votre Sainteté est souveraine de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'
+(Letter of Napoleon to Pope Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)
+
+'Dites bien,' says Napoleon to Cardinal Fesch, 'que je suis
+Charlemagne, leur Empereur [of the Papal Court] que je dois être
+traité de même. Je fais connaitre au Pape mes intentions en peu de
+mots, s'il n'y acquiesce pas, je le réduirai à la même condition qu'il
+était avant Charlemagne.' (Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii. 420.)
+
+[402] Napoleon said on one occasion, 'Je n'ai pas succédé a Louis
+Quatorze, mais à Charlemagne.'--Bourrienne, _Vie de Napoléon_, iv. In
+1804, shortly before he was crowned, he had the imperial insignia of
+Charles brought from the old Frankish capital, and exhibited them in a
+jeweller's shop in Paris, along with those which had just been made
+for his own coronation;--(Bourrienne, _ut supra_.) Somewhat in the
+same spirit in which he displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in order to
+incite his subjects to the conquest of England.
+
+[403] 'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands interêts (of political order
+and the spiritual authority of the Pope) qu'en annulant les donations
+des Empereurs Français, mes predecesseurs, et en réunissant les états
+romains à la France.'--Proclamation issued in 1809: _Œuvres_, iv.
+
+[404] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[405] Pope Pius VII wrote to the First Consul, 'Carissime in Christo
+Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt nobis tuæ voluntatis studia erga
+nos, ut _quotiescunque_ ope aliqua in rebus nostris indigemus, eam a
+te fidenter petere non dubitare debeamus.'--Quoted by Ægidi.
+
+[406] Let us place side by side the letters of Hadrian to Charles in
+the _Codex Carolinus_, and the following preamble to the Concordat of
+A.D. 1801, between the First Consul and the Pope (which I quote from
+the _Bullarium Romanum_), and mark the changes of a thousand years.
+
+'Gubernium reipublicæ [Gallicæ] recognoscit religionem Catholicam
+Apostolicam Romanam eam esse religionem quam longe maxima pars civium
+Gallicæ reipublicæ profitetur.
+
+'Summus pontifex pari modo recognoscit eandem religionem maximam
+utilitatem maximumque decus percepisse et hoc quoque tempore
+præstolari ex catholico cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon ex
+peculiari eius professione quam faciunt reipublicæ consules.'
+
+[407] Cf. Heeren, _Political System_, vol. iii. 273.
+
+[408] He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers, and so forth. The
+Legion of Honour, which was thought important enough to be mentioned
+in the coronation oath, was meant to be something like the mediæval
+orders of knighthood: whose connexion with the Empire has already been
+mentioned.
+
+[409] Napoleon's feelings towards Germany may be gathered from the
+phrase he once used, 'Il faut depayser l'Allemagne.'
+
+[410] Thus in documents issued by the Emperor during these two years
+he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect, Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
+(erwählter Römischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oesterreich).
+
+[411] This Act of Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed in
+Koch's _Traités_ (continued by Schöll), vol. viii., and Meyer's
+_Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. It has every
+appearance of being a translation from the French, and was no doubt
+originally drawn up in that language. Napoleon is called in one place
+'Der nämliche Monarch, dessen Absichten sich stets mit den wahren
+Interessen Deutschlands übereinstimmend gezeigt haben.' The phrase
+'Roman Empire' does not occur: we hear only of the 'German Empire,'
+'body of German states' (Staatskörper), and so forth. This
+Confederation of the Rhine was eventually joined by every German State
+except Austria, Prussia, Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
+
+[412] _Histoire des Traités_, vol. viii. The original may be found in
+Meyer's _Corpus Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ_, vol. i. p. 70. It is
+a document in no way remarkable, except from the ludicrous resemblance
+which its language suggests to the circular in which a tradesman,
+announcing the dissolution of an old partnership, solicits, and hopes
+by close attention to merit, a continuance of his customers' patronage
+to his business, which will henceforth be carried on under the name
+of, &c., &c.
+
+[413] Koch (Schöll), _Histoire des Traités_, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
+Haüsser, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. iv.
+
+[414] Great Britain had refused in 1806 to recognize the dissolution
+of the Empire. And it may indeed be maintained that in point of law
+the Empire was never extinguished at all, but lives on as a
+disembodied spirit to this day. For it is clear that, technically
+speaking, the abdication of a sovereign can destroy only his own
+rights, and does not dissolve the state over which he presides.
+
+[415] 'Les états d'Allemagne seront independans et unis par un lien
+federatif.'--_Histoire des Traités_, xi. p. 257.
+
+[416] The late king of Prussia was actually elected Emperor by the
+revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in 1848. He refused the crown.
+
+[417] [Since the above was written (in A.D. 1865) sudden and momentous
+changes have been effected in Germany by the war of 1866; the Prussian
+kingdom has been enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hessen-Cassel,
+Nassau, and Frankfort; the establishment of the North German
+Confederation has brought all the states north of the Main under
+Prussian control; while even the potentates of the south have
+virtually accepted the hegemony of the house of Hohenzollern. It was
+the author's intention to have added here a chapter examining these
+changes by the light of the past history of Germany and the Empire,
+and tracing out the causes to which the success of Prussia is to be
+ascribed. But at this moment (July 15th, 1870) the French Emperor
+declares war against Prussia, and there rises to meet the challenge an
+united German people,--united for the time, at least, by the folly of
+the enemy who has so long plotted for and profited by its disunion.
+Whatever the result of the struggle may be, it is almost certain to
+alter still further the internal constitution of Germany; and there is
+therefore little use in discussing the existing system, and tracing
+the progress hitherto of a development which, if not suddenly
+arrested, is likely to be greatly accelerated by the events which we
+see passing.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+[Sidenote: General summary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
+
+After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the
+phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its
+nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help
+being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
+as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during
+which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the
+Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was
+extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
+imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a
+city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal
+weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as
+a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes
+of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
+found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering
+confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor
+raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more.
+Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
+successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European
+chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after
+promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks
+at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
+international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions
+so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first
+sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious
+mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever
+based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during
+three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her
+empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen
+with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the
+destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so
+limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its
+power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races
+whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
+weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal
+rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of
+honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city
+had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the
+theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new
+religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology,
+her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had
+never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes
+on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
+
+[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+[Sidenote: Russia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Greece.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks.]
+
+Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions
+by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political
+history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not
+insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason.
+It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine
+the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the
+Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria
+clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in
+Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
+there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more
+legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might
+pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire,
+and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as
+the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the
+self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the
+sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European
+politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called
+Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed
+of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars, and
+trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand
+years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an
+imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable
+engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
+Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political
+combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has
+embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived
+Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
+intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has
+more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern
+Cæsars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent
+assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his
+successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by
+twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the
+consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the
+Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
+legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction
+of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
+
+These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and
+illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of
+the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the
+offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her
+parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
+once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of
+her own approaching doom[420].
+
+Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was
+utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise
+of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those
+who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did
+not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained
+of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on
+so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of
+undisputed possession.
+
+Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for
+unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of
+that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something
+which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of
+sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in
+the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise
+above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true
+difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible
+Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and
+strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
+itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from
+the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful
+than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in
+heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
+militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church
+triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of
+traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great
+is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases
+we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the
+world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its
+feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is
+necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading
+one. Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now often
+spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of
+praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual
+will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the
+belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
+a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an
+abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not,
+cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one
+all-pervading church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life
+in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she
+blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper
+hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus
+of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by
+penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for
+contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle
+Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life
+of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed
+to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
+between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the
+portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already
+self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediæval
+document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
+feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven.
+For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely,
+heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
+
+Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on
+physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came,
+the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was
+firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the
+death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and
+Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a
+single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the
+Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the
+principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they
+resisted the spiritual power.
+
+[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
+
+Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power
+of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been
+said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances,
+but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the
+character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
+was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of
+Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous
+peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by
+controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by
+being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its
+old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of
+both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also
+within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
+sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the
+substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of
+the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never
+weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist
+unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
+them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for
+ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often
+useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as
+when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors,
+to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
+their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by
+the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that
+which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that
+no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to
+preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under
+conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed
+save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle
+Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in
+common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though
+it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a
+new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and
+represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a
+power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring,
+because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its
+contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great
+ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular
+life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
+sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is
+that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed
+the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights
+which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And
+as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays
+of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone
+with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
+
+[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
+
+The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly mediæval. Was it
+then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better
+than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a
+comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
+nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century
+every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a
+strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of
+those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable
+even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could
+scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether
+judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it
+existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had
+persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
+strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The
+thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and
+drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It
+has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for
+many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian
+was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
+that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek
+their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the
+palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had
+floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
+legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would
+have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus;
+but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the
+childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus was installed! It
+was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger
+lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death
+lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it
+had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans
+is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might
+muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient
+contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and mediæval.]
+
+[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
+
+The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic
+representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed
+of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle
+nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
+has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a
+certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or
+rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the
+name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the
+concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
+the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the
+maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of
+the influence of public opinion for the control of representative
+assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to
+characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before
+now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of
+aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that
+may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in
+the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and
+Antonine Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
+Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and
+government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Cæsars and
+the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
+upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley
+of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left
+them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none
+of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the
+strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the
+administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
+uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no
+one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the
+imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle
+Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
+the political character of the French people, whether it be the result
+of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the
+original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a
+claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the
+Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
+to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion,
+if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted
+with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is
+more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common
+idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states
+have been little more successful than their neighbours in the
+establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote,
+and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure
+without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable
+French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of
+government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a
+freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of
+politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like
+that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at
+Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or
+the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which
+the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours
+somewhat different from his.
+
+[Sidenote: Essential principles of the mediæval Empire.]
+
+There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval imperialism, a
+theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government,
+which has been described once already, and need not be described
+again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its
+properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
+existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact
+coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its
+workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was
+its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political
+organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the
+degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local
+authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But
+although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a
+despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and
+blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on
+municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for
+religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which
+constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who
+was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
+power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an
+unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it
+now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because
+he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
+him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a
+time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those
+ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when
+thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
+from the bonds of sense.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
+
+The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be
+more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether
+unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry
+crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
+deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she
+suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people
+forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of
+the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
+compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the
+race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth
+century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of
+intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled
+and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
+the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted
+Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty
+from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still,
+cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous
+as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
+greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians,
+and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so
+great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the
+decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife
+with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
+universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring
+countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his
+feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation
+from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation
+of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish,
+justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own
+liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least
+occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
+people were deprived of all political training, and have found the
+lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
+
+For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some
+compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the
+ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
+never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful
+in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power,
+submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments
+of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories
+of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul
+and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received
+a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
+and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had
+not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the
+German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman
+conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire
+flowed all the richness of their mediæval life and literature: it
+first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history
+has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent
+politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
+future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion.
+When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the
+harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival
+displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety
+which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed
+the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue
+of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed
+the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as
+gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn
+that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a
+capital.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
+
+The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a
+brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The
+spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten
+years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
+States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of
+being the legitimate representative of the mediæval Empire, and
+declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could
+Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
+North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they
+replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true
+daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less
+aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of
+priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national
+feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and
+anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and
+Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest.
+The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is
+possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the
+Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
+some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and
+Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian
+people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians
+themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the
+races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
+spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of
+pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her,
+they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it
+when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like
+her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were
+composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of
+peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task
+of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of
+another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned
+in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze
+of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediæval faith and
+simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and
+is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
+Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in
+some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more
+recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings
+have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
+ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the
+treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes
+wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military
+monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of
+modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the
+old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
+greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the
+throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from
+Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog
+and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not
+how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old
+Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any
+harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those
+of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems
+to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is
+wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of
+Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of
+modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediæval chivalry,
+the noblest creation of mediæval thought.
+
+[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European
+civilization.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
+
+We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state
+rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us,
+but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its
+peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its
+height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts
+and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only
+less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many
+ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and
+through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of
+modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally
+and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other
+monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same
+origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
+prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance
+in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where
+the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old
+system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in
+Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have
+grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch
+was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be
+binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a
+faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally
+disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could
+not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages
+Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered
+how great are the services which German writers have rendered and
+continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this
+result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider
+import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty
+principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the
+need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That
+code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the
+private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the
+system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the
+last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
+creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome
+had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of
+positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice,
+and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only,
+title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
+Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived
+unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the
+Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren
+were also his own.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and
+the Popes.]
+
+The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which
+describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the
+ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In
+the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of
+Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss
+of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The
+struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political
+rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
+the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the
+death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a
+victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat.
+The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
+nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which
+alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
+once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining
+fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
+had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not
+the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to
+do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually
+exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of
+a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find
+mediæval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves,
+expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two
+potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
+things eternal, Cæsar in things temporal. The relative position of the
+two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the
+days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and
+could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
+practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries
+later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas
+had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to
+its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance
+inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
+of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil
+administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration
+nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two
+following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
+power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
+Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the
+obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal
+responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not
+that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed
+to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the
+will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no
+means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual
+supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal
+salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
+also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind
+the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no
+way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever
+things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the
+world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most
+pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to
+extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the
+same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when
+the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
+when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from
+the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for
+supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes
+with every blast.
+
+[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
+
+Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less
+momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward
+dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the
+Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the
+formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the
+concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious
+state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire.
+Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the
+connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and
+the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it
+took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually
+rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
+it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness,
+and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier
+civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight
+upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that
+mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not
+the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman
+Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so
+by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a
+brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose
+sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
+
+[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
+
+As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic
+Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of
+which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of
+Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
+were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the
+emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary,
+Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism,
+menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded,
+after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in
+Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent
+principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few
+military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal
+kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
+physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the
+hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than
+necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to
+crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free
+towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere
+of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the
+necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the
+same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld
+from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
+absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual
+tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the
+proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the
+liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
+the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet,
+should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
+
+Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of
+Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of
+every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old
+forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the
+most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the
+Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has
+been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest
+province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so
+long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom
+Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the
+possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the
+Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since
+Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of
+the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has
+now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize,
+with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts
+confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all
+but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general
+reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may
+be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent
+intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the
+character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant
+prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common
+interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the
+history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
+studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible
+for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to
+repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one
+vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more
+and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great
+measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that
+the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler
+than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after
+summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his
+treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Cæsar found it
+the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless
+abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste,
+and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
+and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The
+blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet
+with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
+tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical
+night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
+in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher
+aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar had sprung
+up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national
+individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great
+founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second
+founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
+work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered,
+while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to
+replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them
+within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature
+of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its
+subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose
+watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national
+hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth.
+And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a
+centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
+of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to
+that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above
+law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it
+is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what
+has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how
+many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
+after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
+not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions
+of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire
+gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to
+those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its
+existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian
+theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
+perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and
+the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
+
+This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost
+inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its
+profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue
+we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of
+expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least
+possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
+institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose
+outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly
+changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the
+difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to
+explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as
+it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which
+we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a
+heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able
+to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts
+and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
+see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition,
+planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from
+entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political
+philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth,
+analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
+the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of
+tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the
+Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is
+impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but
+that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by
+men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations
+are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we
+should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar
+when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
+he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when
+they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding
+generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than
+we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is
+mediæval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and
+understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much
+as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things
+less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
+horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey
+onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it
+can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was
+gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the
+object of the expedition to Mexico.
+
+[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at
+Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal
+abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain,
+France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
+
+[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power
+claiming a more than spiritual authority.
+
+[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam cœlum. Non enim propter
+cœlum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam cœlum.' From the
+tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban
+VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
+
+[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
+
+[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days,
+but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
+
+[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
+_Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_.
+The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
+
+[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das
+Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
+
+[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the
+feudal law of land.
+
+[427] Mommsen, _Römische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE A.
+
+ON THE BURGUNDIES.
+
+It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its
+application at different times to different districts, has caused, and
+continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may,
+therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of
+those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of the subject, the
+following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most
+frequently to be met with:--
+
+I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded
+A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone,
+from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half
+of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
+
+II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundiæ_), mentioned
+occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality,
+confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of
+the older kingdom last named.
+
+III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinciæ seu
+Burgundiæ_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included
+Provence, Dauphiné, the southern part of Savoy, and the country
+between the Saone and the Jura.
+
+IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia
+Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same
+year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and
+all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
+
+V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundiæ_, _regnum
+Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D.
+937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in
+1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by
+bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II
+(the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the
+thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now
+(since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss
+portion of it.
+
+VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund),
+corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the
+Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_
+the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
+from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the
+thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648,
+though practically independent long before that date.
+
+VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comté),
+(Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the
+Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a
+fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it
+in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
+
+VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western
+Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It
+was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned
+after the thirteenth century.
+
+IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division
+of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the
+Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
+Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary,
+daughter of Charles the Bold.
+
+X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most
+northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a
+fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the
+Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles
+the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure
+history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in
+the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois
+historian, to the _Archiv für Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an
+admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled
+'The Franks and the Gauls.'
+
+
+NOTE B.
+
+ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE
+DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
+
+The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the
+Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great
+Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up
+with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the
+relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
+crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish
+kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has
+borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and
+interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
+Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as
+follows:--
+
+I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish
+Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their
+independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the
+Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and
+Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of
+Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time
+Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the
+treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for
+Holstein.
+
+II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as
+Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana
+(Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of
+Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great
+conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
+southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire,
+erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad
+II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his
+suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time
+the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since
+the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined,
+and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to
+sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
+
+III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at
+this day of the North German Bund.
+
+
+NOTE C.
+
+ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
+
+This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more
+than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use;
+for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time
+to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some
+clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of
+title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is
+very far from being a barren or a dull one.
+
+I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus
+serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
+Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam
+Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
+
+Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply
+'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was
+added[428].
+
+Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
+
+A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex
+Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it,
+simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have
+introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some
+authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
+
+Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor
+till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion
+which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the
+sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown,
+began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not,
+however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose
+proclamations it occurs constantly.
+
+From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice
+was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till
+his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator
+semper Augustus.'
+
+In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the
+Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call
+himself 'Imperator electus' (erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I
+(brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
+upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict
+legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in
+proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was
+however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was
+addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice
+he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
+
+Maximilian added the title 'Germaniæ rex,' which had never been known
+before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed
+once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum
+Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A
+great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time.
+Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in
+virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
+
+It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the
+same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It
+is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous
+than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is
+given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and
+Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by
+new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with
+Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of
+King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times
+there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with
+a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and
+associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His
+office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature
+elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or
+the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War
+could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people
+could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of
+God.
+
+II. THE CROWNS.
+
+Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were
+those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy,
+sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at
+Rome.
+
+The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the
+Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the
+Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
+would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick
+I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most
+Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who
+obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
+manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his
+capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
+
+It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was
+necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have
+been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For
+as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son
+of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany,
+so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not
+kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings
+of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save
+the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider
+rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently
+relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and
+absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself
+crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
+
+III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (RÖMISCHER KÖNIG).
+
+It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the
+German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was
+not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to
+be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the
+latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be
+remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not
+only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.)
+This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as
+Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and
+dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed
+against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as
+the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on
+the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor
+during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his
+successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and
+took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the
+Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of
+Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at
+once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after
+the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before
+Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be
+crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch
+generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near
+relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts
+to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's
+death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
+
+The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of
+an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
+
+It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of
+Rome.
+
+
+NOTE D.
+
+LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
+
+ Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
+ Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:
+ At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
+ Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
+ Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,
+ Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
+ Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;
+ Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
+ Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;
+ Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
+ Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,
+ Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
+ Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
+ Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
+ Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
+ Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
+
+Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of
+Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,
+_Patrologiæ Cursus Completus_[436].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase
+'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but
+not in official documents.
+
+[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire
+people had begun to fancy that 'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,' but
+'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
+
+[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the
+kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or
+Gallicized Franks (Francigenæ), which having been for some time
+'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum
+Franciæ,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
+
+[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as
+only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among
+even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the
+forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine
+documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance,
+are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be
+found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter, and in the host of writers to
+whom they refer.
+
+[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement
+in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three
+Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
+
+[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from
+the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
+Confederation.
+
+[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some
+time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So
+Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis
+himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to
+the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be
+adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine
+Empire.
+
+[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
+Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the
+example.
+
+[436] See note 326, p. 270.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+ A.
+
+ Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
+
+ ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive
+ his ashes, 286.
+
+ ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
+
+ ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
+
+ ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
+
+ AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
+
+ ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 19.
+
+ ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
+
+ ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
+
+ Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
+
+ ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
+
+ ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
+
+ ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170;
+ their meeting at Venice, 171.
+
+ ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of
+ England, 212, 229.
+
+ America, discovery of, 311.
+
+ ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
+
+ ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
+
+ Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages,
+ 114 note; in later times, 334.
+
+ Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the
+ civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of
+ an antique character in both, 296.
+
+ ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
+
+ Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
+
+ Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
+
+ ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death
+ at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
+
+ ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
+
+ ATHANARIC, 17.
+
+ ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
+
+ ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting
+ the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
+
+ Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
+
+ AUGUSTINE, 94.
+
+ Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
+
+ Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 381.
+
+ Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
+
+ Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience
+ to France, 219, 243.
+
+ AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
+
+
+ B.
+
+ Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely
+ composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15;
+ their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire
+ to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman
+ officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
+
+ BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
+
+ BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
+
+ 'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
+
+ Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
+
+ BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
+
+ Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
+
+ BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
+
+ Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
+
+ BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
+
+ BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
+
+ BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
+
+ Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112;
+ perversion of its meaning, 114.
+
+ Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king
+ of, an elector, 230.
+
+ BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109,
+ 247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
+
+ BOSO, 81, 395.
+
+ Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
+
+ Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil
+ Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and
+ devices in, 258.
+
+ Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by
+ invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by
+ modern restorers of churches, 292.
+
+ Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added
+ to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on
+ the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten
+ senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
+
+ Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to,
+ 9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor,
+ 189.
+
+
+ C.
+
+ Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
+
+ Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris
+ Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
+
+ CAPET (Hugh), 142.
+
+ Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
+
+ Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
+
+ CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
+
+ Carolingian Emperors, 76.
+
+ Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78;
+ Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
+
+ Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
+
+ Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
+
+ Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
+
+ Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
+
+ Cenci, name of, 289 note.
+
+ CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
+
+ CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom,
+ 41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the
+ people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of
+ Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and
+ Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at
+ Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52;
+ its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53,
+ 64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the
+ transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four
+ centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his
+ reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution
+ suggested by Döllinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61;
+ defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the
+ successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63;
+ has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his
+ authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to
+ declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual
+ despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance
+ attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a
+ Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and
+ State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the
+ Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king,
+ 69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a
+ Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal
+ habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of
+ the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire
+ Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the
+ Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73,
+ 74; impress of his mind on mediæval society, 74; buried at
+ Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a
+ saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
+
+ CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
+
+ CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
+
+ CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his
+ Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236;
+ his object through life, 236; the University of Prague
+ founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
+
+ CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the
+ Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his
+ repressive policy, 322.
+
+ CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
+
+ CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
+
+ CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples
+ and Milan, 315.
+
+ CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
+
+ CHARLES of Valois, 223.
+
+ CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
+
+ CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of
+ the Empire, 339.
+
+ CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
+
+ Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
+
+ Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10;
+ alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization
+ of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11;
+ the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea,
+ 13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond
+ that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives
+ men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92,
+ 370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity
+ of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes
+ the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328;
+ position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129;
+ effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the
+ Empire upon the history of, 384.
+
+ Churches, national, 95, 330.
+
+ Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern
+ restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
+
+ Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their
+ power, 223.
+
+ Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study
+ forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
+
+ CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
+
+ Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of
+ political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century,
+ 128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to
+ the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle
+ Age, 290.
+
+ CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
+
+ Coins, papal, 278 note.
+
+ COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the
+ family of, 281.
+
+ Commons, the, 132, 314.
+
+ Concordat of Worms, 163.
+
+ Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
+
+ CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
+
+ CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the
+ prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V,
+ 165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
+
+ CONRAD III, 165, 277.
+
+ CONRAD IV, 210.
+
+ CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
+
+ Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of,
+ signed by Frederick I, 178.
+
+ CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43,
+ 100, 288 note.
+
+ Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
+
+ Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by
+ the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in
+ which they were performed, 284, 288.
+
+ Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon
+ Law, 101.
+
+ Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
+
+ Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
+
+ CRESCENTIUS, 146.
+
+ Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not
+ legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how
+ treated by the Popes, 82.
+
+ Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
+
+ Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
+
+
+ D.
+
+ DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his
+ treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264
+ et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
+
+ Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
+
+ Decretals, the False, 156.
+
+ Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184;
+ its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648,
+ 340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings,
+ 353.
+
+ DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
+
+ Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
+
+ DÖLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
+
+ Dominicans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note,
+ 261 note.
+
+ Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
+
+
+ E.
+
+ East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
+
+ Eastern Church, the, 191.
+
+ Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25;
+ decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the
+ Popes, 46.
+
+ Edict of Caracalla, 6.
+
+ EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's
+ independence of the Empire, 187.
+
+ EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187;
+ his election against Charles IV, 223.
+
+ EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation,
+ 58, 60.
+
+ Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining
+ the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of
+ the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233;
+ recognition of the popular will, 234.
+
+ Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages
+ upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
+
+ Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
+
+ Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
+
+ Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
+
+ Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230
+ note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
+
+ Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the
+ head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22,
+ 120; correspondence between his position and functions and
+ those of the Pope, 104; proofs from mediæval documents,
+ 109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations
+ from mediæval art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of
+ his functions with those of German King, 127; his office
+ feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards,
+ 189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the
+ title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin
+ and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his
+ office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246;
+ his right of creating kings, 249; his international place
+ at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316;
+ his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of
+ the word now-a-days, 402.
+
+ Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403;
+ persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their
+ short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to
+ Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284;
+ hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their
+ burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue
+ between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
+
+ Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
+
+ Emperors, Franconian, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in
+ Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to
+ set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the
+ throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
+
+ Emperors, Italian, 80.
+
+ Emperors, Saxon, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
+
+ Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their
+ short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286;
+ names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles
+ against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
+
+ Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration
+ of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from
+ without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the
+ policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of,
+ 9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of,
+ composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians,
+ 16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its
+ influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of
+ religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief
+ in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of
+ by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52,
+ 111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles,
+ 77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied
+ in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
+
+ Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103;
+ a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it
+ differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84;
+ identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved
+ from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its
+ union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between
+ the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in
+ Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France,
+ 185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in
+ Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet
+ 'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of
+ epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost
+ to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due
+ to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its
+ relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial
+ distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+ centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and
+ mediator, 244; why an international power, 248;
+ illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251,
+ 254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never
+ carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263,
+ 304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its
+ lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of
+ Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its
+ character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312;
+ effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence
+ upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its
+ bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its
+ relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in
+ Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching
+ fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its
+ re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states,
+ 364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of
+ its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent,
+ 368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the
+ Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373;
+ never truly mediæval, 373; sense in which it was Roman,
+ 374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential
+ principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria
+ as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe,
+ 383; ways in which it affected the political institutions
+ of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern
+ jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384;
+ influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387;
+ principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389;
+ its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390;
+ difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
+
+ Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences,
+ 102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216;
+ parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name,
+ 372.
+
+ Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
+
+ ENGELBERT, 113 note.
+
+ England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it
+ must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions
+ towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
+
+ Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great,
+ 132.
+
+ EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
+
+ Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on
+ the nationalities of, 390.
+
+
+ F.
+
+ False Decretals, the, 156.
+
+ FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
+
+ FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives
+ the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
+
+ Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
+
+ Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society,
+ 124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results
+ in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles
+ of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
+
+ Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
+
+ FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
+
+ Fontenay, battle of, 77.
+
+ France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial
+ authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's
+ precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325;
+ territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism
+ in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 376.
+
+ Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
+
+ FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
+
+ FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial
+ crown by, 1, 363.
+
+ Franciscans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Franconian Emperors, 133.
+
+ 'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
+
+ Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35;
+ Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due
+ to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
+
+ Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
+
+ Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note,
+ 404.
+
+ FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179;
+ his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope
+ Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way
+ to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III,
+ 170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions
+ of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy,
+ 174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175;
+ his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his
+ temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178;
+ his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and
+ happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his
+ jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his
+ letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
+
+ FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle
+ with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge
+ of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome,
+ 287.
+
+ FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220;
+ Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his
+ calamitous reign, 301.
+
+ FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by
+ Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
+
+ Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic
+ Emperors against, 388.
+
+
+ G.
+
+ Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
+
+ GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
+
+ 'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
+
+ Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the
+ theory of the Empire as an international power, 307;
+ attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed
+ to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
+
+ Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77;
+ chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79;
+ establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79;
+ desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86;
+ position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire
+ with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the
+ two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of,
+ generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth
+ century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope
+ against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court,
+ 169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179;
+ growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in,
+ 211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of
+ regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228;
+ kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately
+ became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228;
+ its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302;
+ its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal
+ weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with
+ that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the
+ Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its
+ nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its
+ troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the
+ peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty
+ independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its
+ political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign
+ thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression
+ upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular
+ feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354;
+ Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note;
+ influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
+
+ GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
+
+ Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
+
+ GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
+
+ Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28;
+ Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
+
+ Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth
+ centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman
+ Empire, 368.
+
+ Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire,
+ 210.
+
+ GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31;
+ means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority,
+ 154.
+
+ GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with
+ the Byzantine princes, 102.
+
+ GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour
+ against the Lombards, 39.
+
+ GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
+
+ GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures
+ to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his
+ letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second
+ excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle
+ between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the
+ rights of the Pope with respect to the election of
+ Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the
+ Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom,
+ 373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
+
+ GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives
+ the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
+
+ GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
+
+ GROTIUS, 384.
+
+ Guelf, the name of, 304.
+
+ GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
+
+ GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
+
+ GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
+
+ GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
+
+ GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
+
+
+ H.
+
+ HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the
+ Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to
+ Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
+
+ HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285;
+ his pretensions, 197.
+
+ HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis,
+ 30 note.
+
+ Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
+
+ Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
+
+ HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
+
+ HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
+
+ HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
+
+ HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector
+ of the German Liberties,' 325.
+
+ HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards
+ Frederick I, 186.
+
+ HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151;
+ his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his
+ encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
+
+ HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and
+ Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the
+ struggle, 162; his death, 162.
+
+ HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his
+ quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position,
+ 163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and
+ that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced
+ by his coronation, 285.
+
+ HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor
+ Sigismund, 187.
+
+ HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to
+ the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his
+ untimely death, 206.
+
+ HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
+
+ HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
+
+ Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
+
+ HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
+
+ HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past
+ and present of Rome, 406.
+
+ HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
+
+ HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
+
+ Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
+
+ Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
+
+ Holland, declared independent, 342.
+
+ Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ HUGH CAPET, 42.
+
+ HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
+
+ Hungarians, the, 143.
+
+ Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its
+ connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
+
+ HUSS, the writings of, 241.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
+
+ 'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
+
+ Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediæval, 375.
+
+ Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
+
+ INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV,
+ 206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick
+ II, 208.
+
+ INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227
+ note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
+
+ International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman
+ Empire an, 248.
+
+ Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during,
+ 213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power,
+ 221.
+
+ Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
+
+ IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
+
+ Irminsûl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning
+ of term, 69 note.
+
+ Italian Emperors, 80.
+
+ Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments
+ appeared, 140.
+
+ Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
+
+ Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to
+ establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by
+ Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of,
+ previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first
+ expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's
+ rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150;
+ Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire,
+ 211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation
+ at the present day, 389.
+
+ Italy, Southern, 150.
+
+
+ J.
+
+ JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
+
+ JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against
+ him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the
+ charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him,
+ 136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto,
+ 137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return
+ and death, 138.
+
+ JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
+
+ JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
+
+ JULIUS CÆSAR, 390, 392.
+
+ JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
+
+ Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31;
+ aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence
+ of the Empire on modern, 383.
+
+ Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
+
+ JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the
+ legislation of, 240, 256.
+
+ 'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory
+ IX, 102.
+
+ Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
+
+
+ K.
+
+ Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
+
+ Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
+
+
+ L.
+
+ LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire,
+ 21.
+
+ LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
+
+ Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the
+ Pope, 219.
+
+ Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
+
+ Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 53.
+
+ Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the
+ revived study of, 276.
+
+ Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
+
+ LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the
+ worship of images, 38.
+
+ LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44;
+ crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49;
+ charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the
+ act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
+
+ LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
+
+ Leonine city, the, 286 note.
+
+ LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
+
+ LEOPOLD II, 352.
+
+ LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
+
+ LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
+
+ LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
+
+ LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
+
+ LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and
+ Milan, 315.
+
+ LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
+
+ LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
+
+ LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
+
+ Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations
+ against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the
+ princess Theophano, 141.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the
+ exarchate, 38.
+
+ Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
+
+ Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion
+ to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks
+ against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by
+ Charlemagne, 41.
+
+ LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
+
+ LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
+
+ LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
+
+ Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
+
+ Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
+
+ LUTHER, 319.
+
+
+ M.
+
+ Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
+
+ Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
+
+ Mario (Monte), 283.
+
+ MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events
+ of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316,
+ 405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
+
+ Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ Mediæval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
+
+ Mediæval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
+
+ MICHAEL, 61.
+
+ MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
+
+ Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology
+ of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State
+ during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114;
+ art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133,
+ 261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms
+ and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or
+ progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of
+ the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the
+ clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by
+ the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for
+ unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity
+ of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the
+ political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of
+ saints during, 387.
+
+ Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the
+ rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287;
+ pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on,
+ 315.
+
+ Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
+
+ Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 54, 84.
+
+ MOMMSEN, 390.
+
+ Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
+
+ Monarchy, elective, 232.
+
+ Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ MÜLLER, Johannes von, 354.
+
+ Münster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+
+ N.
+
+ Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of
+ Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
+
+ NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74;
+ extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West,
+ 357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne,
+ 358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in
+ Germany, 361.
+
+ Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations
+ of the Empire to the, 390.
+
+ Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against,
+ 388.
+
+ Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
+
+ Nicæa, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
+
+ NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
+
+ NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
+
+ NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope,
+ 158.
+
+ NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
+
+ Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of
+ the, 228.
+
+ Nürnberg, 259.
+
+
+ O.
+
+ OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
+
+ ODO, 81.
+
+ ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25;
+ his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title
+ of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
+
+ OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra
+ Donatistas_, 13 note.
+
+ Orsini, the family of, 281.
+
+ Osnabrück, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+ Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
+
+ OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first
+ expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to,
+ 84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of
+ Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to
+ sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire
+ under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the
+ Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the
+ imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128;
+ changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130;
+ the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which
+ befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and
+ manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136;
+ deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his
+ suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of
+ John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans
+ of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium,
+ 141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano,
+ 141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern
+ and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144;
+ comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial
+ results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
+
+ OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
+
+ OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense
+ religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason
+ for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early
+ death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in
+ which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with
+ Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people,
+ 285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
+
+ OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206;
+ overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal
+ of, 266 note.
+
+
+ P.
+
+ PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity
+ to Clovis, 30 note.
+
+ PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
+
+ Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
+
+ Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad
+ relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204;
+ growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire,
+ 153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon,
+ 359.
+
+ Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its
+ consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their
+ relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as
+ perpetuation of a name, 372.
+
+ Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
+
+ Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
+
+ PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
+
+ Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when
+ it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
+
+ PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of
+ the Empire, 224.
+
+ Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
+
+ Persecution, Protestant, 330.
+
+ Peter's (St.), old, 48.
+
+ PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the
+ city of Rome, 270.
+
+ PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
+
+ PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick
+ and, 206; his assassination, 206.
+
+ Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
+
+ PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice
+ rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of
+ Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date
+ at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
+
+ PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
+
+ Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
+
+ Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
+
+ Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
+
+ Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the
+ Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons
+ for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46;
+ their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57;
+ their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their
+ theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their
+ position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions,
+ 108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the
+ Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as
+ international judges, 243; reaction against their
+ pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of
+ ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans,
+ 284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors
+ and, 385.
+
+ PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
+
+ Prætaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
+
+ Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
+
+ Prague, University of, 237.
+
+ Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad
+ II and death of Henry V, 165.
+
+ Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
+
+ Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
+
+ Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation,
+ 330.
+
+ Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
+
+ Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the,
+ 313.
+
+
+ R.
+
+ RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the
+ separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
+
+ Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
+
+ Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude
+ towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire,
+ 319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the
+ doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent
+ effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence
+ on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the
+ Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name
+ and associations of the Empire, 332.
+
+ Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars
+ of, 330.
+
+ Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
+
+ 'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal
+ bearing legend of, 103.
+
+ Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation
+ of the, 362.
+
+ RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor
+ Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
+
+ RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with
+ Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
+
+ RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
+
+ RICIMER (patrician), 25.
+
+ RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting,
+ 255; his character and career, 278.
+
+ Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII,
+ 137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their
+ revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the
+ title of King of the, 404.
+
+ Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
+
+ Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7;
+ prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire,
+ 9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32;
+ claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown,
+ 57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83;
+ profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold
+ of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle
+ Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller
+ in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities
+ of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth
+ to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and
+ tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in,
+ 276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277;
+ causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in,
+ 280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her
+ nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to,
+ 282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the
+ Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II,
+ 287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of mediæval
+ monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289;
+ ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290;
+ tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner,
+ 290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291;
+ her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and
+ Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy
+ between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical
+ constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297;
+ feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of
+ the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's
+ lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
+
+ ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding,
+ 25.
+
+ RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
+
+ RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress
+ under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast
+ of, 231 note, 262.
+
+ RUDOLF II, 335.
+
+ RUDOLF III, 151.
+
+ RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
+
+ RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath
+ Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
+
+ Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
+
+
+ S.
+
+ Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
+
+ SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
+
+ Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
+
+ Saxon Emperors, 133.
+
+ Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the
+ Empire, 398.
+
+ Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
+
+ SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5,
+ 6.
+
+ SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
+
+ Seven Years' War, 352.
+
+ Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation,
+ 34.
+
+ Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
+
+ SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the
+ Council of Constance, 253, 301.
+
+ Simony, measures taken against, 158.
+
+ Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
+
+ Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
+
+ Southern Italy, 150.
+
+ Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany,
+ 303.
+
+ Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
+
+ STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
+
+ Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of,
+ 223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of,
+ respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
+
+ Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
+
+ Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of
+ Westphalia, 341.
+
+ Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
+
+ SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
+
+
+ T.
+
+ Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
+
+ TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21
+ note, 23 note.
+
+ TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
+
+ Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a
+ national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his
+ usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his
+ reign, 29.
+
+ THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose,
+ 12.
+
+ THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
+
+ Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336;
+ its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
+
+ THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of
+ Emperors, 227.
+
+ Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
+
+ Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
+
+ Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
+
+ Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
+
+ 'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
+
+ Transubstantiation, 326 note.
+
+ Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire,
+ 368.
+
+ TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
+
+
+ U.
+
+ University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
+
+ Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
+
+ URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king,
+ 229.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards,
+ 188; maintains her independence, 188.
+
+ Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
+
+ VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
+
+ Vienna, Congress of, 364.
+
+ VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304;
+ his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
+
+ Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by
+ the, 30.
+
+
+ W.
+
+ WALLENSTEIN, 335.
+
+ WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
+
+ Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France,
+ 341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history,
+ 342.
+
+ WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
+
+ WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
+
+ WIPPO, 227 note.
+
+ WITUKIND, 85 note.
+
+ WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
+
+ World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics
+ upon the theory, 97.
+
+ World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the
+ World-Empire, 92.
+
+ Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Holy Roman Empire
+
+Author: James Bryce
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2013 [EBook #44101]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Rowland, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+ Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+ been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+ Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+ BY
+ JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.
+
+ _FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
+ and
+ PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_
+
+
+ THIRD EDITION REVISED
+
+
+ London
+ MACMILLAN AND CO.
+ 1871
+
+
+
+
+ OXFORD:
+ By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,
+ PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
+
+
+The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history
+of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic Empire--Italy during
+the middle ages, Germany from the ninth century to the nineteenth--as
+to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the
+wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have
+almost wholly passed away from the world. Such a description, however,
+would not be intelligible without some account of the great events
+which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has
+therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a
+narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of
+what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the
+political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
+of medival Italy. To make the succession of events clearer, a
+Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has been prefixed[1].
+
+The present edition has been carefully revised and corrected
+throughout; and a good many additions have been made to both text and
+notes.
+
+ LINCOLN'S INN,
+ August 11, 1870.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete
+and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve
+as a sort of skeleton history of medival Germany and Italy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ Introductory.
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+ The Roman Empire before the Invasion of the Barbarians.
+
+ The Empire in the Second Century 5
+ Obliteration of National distinctions 6
+ Rise of Christianity 10
+ Its Alliance with the State 10
+ Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality 13
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+ The Barbarian Invasions.
+
+ Relations between the Primitive Germans and the Romans 15
+ Their Feelings towards Rome and her Empire 16
+ Belief in its Eternity 20
+ Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire 26
+ Theodoric the Ostrogothic King 27
+ Gradual Dissolution of the Empire 30
+ Permanence of the Roman Religion and the Roman Law 31
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ Restoration of the Empire in the West.
+
+ The Franks 34
+ Italy under Greeks and Lombards 37
+ The Iconoclastic Schism 38
+ Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings 39
+ The Frankish Conquest of Italy 41
+ Adventures and Plans of Pope Leo III 43
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 48
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+ Empire and Policy of Charles.
+
+ Import of the Coronation at Rome 52
+ Accounts given in the Annals of the time 53
+ Question as to the Intentions of Charles 58
+ Legal Effect of the Coronation 62
+ Position of Charles towards the Church 64
+ Towards his German Subjects 67
+ Towards the other Races of Europe 70
+ General View of his Character and Policy 72
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ Carolingian and Italian Emperors.
+
+ Reign of Lewis I 76
+ Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire 78
+ Beginnings of the German Kingdom 79
+ Italian Emperors 80
+ Otto the Saxon King 84
+ Coronation of Otto at Rome 87
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ Theory of the Medival Empire.
+
+ The World Monarchy and the World Religion 91
+ Unity of the Christian Church 94
+ Influence of the Doctrine of Realism 97
+ The Popes as heirs to the Roman Monarchy 99
+ Character of the revived Roman Empire 102
+ Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor 104
+ Proofs and Illustrations 109
+ Interpretations of Prophecy 112
+ Two remarkable Pictures 116
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom.
+
+ The German or East Frankish Monarchy 122
+ Feudality in Germany 123
+ Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
+ the Character of the Empire 127
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ Saxon and Franconian Emperors.
+
+ Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome 134
+ Trial and Deposition of Pope John XII 135
+ Position of Otto in Italy 139
+ His European Policy 140
+ Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian 144
+ Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III 146
+ The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II 150
+ The Emperor Henry III 151
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+ Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.
+
+ Origin and Progress of Papal Power 153
+ Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors 155
+ Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII 159
+ Gregory's Ideas 160
+ Concordat of Worms 163
+ General Results of the Contest 164
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+ Frederick and the Papacy 167
+ Revival of the Study of the Roman Law 172
+ Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans 174
+ Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities 175
+ His Policy as German King 178
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ Imperial Titles and Pretensions.
+
+ Territorial Limits of the Empire--Its Claims of Jurisdiction
+ over other Countries 182
+ Hungary 183
+ Poland 184
+ Denmark 184
+ France 185
+ Sweden 185
+ Spain 185
+ England 186
+ Scotland 187
+ Naples and Sicily 188
+ Venice 188
+ The East 189
+ Rivalry of the Teutonic and Byzantine Emperors 191
+ The Four Crowns 193
+ Origin and Meaning of the title 'Holy Empire' 199
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ Fall of the Hohenstaufen.
+
+ Reign of Henry VI 205
+ Contest of Philip and Otto IV 206
+ Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II 207
+ Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy 211
+ The Great Interregnum 212
+ Rudolf of Hapsburg 213
+ Change in the Character of the Empire 214
+ Haughty Demeanour of the Popes 217
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ The Germanic Constitution--the Seven Electors.
+
+ Germany in the Fourteenth Century 222
+ Reign of the Emperor Charles IV 225
+ Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
+ Electoral Body 225
+ The Golden Bull 230
+ Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany 233
+ Results of Charles IV's Policy 236
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ The Empire as an International Power.
+
+ Revival of Learning 240
+ Beginnings of Political Thought 241
+ Desire for an International Power 242
+ Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe 244
+ Illustrations 249
+ Relations of the Empire and the New Learning 251
+ The Men of Letters--Petrarch, Dante 254
+ The Jurists 256
+ Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages: its Causes 258
+ The Emperor Henry VII in Italy 262
+ The _De Monarchia_ of Dante 264
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ The City of Rome in the Middle Ages.
+
+ Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars 273
+ Her Condition in the Dark Ages 274
+ Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century 276
+ Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi 278
+ Social State of Medival Rome 280
+ Visits of the Teutonic Emperors 282
+ Revolts against them 284
+ Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome 286
+ Want of Medival, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
+ Modern Rome 289
+ Causes of this; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens 291
+ Modern Restorations 292
+ Surviving Features of truly Medival Architecture--the
+ Bell-towers 294
+ The Roman Church and the Roman City 296
+ Rome since the Revolution 299
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire.
+
+ Weakness of Germany 302
+ Loss of Imperial Territories 303
+ Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution 307
+ Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs 310
+ The Discovery of America 311
+ The Renaissance and its Effects on the Empire 311
+ Projects of Constitutional Reform 313
+ Changes of Title 316
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ The Reformation and its Effects upon the Empire.
+
+ Accession of Charles V 319
+ His Attitude towards the Reformation 321
+ Issue of his Attempts at Coercion 322
+ Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement 325
+ Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church 327
+ How far it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty 329
+ Its Effect upon the Medival Theory of the Empire 332
+ Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe 333
+ Dissensions in Germany 334
+ The Thirty Years' War 335
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline
+ of the Empire.
+
+ Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia 337
+ Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book 339
+ Changes in the Germanic Constitution 340
+ Narrowed Bounds of the Empire 341
+ Condition of Germany after the Peace 342
+ The Balance of Power 345
+ The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy 348
+ The Emperor Charles VII 351
+ The Empire in its last Phase 352
+ Feelings of the German People 354
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ Fall of the Empire.
+
+ The Emperor Francis II 356
+ Napoleon as the Representative of the Carolingians 357
+ The French Empire 360
+ Napoleon's German Policy 361
+ The Confederation of the Rhine 362
+ End of the Empire 363
+ The German Confederation 364
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ Conclusion: General Summary.
+
+ Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome 366
+ Parallel instances: Claims now made to represent the Roman
+ Empire 367
+ Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy 369
+ In how far was the Empire really Roman 374
+ Imperialism: Ancient and Modern 375
+ Essential Principles of the Medival Empire 377
+ Influence of the Imperial System in Germany 378
+ The Claim of Modern Austria to represent the Medival Empire 381
+ Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe 383
+ Upon Modern Jurisprudence 383
+ Upon the Development of the Ecclesiastical Power 384
+ Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles 388
+ Its Relations, Past and Present, to the Nationalities
+ of Europe 390
+ Conclusion: Difficulties caused by the Nature of the
+ Subject 392
+
+
+ APPENDIX.
+
+ NOTE A.
+ On the Burgundies 395
+
+ NOTE B.
+ On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark
+ and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 398
+
+ NOTE C.
+ On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies 400
+
+ NOTE D.
+ Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome 406
+
+
+ INDEX 407
+
+
+
+
+ DATES OF
+ SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS
+ IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+ B.C.
+
+ Battle of Pharsalia 48
+
+ A.D.
+
+ Council of Nica 325
+
+ End of the separate Western Empire 476
+
+ Revolt of the Italians from the Iconoclastic Emperors 728
+
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 800
+
+ End of the Carolingian Empire 888
+
+ Coronation of Otto the Great 962
+
+ Final Union of Italy to the Empire 1014
+
+ Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII 1076
+
+ The First Crusade 1096
+
+ Battle of Legnano 1176
+
+ Death of Frederick II 1250
+
+ League of the three Forest Cantons of Switzerland 1308
+
+ Career of Rienzi 1347-1354
+
+ The Golden Bull 1356
+
+ Council of Constance 1415
+
+ Extinction of the Eastern Empire 1453
+
+ Discovery of America 1492
+
+ Luther at the Diet of Worms 1521
+
+ Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618
+
+ Peace of Westphalia 1648
+
+ Prussia recognized as a Kingdom 1701
+
+ End of the House of Hapsburg 1742
+
+ Seven Years' War 1756-1763
+
+ Peace of Luneville 1801
+
+ Formation of the German Confederation 1815
+
+ Establishment of the North German Confederation 1866
+
+
+
+
+ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
+ OF
+ EMPERORS AND POPES.
+
+
+ A. D. B. C.
+ Augustus. 27
+ A. D.
+ Tiberius. 14
+ Caligula. 37
+ Claudius. 41
+ 42 St. Peter, (according
+ to Jerome).
+ Nero. 54
+ 67 Linus, (according to
+ Jerome, Irenus,
+ Eusebius).
+ 68 Clement, (according Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
+ to Tertullian and Vespasian. 68
+ Rufinus).
+ 78 Anacletus (?).
+ Titus. 79
+ Domitian. 81
+ 91 Clement, (according
+ to later writers).
+ Nerva. 96
+ Trajan. 98
+ 100 Evaristus (?).
+ 109 Alexander (?).
+ Hadrian. 117
+ 119 Sixtus I.
+ 129 Telesphorus.
+ Antoninus Pius. 138
+ 139 Hyginus.
+ 143 Pius I.
+ 157 Anicetus.
+ Marcus Aurelius. 161
+ 168 Soter.
+ 177 Eleutherius.
+ Commodus. 180
+ Pertinax. 190
+ Didius Julianus. 191
+ Niger. 192
+ 193 Victor (?). Septimius Severus. 193
+ 202 Zephyrinus (?).
+ Caracalla, Geta,
+ Diadumenian. 211
+ Opilius Macrinus. 217
+ Elagabalus. 218
+ 219 Calixtus I.
+ Alexander Severus. 222
+ 223 Urban I.
+ 230 Pontianus.
+ 235 Anterius or Anteros. Maximin. 235
+ 236 Fabianus.
+ The two Gordians, Maximus
+ Pupienus, Balbinus. 237
+ Gordian the Younger. 238
+ Philip. 244
+ Decius. 249
+ 251 Cornelius. Gallus. 251
+ 252 Lucius I. Volusian. 252
+ 253 Stephen I. milian, Valerian,
+ Gallienus. 253
+ 257 Sixtus II.
+ 259 Dionysius.
+ Claudius II. 268
+ 269 Felix.
+ Aurelian. 270
+ 275 Eutychianus. Tacitus. 275
+ Probus. 276
+ Carus. 282
+ 283 Caius.
+ Carinus, Numerian,
+ Diocletian. 284
+ Maximian, joint Emperor
+ with Diocletian. 286
+ 296 Marcellinus. [305(?)
+ 304 Vacancy. Constantius, Galerius. 304(?)
+ Licinius. or 307]
+ 308 Marcellus I. Maximin. 308
+ Constantine, Galerius,
+ Licinius, Maximin,
+ Maxentius, and Maximian
+ reigning jointly. 309
+ 310 Eusebius.
+ 311 Melchiades.
+ 314 Sylvester I.
+ Constantine (the Great)
+ alone. 323
+ 336 Marcus I.
+ 337 Julius I. Constantine II,
+ Constantius II,
+ Constans. 337
+ Magnentius. 350
+ 352 Liberius.
+ Constantius alone. 353
+ 356 Felix (Anti-pope).
+ Julian. 361
+ Jovian. 363
+ Valens and Valentinian I. 364
+ 366 Damasus I.
+ Gratian and Valentinian I. 367
+ Valentinian II and
+ Gratian. 375
+ Theodosius. 379
+ 384 Siricius.
+ Arcadius (in the East),
+ Honorius (in the West). 395
+ 398 Anastasius I.
+ 402 Innocent I.
+ Theodosius II. (E) 408
+ 417 Zosimus.
+ 418 Boniface I.
+ 418 Eulalius (Anti-pope).
+ 422 Celestine I.
+ Valentinian III. (W) 424
+ 432 Sixtus III.
+ 440 Leo I (the Great).
+ Marcian. (E) 450
+ Maximus, Avitus. (W) 455
+ Majorian. (W) 455
+ Leo I. (E) 457
+ 461 Hilarius. Severus. (W) 461
+ Vacancy. (W) 465
+ Anthemius. (W) 467
+ 468 Simplicius.
+ Olybrius. (W) 472
+ Glycerius. (W) 473
+ Julius Nepos. (W) 474
+ Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus
+ (all E.) 474
+ Romulus Augustulus. (W) 475
+ (End of the Western Line
+ in Romulus Augustus. 476)
+ (Henceforth, till A.D. 800,
+ Emperors reigning at
+ 483 Felix III[2]. Constantinople).
+ Anastasius I. 491
+ 492 Gelasius I.
+ 496 Anastasius II.
+ 498 Symmachus.
+ 498 Laurentius (Anti-pope).
+ 514 Hormisdas.
+ Justin I. 518
+ 523 John I.
+ 526 Felix IV.
+ Justinian. 527
+ 530 Boniface II.
+ 530 Dioscorus (Anti-pope).
+ 532 John II.
+ 535 Agapetus I.
+ 536 Silverius.
+ 537 Vigilius.
+ 555 Pelagius I.
+ 560 John III.
+ Justin II. 565
+ 574 Benedict I.
+ 578 Pelagius II. Tiberius II. 578
+ Maurice. 582
+ 590 Gregory I (the Great).
+ Phocas. 602
+ 604 Sabinianus.
+ 607 Boniface III.
+ 607 Boniface IV.
+ Heraclius. 610
+ 615 Deus dedit.
+ 618 Boniface V.
+ 625 Honorius I.
+ 638 Severinus.
+ 640 John IV.
+ Constantine III,
+ Heracleonas,
+ Constans II. 641
+ 642 Theodorus I.
+ 649 Martin I.
+ 654 Eugenius I.
+ 657 Vitalianus.
+ Constantine IV (Pogonatus). 668
+ 672 Adeodatus.
+ 676 Domnus or Donus I.
+ 678 Agatho.
+ 682 Leo II.
+ 683(?) Benedict II.
+ 685 John V. Justinian II. 685
+ 685(?) Conon.
+ 687 Sergius I.
+ 687 Paschal (Anti-pope).
+ 687 Theodorus (Anti-pope).
+ Leontius. 694
+ Tiberius. 697
+ 701 John VI.
+ 705 John VII. Justinian II restored. 705
+ 708 Sisinnius.
+ 708 Constantine.
+ Philippicus Bardanes. 711
+ Anastasius II. 713
+ 715 Gregory II.
+ Theodosius III. 716
+ Leo III (the Isaurian). 718
+ 731 Gregory III.
+ 741 Zacharias. Constantine V
+ (Copronymus). 741
+ 752 Stephen (II).
+ 752 Stephen II (or III).
+ 757 Paul I.
+ 767 Constantine (Anti-pope).
+ 768 Stephen III (IV).
+ 772 Hadrian I.
+ Leo IV. 775
+ Constantine VI. 780
+ 795 Leo III.
+ Deposition of Constantine
+ VI by Irene. 797
+ Charles I (the Great). 800
+ (Following henceforth the
+ new Western line).
+ Lewis I (the Pious). 814
+ 816 Stephen IV.
+ 817 Paschal I.
+ 824 Eugenius II.
+ 827 Valentinus.
+ 827 Gregory IV.
+ Lothar I. 840
+ 844 Sergius II.
+ 847 Leo IV.
+ 855 Benedict III. Lewis II. 855
+ 855 Anastasius (Anti-pope).
+ 858 Nicholas I.
+ 867 Hadrian II.
+ 872 John VIII.
+ Charles II (the Bald). 875
+ Charles III (the Fat). 881
+ 882 Martin II.
+ 884 Hadrian III.
+ 885 Stephen V.
+ 891 Formosus. Guido. 891
+ Lambert. 894
+ 896 Boniface VI. Arnulf. 896
+ 896 Stephen VI.
+ 897 Romanus.
+ 897 Theodore II.
+ 898 John IX.
+ Lewis (the Child).[+] 899
+ 900 Benedict IV.
+ Lewis III (of Provence). 901
+ 903 Leo V.
+ 903 Christopher.
+ 904 Sergius III.
+ 911 Anastasius III.
+ Conrad I.[+] 912(?)
+ 913 Lando.
+ 914 John X.
+ Berengar. 915
+ Henry I (the Fowler).[+] 918
+ 928 Leo VI.
+ 929 Stephen VII.
+ 931 John XI.
+ 936 Leo VII. Otto I (the Great).[+] 936
+ 939 Stephen VIII.
+ 941 Martin III.
+ 946 Agapetus II.
+ 955 John XII.
+ Otto I, crowned at Rome. 962
+ 963 Leo VIII.
+ 964 Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).
+ 965 John XIII.
+ 972 Benedict VI.
+ Otto II. 973
+ 974 Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).
+ 974 Domnus II (?).
+ 974 Benedict VII.
+ 983 John XIV. Otto III 983
+ 985 John XV.
+ 996 Gregory V.
+ 996 John XVI (Anti-pope).
+ 999 Sylvester II.
+ Henry II (the Saint). 1002
+ 1003 John XVII.
+ 1003 John XVIII.
+ 1009 Sergius IV.
+ 1012 Benedict VIII.
+ 1024 John XIX. Conrad II (the Salic). 1024
+ 1033 Benedict IX.
+ Henry III. 1039
+ 1044 Sylvester (Anti-pope).
+ 1045( Gregory VI.
+ 1046 Clement II.
+ 1048 Damasus II.
+ 1048 Leo IX.
+ 1054 Victor II.
+ Henry IV. 1056
+ 1057 Stephen IX.
+ 1058 Benedict X.
+ 1059 Nicholas II.
+ 1061 Alexander II.
+ 1073 Gregory VII (Hildebrand).
+ 1080 (Clement, Anti-pope).
+ 1086 Victor III.
+ 1087 Urban II.
+ 1099 Paschal II.
+ Henry V. 1106
+ 1118 Gelasius II.
+ 1118 Gregory, (Anti-pope).
+ 1119 Calixtus II.
+ 1121 (Celestine, Anti-pope).
+ 1124 Honorius II.
+ Lothar II (the Saxon). 1125
+ 1130 Innocent II.
+ (Anacletus, Anti-pope).
+ 1138 Victor (Anti-pope). [*]Conrad III. 1138
+ 1143 Celestine II.
+ 1144 Lucius II.
+ 1145 Eugenius III.
+ Frederick I (Barbarossa). 1152
+ 1153 Anastasius IV.
+ 1154 Hadrian IV.
+ 1159 Alexander III.
+ 1159 (Victor, Anti-pope).
+ 1164 (Paschal, Anti-pope).
+ 1168 (Calixtus, Anti-pope).
+ 1181 Lucius III.
+ 1185 Urban III.
+ 1187 Gregory VIII.
+ 1187 Clement III.
+ Henry VI. 1190
+ 1191 Celestine III.
+ 1198 Innocent III. [*]Philip, Otto IV
+ (rivals). 1198
+ Otto IV. 1208
+ Frederick II. 1212
+ 1216 Honorius III.
+ 1227 Gregory IX.
+ 1241 Celestine IV.
+ 1241 Vacancy.
+ 1243 Innocent IV.
+ [*]Conrad IV, [*]William,
+ (rivals). 1250
+ 1254 Alexander IV. Interregnum. 1254
+ [*]Richard (earl of
+ Cornwall).
+ [*]Alfonso (king of
+ Castile), (rivals). 1257
+ 1261 Urban IV.
+ 1265 Clement IV.
+ 1269 Vacancy.
+ 1271 Gregory X.
+ [*]Rudolf I (of Hapsburg). 1272
+ 1276 Innocent V.
+ 1276 Hadrian V.
+ 1277 John XX or XXI.
+ 1277 Nicholas I
+ 1281 Martin IV.
+ 1285 Honorius IV.
+ 1289 Nicholas IV.
+ 1292 Vacancy. [*]Adolf (of Nassau). 1292
+ 1294 Celestine V.
+ 1294 Boniface VIII.
+ [*]Albert I. 1298
+ 1303 Benedict XI.
+ 1305 Clement V.
+ Henry VII. 1308
+ 1314 Vacancy. Lewis IV. 1315
+ (Frederick of Austria,
+ rival).
+ 1316 John XXI or XXII.
+ 1334 Benedict XII.
+ 1342 Clement VI.
+ Charles IV. 1347
+ 1352 Innocent VI. (Gnther of Schwartzburg,
+ rival).
+ 1362 Urban V.
+ 1370 Gregory XI.
+ 1378 Urban VI,
+ Clement VII [*]Wenzel. 1378
+ (Anti-pope).
+ 1389 Boniface IX.
+ 1394 Benedict (Anti-pope).
+ [*]Rupert. 1400
+ 1404 Innocent VII.
+ 1406 Gregory XII.
+ 1409 Alexander V.
+ 1410 John XXII or Sigismund. 1410
+ XXIII. (Jobst of Moravia, rival).
+
+ 1417 Martin V.
+ 1431 Eugene IV.
+ [*]Albert II. 1438
+ 1439 Felix V (Anti-pope).
+ Frederick III. 1440
+ 1447 Nicholas V.
+ 1455 Calixtus IV.
+ 1458 Pius II.
+ 1464 Paul II.
+ 1471 Sixtus IV.
+ 1484 Innocent VIII.
+ 1493 Alexander VI. [*]Maximilian I. 1493
+ 1503 Pius III.
+ 1503 Julius II.
+ 1513 Leo X.
+ Charles V.[3] 1519
+ 1522 Hadrian VI.
+ 1523 Clement VII.
+ 1534 Paul III.
+ 1550 Julius III.
+ 1555 Marcellus II.
+ 1555 Paul IV.
+ [*]Ferdinand I. 1558
+ 1559 Pius IV.
+ [*]Maximilian II. 1564
+ 1566 Pius V.
+ 1572 Gregory XIII.
+ [*]Rudolf II. 1576
+ 1585 Sixtus V.
+ 1590 Urban VII.
+ 1590 Gregory XIV.
+ 1591 Innocent IX.
+ 1592 Clement VIII.
+ 1604 Leo XI.
+ 1604 Paul V.
+ [*]Matthias. 1612
+ [*]Ferdinand II. 1619
+ 1621 Gregory XV.
+ 1623 Urban VIII.
+ [*]Ferdinand III. 1637
+ 1644 Innocent X.
+ 1655 Alexander VII.
+ [*]Leopold I. 1658
+ 1667 Clement IX.
+ 1670 Clement X.
+ 1676 Innocent XI.
+ 1689 Alexander VIII.
+ 1691 Innocent XII.
+ 1700 Clement XI.
+ [*]Joseph I. 1705
+ [*]Charles VI. 1711
+ 1720 Innocent XIII.
+ 1724 Benedict XIII.
+ 1740 Benedict XIV.
+ [*]Charles VII. 1742
+ [*]Francis I. 1745
+ 1758 Clement XII.
+ [*]Joseph II. 1765
+ 1769 Clement XIII.
+ 1775 Pius VI.
+ [*]Leopold II. 1790
+ [*]Francis II. 1792
+ 1800 Pius VII.
+ Abdication of Francis II. 1806
+ 1823 Leo XII.
+ 1829 Pius VIII.
+ 1831 Gregory XVI.
+ 1846 Pius IX.
+
+[*] Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.
+[+] The names marked with a + are those of German kings who never made any
+claim to the imperial title.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Reckoning the Anti-pope Felix (A.D. 356) as Felix II.
+
+[3] Crowned Emperor, but at Bologna, not at Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the
+Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the
+imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest
+political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so.
+The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the
+Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius
+had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the
+cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through
+eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in
+extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all
+meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the
+old world to the new--nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts
+of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much
+of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into
+the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised
+centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an
+influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It
+is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than
+of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are
+designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and
+brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a
+subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail
+sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy
+with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still
+less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire,
+would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to
+the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth;
+while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt
+to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries
+the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be
+compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining
+so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though
+not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of
+principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as
+an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful
+system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the
+Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be
+briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who
+founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched
+upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on
+the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the
+fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew
+how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to
+revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of
+their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced
+the European commonwealth of nations.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 A.D., when a King of the
+Franks was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, that the
+beginning of the Holy Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there
+is nothing isolated, and just as to explain a modern Act of Parliament
+or a modern conveyance of lands we must go back to the feudal customs
+of the thirteenth century, so among the institutions of the Middle
+Ages there is scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced
+up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic antiquity. Such a mode
+of inquiry is most of all needful in the case of the Holy Empire,
+itself no more than a tradition, a fancied revival of departed
+glories. And thus, in order to make it clear out of what elements the
+imperial system was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the
+antiquities of the Christian Church; to survey the constitution of
+Rome in the days when Rome was no more than the first of the Latin
+cities; nay, to travel back yet further to that Jewish theocratic
+polity whose influence on the minds of the medival priesthood was
+necessarily so profound. Practically, however, it may suffice to begin
+by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in the third and
+fourth centuries of the Christian era. We shall then see the old
+Empire with its scheme of absolutism fully matured; we shall mark how
+the new religion, rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by
+embracing and transforming it; and we shall be in a position to
+understand what impression the whole huge fabric of secular and
+ecclesiastical government which Roman and Christian had piled up made
+upon the barbarian tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the
+ancient civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire in the second century.]
+
+[Sidenote: Obliteration of national distinctions.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Capital.]
+
+That ostentation of humility which the subtle policy of Augustus had
+conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was
+gradually dropped by their successors, till despotism became at last
+recognised in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an
+aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an army no longer recruited
+from Italy, the semblance of liberty that yet survived might be swept
+away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the
+provinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial administration had
+originally assumed there, soon reacted on its position in the capital.
+Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish
+senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time
+went on, even this veil was withdrawn; and in the age of Septimius
+Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the
+single centre and source of power and political action. The warlike
+character of the Roman state was preserved in his title of General;
+his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more
+terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his dependence on the
+army, at once the origin and support of all authority. But, as he
+united in himself every function of government, his sovereignty was
+civil as well as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted
+under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity.
+This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the
+necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than
+disaffection. Few troops were quartered through the country: few
+fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed
+Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the
+Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in the profound
+quiet of the Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had
+disappeared. No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that calm, for
+all national distinctions were becoming merged in the idea of a common
+Empire. The gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the
+_coloni_, the working of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the
+even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement of
+population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily
+assimilating the various peoples. Emperors who were for the most part
+natives of the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate
+Rome: it was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by
+whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit
+the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul,
+Spain, and Asia. The edict by which Caracalla extended to all natives
+of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship, though prompted by
+no motives of kindness, proved in the end a boon. Annihilating legal
+distinctions, it completed the work which trade and literature and
+toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left,
+so far as we can tell, only two nations still cherishing a national
+feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his religion: the Greek boasted his
+original intellectual superiority. Speculative philosophy lent her aid
+to this general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a
+universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between man and
+man seem insignificant: and by its teachers the idea of
+cosmopolitanism was for the first time proclaimed. Alexandrian
+Neo-Platonism, uniting the tenets of many schools, first bringing the
+mysticism of the East into connection with the logical philosophies of
+Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or controversy for the
+minds of all the world. Yet Rome's commanding position was scarcely
+shaken. Her actual power was indeed confined within narrow limits.
+Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign:
+more rarely still could they control his policy; neither law nor
+custom raised them above other subjects, or accorded to them any
+advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past
+Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress of
+others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had descended to
+the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its
+reward. From her came the laws and the language that had overspread
+the world: at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour:
+she was the head of the Empire and of civilization, and in riches,
+fame, and splendour far outshone as well the cities of that time as
+the fabled glories of Babylon or Persepolis.
+
+[Sidenote: Diocletian and Constantine.]
+
+Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought about this unity,
+when other influences began to threaten it. New foes assailed the
+frontiers; while the loosening of the structure within was shewn by
+the long struggles for power which followed the death or deposition of
+each successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of
+Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in every part of the
+Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no
+allegiance to the possessor of the capital.
+
+The founding of the kingdoms of modern Europe might have been
+anticipated by two hundred years, had the barbarians been bolder, or
+had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough
+to bind up the fragments before they had lost all cohesion, meeting
+altered conditions by new remedies. By dividing and localizing
+authority, he confessed that the weaker heart could no longer make its
+pulsations felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the
+supreme power among four persons, and then sought to give it a
+factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his
+earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became
+more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the
+interposition of a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was
+menaced by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness of
+Milan. Constantine trod in the same path, extending the system of
+titles and functionaries, separating the civil from the military,
+placing counts and dukes along the frontiers and in the cities, making
+the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more
+important, though to a Roman eye degraded by their attachment to the
+monarch's person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain
+of honour. These changes brought little good. Heavier taxation
+depressed the aristocracy[4]: population decreased, agriculture
+withered, serfdom spread: it was found more difficult to raise native
+troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal of the seat of
+power to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life of a part of the Empire,
+shook it as a whole, by making the separation of East and West
+inevitable. By it Rome's self-abnegation that she might Romanize the
+world, was completed; for though the new capital preserved her name,
+and followed her customs and precedents, yet now the imperial sway
+ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did
+the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its
+local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so to speak,
+naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external
+conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the Empire would
+be unaffected by the disasters of the city. And though, after the
+partition of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian, and finally
+settled on the death of Theodosius, the seat of the Western government
+was removed first to Milan and then to Ravenna, neither event
+destroyed Rome's prestige, nor the notion of a single imperial
+nationality common to all her subjects. The Syrian, the Pannonian, the
+Briton, the Spaniard, still called himself a Roman[5].
+
+[Sidenote: Christianity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its alliance with the State.]
+
+For that nationality was now beginning to be supported by a new and
+vigorous power. The Emperors had indeed opposed it as disloyal and
+revolutionary: had more than once put forth their whole strength to
+root it out. But the unity of the Empire, and the ease of
+communication through its parts, had favoured the spread of
+Christianity: persecution had scattered the seeds more widely, had
+forced on it a firm organization, had given it martyr-heroes and a
+history. When Constantine, partly perhaps from a genuine moral
+sympathy, yet doubtless far more in the well-grounded belief that he
+had more to gain from the zealous sympathy of its professors than he
+could lose by the aversion of those who still cultivated a languid
+paganism, took Christianity to be the religion of the Empire, it was
+already a great political force, able, and not more able than willing,
+to repay him by aid and submission. Yet the league was struck in no
+mere mercenary spirit, for the league was inevitable. Of the evils and
+dangers incident to the system then founded, there was as yet no
+experience: of that antagonism between Church and State which to a
+modern appears so natural, there was not even an idea. Among the Jews,
+the State had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion had
+been an integral part of the political constitution, a matter far more
+of national or tribal or family feeling than of personal[6]. Both in
+Israel and at Rome the mingling of religious with civic patriotism had
+been harmonious, giving strength and elasticity to the whole body
+politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible in the Roman
+Empire, for the new faith had already a governing body of her own in
+those rulers and teachers whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of
+sacerdotalism its necessary consequence, was making every day more
+powerful, and marking off more sharply from the mass of the Christian
+people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical organization could not be
+identical with the civil, it became its counterpart. Suddenly called
+from danger and ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her
+inexperience perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied, the
+Church was compelled to frame herself upon the model of the secular
+administration. Where her own machinery was defective, as in the case
+of doctrinal disputes affecting the whole Christian world, she sought
+the interposition of the sovereign; in all else she strove not to sink
+in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system. And just as with
+the extension of the Empire all the independent rights of districts,
+towns, or tribes had disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and
+diversity of individual Christians and local Churches, already
+circumscribed by the frequent struggles against heresy, was finally
+overborne by the idea of one visible catholic Church, uniform in faith
+and ritual; uniform too in her relation to the civil power and the
+increasingly oligarchical character of her government. Thus, under the
+combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, there shaped
+itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops, their
+jurisdiction, although still chiefly spiritual, enforced by the laws
+of the State, their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to
+the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no patriarch yet
+enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy, the head of the Church--so
+far as she could be said to have a head--was virtually the Emperor
+himself. The inchoate right to intermeddle in religious affairs which
+he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus was readily admitted;
+and the clergy, preaching the duty of passive obedience now as it had
+been preached in the days of Nero and Diocletian[7], were well pleased
+to see him preside in councils, issue edicts against heresy, and
+testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal for the advancement of the
+faith and the overthrow of pagan rites. But though the tone of the
+Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions
+wanting which revealed the future that was in store for her. The
+resistance and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society
+could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known
+before: the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before Ambrose the
+Archbishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the
+decrepitude of old institutions, in the barrenness of literature and
+the feebleness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings
+of the people sought more and more to attach themselves; and when in
+the fifth century the horizon grew black with clouds of ruin, those
+who watched with despair or apathy the approach of irresistible foes,
+fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes
+revered.
+
+[Sidenote: It embraces and preserves the imperial idea.]
+
+But that which we are above all concerned to remark here is, that this
+church system, demanding a more rigid uniformity in doctrine and
+organization, making more and more vital the notion of a visible body
+of worshippers united by participation in the same sacraments,
+maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman people
+throughout the world. Christianity as well as civilization became
+conterminous with the Roman Empire[8].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the
+_curiales_ in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when
+there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.
+
+[5] See the eloquent passage of Claudian, _In secundum consulatum
+Stilichonis_, 129, _sqq._, from which the following lines are taken
+(150-60):--
+
+ 'Hc est in gremio victos qu sola recepit,
+ Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,
+ Matris, non domin, ritu; civesque vocavit
+ Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.
+ Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes
+ Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes:
+ Quod sedem mutare licet: quod cernere Thulen
+ Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus:
+ Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Oronten,
+ Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquam
+ Roman ditionis erit.'
+
+[6] In the Roman jurisprudence, _ius sacrum_ is a branch of _ius
+publicum_.
+
+[7] Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de
+religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est
+suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim,
+noster est magis Csar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.'--_Apologet._
+cap. 34.
+
+[8] See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, _Contra Donatistas_.
+'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id
+est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus
+Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's _Patrologi Cursus completus_.)
+The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of
+the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair,
+as constituting its centre and representing its unity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Barbarians.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admitted to Roman titles and honours.]
+
+Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians of the North descend.
+From the dawn of history they shew as a dim background to the warmth
+and light of the Mediterranean coast, changing little while kingdoms
+rise and fall in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm
+comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes that they are
+known. The Romans never forgot the invasion of Brennus; and their
+fears, renewed by the irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not
+let them rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and the
+Danube removed Italy from immediate danger. A little more perseverance
+under Tiberius, or again under Hadrian, would probably have reduced
+all Germany as far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or
+jealous advice of Augustus[9] was followed, and it was only along the
+frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the Teutonic races.
+Commerce was brisk; Roman envoys penetrated the forests to the courts
+of rude chieftains; adventurous barbarians entered the provinces,
+sometimes to admire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius[10], to
+take service under the Roman flag, and rise to a distinction in the
+legion which some feud denied them at home. This was found even more
+convenient by the hirer than by the employed; till by degrees
+barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most
+effective, part of the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had
+been so composed; the prtorians were generally selected from the
+bravest frontier troops, most of them German; the practice could not
+but increase with the extinction of the free peasantry, the growth of
+villenage, and the effeminacy of all classes. Emperors who were, like
+Maximin, themselves foreigners, encouraged a system by whose means
+they had risen, and whose advantages they knew. After Constantine, the
+barbarians form the majority of the troops; after Theodosius, a Roman
+is the exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the time of
+Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of whom had been settled in
+the provinces; while in the West, Stilicho[11] can oppose Rhodogast
+only by summoning the German auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along
+with this practice there had grown up another, which did still more to
+make the barbarians feel themselves members of the Roman state.
+Whatever the pride of the old republic might assert, the maxim of the
+Empire had always been that birth and race should exclude no subject
+from any post which his abilities deserved. This principle, which had
+removed all obstacles from the path of the Spaniard Trajan, the
+Pannonian Maximin, the Numidian Philip, was afterwards extended to the
+conferring of honour and power on persons who did not even profess to
+have passed through the grades of Roman service, but remained leaders
+of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been soothed by the title of
+Friend of the Roman People; in the third century the insignia of the
+consulship[12] were conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his
+Alemanni entered as an independent body into the service of Rome;
+along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of Laeti, lands
+within the provinces on condition of military service; and the foreign
+aid which the Sarmatian had proffered to Vespasian against his rival,
+and Marcus Aurelius had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius,
+became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire, in civil as
+well as in external strife.
+
+Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken down--Romans admitting
+barbarians to rank and office, barbarians catching something of the
+manners and culture of their neighbours. And thus when the final
+movement came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves
+through the provinces, they entered not as savage strangers, but as
+colonists knowing something of the system into which they came, and
+not unwilling to be considered its members; despising the degenerate
+provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of
+respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries
+confronted and instructed them.
+
+[Sidenote: Their feelings towards the Roman Empire.]
+
+Great during all these ages, but greatest when they were actually
+traversing and settling in the Empire, must have been the impression
+which its elaborate machinery of government and mature civilization
+made upon the minds of the Northern invaders. With arms whose
+fabrication they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in the
+forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns whose busy
+workshops, marts stored with the productions of distant countries, and
+palaces rich in monuments of art, equally roused their wonder. To the
+beauty of statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the
+rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles with which vanity
+or devotion, or the passion for amusement, had adorned Milan and
+Verona, Arles, Treves, and Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as
+they gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial of
+Christianity, most unlike their own rude sacrifices. The exclamation
+of the Goth Athanaric, when led into the market-place of
+Constantinople, may stand for the feelings of his nation: 'Without
+doubt the Emperor is a God upon earth, and he who attacks him is
+guilty of his own blood[13].'
+
+[Sidenote: Their desire to preserve its institutions.]
+
+The social and political system, with its cultivated language and
+literature, into which they came, would impress fewer of the
+conquerors, but by those few would be admired beyond all else. Its
+regular organization supplied what they most needed and could least
+construct for themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among
+them were the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol Attila
+excepted, there is among these terrible hosts no destroyer; the wish
+of each leader is to maintain the existing order, to spare life, to
+respect every work of skill and labour, above all to perpetuate the
+methods of Roman administration, and rule the people as the deputy or
+successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him were the highest
+honours they knew: they were also the only means of acquiring
+something like a legal claim to the obedience of the subject, and of
+turning a patriarchal or military chieftainship into the regular sway
+of an hereditary monarch. Civilis had long since endeavoured to govern
+his Batavians as a Roman general[14]. Alaric became master-general of
+the armies of Illyricum. Clovis exulted in the consulship; his son
+Theodebert received Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as
+the gift of Justinian. Sigismund the Burgundian king, created count
+and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius, professed the deepest
+gratitude and the firmest faith to that Eastern court which was
+absolutely powerless to help or to hurt him. 'My people is yours,' he
+writes, 'and to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the
+hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us account those the
+highest honours which your military titles convey; we have always
+preferred what an Emperor gave to all that our ancestors could
+bequeath. In ruling our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants:
+you, whose divinely-appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose blessed
+beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant Gaul, employ us to
+administer the remoter regions of your Empire: your world is our
+fatherland[15].' A contemporary historian has recorded the remarkable
+disclosure of his own thoughts and purposes, made by one of the ablest
+of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the brother-in-law
+and successor of Alaric. 'It was at first my wish to destroy the Roman
+name, and erect in its place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the
+place and the powers of Csar Augustus. But when experience taught me
+that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not suffer them to
+live beneath the sway of law, and that the abolition of the
+institutions on which the state rested would involve the ruin of the
+state itself, I chose the glory of renewing and maintaining by Gothic
+strength the fame of Rome, desiring to go down to posterity as the
+restorer of that Roman power which it was beyond my power to replace.
+Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace[16].'
+
+Historians have remarked how valuable must have been the skill of
+Roman officials to princes who from leaders of tribes were become
+rulers of wide lands; and in particular how indispensable the aid of
+the Christian bishops, the intellectual aristocracy of their new
+subjects, whose advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate
+the vanquished. Not only is this true; it is but a small part of the
+truth; one form of that manifold and overpowering influence which the
+old system exercised over its foes not less than its own children. For
+it is hardly too much to say that the thought of antagonism to the
+Empire and the wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the
+barbarians[17]. The conception of that Empire was too universal, too
+august, too enduring. It was everywhere around them, and they could
+remember no time when it had not been so. It had no association of
+people or place whose fall could seem to involve that of the whole
+fabric; it had that connection with the Christian Church which made it
+all-embracing and venerable.
+
+[Sidenote: The belief in its eternity.]
+
+There were especially two ideas whereon it rested, and from which it
+obtained a peculiar strength and a peculiar direction. The one was the
+belief that as the dominion of Rome was universal, so must it be
+eternal. Nothing like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander
+had lasted a short lifetime; and within its wide compass were included
+many arid wastes, and many tracts where none but the roving savage had
+ever set foot. That of the Italian city had for fourteen generations
+embraced all the most wealthy and populous regions of the civilized
+world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep that they
+seemed destined to last for ever. If Rome moved slowly for a time, her
+foot was always planted firmly: the ease and swiftness of her later
+conquests proved the solidity of the earlier; and to her, more justly
+than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian historian be
+applied: that she advanced farthest in prosperity, and in adversity
+drew back the least. From the end of the republican period her poets,
+her orators, her jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of
+world-dominion, and confidently predict its eternity[18]. The proud
+belief of his countrymen which Virgil had expressed--
+
+ 'His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono:
+ Imperium sine fine dedi'--
+
+was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for the
+persecuting power whose fall would bring Antichrist upon earth.
+Lactantius writes: 'When Rome the head of the world shall have fallen,
+who can doubt that the end is come of human things, aye, of the earth
+itself. She, she alone is the state by which all things are upheld
+even until now; wherefore let us make prayers and supplications to the
+God of heaven, if indeed his decrees and his purposes can be delayed,
+that that hateful tyrant come not sooner than we look for, he for whom
+are reserved fearful deeds, who shall pluck out that eye in whose
+extinction the world itself shall perish[19].' With the triumph of
+Christianity this belief had found a new basis. For as the Empire had
+decayed, the Church had grown stronger; and now while the one,
+trembling at the approach of the destroyer, saw province after
+province torn away, the other, rising in stately youth, prepared to
+fill her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to adopt and
+sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a universal and unending
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Sanctity of the imperial name.]
+
+The second chief element in this conception was the association of
+such a state with one irresponsible governor, the Emperor. The hatred
+to the name of King, which their earliest political struggles had left
+in the Romans, by obliging their ruler to take a new and strange
+title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of the world. To
+the provincials especially he became an awful impersonation of the
+great machine of government which moved above and around them. It was
+not merely that he was, like a modern king, the centre of power and
+the dispenser of honour: his pre-eminence, broken by no comparison
+with other princes, by the ascending ranks of no aristocracy, had in
+it something almost supernatural. The right of legislation had become
+vested in him alone: the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the
+senate, and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three
+centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions; his domestic council,
+the consistory, was the supreme court of appeal; his interposition,
+like that of some terrestrial Providence, was invoked, and legally
+provided so to be, to reverse or overleap the ordinary rules of
+law[20]. From the time of Julius and Augustus his person had been
+hallowed by the office of chief pontiff[21] and the tribunician power;
+to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths[22];
+his effigy was sacred[23], even on a coin; to him or to his Genius
+temples were erected and divine honours paid while he lived[24]; and
+when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of
+Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration[25]. In the
+confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was
+the only worship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore
+that usually proposed as a test to the Christians on their trial.
+Under the new religion the form of adoration vanished, the sentiment
+of reverence remained: the right to control Church as well as State,
+admitted at Nica, and habitually exercised by the sovereigns of
+Constantinople, made the Emperor hardly less essential to the new
+conception of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had been to the
+military despotism of old. These considerations explain why the men of
+the fifth century, clinging to preconceived ideas, refused to believe
+in that dissolution of the Empire which they saw with their own eyes.
+Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the slowness of
+the change and its external aspect, as well as in the fortunes of the
+capital, something to favour the illusion. The Roman name was shared
+by every subject; the Roman city was no longer the seat of government,
+nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power, for the maxim was
+now accepted, Where the Emperor is, there is Rome[26]. But her
+continued existence, not permanently occupied by any conqueror,
+striking the nations with an awe which the history or the external
+splendours of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna could nowise inspire,
+was an ever new assertion of the endurance of the Roman race and
+dominion. Dishonoured and defenceless, the spell of her name was still
+strong enough to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The
+irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or revenge, not
+of destruction: the Hun turned back from Aquileia with a vague fear
+upon him: the Ostrogoth adorned and protected his splendid prize.
+
+[Sidenote: Last days of the Western Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its extinction by Odoacer, A.D. 476.]
+
+In the history of the last days of the Western Empire, two points
+deserve special remark: its continued union with the Eastern branch,
+and the way in which its ideal dignity was respected while its
+representatives were despised. After Stilicho's death, and Alaric's
+invasion, its fall was a question of time. While one by one the
+provinces were abandoned by the central government, left either to be
+occupied by invading tribes or to maintain a precarious independence,
+like Britain and Armorica[27], by means of municipal unions, Italy lay
+at the mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by their
+leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might have seemed to reign
+by hereditary right, but after their extinction in Valentinian III
+each phantom Emperor--Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Anthemius,
+Olybrius--received the purple from the haughty Ricimer, general of the
+troops, only to be stripped of it when he presumed to forget his
+dependence. Though the division between Arcadius and Honorius had
+definitely severed the two realms for administrative purposes, they
+were still supposed to constitute a single Empire, and the rulers of
+the East interfered more than once to raise to the Western throne
+princes they could not protect upon it. Ricimer's insolence quailed
+before the shadowy grandeur of the imperial title: his ambition, and
+Gundobald his successor's, were bounded by the name of patrician. The
+bolder genius of Odoacer[28], general of the barbarian auxiliaries,
+resolved to abolish an empty pageant, and extinguish the title and
+office of Emperor of the West. Yet over him too the spell had power;
+and as the Gaulish warrior had gazed on the silent majesty of the
+senate in a deserted city, so the Herulian revered the power before
+which the world had bowed, and though there was no force to check or
+to affright him, shrank from grasping in his own barbarian hand the
+sceptre of the Csars. When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus,
+the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Csar of
+Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a
+deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the
+insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West,
+they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch
+sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and
+courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was
+entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of
+the Italian provinces[29]. The Emperor granted what he could not
+refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King[30], continued the
+consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions
+of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of
+the Eastern Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction of the
+Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form,
+and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to
+their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that
+Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The
+joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further
+by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I and again at the death of
+Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway
+the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church[31].
+To those who lived at the time, this year (476 A.D.) was no such epoch
+as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men's minds
+commensurate with the real significance of the event. For though it
+did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its
+consequences were from the first great. It hastened the development of
+a Latin as opposed to Greek and Oriental forms of Christianity: it
+emancipated the Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and
+government of the Teutonic rulers of the West. But the importance of
+remembering its formal aspect to those who witnessed it will be felt
+as we approach the era when the Empire was revived by Charles the
+Frank.
+
+[Sidenote: Odoacer.]
+
+[Sidenote: Theodoric.]
+
+[Sidenote: Italy reconquered, by Justinian.]
+
+Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than those of his
+neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But the mercenary _foederati_
+who supported it were a loose swarm of predatory tribes: themselves
+without cohesion, they could take no firm root in Italy. During the
+eighteen years of his reign no progress seems to have been made
+towards the re-organization of society; and the first real attempt to
+blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the
+hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous
+chieftain, the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the
+forerunner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
+The aim of his reign, though he professed allegiance to the Eastern
+court which had favoured his invasion[32], was the establishment of a
+national monarchy in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of
+Byzantium, he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and
+cultivated society and the principles by which it must be maintained;
+called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief over the plains of
+the Danube, he acquired along with the arts of command a sense of the
+superiority of his own people in valour and energy and truth. When the
+defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at his mercy, he
+sought no further conquest, easy as it would have been to tear away
+new provinces from the Eastern realm, but strove only to preserve and
+strengthen the ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying
+institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering the
+military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate by indulgence and
+gradually raise to the level of their masters the degenerate
+population of Italy. The Gothic nation appears from the first less
+cruel in war and more prudent in council than any of their Germanic
+brethren[33]: all that was most noble among them shone forth now in
+the rule of the greatest of the Amali. From his palace at Verona[34],
+commemorated in the song of the Nibelungs, he issued equal laws for
+Roman and Goth, and bade the intruder, if he must occupy part of the
+lands, at least respect the goods and the person of his
+fellow-subject. Jurisprudence and administration remained in native
+hands: two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other by the
+Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient state; and while
+agriculture and the arts revived in the provinces, Rome herself
+celebrated the visits of a master who provided for the wants of her
+people and preserved with care the monuments of her former splendour.
+With peace and plenty men's minds took hope, and the study of letters
+revived. The last gleam of classical literature gilds the reign of the
+barbarian. By the consolidation of the two races under one wise
+government, Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom
+and degradation. It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but
+toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox subjects:
+the Arian Goths were and remained strangers and enemies among the
+Catholic Italians. Scarcely had the sceptre passed from the hands of
+Theodoric to his unworthy offspring, when Justinian, who had viewed
+with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant, determined to
+assert his dormant rights over Italy; its people welcomed Belisarius
+as a deliverer, and in the struggle that followed the race and name of
+the Ostrogoths perished for ever. Thus again reunited in fact, as it
+had been all the while united in name, to the Roman Empire, the
+peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms, and obeyed the
+exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the Byzantine court, till the arrival of
+the Lombards in A.D. 568 drove him from some districts, and left him
+only a feeble authority in the rest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Transalpine provinces.]
+
+Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population had now ceased to seek
+help from the Eastern court, the Empire's rights still subsisted in
+theory, and were never legally extinguished. As has been said, they
+were admitted by the conquerors themselves: by Athaulf, when he
+reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and recovered Spain
+from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient masters; by the Visigothic
+kings of Spain, when they permitted the Mediterranean cities to send
+tribute to Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of
+the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities, had been
+overpowered or absorbed, he received with delight from the Eastern
+emperor Anastasius the grant of a Roman dignity to confirm his
+possession. Arrayed like a Fabius or Valerius in the consul's
+embroidered robe, the Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of
+Tours, while the shout of the provincials hailed him Augustus[35].
+They already obeyed him, but his power was now legalised in their
+eyes, and it was not without a melancholy pride that they saw the
+terrible conqueror himself yield to the spell of the Roman name, and
+do homage to the enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign[36].
+
+[Sidenote: Lingering influences of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Religion.]
+
+Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot by degrees their original
+unity. As in the breaking up of the old society, which we trace from
+the sixth to the eighth century, rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as
+language and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic
+settlers, as men's thoughts and hopes and interests were narrowed by
+isolation from their fellows, as the organization of the Roman
+province and the Germanic tribe alike dissolved into a chaos whence
+the new order began to shape itself, dimly and doubtfully as yet, the
+memory of the old Empire, its symmetry, its sway, its civilization,
+must needs wane and fade. It might have perished altogether but for
+the two enduring witnesses Rome had left--her Church and her Law. The
+barbarians had at first associated Christianity with the Romans from
+whom they learned it: the Romans had used it as their only bulwark
+against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders of the
+people, and the necessary councillors of the king. Their power grew
+with the extinction of civil government and the spread of
+superstition; and when the Frank found it too valuable to be abandoned
+to the vanquished people, he insensibly acquired the feelings and
+policy of the order he entered.
+
+[Sidenote: Jurisprudence.]
+
+As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms which the
+conquerors had founded themselves began to dissolve, the Church clung
+more closely to her unity of faith and discipline, the common bond of
+all Christian men. That unity must have a centre, that centre was
+Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs extended her influence
+(the sanctity and the writings of Gregory the Great were famous
+through all the West): never occupied by barbarians, she retained her
+peculiar character and customs, and laid the foundations of a power
+over men's souls more durable than that which she had lost over their
+bodies[37]. Only second in importance to this influence was that which
+was exercised by the permanence of the old law, and of its creature
+the municipality. The barbarian invaders retained the customs of their
+ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people, as we see them
+in the Salic law or in the ordinances of Ina and Alfred. But the
+subject population and the clergy continued to be governed by that
+elaborate system which the genius and labour of many generations had
+raised to be the most lasting monument of Roman greatness.
+
+The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and Southern Gaul, nor
+was it utterly forgotten even in the North, in Britain, on the borders
+of Germany. Revised editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the
+Visigothic and Burgundian princes. For some centuries it was the
+patrimony of the subject population everywhere, and in Aquitaine and
+Italy has outlived feudalism. The presumption in later times was that
+all men were to be judged by it who could not be proved to be subject
+to some other[38]. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety
+and precision, all recalled the strong and refined society which had
+produced it. Other motives, as well as those of kindness to their
+subjects, made the new kings favour it; for it exalted their
+prerogative, and the submission enjoined by it on one class of their
+subjects soon came to be demanded from the other, by their own laws
+the equals of the prince. Considering attentively how many of the old
+institutions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings of that
+time, as they are faintly preserved in its scanty records, it seems
+hardly too much to say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire
+still existed in the West: existed in men's minds as a power weakened,
+delegated, suspended, but not destroyed.
+
+It is easy for those who read the history of an age in the light of
+those that followed it, to perceive that in this men erred; that the
+tendency of events was wholly different; that society had entered on a
+new phase, wherein every change did more to localize authority and
+strengthen the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic.
+We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise for the
+distant future, had already begun to shew themselves: they--with no
+type of power or beauty, but that which had filled the imagination of
+their forefathers, and now loomed on them grander than ever through
+the mist of centuries--mistook, as it has been said of Rienzi in later
+days, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the renewal of its
+strength. Events were at hand by which these hopes seemed destined to
+be gratified.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] 'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.'--Tac.
+_Ann._ i. 2.
+
+[10] Tac. _Ann._ ii. 9.
+
+[11] Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself a
+Vandal by extraction.
+
+[12] Of course not the consulship itself, but the _ornamenta
+consularia_.
+
+[13] Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 28.
+
+[14] Tac. _Hist._ i. and iv.
+
+[15] 'Vester quidem est populus meus sed me plus servire vobis quam
+illi presse delectat. Traxit istud a proavis generis mei apud vos
+decessoresque vestros semper animo Romana devotio, ut illa nobis magis
+claritas putaretur, quam vestra per militi titulos porrigeret
+celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus meis semper magis ambitum est quod a
+principibus sumerent quam quod a patribus attulissent. Cumque gentem
+nostram videamur regere, non aliud nos quam milites vestros credimus
+ordinari.... Per nos administratis remotarum spatia regionum: patria
+nostra vester orbis est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen orientis, et radius
+qui illis partibus oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem vobis
+divinitus prstitam obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum
+terminis diffusio felicium sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
+honore sit dictum.'--Letter printed among the works of Avitus, Bishop
+of Vienne. (Migne's _Patrologia_, vol. lix. p. 285.)
+
+This letter, as its style shews, is the composition not of Sigismund
+himself, but of Avitus, writing on Sigismund's behalf. But this makes
+it scarcely less valuable evidence of the feelings of the time.
+
+[16] 'Referre solitus est (_sc._ Ataulphus) se in primis ardenter
+inhiasse: ut obliterato Romanorum nomine Romanum omne solum Gothorum
+imperium et faceret et vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia
+quod Romania fuisset; fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod quondam Csar
+Augustus. At ubi multa experientia probavisset, neque Gothos ullo modo
+parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem, neque reipublic
+interdici leges oportere sine quibus respublica non est respublica;
+elegisse se saltem, ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum
+augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus qureret, habereturque apud
+posteros Roman restitutionis auctor postquam esse non potuerat
+immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare paci
+nitebatur.'--Orosius, vii. 43.
+
+[17] Athaulf formed only to abandon it.
+
+[18] See, among other passages, Varro, _De lingua Latina_, iv. 34;
+Cic., _Pro Domo_, 33; and in the _Corpus Iuris Civilis_, Dig. i. 5,
+17; l. 1, 33; xiv. 2, 9; quoted by gidi, _Der Frstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden_. The phrase 'urbs terna' appears in a novel
+issued by Valentinian III.
+
+Tertullian speaks of Rome as 'civitas sacrosancta.'
+
+[19] Lact. _Divin. Instit._ vii. 25: 'Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum
+ruinamque rerum brevi fore: nisi quod incolumi urbe Roma nihil
+istiusmodi videtur esse metuendum. At vero cum caput illud orbis
+occident, et [Greek:rhym] esse coeperit quod Sibyll fore aiunt, quis
+dubitet venisse iam finem rebus humanis, orbique terrarum? Illa, illa
+est civitas qu adhuc sustentat omnia, precandusque nobis et adorandus
+est Deus coeli si tamen statuta eius et placita differri possunt,
+ne citius quam putemus tyrannus ille abominabilis veniat qui tantum
+facinus moliatur, ac lumen illud effodiat cuius interitu mundus ipse
+lapsurus est.'
+
+Cf. Tertull. _Apolog._ cap. xxxii: 'Est et alia maior necessitas nobis
+orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque
+Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam
+sculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu
+scimus retardari.' Also the same writer, _Ad Scapulam_, cap. ii:
+'Christianus sciens imperatorem a Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut
+ipsum diligat et revereatur et honoret et salvum velit cum toto Romano
+imperio quousque sculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit.' So too the
+author--now usually supposed to be Hilary the Deacon--of the
+Commentary on the Pauline Epistles ascribed to S. Ambrose: 'Non prius
+veniet Dominus quam regni Romani defectio fiat, et appareat
+antichristus qui interficiet sanctos, reddita Romanis libertate, sub
+suo tamen nomine.'--Ad II Thess. ii. 4, 7.
+
+[20] For example, by the 'restitutio natalium,' and the 'adrogatio per
+rescriptum principis,' or, as it is expressed, 'per sacrum oraculum.'
+
+[21] Even the Christian Emperors took the title of Pontifex Maximus,
+till Gratian refused it: [Greek: athemiston einai Christian to schma
+nomisas].--Zosimus, lib. iv. cap. 36.
+
+[22] 'Maiore formidine et callidiore timiditate Csarem observatis quam
+ipsum ex Olympo Iovem, et merito, si sciatis.... Citius denique apud
+vos per omnes Deos quam per unum genium Csaris peieratur.'--Tertull.
+_Apolog._ c. xxviii.
+
+Cf. Zos. v. 51: [Greek: ei men gar pros ton theon tetychkei didomenos
+horkos, n an hs eikos paridein endidontas t tou theou philanthrpia
+tn epi t asebeia syngnmn. epei de kata tn tou basiles
+ommokesan kephals, ouk einai themiton autois eis ton tosouton horkon
+examartein.]
+
+[23] Tac. _Ann._ i. 73; iii. 38, etc.
+
+[24] It is curious that this should have begun in the first years of
+the Empire. See, among other passages that might be cited from the
+Augustan poets, Virg. _Georg._ i. 42; iv. 462; Hor. _Od._ iii. 3, 11;
+Ovid, _Epp. ex Ponto_, iv. 9. 105.
+
+[25] Hence Vespasian's dying jest, 'Ut puto, deus fio.'
+
+[26] [Greek: hopou an ho basileus , ekei h Rhm.]--Herodian.
+
+[27] If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.
+
+[28] Odoacer or Odovaker, as it seems his name ought to be written, is
+usually, but incorrectly, described as a King of the Heruli, who led
+his people into Italy and overthrew the Empire of the West; others
+call him King of the Rugii, or Skyrri, or Turcilingi. The truth seems
+to be that he was not a king at all, but the son of a Skyrrian
+chieftain (Edecon, known as one of the envoys whom Attila sent to
+Constantinople), whose personal merits made him chosen by the
+barbarian auxiliaries to be their leader. The Skyrri were a small
+tribe, apparently akin to the more powerful Heruli, whose name is
+often extended to them.
+
+[29] [Greek: Augoustos ho Orestou huios akousas Znna palin tn
+basileian anakektsthai ts he ... nankase tn bouln aposteilai
+presbeian Znni smainousan hs idias men autois basileias ou deoi,
+koinos de apochrsei monos n autokratr ep' amphoterois tois perasi.
+ton mentoi Odoachon hyp' autn probeblsthai hikanon onta szein
+ta par' autois pragmata politikn echn noun kai synesin homou kai
+machimon. kai deisthai tou Znnos patrikiou te aut aposteilai axian
+kai tn tn Italn tout epheinai dioiksin]--Malchus ap. Photium in
+_Corp. Hist. Byzant._
+
+[30] Not king of Italy, as is often said. The barbarian kings did not
+for several centuries employ territorial titles; the title 'king of
+France,' for instance, was first used by Henry IV. Jornandes tells us
+that Odoacer never so much as assumed the insignia of royalty.
+
+[31] Sismondi, _Histoire de la Chute de l'Empire Occidentale_.
+
+[32] 'Nil deest nobis imperio vestro famulantibus.'--Theodoric to
+Zeno: Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 57.
+
+[33] 'Unde et pne omnibus barbaris Gothi sapientiores exstiterunt
+Grcisque pne consimiles.'--Jorn. cap. 5.
+
+[34] Theodoric (Thiodorich) seems to have resided usually at Ravenna,
+where he died and was buried; a remarkable building which tradition
+points out as his tomb stands a little way out of the town, near the
+railway station, but the porphyry sarcophagus, in which his body is
+supposed to have lain, has been removed thence, and may be seen built
+up into the wall of the building called his palace, situated close to
+the church of Sant' Apollinare, and not far from the tomb of Dante.
+There does not appear to be any sufficient authority for attributing
+this building to Ostrogothic times; it is very different from the
+representation of Theodoric's palace which we have in the contemporary
+mosaics of Sant' Apollinare in urbe.
+
+In the German legends, however, Theodoric is always the prince of
+Verona (Dietrich von Berne), no doubt because that city was better
+known to the Teutonic nations, and because it was thither that he
+moved his court when transalpine affairs required his attention. His
+castle there stood in the old town on the left bank of the Adige, on
+the height now occupied by the citadel; it is doubtful whether any
+traces of it remain, for the old foundations which we now see may have
+belonged to the fortress erected by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[35] 'Igitur Chlodovechus ab imperatore Anastasio codicillos de
+consulatu accepit, et in basilica beati Martini tunica blatea indutus
+est et chlamyde, imponens vertici diadema ... et ab ea die tanquam
+consul aut (=et) Augustus est vocitatus.'--Gregory of Tours, ii. 58.
+
+[36] Sir F. Palgrave (_English Commonwealth_) considers this grant as
+equivalent to a formal ratification of Clovis' rule in Gaul. Hallam
+rates its importance lower (_Middle Ages_, note iii. to chap. i.).
+Taken in connection with the grant of south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
+by Justinian, it may fairly be held to shew that the influence of the
+Empire was still felt in these distant provinces.
+
+[37] Even so early as the middle of the fifth century, S. Leo the
+Great could say to the Roman people, 'Isti (sc. Petrus et Paulus) sunt
+qui te ad hanc gloriam provexerunt ut gens sancta, populus electus,
+civitas sacerdotalis et regia, per sacram B. Petri sedem caput orbis
+effecta latius prsideres religione divina quam dominatione
+terrena.'--_Sermon on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul._ (Opp. _ap._
+Migne tom. i. p. 336.)
+
+[38] 'Ius Romanum est adhuc in viridi observantia et eo iure
+prsumitur quilibet vivere nisi adversum probetur.'--Maranta, quoted
+by Marquard Freher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
+
+
+It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that the thoughts
+and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were
+constantly directed. Yet not from Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the
+exhausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we
+may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the
+Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the
+furthest corner of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within
+the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service
+of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
+heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which
+doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity almost divine.
+
+[Sidenote: The Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 486.]
+
+Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of Rome, that of the
+Franks was by far the greatest. In the third century they appear, with
+Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe
+leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was
+a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former
+hostility to Rome, and her future representatives were thenceforth,
+with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to
+high place: Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western
+provinces; Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and
+his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius
+against Attila in the great battle of Chalons; his countrymen
+endeavour in vain to save Gaul from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not
+till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the
+booty; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving
+his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances
+from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had
+entered it some sixty years before. Few conquerors have had a career
+of more unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius
+he was left master of the northern provinces: the Burgundian kingdom
+in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to dependence:
+last of all, the Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle,
+and Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frankish
+arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of
+Tolbiac led to the submission of the Alemanni: their allies the
+Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by
+Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the
+tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed,
+stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of
+course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor,
+although the widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
+a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom
+at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the
+predominance of a single nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul
+as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
+hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the
+middle of the eighth century a change began. Under the rule of Pipin
+of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the
+last feeble Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
+became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while
+establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength
+in projects of foreign ambition. The form those projects took arose
+from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not
+solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their
+past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited them, it was
+to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See.
+The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians,
+Lombards, had been most of them converted by Arian missionaries who
+proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian
+doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest
+converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the
+clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the
+hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
+Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of the
+priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian and
+Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively easy for them to blend
+with the Roman population in the provinces. They had done good service
+against the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface in
+his mission to the heathen of Germany[39]; and at length, as the most
+powerful among Catholic nations, they attracted the eyes of the
+ecclesiastical head of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy: the Lombards.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes.]
+
+Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication
+of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D.
+568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and
+founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the
+country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the
+Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than
+nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders
+were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met
+with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the
+spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we
+may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the
+Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their
+aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils.
+Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
+Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the
+Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of
+Ravenna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his
+confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the
+victims of his anger[40]. But as the city became more accustomed in
+independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet
+legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In
+the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom
+or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the
+orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
+deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished[41].
+
+[Sidenote: Iconoclastic controversy.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes appeal to the Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.]
+
+The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer
+faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of
+idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed
+fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
+sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in
+Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence
+of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain:
+the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and
+protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he
+could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the
+Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the
+champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he
+overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The
+Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a
+heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a
+Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for
+Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
+communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual
+ruler of the Frankish realm[42]. As the crisis becomes more pressing,
+Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to
+him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church[43].
+Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman
+people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain
+that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the
+rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political
+movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate
+sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son
+Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with
+Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a
+monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of
+Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock
+the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one
+then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an
+international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave
+to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto
+unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in
+raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem
+and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of
+Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was
+summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
+Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second
+time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter
+himself[44]. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed
+on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy,
+receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician[45].
+
+[Sidenote: Import of this title.]
+
+As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this
+title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time
+when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to
+be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank,
+the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually
+conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time
+also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish
+to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
+Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too
+in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian
+princes[46]. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice
+seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
+thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men
+take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an
+extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the
+duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It
+was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop
+bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
+for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the
+title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and
+defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always
+'_Patricius Romanorum_;' not, as in former times, '_Patricius_' alone:
+hence it is usually associated with the terms '_defensor_' and
+'_protector_.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of
+obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been
+conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority
+in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the
+Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the
+Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
+
+So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from
+their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal.
+But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
+menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or
+Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of
+Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself
+the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral
+part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his
+victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were
+to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian
+with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader
+and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that
+sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to
+bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the
+pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in
+the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and
+Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years
+before.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles and Hadrian.]
+
+It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that
+in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise
+the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The
+Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most
+powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by
+swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it
+might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their
+words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
+expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an
+indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless
+in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and
+passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the
+stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not
+defended, as almost inseparable from an intense and restless genius,
+which, be it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing them fix
+upon everything its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
+The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since
+the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the
+ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most
+abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of
+territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
+a sort of justification--for Rome, a city with neither trade nor
+industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to
+provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the
+purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did.
+It was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than for
+religion or the safety of the city--neither of which were really
+endangered by the Lombard attacks--that had prompted their passionate
+appeals to Charles Martel and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope
+of having these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's greater
+son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it
+was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the
+dawning prospect of an independent principality, that now began to
+seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is
+probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established,
+to which must be assigned the extraordinary forgery of the Donation of
+Constantine, whereby it was pretended that power over Italy and the
+whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope
+Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Pope Leo III, A.D. 796.]
+
+For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of
+Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it
+does not appear that he sent thither any official representative;
+while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
+admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the
+years of his reign to date documents. In A.D. 796, Leo the Third
+succeeded Pope Hadrian, and signalized his devotion to the Frankish
+throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of
+the holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter, asking
+that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the
+people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to
+seek the Patrician's help for himself. In A.D. 798 a sedition broke
+out: the Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to the
+church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men,
+headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was
+wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
+to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish lands. Charles
+had led his army against the revolted Saxons: thither Leo following
+overtook him at Paderborn in Westphalia. The king received with
+respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
+some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under the escort of
+Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers; promising to follow ere
+long in person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony, and in
+the autumn of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more, while Leo
+revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was
+now ripe.
+
+[Sidenote: Belief in the Roman Empire not extinct.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives of the Pope.]
+
+Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Csar of
+the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to
+his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the
+latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
+only during one brief interval between the death of Totila the last
+Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his
+power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul,
+Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire
+as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been
+admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been
+cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was
+dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days
+when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen
+the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system
+he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of
+consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
+Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant England the
+fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities,
+and before long began to call themselves _imperatores_ and _basileis_
+of Britain. Within the last century and a half the rise of
+Mohammedanism[47] had brought out the common Christianity of Europe
+into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one
+Empire, one Commander of the faithful: the Christian commonwealth
+needed more than ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
+could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing ever feebler
+and more alien to the West. The name of 'respublica,' permanent at the
+elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its
+government was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
+drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms of an Oriental
+despotism. Claudian had already sneered at 'Greek Quirites[48]:' the
+general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the
+difference of manners and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
+The Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes, who
+while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage
+Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years[49] had been contaminated
+by a heresy the more odious that it touched not speculative points of
+doctrine but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy their
+power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had asked their
+confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment of the intruding
+Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to
+confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights
+subsisted: they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
+must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman city. Nor could
+the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal: without
+the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary
+consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church[50]. For, as will be shewn
+more fully hereafter, men could not separate in fact what was
+indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with
+the great Christian state: they were but two names for the same thing.
+Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are
+said to have already contemplated[51], and towards which the events of
+the last fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The
+widowed empress Irene, equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and
+her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a woman,
+an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne of the world. By
+what right, it might well be asked, did the factions of Byzantium
+impose a master on the original seat of empire? It was time to provide
+better for the most august of human offices: an election at Rome was
+as valid as at Constantinople--the possessor of the real power should
+also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted
+where that possessor was to be found. The Frank had been always
+faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
+auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders,
+against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him
+the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
+was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations,
+Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to
+imitate his customs[52]. In Charles, the hero who united under one
+sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
+pontiff might well see--as later ages saw--the new golden head of a
+second image[53], erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and
+clay seemed crumbling to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks
+of Constantinople.
+
+[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles at Rome, A.D. 800.]
+
+At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The Pope's cause was heard;
+his innocence, already vindicated by a miracle, was pronounced by the
+Patrician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
+remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, A.D.
+800[54], he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. On the spot where
+now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the
+buildings of the modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as
+that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the
+oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less
+like than was this basilica to those northern cathedrals, shadowy,
+fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by
+clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of
+medival architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious
+sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of
+Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness,
+its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman
+art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman character[55].
+Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar
+underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph as it
+was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising
+tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest,
+and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the
+bishop's throne[56], itself the curule chair of some forgotten
+magistrate[57]. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of
+the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles--who had exchanged his
+simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman
+patrician[58]--knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight
+of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem
+of the Csars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to
+the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of
+the world, 'Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori
+vita et victoria[59].' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without,
+was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its
+consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the
+civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from
+that moment modern history begins.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[39] 'Denique gens Francorum multos et foecundissimos fructus Domino
+attulit, non solum credendo, sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'
+says the emperor Lewis II in A.D. 871.
+
+[40] Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.
+
+[41] A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks
+and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph
+Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), _De translatione Imperii
+Romani_ (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a
+revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the
+Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding,
+like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics
+(apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt)
+carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly,
+the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a
+rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning
+to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the
+earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to
+the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very
+existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth
+or ninth century altogether forgotten.
+
+[42] Anastasius, _Vit Pontificum Romanorum_ i. _ap._ Muratori.
+
+[43] Letter in _Codex Carolinus_, in Muratori's _Scriptores Rerum
+Italicarum_, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'
+
+[44] Letter in _Cod. Carol._ (Mur. _R. S. I._ iii. [2.] p. 96), a
+strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish
+pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod
+super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro
+exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus
+Vicarii mei commendavi.'
+
+[45] The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out.
+Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino,
+Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the _Chronicon Casinense_
+(Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be
+right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two
+documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is
+a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title
+was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted
+by him.
+
+[46] The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands
+in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard
+of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, _s.v._
+
+[47] After the _translatio ad Francos_ of A.D. 800, the two Empires
+corresponded exactly to the two Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.
+
+[48]
+
+ 'Plaudentem cerne senatum
+ Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'
+ _In Eutrop._ ii. 135.
+
+[49] Several Emperors during this period had been patrons of images,
+as was Irene at the moment of which I write: the stain nevertheless
+adhered to their government as a whole.
+
+[50] I should not have thought it necessary to explain that the
+sentence in the text is meant simply to state what were (so far as can
+be made out) the sentiments and notions of the ninth century, if a
+writer in the _Tablet_ (reviewing a former edition) had not understood
+it as an expression of the author's own belief.
+
+To a modern eye there is of course no necessary connection between the
+Roman Empire and a catholic and apostolic Church; in fact, the two
+things seem rather, such has been the impression made on us by the
+long struggle of church and state, in their nature mutually
+antagonistic. The interest of history lies not least in this, that it
+shews us how men have at different times entertained wholly different
+notions respecting the relation to one another of the same ideas or
+the same institutions.
+
+[51] Monachus Sangallensis, _De Gestis Karoli_; in Pertz, _Monumenta
+Germani Historica_.
+
+[52] Monachus Sangallensis; _ut supra_. So Pope Gregory the Great two
+centuries earlier: 'Quanto cteros homines regia dignitas antecedit,
+tanto cterarum gentium regna regni Francorum culmen excellit.' Ep. v.
+6.
+
+[53] Alciatus, _De Formula imperii Romani_.
+
+[54] Or rather, according to the then prevailing practice of beginning
+the year from Christmas-day, A.D. 801.
+
+[55] An elaborate description of old St. Peter's may be found in
+Bunsen's and Platner's _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom_; with which
+compare Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome.
+
+[56] The primitive custom was for the bishop to sit in the centre of
+the apse, at the central point of the east end of the church (or, as
+it would be more correct to say, the end furthest from the door) just
+as the judge had done in those law courts on the model of which the
+first basilicas were constructed. This arrangement may still be seen
+in some of the churches of Rome, as well as elsewhere in Italy;
+nowhere better than in the churches of Ravenna, particularly the
+beautiful one of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and in the cathedral of
+Torcello, near Venice.
+
+[57] On this chair were represented the labours of Hercules and the
+signs of the zodiac. It is believed at Rome to be the veritable chair
+of the Apostle himself, and whatever may be thought of such an
+antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily traced back to the third
+or fourth century of Christianity. (The story that it is inscribed
+with verses from the Koran is, I believe, without foundation.) It is
+now enclosed in a gorgeous casing of gilded wood (some say, of
+bronze), and placed aloft at the extremity of St. Peter's, just over
+the spot where a bishop's chair would in the old arrangement of the
+basilica have stood. The sarcophagus in which Charles himself lay,
+till the French scattered his bones abroad, had carved on it the rape
+of Proserpine. It may still be seen in the gallery of the basilica at
+Aachen.
+
+[58] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_.
+
+[59] The coronation scene is described in all the annals of the time,
+to which it is therefore needless to refer more particularly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+EMPIRE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.
+
+
+The coronation of Charles is not only the central event of the Middle
+Ages, it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them
+singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of
+the world would have been different. In one sense indeed it has
+scarcely a parallel. The assassins of Julius Csar thought that they
+had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy came inevitable in the next
+generation. The conversion of Constantine changed the face of the
+world, but Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph
+was only a question of time. Had Columbus never spread his sails, the
+secret of the western sea would yet have been pierced by some later
+voyager: had Charles V broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice
+silenced at Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere.
+But if the Roman Empire had not been restored in the West in the
+person of Charles, it would never have been restored at all, and the
+inexhaustible train of consequences for good and for evil that
+followed could not have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining
+the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as through all the
+Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were striving for the mastery. The
+one was the instinct of separation, disorder, anarchy, caused by the
+ungoverned impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of
+mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the better minds for
+a formal unity of government, which had its historical basis in the
+memories of the old Roman Empire, and its most constant expression in
+the devotion to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency, as
+everything shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger, but the
+latter, used and stimulated by an extraordinary genius like Charles,
+achieved in the year 800 a victory whose results were never to be
+lost. When the hero was gone, the returning wave of anarchy and
+barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate
+the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck
+its roots too deep to be overthrown by force, and when it perished at
+last, perished from inner decay. It was just because men felt that no
+one less than Charles could have won such a triumph over the evils of
+the time, by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government,
+that the excitement and hope and joy which the coronation evoked were
+so intense. Their best evidence is perhaps to be found not in the
+records of that time itself, but in the cries of lamentation that
+broke forth when the Empire began to dissolve towards the close of the
+ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached themselves to
+the name of Charles the Emperor, a hero of whom any exploit was
+credible[60], in the devout admiration wherewith his German successors
+looked back to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but
+superhuman prototype.
+
+[Sidenote: Import of the coronation.]
+
+As the event of A.D. 800 made an unparalleled impression on those who
+lived at the time, so has it engaged the attention of men in
+succeeding ages, has been viewed in the most opposite lights, and
+become the theme of interminable controversies. It is better to look
+at it simply as it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in
+so many other cases, may be seen the errors into which jurists have
+been led by the want of historical feeling. In rude and unsettled
+states of society men respect forms and obey facts, while careless of
+rules and principles. In England, for example, in the eleventh and
+twelfth centuries, it signified very little whether an aspirant to the
+throne was next lawful heir, but it signified a great deal whether he
+had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong party. Regarding
+the matter thus, it is not hard to see why those who judged the actors
+of A.D. 800 as they would have judged their contemporaries should have
+misunderstood the nature of that which then came to pass. Baronius and
+Bellarmine, Spanheim and Conring, are advocates bound to prove a
+thesis, and therefore believing it; nor does either party find any
+lack of plausible arguments[61]. But civilian and canonist alike
+proceed upon strict legal principles, and no such principles can be
+found in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited by
+the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of priests to set up
+and pull down princes, nor those which shew the earlier Emperors
+controlling the bishops of Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted
+not as having alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of
+hereditary succession and the theory of popular election would have
+equally excluded such a claim; he was the spokesman of the popular
+will, which, identifying itself with the sacerdotal power, hated the
+Greeks and was grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more.
+The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly his work,
+and without him would never have been brought about at all. It was
+natural that a confusion of his secular functions as leader, and his
+spiritual as consecrating priest, should lay the foundation of the
+right claimed afterwards of raising and deposing monarchs at the will
+of Christ's vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout; he did not, as
+in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was received by the Pope and
+the people as a friend and ally. Rome no doubt became his capital, but
+it had already obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that
+stood out to posterity from the whole transaction was that the crown
+was bestowed, was at least imposed, by the hands of the pontiff. He
+seemed the trustee and depositary of the imperial authority[62].
+
+[Sidenote: Contemporary accounts.]
+
+The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives of those concerned in
+the transaction is to transcribe the narratives of three contemporary,
+or almost contemporary annalists, two of them German and one Italian.
+The Annals of Lauresheim say:--
+
+'And because the name of Emperor had now ceased among the Greeks, and
+their Empire was possessed by a woman, it then seemed both to Leo the
+Pope himself, and to all the holy fathers who were present in the
+selfsame council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that
+they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the Franks, who held
+Rome herself, where the Csars had always been wont to sit, and all
+the other regions which he ruled through Italy and Gaul and Germany;
+and inasmuch as God had given all these lands into his hand, it seemed
+right that with the help of God and at the prayer of the whole
+Christian people he should have the name of Emperor also. Whose
+petition king Charles willed not to refuse, but submitting himself
+with all humility to God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the
+whole Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus
+Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor, being consecrated by
+the lord Pope Leo[63].'
+
+Very similar in substance is the account of the Chronicle of Moissac
+(ad ann. 801):--
+
+'Now when the king upon the most holy day of the Lord's birth was
+rising to the mass after praying before the confession of the blessed
+Peter the Apostle, Leo the Pope, with the consent of all the bishops
+and priests and of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the
+Romans, set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also
+shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the
+Laudes, he was adored by the Pope after the manner of the emperors of
+old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said
+Emperor abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him, who said that
+the name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them
+the Empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid
+hold on her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the
+Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book of the
+Kings; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly of the bishops and
+priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the
+elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian
+people, that they should name Charles king of the Franks to be
+Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire where the
+Csars and Emperors were always used to sit; and that the heathen
+might not mock the Christians if the name of Emperor should have
+ceased among the Christians[64].'
+
+These two accounts are both from a German source: that which follows
+is Roman, written probably within some fifty or sixty years of the
+event. It is taken from the Life of Leo III in the _Vit Pontificum
+Romanorum_, compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.
+
+'After these things came the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus
+Christ, and all men were again gathered together in the aforesaid
+basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle: and then the gracious and
+venerable pontiff did with his own hands crown Charles with a very
+precious crown. Then all the faithful people of Rome, seeing the
+defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy Roman
+Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and of the blessed Peter,
+the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, cry with one accord
+with a loud voice, 'To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of
+God, the great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.' While
+he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, was
+invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed thrice, and he was chosen by
+all to be Emperor of the Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff
+anointed Charles with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to
+be king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; and
+when the mass was finished, then after the mass the most serene lord
+Emperor offered gifts[65].'
+
+[Sidenote: Impression which they convey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Later theories respecting the coronation.]
+
+In these three accounts there is no serious discrepancy as to the
+facts, although the Italian priest, as is natural, heightens the
+importance of the part played by the Pope, while the Germans are too
+anxious to rationalize the event, talking of a synod of the clergy, a
+consultation of the people, and a formal request to Charles, which the
+silence of Eginhard, as well as the other circumstances of the case,
+forbid us to accept as literally true. Similarly Anastasius passes
+over the adoration rendered by the Pope to the Emperor, upon which
+most of the Frankish records insist in a way which puts it beyond
+doubt. But the impression which the three narratives leave is
+essentially the same. They all shew how little the transaction can be
+made to wear a strictly legal character. The Frankish king does not of
+his own might seize the crown, but rather receives it as coming
+naturally to him, as the legitimate consequence of the authority he
+already enjoyed. The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any
+right of his own as head of the Church: he is merely the instrument of
+God's providence, which has unmistakeably pointed out Charles as the
+proper person to defend and lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman
+people do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause accept
+the chief who is presented to them. The act is conceived of as
+directly ordered by the Divine Providence which has brought about a
+state of things that admits of but one issue, an issue which king,
+priest, and people have only to recognise and obey; their personal
+ambitions, passions, intrigues, sinking and vanishing in reverential
+awe at what seems the immediate interposition of Heaven. And as the
+result is desired by all parties alike, they do not think of inquiring
+into one another's rights, but take their momentary harmony to be
+natural and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and
+conflicts which were to arise out of what seemed then so simple. And
+it was just because everything was thus left undetermined, resting not
+on express stipulation but rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a
+sympathy of beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event
+admitted of being afterwards represented in so many different lights.
+Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the
+mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct
+theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated
+by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some
+extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been
+won by their great predecessor as the prize of conquest, and drew the
+conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as
+against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to
+the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the
+voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created,
+he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of
+their authority. The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo
+imposed the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it was then
+his, and must always continue to be their right to give to whomsoever
+they would an office which was created to be the handmaid of their
+own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed,
+yet to an impartial eye it cannot claim, any more than do the two
+others, to contain the whole truth. Charles did not conquer, nor the
+Pope give, nor the people elect. As the act was unprecedented so was
+it illegal; it was a revolt of the ancient Western capital against a
+daughter who had become a mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of
+insurrection, justified by the weakness and wickedness of the
+Byzantine princes, hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction
+of Christ's representative, but founded upon no law, nor competent to
+create any for the future.
+
+[Sidenote: Was the coronation a surprise?]
+
+It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing question, how far the
+coronation scene, an act as imposing in its circumstances as it was
+momentous in its results, was prearranged among the parties. Eginhard
+tells us that Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not,
+even on so high a festival, have entered the church had he known of
+the Pope's intention. Even if the monarch had uttered, the secretary
+would hardly have recorded a falsehood long after the motive that
+might have prompted it had disappeared. Of the existence of that
+motive which has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent
+of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered, little or no
+proof can be brought from the records of the time, wherein the nation
+is represented as exulting in the new dignity of their chief as an
+accession of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that Charles's
+disavowal was meant to soothe the offended pride of the Byzantine
+princes, from whom he had nothing to fear, and who were none the more
+likely to recognise his dignity, if they should believe it to be not
+of his own seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a
+surprise; for it was the goal towards which the policy of the Frankish
+kings had for many years pointed, and Charles himself, in sending
+before him to Rome many of the spiritual and temporal magnates of his
+realm, in summoning thither his son Pipin from the war against the
+Lombards of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some more than
+ordinary result from this journey to the imperial city. Alcuin
+moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister of Charles in matters
+religious and literary, appears from one of his extant letters to have
+sent as a Christmas gift to his royal pupil a carefully corrected and
+superbly adorned copy of the Scriptures, with the words 'ad splendorem
+imperialis potenti.' This has commonly been taken for conclusive
+evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand, and such it would
+be were there not some reasons for giving the letter an earlier date,
+and looking upon the word 'imperialis' as a mere magniloquent
+flourish[66]. More weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments
+supplied by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his
+confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never have ventured on
+so momentous a step until previous conferences had assured him of the
+feelings of the king, nor could an act for which the assembly were
+evidently prepared have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the
+declaration of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down to
+mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the whole more
+reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied himself of the
+wishes of the Roman clergy and people as well as of the Frankish
+magnates, resolved to seize an occasion and place so eminently
+favourable to his long-cherished plan, while Charles, carried away by
+the enthusiasm of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet and
+instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which he might have
+wished to receive at some later time or in some other way. If,
+therefore, any positive conclusion be adopted, it would seem to be
+that Charles, although he had probably given a more or less vague
+consent to the project, was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden
+fulfilment which interrupted his own carefully studied designs. And
+although a deed which changed the history of the world was in any case
+no accident, it may well have worn to the Frankish and Roman
+spectators the air of a surprise. For there were no preparations
+apparent in the church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors
+in aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne: suddenly, at
+the very moment when he rose from the sacred hollow where he had knelt
+among the ever-burning lamps before the holiest of Christian
+relics--the body of the prince of the Apostles--the hands of that
+Apostle's representative placed upon his head the crown of glory and
+poured upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something in this
+to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine presence, and make
+them hail him whom that presence seemed almost visibly to consecrate,
+the 'pious and peace-giving Emperor, crowned of God.'
+
+[Sidenote: Theories of the motives of Charles.]
+
+The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial title is ascribed by
+Eginhard to a fear of the jealous hostility of the Greeks, who could
+not only deny his claim to it, but might disturb by their intrigues
+his dominions in Italy. Accepting this statement, the problem remains,
+how is this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his which
+clearly shew him aiming at the Roman crown? An ingenious and probable,
+if not certain solution, is suggested by a recent historian[67], who
+argues from a minute examination of the previous policy of Charles,
+that while it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown of
+the world, he foresaw at the same time the opposition of the Eastern
+Court, and the want of legality from which his title would in
+consequence suffer. He was therefore bent on getting from the
+Byzantines, if possible, a transference of their crown; if not, at
+least a recognition of his own: and he appears to have hoped to win
+this by the negotiations which had been for some time kept on foot
+with the Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation by
+Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, irritating the Eastern
+Court, and forcing Charles into the position of a rival who could not
+with dignity adopt a soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he
+seems not even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a peaceful
+recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him, if we may credit
+Theophanes[68], from seeking her hand in marriage. And when the
+project of thus uniting the East and West in a single Empire, baffled
+for a time by the opposition of her minister tius, was rendered
+impossible by her subsequent dethronement and exile, he did not
+abandon the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in
+rather than admission of his dignity had been won from the Byzantine
+sovereigns Michael and Nicephorus[69].
+
+[Sidenote: Defect in the title of the Teutonic Emperors.]
+
+Whether, supposing Leo to have been less precipitate, a cession of the
+crown, or an acknowledgment of the right of the Romans to confer it,
+could ever have been obtained by Charles is perhaps more than
+doubtful. But it is clear that he judged rightly in rating its
+importance high, for the want of it was the great blemish in his own
+and his successors' dignity. To shew how this was so, reference must
+be made to the events of A.D. 476. Both the extinction of the Western
+Empire in that year and its revival in A.D. 800 have been very
+generally misunderstood in modern times, and although the mistake is
+not, in a certain sense, of practical importance, yet it tends to
+confuse history and to blind us to the ideas of the people who acted
+on both occasions. When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus
+Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power,
+but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that
+from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a
+single undivided Roman Empire. In A.D. 800 the very memory of the
+separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius
+till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long since lost, and
+neither Leo nor Charles nor any one among their advisers dreamt of
+reviving it. They too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire
+to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the
+Frankish king not to proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to
+reverse the act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as
+well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name.
+Their deed was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it
+every semblance of legality: they professed and partly believed that
+they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign, but legitimately
+filling up the place of the deposed Constantine the Sixth; the people
+of the imperial city exercising their ancient right of choice, their
+bishop his right of consecration.
+
+Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could create but they
+could not destroy: they set up an Emperor of their own, whose
+representatives thenceforward ruled the West, but Constantinople
+retained her sovereigns as of yore; and Christendom saw henceforth two
+imperial lines, not as in the time before A.D. 476, the conjoint heads
+of a single realm, but rivals and enemies, each denouncing the other
+as an impostor, each professing to be the only true and lawful head of
+the Christian Church and people. Although therefore we must in
+practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till A.D. 1453,
+when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a
+Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one
+which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did
+repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to facts, they
+sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was
+always the same. Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not
+of Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius,
+and all the Eastern line; and hence it is that in all the annals of
+the time and of many succeeding centuries, the name of Constantine VI,
+the sixty-seventh in order from Augustus, is followed without a break
+by that of Charles, the sixty-eighth.
+
+[Sidenote: Government of Charles as Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: His authority in matters ecclesiastical.]
+
+The maintenance of an imperial line among the Greeks was a continuing
+protest against the validity of Charles's title. But from their enmity
+he had little to fear, and in the eyes of the world he seemed to step
+into their place, adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs
+to the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and Rome ceased for
+ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while the Eastern princes
+paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor--as the
+recognised head of Christendom--received from the patriarch of
+Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary;
+the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of
+the Persians[70]. Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great
+Khalif the romancers created a crusade. Within his own dominions his
+sway assumed a more sacred character. Already had his unwearied and
+comprehensive activity made him throughout his reign an ecclesiastical
+no less than a civil ruler, summoning and sitting in councils,
+examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the
+smallest points of church discipline and polity. A synod held at
+Frankfort in A.D. 794 condemned the decrees of the second council of
+Nica, which had been approved by Pope Hadrian, censured in violent
+terms the conduct of the Byzantine rulers in suggesting them, and
+without excluding images from churches, altogether forbade them to be
+worshipped or even venerated. Not only did Charles preside in and
+direct the deliberations of this synod, although legates from the Pope
+were present--he also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and
+urging its conclusions; he pressed Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a
+heretic for enouncing doctrines to which Hadrian had himself
+consented. There are letters of his extant in which he lectures Pope
+Leo in a tone of easy superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy
+canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts
+which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation of pagans
+and the establishment of sound doctrine throughout the Church. Nay,
+subsequent Popes themselves[71] admitted and applauded the despotic
+superintendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise,
+and which led some one to give him playfully a title that had once
+been applied to the Pope himself, 'Episcopus episcoporum.'
+
+[Sidenote: The imperial office in its ecclesiastical relations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Capitulary of A.D. 802.]
+
+Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be thought that
+Charles needed no further title to justify his power. The inference is
+in truth rather the converse of this. Upon what he had done already
+the imperial title must necessarily follow: the attitude of protection
+and control which he held towards the Church and the Holy See
+belonged, according to the ideas of the time, especially and only to
+an Emperor. Therefore his coronation was the fitting completion and
+legitimation of his authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it.
+We have, however, one remarkable witness to the importance that was
+attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement which he conceived
+his office to have received from it. In a great assembly held at
+Aachen, A.D. 802, the lately-crowned Emperor revised the laws of all
+the races that obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them,
+and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone[72]. All persons
+within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as civil, who have
+already sworn allegiance to him as king, are thereby commanded to
+swear to him afresh as Csar; and all who have never yet sworn, down
+to the age of twelve, shall now take the same oath. 'At the same time
+it shall be publicly explained to all what is the force and meaning of
+this oath, and how much more it includes than a mere promise of
+fidelity to the monarch's person. Firstly, it binds those who swear it
+to live, each and every one of them, according to his strength and
+knowledge, in the holy service of God; since the lord Emperor cannot
+extend over all his care and discipline. Secondly, it binds them
+neither by force nor fraud to seize or molest any of the goods or
+servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do no violence nor treason towards
+the holy Church, or to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that
+the lord Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord and his saints,
+the protector and defender of all such.' Then in similar fashion
+purity of life is prescribed to the monks; homicide, the neglect of
+hospitality, and other offences are denounced, the notions of sin and
+crime being intermingled and almost identified in a way to which no
+parallel can be found, unless it be in the Mosaic code. There God, the
+invisible object of worship, is also, though almost incidentally, the
+judge and political ruler of Israel; here the whole cycle of social
+and moral duty is deduced from the obligation of obedience to the
+visible autocratic head of the Christian state.
+
+In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly in the
+writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned the working of the
+same theocratic ideas. Among his intimate friends he chose to be
+called by the name of David, exercising in reality all the powers of
+the Jewish king; presiding over this kingdom of God upon earth rather
+as a second Constantine or Theodosius than in the spirit and
+traditions of the Julii or the Flavii. Among his measures there are
+two which in particular recall the first Christian Emperor. As
+Constantine founds so Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection
+of Church and State. Bishops and abbots are as essential a part of
+rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices are held under
+the same conditions of fealty and the service in war of their vassal
+tenants, not of the spiritual person himself: they have similar rights
+of jurisdiction, and are subject alike to the imperial _missi_. The
+monarch tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual
+duties; quells the insubordination of the monasteries; endeavours to
+bring the seculars into a monastic life by instituting and regulating
+chapters. But after granting wealth and power, the attempt was vain;
+his strong hand withdrawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by
+him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood had
+long been pleading, was made compulsory in Western Europe, and the
+support of the ministers of religion entrusted to the laws of the
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the imperial title in Germany and Gaul.]
+
+[Sidenote: Action of Charles on Europe.]
+
+In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the imperial title, a new
+position. Later jurists labour to distinguish his power as Roman
+Emperor from that which he held already as king of the Franks and
+their subject allies: they insist that his coronation gave him the
+capital only, that it is absurd to talk of a Roman Empire in regions
+whither the eagles had never flown[73]. In such expressions there
+seems to lurk either confusion or misconception. It was not the actual
+government of the city that Charles obtained in A.D. 800: that his
+father had already held as Patrician and he had constantly exercised
+in the same capacity: it was far more than the titular sovereignty of
+Rome which had hitherto been supposed to be vested in the Byzantine
+princes: it was nothing less than the headship of the world, believed
+to appertain of right to the lawful Roman Emperor, whether he reigned
+on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Rhine. As that headship, although
+never denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several centuries,
+its bestowal on the king of so vast a realm was a change of the first
+moment, for it made the coronation not merely a transference of the
+seat of Empire, but a renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing back of
+it from faith to sight, from the world of belief and theory to the
+world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave were
+autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all minor claims and
+dignities: the rights of Charles the Frankish king were merged in
+those of Charles the successor of Augustus, the lord of the world.
+That his imperial authority was theoretically irrespective of place is
+clear from his own words and acts, and from all the monuments of that
+time. He would not, indeed, have dreamed of treating the free Franks
+as Justinian had treated his half-Oriental subjects, nor would the
+warriors who followed his standard have brooked such an attempt. Yet
+even to German eyes his position must have been altered by the halo of
+vague splendour which now surrounded him; for all, even the Saxon and
+the Slave, had heard of Rome's glories, and revered the name of Csar.
+And in his effort to weld discordant elements into one body, to
+introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the Teutonic
+tendency to localization by his _missi_--officials commissioned to
+traverse each some part of his dominions, reporting on and redressing
+the evils they found--and by his own oft-repeated personal progresses,
+Charles was guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is
+the revival of order and culture, fusing the West into a compact
+whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to lose the marks of their
+connection and their half-Roman character, gathering up all that is
+left in Europe of spirit and wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with
+the new force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the
+masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East. Ruling the world by
+the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of the Romans and their
+Csar whom God had chosen to conquer it, he renews the original
+aggressive movement of the Empire: the civilized world has subdued her
+invader[74], and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence
+the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons,
+Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses
+and baptism the badge of submission. The overthrow of the
+Irminsl[75], in the first Saxon campaign[76], sums up the changes of
+seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton destroys the monument of his
+country's freedom, for it is also the emblem of paganism and
+barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor.
+
+[Sidenote: His position as Frankish king.]
+
+This, however, is not the only side from which Charles's policy and
+character may be regarded. If the unity of the Church and the shadow
+of imperial prerogative was one pillar of his power, the other was the
+Frankish nation. The Empire was still military, though in a sense
+strangely different from that of Julius or Severus. The warlike Franks
+had permeated Western Europe; their primacy was admitted by the
+kindred tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemannians, and
+Burgundians; the Slavic peoples on the borders trembled and paid
+tribute; Alfonso of Asturias found in the Emperor a protector against
+the infidel foe. His influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the
+ocean: the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord[77]: the
+restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of Egbert to Wessex,
+might furnish a better ground for the claim of suzerainty than many to
+which his successors had afterwards recourse. As it was by Frankish
+arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial title adorned
+and legalized had been won, so was the government of Charles Roman in
+semblance rather than in fact. It was not by restoring the effete
+mechanism of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action
+and that of his great officers, that he strove to administer and
+reform. With every effort for a strong central government, there is no
+despotism; each nation retains its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its
+free popular assemblies. The conditions granted to the Saxons after
+such cruel warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century
+their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew how little he
+desired to make the Franks a dominant caste.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of his Empire.]
+
+He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe a Teutonic spirit into
+Roman forms. The conception was magnificent; great results followed
+its partial execution. Two causes forbade success. The one was the
+ecclesiastical, especially the Papal power, apparently subject to the
+temporal, but with a strong and undefined prerogative which only
+waited the occasion to trample on what it had helped to raise. The
+Pope might take away the crown he had bestowed, and turn against the
+Emperor the Church which now obeyed him. The other was to be found in
+the discordance of the component parts of the Empire. The nations were
+not ripe for settled life or extensive schemes of polity; the
+differences of race, language, manners, over vast and thinly-peopled
+lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection: and when
+once the spell of the great mind was withdrawn, the mutually repellent
+forces began to work, and the mass dissolved into that chaos out of
+which it had been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as
+they met, but having all of them undergone influences which continued
+to act when political connection had ceased. For the work of
+Charles--a genius pre-eminently creative--was not lost in the anarchy
+that followed: rather are we to regard his reign as the beginning of a
+new era, or as laying the foundations whereon men continued for many
+generations to build.
+
+[Sidenote: Personal habits and sympathies.]
+
+No claim can be more groundless than that which the modern French, the
+sons of the Latinized Kelt, set up to the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he
+might assume the chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his
+Frankish host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country, and
+was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their own character and
+habits[78]. Of strength and stature almost superhuman, in swimming and
+hunting unsurpassed, steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends
+gentle and condescending, he was a Roman, much less a Gaul, in nothing
+but his culture and his width of view, otherwise a Teuton. The centre
+of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen[79] and
+Engilenheim[80]; his army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn
+in the gathering of the old hero-lays[81], the composition of a German
+grammar, the ordinance against confining prayer to the three
+languages,--Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,--were all for the race from
+which he sprang, and whose advance, represented by the victory of
+Austrasia, the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aquitaine,
+spread a second Germanic wave over the conquered countries.
+
+[Sidenote: His Empire and character generally.]
+
+There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two
+from the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern
+civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to
+the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the
+conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still governed almost
+exclusively by viceroys and officers of Frankish blood. But the
+conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere
+mass of subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which rise
+and perish in a lifetime, the realms of Sesostris, or Attila, or
+Timur, was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not
+Teutonic but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and
+precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the
+system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human
+perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further
+progress. And the bond, too, by which the Empire was held together was
+Roman in its origin, although Roman in a sense which would have
+surprised Trajan or Severus, could it have been foretold them. The
+ecclesiastical body was already organized and centralized, and it was
+in his rule over the ecclesiastical body that the secret of Charles's
+power lay. Every Christian--Frank, Gaul, or Italian--owed loyalty to
+the head and defender of his religion: the unity of the Empire was a
+reflection of the unity of the Church.
+
+Into a general view of the government and policy of Charles it is not
+possible here to enter. Yet his legislation, his assemblies, his
+administrative system, his magnificent works, recalling the projects
+of Alexander and Csar[82], the zeal for education and literature
+which he shewed in the collection of manuscripts, the founding of
+schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters around him,
+cannot be appreciated apart from his position as restorer of the Roman
+Empire. Like all the foremost men of our race, Charles was all great
+things in one, and was so great just because the workings of his
+genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian warrior any
+more than he was an astute diplomatist; there is none of all his
+qualities which would not be forced out of its place were we to
+characterize him chiefly by it. Comparisons between famous men of
+different ages are generally as worthless as they are easy: the
+circumstances among which Charles lived do not permit us to institute
+a minute parallel between his greatness and that of those two to whom
+it is the modern fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
+could have become as profound a politician as Csar, as skilful a
+commander as Napoleon[83]. But neither to the Roman nor to the
+Corsican was he inferior in that one quality by which both he and they
+chiefly impress our imaginations--that intense, vivid, unresting
+energy which swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign, which
+sought a field for its workings in theology, science, literature, no
+less than in politics and war. As it was this wondrous activity that
+made him the conqueror of Europe, so was it by the variety of his
+culture that he became her civilizer. From him, in whose wide deep
+mind the whole medival theory of the world and human life mirrored
+itself, did medival society take the form and impress which it
+retained for centuries, and the traces whereof are among us and upon
+us to this day.
+
+The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that basilica which it had
+been the delight of his later years to erect and adorn with the
+treasures of ancient art. His tomb under the dome--where now we see an
+enormous slab, with the words 'Carolo Magno'--was inscribed, '_Magnus
+atque Orthodoxus Imperator_[84].' Poets, fostered by his own zeal,
+sang of him who had given to the Franks the sway of Romulus[85]. The
+gorgeous drapery of romance gradually wreathed itself round his name,
+till by canonization as a saint he received the highest glory the
+world or the Church could confer. For the Roman Church claimed then,
+as she claims still, the privilege which humanity in one form or
+another seems scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost
+divine its great departed; and as in pagan times temples had risen to
+a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated to St. Charlemagne.
+Between Sanctus Carolus and Divus Julius how strange an analogy and
+how strange a contrast!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[60] Before the end of the tenth century we find the monk Benedict of
+Soracte ascribing to Charles an expedition to Palestine, and other
+marvellous exploits. The romance which passes under the name of
+Archbishop Turpin is well known. All the best stories about
+Charles--and some of them are very good--may be found in the book of
+the Monk of St. Gall. Many refer to his dealings with the bishops,
+towards whom he is described as acting like a good-humoured
+schoolmaster.
+
+[61] Baronius, _Ann._, ad ann. 800; Bellarminus, _De translatione
+imperii Romani adversus Illyricum_; Spanhemius, _De ficta translatione
+imperii_; Conringius, _De imperio Romano Germanico_.
+
+[62] See especially Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, vol. iii. p. 109.
+
+[63] _Ann. Lauresb. ap._ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[64] _Apud_ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[65] _Vit Pontif._ in Mur. _S. R. I._ Anastasius in reporting the
+shout of the people omits the word 'Romanorum,' which the other
+annalists insert after 'imperatori.' The balance of probability is
+certainly in his favour.
+
+[66] Lorentz, _Leben Alcuins_. And cf. Dllinger, _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_.
+
+[67] See a very learned and interesting tract entitled _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_, recently published by Dr. v.
+Dllinger of Munich.
+
+[68] [Greek: Apokrisiarioi para Karoullou kai Leontos aitoumenoi
+zeuchthnai autn t Karoull pros gamon kai hensai ta Hea kai ta
+Hesperia.]--Theoph. _Chron._ in _Corp. Scriptt. Hist. Byz._
+
+[69] Their ambassadors at last saluted him by the desired title
+'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum et basileum appellantes.' Eginh.
+_Ann._, ad ann. 812.
+
+[70] Harun er Rashid; Eginh. _Vita Karoli_, c. 16.
+
+[71] So Pope John VIII in a document quoted by Waitz, _Deutsche
+Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+
+[72] Pertz, _M. G. H._ iii. (legg. I.)
+
+[73] Ptter, _Historical Development of the German Constitution_; so
+too Conring, and esp. David Blondel, _Adv. Chiffletium_.
+
+[74] 'Grcia capta ferum victorem cepit,' is repeated in this conquest
+of the Teuton by the Roman.
+
+[75] The notion that once prevailed that the Irminsl was the 'pillar
+of Hermann,' set up on the spot of the defeat of Varus, is now
+generally discredited. Some German antiquaries take the pillar to be a
+rude figure of the native god Irmin; but nothing seems to be known of
+this alleged deity: and it is more probable that the name Irmin is
+after all merely an altered form of the Keltic word which appears in
+Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone (_Maen_, a stone). Thus the pillar,
+so far from being the monument of the great Teutonic victory, would
+commemorate a pre-Teutonic race, whose name for it the invading tribes
+adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott, of Westminster, to whose kindness I am
+indebted for this explanation, informs me that a rude ditty recording
+the destruction of the pillar by Charles was current on the spot a few
+years ago. It ran thus:--
+
+ 'Irmin slad Irmin
+ Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen
+ Der Kaiser wird kommen
+ Mit Hammer und Stangen
+ Wird Irmin uphangen.'
+
+[76] Eginhard, _Ann_.
+
+[77] Most probably the Scots of Ireland--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+16.
+
+[78] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 23.
+
+[79] Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz (_M. G. H._ ii.),
+beginning,--
+
+ 'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,
+ Sedes regni principalis,
+ Prima regum curia.'
+
+This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth
+century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English
+name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do
+not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name
+Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place
+is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing
+for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name.
+
+[80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine
+between Mentz and Bingen.
+
+[81] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 29.
+
+[82] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 17.
+
+[83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern
+French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been
+foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.
+
+[84] This basilica was built upon the model of the church of the Holy
+Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as it was the first church of any size
+that had been erected in those regions for centuries past, it excited
+extraordinary interest among the Franks and Gauls. In many of its
+features it greatly resembles the beautiful church of San Vitale, at
+Ravenna (also modelled upon that of the Holy Sepulchre) which was
+begun by Theodoric, and completed under Justinian. Probably San Vitale
+was used as a pattern by Charles's architects: we know that he caused
+marble columns to be brought from Ravenna to deck the church at
+Aachen. Over the tomb of Charles, below the central dome (to which the
+Gothic choir we now see was added some centuries later), there hangs a
+huge chandelier, the gift of Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+[85] 'Romuleum Francis prstitit imperium.'--Elegy of Ermoldus
+Nigellus, in Pertz; _M. G. H._, t. i. So too Florus the Deacon,--
+
+ 'Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Romula genti,
+ Regnorumque simul mater Roma inclyta cessit:
+ Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit
+ Munere apostolico, Christi munimine fretus.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis the Pious.]
+
+[Sidenote: Partition of Verdun, A.D. 843.]
+
+Lewis the Pious[86], left by Charles's death sole heir, had been some
+years before associated with his father in the Empire, and had been
+crowned by his own hands in a way which, intentionally or not,
+appeared to deny the need of Papal sanction. But it was soon seen that
+the strength to grasp the sceptre had not passed with it. Too mild to
+restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown by over-conscientiousness
+into the hands of the clergy, he had reigned few years when
+dissensions broke out on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to
+continue one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor, but with its
+several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia, Bavaria, each a kingdom
+held by a scion of the reigning house. A scheme dangerous in itself,
+and rendered more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of
+succession, could with difficulty have been managed by a wise and firm
+monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and
+Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed,
+and forced by the bishops to do penance; again restored, but without
+power, a tool in the hands of contending factions. On his death the
+sons flew to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern
+Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition
+treaty of Verdun which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal
+division among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission
+of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all three
+brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren
+precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he,
+as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result was the
+separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities. Their difference
+of feeling, shewn already in the support of Lewis the Pious by the
+Germans against the Gallo-Franks and the Church[87], took now a
+permanent shape: modern Germany proclaims the era of A.D. 843 the
+beginning of her national existence, and celebrated its thousandth
+anniversary twenty-seven years ago. To Charles the Bald was given
+Francia Occidentalis, that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to
+Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
+a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the
+Mediterranean, and including the northern half of Italy: Lewis
+(surnamed, from his kingdom, the German) received all east of the
+Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible
+supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these regions
+German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally
+removed from Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and
+having no national basis, was the weakest of the three, and soon
+dissolved into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy, and
+Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine.
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Carolingian Empire of the West, A.D. 888.]
+
+On the tangled history of the period that follows it is not possible
+to do more than touch. After passing from one branch of the
+Carolingian line to another[88], the imperial sceptre was at last
+possessed and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all the
+dominions of his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail
+himself of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring
+monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A.D. 887, and his death in 888
+has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the
+Carolingian Empire of the West. The Germans, still attached to the
+ancient line, chose Arnulf, an illegitimate Carolingian, for their
+king: he entered Italy and was crowned Emperor by his partizan Pope
+Formosus, in 894. But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no
+condition to maintain her power over the southern lands: Arnulf
+retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy
+independence.
+
+That time was indeed the nadir of order and civilization. From all
+sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was
+rushing down upon his empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean
+coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman swept the
+Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced France and Germany by their
+rivers, burning, slaying, carrying off into captivity: pouring through
+the Straits of Gibraltar, they fell upon Provence and Italy. By land,
+while Wends and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the German yoke and
+threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian bands, pressing in from the
+steppes of the Caspian, dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a
+new wave of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes to
+the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes the already loosened
+fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide
+organization: the strong built castles, the weak became their
+bondsmen, or took shelter under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot,
+or bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an
+independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned
+a distant and feeble suzerain. The grand vision of a universal
+Christian empire was utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism,
+the increasing localization of all powers: it might seem to have been
+but a passing gleam from an older and better world.
+
+[Sidenote: The German Kingdom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry the Fowler.]
+
+In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure. When
+the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians had ended in
+Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and
+the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the
+Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid
+the foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and
+Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly
+life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to
+claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had
+at least asserted by the demand of tribute; but death overtook him,
+and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great.]
+
+The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name in the sense which it commonly
+bore in later centuries, as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and
+Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great.
+Substantially, it is true, as well as technically, it was a
+prolongation of the Empire of Charles; and it rested (as will be shewn
+in the sequel) upon ideas essentially the same as those which brought
+about the coronation of A.D. 800. But a revival is always more or less
+a revolution: the one hundred and fifty years that had passed since
+the death of Charles had brought with them changes which made Otto's
+position in Germany and Europe less commanding and less autocratic
+than his predecessor's. With narrower geographical limits, his Empire
+had a less plausible claim to be the heir of Rome's universal
+dominion; and there were also differences in its inner character and
+structure sufficient to justify us in considering Otto (as he is
+usually considered by his countrymen) not a mere successor after an
+interregnum, but rather a second founder of the imperial throne in the
+West.
+
+Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something must be said
+of the condition of that country, where circumstances had again made
+possible the plan of Theodoric, permitted it to become an independent
+kingdom, and attached the imperial title to its sovereign.
+
+[Sidenote: Italian Emperors.]
+
+The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great was not really that
+'translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks,' which it
+was afterwards described as having been. It was not meant to settle
+the office in one nation or one dynasty: there was but an extension of
+that principle of the equality of all Romans which had made Trajan and
+Maximin Emperors. The '_arcanum imperii_,' whereof Tacitus speaks,
+'_posse principem alibi quam Rom fieri_[89],' had long before become
+_alium quam Romanum_; and now, the names of Roman and Christian having
+grown co-extensive, a barbarian chieftain was, as a Roman citizen,
+eligible to the office of Roman Emperor. Treating him as such, the
+people and pontiff of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern
+throne asserted their ancient rights of election, and while attempting
+to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established the division of
+Valentinian. The dignity was therefore in strictness personal to
+Charles; in point of fact, and by consent, hereditarily transmissible,
+just as it had formerly become in the families of Constantine and
+Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by no means legally
+attached, though they might think it so; it had passed to their king
+only because he was the greatest European potentate, and might equally
+well pass to some stronger race, if any such appeared. Hence, when the
+line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles the Fat, the rights of
+Rome and Italy might be taken to revive, and there was nothing to
+prevent the citizens from choosing whom they would. At that memorable
+era (A.D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince had united fell
+asunder; West France, where Odo or Eudes then began to reign, was
+never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf;
+Burgundy[90] split up into two principalities, in one of which
+(Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other
+(Cisjurane with Provence) submitted to Boso[91]; while Italy was
+divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of
+Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the
+latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor
+by the Pope. Arnulf's descent chased them away and vindicated the
+claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German
+faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy,
+and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his
+fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title
+he retained through years of misery and exile, till A.D. 928[92]. None
+of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy;
+beyond it they were not so much as recognized. The crown had become a
+bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes
+whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their
+more honest supporters. The demoralization and confusion of Italy, the
+shameless profligacy of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were
+enough to prevent a true Italian kingdom from being built up on the
+basis of Roman choice and national unity. Italian indeed it can
+scarcely be called, for these Emperors were still in blood and manners
+Teutonic, and akin rather to their Transalpine enemies than their
+Romanic subjects. But Italian it might soon have become under a
+vigorous rule which should have organized it within and knit it
+together to resist attacks from without. And therefore the attempt to
+establish such a kingdom is remarkable, for it might have had great
+consequences; might, if it had prospered, have spared Italy much
+suffering and Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who from
+the summit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty plain the gleaming
+turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great arc from North to West, may
+well wonder that a land which nature has so severed from its
+neighbours should, since history begins, have been always the victim
+of their intrusive tyranny.
+
+[Sidenote: Adelheid Queen of Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's first expedition into Italy, A.D. 951.]
+
+[Sidenote: Invitation sent by the Pope to Otto.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives for reviving the Empire.]
+
+In A.D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After
+him Hugh of Burgundy, and Lothar his son, reigned as kings of Italy,
+if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called.
+Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic[93], who had
+renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the
+degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city. Lothar
+dying, his widow Adelheid[94] was sought in marriage by Adalbert son
+of Berengar II, the new Italian monarch. A gleam of romance is shed on
+the Empire's revival by her beauty and her adventures. Rejecting the
+odious alliance, she was seized by Berengar, escaped with difficulty
+from the loathsome prison where his barbarity had confined her, and
+appealed to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly virtue
+which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce brutality of the
+last age. He listened, descended into Lombardy by the Adige valley,
+espoused the injured queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as
+a vassal of the East Frankish crown. That prince was turbulent and
+faithless; new complaints reached ere long his liege lord, and envoys
+from the Pope offered Otto the imperial title if he would re-visit and
+pacify Italy. The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, as they
+had thought in the centuries before the Carolingians, that the Empire
+was suspended, not extinct; and the desire to see its effective power
+restored, the belief that without it the world could never be right,
+might seem better grounded than it had been before the coronation of
+Charles. Then the imperial name had recalled only the faint memories
+of Roman majesty and order; now it was also associated with the golden
+age of the first Frankish Emperor, when a single firm and just hand
+had guided the state, reformed the church, repressed the excesses of
+local power: when Christianity had advanced against heathendom,
+civilizing as she went, fearing neither Hun nor Paynim. One annalist
+tells us that Charles was elected 'lest the pagans should insult the
+Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
+Christians[95].' The motive would be bitterly enforced by the
+calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of disintegration,
+confusion, strife, all the longings of every wiser and better soul for
+unity, for peace and law, for some bond to bring Christian men and
+Christian states together against the common enemy of the faith, were
+but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman Empire[96]. These
+were the feelings that on the field of Merseburg broke forth in the
+shout of 'Henry the Emperor:' these the hopes of the Teutonic host
+when after the great deliverance of the Lechfeld they greeted Otto,
+conqueror of the Magyars, as 'Imperator Augustus, Pater Patri[97].'
+
+[Sidenote: Condition of Italy.]
+
+The anarchy which an Emperor was needed to heal was at its worst in
+Italy, desolated by the feuds of a crowd of petty princes. A
+succession of infamous Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the
+lovers and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the chair of
+the Apostle, and though Rome herself might be lost to decency, Western
+Christendom was roused to anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to
+satisfy their consciences by separating the person from the office.
+The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest confusion, and
+demands were raised for the renewal of that imperial authority which
+all admitted in theory[98], and which nothing but the resolute
+opposition of Alberic himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951.
+From the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once tempted to
+turn, nothing could be hoped; its dangers from foreign enemies were
+aggravated by the plots of the court and the seditions of the capital;
+it was becoming more and more alienated from the West by the Photian
+schism and the question regarding the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
+which that quarrel had started. Germany was extending and
+consolidating herself, had escaped domestic perils, and might think of
+reviving ancient claims. No one could be more willing to revive them
+than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging a bold and
+successful struggle against the turbulent magnates of his German
+realm, had engaged him in wars with the surrounding nations, and was
+now captivated by the vision of a wider sway and a loftier
+world-embracing dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer
+opened up less welcome to his people. Aachen, their capital, was the
+ancestral home of the house of Pipin: their sovereign, although
+himself a Saxon by race, titled himself king of the Franks, in
+opposition to the Frankish rulers of the Western branch, whose
+Teutonic character was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul; they
+held themselves in every way the true representatives of the
+Carolingian power, and accounted the period since Arnulf's death
+nothing but an interregnum which had suspended but not impaired their
+rights over Rome. 'For so long,' says a writer of the time, 'as there
+remain kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman
+Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its
+kings[99].' The recovery of Italy was therefore to German eyes a
+righteous as well as a glorious design: approved by the Teutonic
+Church which had lately been negotiating with Rome on the subject of
+missions to the heathen; embraced by the people, who saw in it an
+accession of strength to their young kingdom. Everything smiled on
+Otto's enterprise, and the connection which was destined to bring so
+much strife and woe to Germany and to Italy was welcomed by the wisest
+of both countries as the beginning of a better era.
+
+[Sidenote: Descent of Otto the Great into Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: His coronation at Rome, A.D. 962.]
+
+Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or not he felt that he was
+sacrificing, as modern writers have thought that he did sacrifice, the
+greatness of his German kingdom to the lust of universal dominion, he
+shewed no hesitation in his acts. Descending from the Alps with an
+overpowering force, he was acknowledged as king of Italy at
+Pavia[100]; and, having first taken an oath to protect the Holy See
+and respect the liberties of the city, advanced to Rome. There, with
+Adelheid his queen, he was crowned by John XII, on the day of the
+Purification, the second of February, A.D. 962. The details of his
+election and coronation are unfortunately still more scanty than in
+the case of his great predecessor. Most of our authorities represent
+the act as of the Pope's favour[101], yet it is plain that the consent
+of the people was still thought an essential part of the ceremony, and
+that Otto rested after all on his host of conquering Saxons. Be this
+as it may, there was neither question raised nor opposition made in
+Rome; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged between Emperor
+and Pope, the latter owning himself a subject, and the citizens swore
+for the future to elect no pontiff without Otto's consent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Usage has established this translation of 'Hludowicus Pius,' but
+'gentle' or 'kind-hearted' would better express the meaning of the
+epithet.
+
+[87] Von Ranke discovers in this early traces of the aversion of the
+Germans to the pretensions of the spiritual power.--_History of
+Germany during the Reformation_: Introduction.
+
+[88] Singularly enough, when one thinks of modern claims, the dynasty
+of France (Francia occidentalis) had the least share of it. Charles
+the Bald was the only West Frankish Emperor, and reigned a very short
+time.
+
+[89] Tac. _Hist._ i. 4.
+
+[90] For an account of the various applications of the name Burgundy,
+see Appendix, Note A.
+
+[91] The accession of Boso took place in A.D. 877, eleven years before
+Charles the Fat's death. But the new kingdom could not be considered
+legally settled until the latter date, and its establishment is at any
+rate a part of that general break-up of the great Carolingian empire
+whereof A.D. 888 marks the crisis. See Appendix A at the end.
+
+It is a curious mark of the reverence paid to the Carolingian blood,
+that Boso, a powerful and ambitious prince, seems to have chiefly
+rested his claims on the fact that he was husband of Irmingard,
+daughter of the Emperor Lewis II. Baron de Gingins la Sarraz quotes a
+charter of his (drawn up when he seems to have doubted whether to call
+himself king) which begins, 'Ego Boso Dei gratia id quod sum, et
+coniux mea Irmingardis proles imperialis.'
+
+[92] Lewis had been surprised by Berengar at Verona, blinded, and
+forced to take refuge in his own kingdom of Provence.
+
+[93] Alberic is called variously senator, consul, patrician, and
+prince of the Romans.
+
+[94] Adelheid was daughter of Rudolf, king of Trans-Jurane Burgundy.
+She was at this time in her nineteenth year.
+
+[95] _Chron. Moiss._, in Pertz; _M. G. H._ i. 305.
+
+[96] See especially the poem of Florus the Deacon (printed in the
+Benedictine collection and in Migne), a bitter lament over the
+dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. It is too long for quotation. I
+give four lines here:--
+
+ 'Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister,
+ Quos Rhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve,
+ Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos,
+ Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta fatigant.'
+
+[97] Witukind, _Annales_, in Pertz. It may, however, be doubted
+whether the annalist is not here giving a very free rendering of the
+triumphant cries of the German army.
+
+[98] Cf. esp. the '_Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma_,'
+in Pertz.
+
+[99] 'Licet videamus Romanorum regnum in maxima parte jam destructum,
+tamen quamdiu reges Francorum duraverint qui Romanum imperium tenere
+debent, dignitas Romani imperii ex toto non peribit, quia stabit in
+regibus suis.'--_Liber de Antichristo_, addressed by Adso, abbot of
+Moutier-en-Der, to queen Gerberga (circa A.D. 950).
+
+[100] From the money which Otto struck in Italy, it seems probable
+that he did occasionally use the title of king of Italy or of the
+Lombards. That he was crowned can hardly be considered quite certain.
+
+[101] 'A papa imperator ordinatur,' says Hermannus Contractus.
+'Dominum Ottonem, ad hoc usque vocatum regem, non solum Romano sed et
+poene totius Europ populo acclamante imperatorem consecravit
+Augustum.'--_Annal. Quedlinb._, ad ann. 962. 'Benedictionem a domno
+apostolico Iohanne, cuius rogatione huc venit, cum sua coniuge promeruit
+imperialem ac patronus Roman effectus est ecclesi.'--Thietmar.
+'Acclamatione totius Romani populi ab apostolico Iohanne, filio
+Alberici, imperator et Augustus vocatur et ordinatur.'--Continuator
+Reginonis. And similarly the other annalists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THEORY OF THE MEDIVAL EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Why the revival of the Empire was desired.]
+
+These were the events and circumstances of the time: let us now look
+at the causes. The restoration of the Empire by Charles may seem to be
+sufficiently accounted for by the width of his conquests, by the
+peculiar connection which already subsisted between him and the Roman
+Church, by his commanding personal character, by the temporary vacancy
+of the Byzantine throne. The causes of its revival under Otto must be
+sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents
+which have already been dwelt upon, there must have been some further
+influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Frankish
+kings, so far from home in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the
+Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
+the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it
+seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and
+necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of
+things. The empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life,
+yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the
+provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the attacks of the
+barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the
+course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual
+representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a
+profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all
+this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem
+the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were
+breasting it even while it was sweeping them ever faster and faster
+away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings,
+new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reformation was the
+illusion dispelled.
+
+[Sidenote: Medival theories.]
+
+The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during
+these centuries. The Middle Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas
+as familiar to the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas
+of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the
+people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government,
+were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their
+speculative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the
+one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism
+was a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence a
+political one. Yet the human mind, so far from being idle, was in
+certain directions never more active; nor was it possible for it to
+remain without general conceptions regarding the relation of men to
+each other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made an
+expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an
+induction of the past; they were partly inherited from the system that
+had preceded, partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
+theology which was ripening into scholasticism[102]. Now the two great
+ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed
+were those of a World-Monarchy and a World-Religion.
+
+[Sidenote: The World-Religion.]
+
+Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge of each
+other, with no experience of wide political union[103], had held
+differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly,
+religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national; and as
+there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and
+of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
+the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles,
+natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings, if keenest in the East,
+frequently shew themselves in the early records of Greece and Italy:
+in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in
+sacking the cities of the stranger[104]; the primitive Latins have the
+same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
+Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions of the
+belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between
+Greeks and barbarians as natural[105], and defend slavery on the same
+ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races
+that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech
+and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more
+effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety
+of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are
+equal[106].
+
+[Sidenote: Coincides with the World-Empire.]
+
+It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because divinity was
+divided, humanity had been divided likewise; the doctrine of the unity
+of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His
+image[107]. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was
+to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of
+race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new
+religion a community of the faithful, a Holy Empire, designed to
+gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold
+polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the
+Csars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that
+had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts of
+one great world-movement toward unity: the coincidence of their
+boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough
+after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names
+of Roman and Christian convertible[108]. Oecumenical councils, where
+the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the
+temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head, presented
+the most visible and impressive examples of their connection[109]. The
+language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
+sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his generation
+consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome,
+by describing to them its successor and representative, the 'city
+which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God[110].'
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of the unity of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Medival Theology requires One Visible Catholic Church.]
+
+Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and that of the
+religious society, meeting in the higher unity of all Christians,
+which may be indifferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in
+that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which
+had been entrusted to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
+the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the firmness with
+which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to
+pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed
+from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing
+difficulty of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
+by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter
+every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more
+powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one
+body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that
+they can preserve it. Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
+may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the council of Trent,
+there had arisen the idea of supplementing revelation by tradition as
+a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and belief
+above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
+through the universal consciousness, represented by the sacerdotal
+order: principles still maintained by one branch of the Church, and
+for some at least of which far weightier reasons could be assigned
+then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the
+mass of the people, than any to which their modern advocates have
+recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it
+is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in
+the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the
+universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind
+to realize the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
+see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the
+doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the
+essential ceremony; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and
+saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could
+satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
+which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of
+the direct action of angels and devils: which expressed the strivings
+of the soul after purity by the search for the Holy Grail: which in
+the Crusades sent myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the
+sepulchre of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
+approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole
+fabric of medival Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible
+Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To
+acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have
+appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized,
+contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius
+of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a
+temporary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties. Had
+this plan, on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later
+times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its adversity
+or to the dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
+rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan
+was one which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church
+was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of
+Christian men dispersed throughout the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Idea of political unity upheld by the clergy.]
+
+Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was the priesthood; and
+it was by them, in whom dwelt whatever of learning and thought was
+left in Europe, that the second great idea whereof mention has been
+made--the belief in one universal temporal state--was preserved. As a
+matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West, and it might
+seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, did not
+so calculate their interest. So far from feeling themselves opposed to
+the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came
+to do in the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
+that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They
+were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves living by the Roman
+law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of
+the historical connection of the two powers. And by them chiefly was
+that idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by none more
+earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles[111]. The
+limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice: bishops
+were princes, the chief ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the
+leaders of their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
+ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the metaphysics of the time upon the theory of
+a World-State.]
+
+But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a universal
+monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical basis, and may be
+traced up to those metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call
+Realism developed itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times
+were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
+system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that which was most
+desirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became a
+search after principles of classification; since simplicity and truth
+were held to consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
+nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a
+sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of the relations of classes
+as containing or excluding each other. These classes, genera or
+species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind
+from phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped
+under and called by some common name; they were real things, existing
+independently of the individuals who composed them, recognized rather
+than created by the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
+quality present in all men, and making them what they are: as regards
+it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between
+individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their
+being lies in the universal property, which alone has a permanent and
+independent existence. The common nature of the individuals thus
+gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual
+and the secular, by two persons, the World-Priest and the
+World-Monarch, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity.
+For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
+expression that a thought could then be apprehended[112]. Although it
+was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine
+and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the
+corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a
+social and public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and
+concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which rewarded
+or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as
+different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all
+Christian men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising through
+successive grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they were
+answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually
+irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily opposed to the
+Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had
+imagined, a communion of the saints without its expression in a
+visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood
+of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the
+image of a universal State[113]. In this, as in so much else, the men
+of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all
+their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the
+very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out
+in practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
+
+[Sidenote: The ideal state supposed to be embodied in the Roman
+Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantine's Donation.]
+
+Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never have risen to
+maturity nor sensibly affected the progress of events, had it not
+gained in the pre-existence of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape
+and a definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that
+this came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian Church was
+framing her organization on the model of the state which protected
+her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and improved the analogy
+between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that
+the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
+upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every
+century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before
+the Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that
+to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a
+holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had
+been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway[114].
+In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western
+countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
+power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still
+commanded, until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the
+ninth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the
+exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the
+hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of
+that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most
+stupendous of all the medival forgeries, which under the name of the
+Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the
+unquestioning belief of mankind[115]. Itself a portentous falsehood,
+it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of
+the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the
+eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine
+the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved,
+on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a
+new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
+government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he
+bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
+over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all,
+although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid
+audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the
+Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all
+of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
+same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The
+Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar,
+the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body
+of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
+receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians[116].
+
+[Sidenote: Interdependence of Papacy and Empire.]
+
+The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious
+society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of
+the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman
+clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than
+it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law was
+intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial
+jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and
+those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first
+to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title
+of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
+even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate
+and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it the necessary
+complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally
+imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II
+to break with the Byzantine princes[117], and the maintenance of their
+titular sovereignty till A.D. 800: hence the part which the Holy See
+played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of
+the West capable of fulfilling its duties; hence the grief with which
+its weakness under his successors was seen, the gladness when it
+descended to Otto as representative of the Frankish kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire revived in a new character.]
+
+Up to the era of A.D. 800 there had been at Constantinople a
+legitimate historical prolongation of the Roman Empire. Technically,
+as we have seen, the election of Charles, after the deposition of
+Constantine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old
+rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it
+not, did far more than effect a change of dynasty when he rejected
+Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always
+delusive. As well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
+orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human affairs
+which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new
+order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former
+ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
+unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Csar, nor the States-general of
+Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in
+1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles
+the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to A.D. 800, which bears the legend
+'Renovatio Romani Imperii[118],' expresses, more justly perhaps than
+was intended by its author, a second birth of the Roman Empire.
+
+It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this
+new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of
+fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one
+dynasty and country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
+character and claims, and was without the power that would have
+enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Great a
+new period begins, in which the ideas that have been described as
+floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the
+imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
+this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
+
+[Sidenote: Position and functions of the Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Correspondence and harmony of the spiritual and temporal
+powers.]
+
+The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion
+of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the
+World-State to be a monarchy; tradition, as well as the continuance of
+certain institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A
+king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the
+Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in
+older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilized world;
+the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
+of Christendom[119]. His functions will be seen most clearly if we
+deduce them from the leading principle of medival mythology, the
+exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the
+celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
+His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigned over
+the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as
+of heaven, so must he (the _Imperator coelestis_[t]) be represented by
+a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor (_Imperator terrenus_[120]),
+whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this
+present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the
+body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's
+manifestation, so must there be a rule and care of men's bodies as
+well as of their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of
+that which is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem
+of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is
+presented to us throughout the Middle Ages[121]. The Pope, as God's
+vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the
+Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their
+dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed
+the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end
+of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is
+to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position
+is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by
+churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect
+their lands and lead their tenants in war[122]. The functions of
+Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to
+the priesthood, and to execute their decrees upon heretics and
+sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
+to use carnal weapons[123]. Thus does the Emperor answer in every
+point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank,
+created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been
+modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its
+details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and
+robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his
+own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a
+clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all
+narrowing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites
+every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their
+essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman
+Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
+the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism;
+that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality;
+manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two
+natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
+to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor,
+commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Union of Church and State.]
+
+In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the
+same, differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not
+whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular
+Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's
+life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore,
+on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
+papal. For, as has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
+not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven: as
+sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor.
+Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable,
+each being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation of both
+being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
+This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of
+Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits
+to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint
+government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the
+duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less
+than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which,
+granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two
+powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of
+strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions,
+in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to
+work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
+worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system which
+Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which culminated so
+triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each
+succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its
+brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who
+are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend
+or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
+
+The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this
+theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only
+at a few points in their history[124]. It was finally supplanted by
+another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development
+of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
+the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent
+churchmen[125]. Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the
+Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the
+Empire be held--held feudally, it was said by many--and it thereby
+thrust down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the sister
+of the spiritual[126]. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and
+under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander,
+of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government,
+required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save
+herself[127]. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
+pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to
+show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300,
+seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown,
+and sceptre, shouting aloud, 'I am Csar--I am Emperor[128].'
+
+[Sidenote: Proofs from medival documents.]
+
+The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus sketched cannot be
+definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and
+changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise
+us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds
+whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then
+too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines
+medival writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words,
+oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are
+present to the minds of the authors[129]. That which it is easiest to
+prove is the connection of the Empire with religion. From every
+record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and
+sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the
+faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, are
+represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart.
+The belief expressed by Lewis II, 'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
+voce sed in glorios pietatis culmine consistit[130],' appears again
+in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to Conrad II[131], as Vicar
+of God; is reiterated by Frederick I[132], when he writes to the
+prelates of Germany, 'On earth God has placed no more than two powers,
+and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and
+one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church[133];' is
+echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V[134]. It
+was a doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the Holy
+See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make the transference
+(_translatio_) from the Greeks to the Germans appear entirely the
+Pope's work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling
+his rival's election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of
+the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his
+realm[135]. His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties
+already noticed. As the counterpart of the Mussulman Commander of the
+Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel
+foes, was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and in later
+times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering
+Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged
+to him to convoke General Councils, a right not without importance
+even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty
+when the object of the council was to settle a disputed election, or,
+as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coronation ceremonies.]
+
+No better illustrations can be desired than those to be found in the
+office for the imperial coronation at Rome, too long to be transcribed
+here, but well worthy of an attentive study[136]. The rites prescribed
+in it are rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
+besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power, receives a
+ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the
+Pope in celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
+communion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John
+Lateran. The oath to be taken by an elector begins, 'Ego N. volo regem
+Romanorum in Csarem promovendum, temporale caput populo Christiano
+eligere.' The Emperor swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
+Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
+'Deus qui ad prdicandum terni regni evangelium Imperium Romanum
+prparasti, prtende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma coelestia.'
+Among the Emperor's official titles there occur these: 'Head of
+Christendom,' 'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Temporal Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and of the
+Catholic Faith[137].'
+
+[Sidenote: The rights of the Empire proved from the Bible.]
+
+Very singular are the reasonings used by which the necessity and
+divine right of the Empire are proved out of the Bible. The medival
+theory of the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
+profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the
+Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his
+office was a derogation from the purity of the older system, appears
+divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate
+relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the
+authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
+was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined,
+every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to
+imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction
+which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the
+world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by
+paying tribute to Csar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no
+power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.'
+
+More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments
+were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical
+interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the
+belief formed itself that the Roman Empire--as the fourth beast of
+Daniel's vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's
+image--was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen
+and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned acceptance[138], and that
+not unnaturally. For no new power had arisen to extinguish the Roman,
+as the Persian monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
+realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic
+herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Burgundian, had
+cherished her memory and preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even
+the name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
+and diverse from all that were before it.' To these predictions, and
+to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the
+Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist[139]. He was to
+succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned
+that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the
+enemy and the end of the world[140]. It is not only when groping in
+the dark labyrinths of prophecy that medival authors are quick in
+detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in
+those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did
+it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom
+they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
+the sense they discovered was one which the language used would
+naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy
+was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple
+text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument
+all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which
+Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual and temporal powers,
+and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the
+Papacy[141]. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the
+seventy-second Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and
+moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon being of course,
+since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is
+the Popedom. Another quoting, 'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur[142],'
+with Augustine's explanation thereof[143], says, that when 'he who
+letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and
+the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race
+will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under
+Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
+symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the seven lamps
+burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Holy
+Empire[144].' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one
+lineage; how Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
+the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to
+reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the
+scriptural proof appear in the hands of medival churchmen, many
+holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we
+forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing
+institution what they found written already; we begin to fancy that
+the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the
+strength of words to which we attach in almost every case a wholly
+different meaning.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations from Medival Art.]
+
+It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass on from the
+theologians to the poets and artists of the Middle Ages, and endeavour
+to trace through their works the influence of the ideas which have
+been expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
+present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance with
+those works themselves such as only minute and long-continued study
+could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how
+much still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature and
+in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a
+piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the
+artist's thought or belief which are all the more precious that they
+are indirect or unconscious. Therefore a history of medival art which
+shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have
+any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in
+method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have
+been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in
+which the theory of the medival empire is unmistakeably set forth.
+One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence; every traveller in
+Italy may examine both for himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Mosaic of the Lateran Palace at Rome.]
+
+The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium,
+constructed by Pope Leo III about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of
+which, made by the order of Sextus V, may still be seen over against
+the faade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state
+banqueting-hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
+finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the
+green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the
+glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine
+Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the
+Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is
+extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax Vobis.'
+Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time
+sitting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the
+Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell,
+to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the
+opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle
+Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and
+Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
+Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an
+archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The
+inscription is, 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo
+regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,
+et in terra pax omnibus bon voluntatis.'
+
+The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently
+clear. First comes the revelation of the Gospel, and the divine
+commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at
+the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by
+which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed.
+Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who
+keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers
+on a new and firmer basis[145]. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy
+he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the
+banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause
+against heretics and infidels.
+
+[Sidenote: Fresco in S. Maria Novella at Florence.]
+
+The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the
+chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella[146] at
+Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been
+commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena,
+but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this
+view[147]. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350.
+It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and
+filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
+authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the
+time--Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it
+is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter--the
+Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
+side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a
+descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the
+Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king
+of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
+Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their
+feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves
+(heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the
+Dominicans[148]) combat and chase away. From this, the central
+foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a
+great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers:
+they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on
+through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the
+painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and
+Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and
+angels[149].
+
+[Sidenote: Anti-national character of the Empire.]
+
+Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect
+counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those
+who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of
+her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of
+her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to
+those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.
+
+A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and
+illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The
+idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight
+of God,--an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood,
+where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
+humblest curate,--and in the prevalence of one language for worship
+and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or
+rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to
+the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
+tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as
+solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the
+kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far
+from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the
+source and needful condition of their authority in their several
+territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The
+vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had
+concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the
+imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the
+kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an
+undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's
+minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that
+demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was
+or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they
+were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual
+helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending
+all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it.
+Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
+there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy
+of life.
+
+The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international;
+though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important
+aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely
+begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
+territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands,
+but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] I do not mean to say that the system of ideas which it is
+endeavoured to set forth in the following pages was complete in this
+particular form, either in the days of Charles or in those of Otto, or
+in those of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems to have been constantly
+growing and decaying from the fourth century to the sixteenth, the
+relative prominence of its cardinal doctrines varying from age to age.
+But, just as the painter who sees the ever-shifting lights and shades
+play over the face of a wide landscape faster than his brush can place
+them on the canvas, in despair at representing their exact position at
+any single moment, contents himself with painting the effects that are
+broadest and most permanent, and at giving rather the impression which
+the scene makes on him than every detail of the scene itself, so here,
+the best and indeed the only practicable course seems to be that of
+setting forth in its most self-consistent form the body of ideas and
+beliefs on which the Empire rested, although this form may not be
+exactly that which they can be asserted to have worn in any one
+century, and although the illustrations adduced may have to be taken
+sometimes from earlier, sometimes from later writers. As the doctrine
+of the Empire was in its essence the same during the whole Middle Age,
+such a general description as is attempted here may, I venture to
+hope, be found substantially true for the tenth as well as for the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[103] Empires like the Persian did nothing to assimilate the subject
+races, who retained their own laws and customs, sometimes their own
+princes, and were bound only to serve in the armies and fill the
+treasury of the Great King.
+
+[104] Od. iii. 72:--
+
+ [Greek: ... mapsidis alalsthe,
+ hoia te lstres, hypeir hala, toit' alontai
+ psychas parthemenoi, kakon allodapoisi pherontes?]
+
+Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
+v. 214, [Greek: allotrios phs].
+
+[105] Plato, in the beginning of the Laws, represents it as natural
+between all states: [Greek: polemos physei hyparchei pros hapasas tas
+poleis].
+
+[106] See especially Acts xvii. 26; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.;
+iv. 3-6; Col. iii. 11.
+
+[107] This is drawn out by Laurent, _Histoire du Droit des Gens_; and
+gidi, _Der Frstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[108] 'Romanos enim vocitant homines nostr religionis.'--Gregory of
+Tours, quoted by gidi, from A. F. Pott, _Essay on the Words 'Rmisch,'
+'Romanisch,' 'Roman,' 'Romantisch.'_ So in the Middle Ages, [Greek:
+Rhmaioi] is used to mean Christians, as opposed to [Greek: Hellnes],
+heathens.
+
+Cf. Ducange, 'Romani olim dicti qui alias Christiani vel etiam
+Catholici.'
+
+[109] As a reviewer in the _Tablet_ (whose courtesy it is the more
+pleasant to acknowledge since his point of view is altogether opposed
+to mine) has understood this passage as meaning that 'people imagined
+the Christian religion was to last for ever because the Holy Roman
+Empire was never to decay,' it may be worth while to say that this is
+far from being the purport of the argument which this chapter was
+designed to state. The converse would be nearer the truth:--'people
+imagined the Holy Roman Empire was never to decay, because the
+Christian religion was to last for ever.'
+
+The phenomen may perhaps be stated thus:--Men who were already
+disposed to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal for one set of
+reasons, came to believe the Christian Church to be eternal for
+another and, to them, more impressive set of reasons. Seeing the two
+institutions allied in fact, they took their alliance and connection
+to be eternal also; and went on for centuries believing in the
+necessary existence of the Roman Empire because they believed in its
+necessary union with the Catholic Church.
+
+[110] Augustine, in the _De Civitate Dei_. His influence, great
+through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on
+Charles.--'Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, prcipueque his
+qui De Civitate Dei prtitulati sunt.'--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+24.
+
+[111] 'Quapropter universorum precibus fidelium optandum est, ut in
+omnem gloriam vestram extendatur imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides
+... veraciter in una confessione cunctorum cordibus infigatur,
+quatenus summi Regis donante pietate eadem sanct pacis et perfect
+caritatis omnes ubique regat et custodiat unitas.' Quoted by Waitz
+(_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, ii. 182) from an unprinted letter
+of Alcuin.
+
+[112] A curious illustration of this tendency of mind is afforded by
+the descriptions we meet with of Learning or Theology (_Studium_) as a
+concrete existence, having a visible dwelling in the University of
+Paris. The three great powers which rule human life, says one writer,
+the Popedom, the Empire, and Learning, have been severally entrusted
+to the three foremost nations of Europe: Italians, Germans, French.
+'His siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio, tanquam
+tribus virtutibus, videlicet naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
+ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur, augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
+tribus, tanquam fundamento, pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia tanquam
+materialiter proficit. Et sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
+fundamento et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
+quatuor habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
+Arelatum, Mediolanum, Romam.'--_Jordanis Chronica_; _ap._ Schardius
+_Sylloge Tractatuum_. And see Dllinger, _Die Vergangenheit und
+Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie_, p. 8.
+
+[113] 'Una est sola respublica totius populi Christiani, ergo de
+necessitate erit et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublic,
+statutus et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
+dilatationem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augustinus
+(_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam fuit nec
+potuit nec poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
+qualitercumque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra
+fidem Catholicam et ecclesiam.'--Engelbert (abbot of Admont in Upper
+Austria), _De Ortu et Fine imperii Romani_ (circ. 1310).
+
+In this 'de necessitate' everything is included.
+
+[114] See note 37.
+
+[115] This is admirably brought out by gidi, _Der Frstenrath nach
+dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[116] See the original forgery (or rather the extracts which Gratian
+gives from it) in the _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, _Dist._ xcvi. cc. 13,
+14. 'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
+Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam
+nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri gloriose
+exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem et glori dignitatem atque vigorem
+et honorificentiam imperialem.... Beato Sylvestro patri nostro summo
+pontifici et universali urbis Rom pap, et omnibus eius successoribus
+pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt
+sessuri, de prsenti contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
+deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium,
+necnon et superhumerale, verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream et tunicam
+coccineam, et omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et dignitatem imperialem
+prsidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra,
+simulque cuncta signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta imperialia et
+omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
+nostr.... Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur ita et clerum sanct
+Roman ecclesi ornari decernimus.... Unde ut pontificalis apex non
+vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii dignitas gloria et potentia
+decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam urbem et omnes
+Itali seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates
+beatissimo pap Sylvestro universali pap contradimus atque
+relinquimus.... Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christian
+religionis caput ab imperatore coelesti constitutum est, iustum non est
+ut illic imperator terrenus habeat potestatem.'
+
+The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imitation of
+the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German
+Emperors.
+
+[117] Dllinger has shewn in a recent work (_Die Papst-Fabeln des
+Mittelalters_) that the common belief that Gregory II excited the
+revolt against Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.
+
+So Anastasius, 'Ammonebat (_sc._ Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
+amore Romani imperii desisterent.'--_Vit Pontif. Rom._
+
+[118] Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure
+is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments
+of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond
+doubt; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour.
+See, among others, Le Blanc, _Dissertation historique sur quelques
+Monnoies de Charlemagne_, Paris, 1689; J. M. Heineccius, _De Veteribus
+Germanorum aliarumque nationum sigillis_, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
+_Vit Pontificum Romanorum_, ed. Vignoli, Rom, 1752; Gtz,
+_Deutschlands Kayser-Mnzen des Mittelalters_, Dresden, 1827; and the
+authorities cited by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+179, n. 4.
+
+[119] 'Prterea mirari se dilecta fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
+set Romanorum imperatores nos appellemus; set scire te convenit quia
+nisi Romanorum imperatores essemus, utique nec Francorum. A Romanis
+enim hoc nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus, apud quos profecto primum
+tant culmen sublimitatis effulsit,' &c--_Letter of the Emperor Lewis
+II to Basil the Emperor at Constantinople_, from _Chron. Salernit.
+ap._ Murat. _S. R. I._
+
+[120] 'Illam (_sc._ Romanam ecclesiam) solus ille fundavit, et super
+petram fidei mox nascentis erexit, qui beato tern vit clavigero
+terreni simul et coelestis imperii iura commisit.'--_Corpus Iuris
+Canonici_, _Dist._ xxii. c. 1. The expression is not uncommon in
+medival writers. So 'unum est imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
+Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta in terris,' in Lewis II's
+letter.
+
+[121] 'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et
+sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
+videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex
+spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute
+anim. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et
+operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem
+Petri et successorum eius.'--St. Thomas Aquinas, _De Regimine
+Principum_.
+
+[122] 'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
+et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
+certe sic.... Patronis vero concessum est ut prlatos in ecclesiis sui
+patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui
+tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote
+this from a curious document in Goldast's collection of tracts
+(_Monarchia Imperii_), entitled '_Letter of the four Universities,
+Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor
+Wenzel and Pope Urban_,' A.D. 1380. The title can scarcely be right,
+but if the document is, as in all probability it is, not later than
+the fifteenth century, its being misdescribed, or even its being a
+forgery, does not make it less valuable as an evidence of men's ideas.
+
+[123] So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's
+coronation: '... actum in prsentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi
+filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem
+sanct universalis ecclesi hodie Augustum sacravimus.'--Jaff
+_Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, ad ann. 800.
+
+So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
+to the Emperor an almost papal authority over the Church itself:--
+
+ 'Coeli habet hic (_sc._ Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;
+ Tu regis ecclesi, nam regit ille poli;
+ Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,
+ Hic te coelicolas ducet ad usque choros.'
+ In D. Bouquet, v. 415.
+
+[124] Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo;
+again under Otto III and his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester II;
+thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth.
+
+[125] _The Sachsenspiegel_ (_Speculum Saxonicum_, circ. A.D. 1240),
+the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God
+alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what
+has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the
+Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' _The
+Schwabenspiegel_, compiled half a century later, subordinates the
+prince to the pontiff: 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet
+der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er
+damit richte.'
+
+[126] So Boniface VIII in the bull _Unam Sanctam_, will have but one
+head for the Christian people. 'Igitur ecclesi unius et unic unum
+corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum.'
+
+[127] St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in
+consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesi
+vel ecclesi prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So in
+the _De Consideratione_: 'Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes
+utrumque,' of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority,
+quoted by Gieseler.
+
+[128] 'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite
+Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait:
+"Numquid ego summus sum pontifex? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
+possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Csar, ego sum imperator."'--Fr.
+Pipinus (ap. Murat. _S. R. I._ ix.) l. iv. c. 47. These words,
+however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface, when receiving the
+envoys of the emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to
+find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current
+story for what it is worth.
+
+It has been suggested that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene
+in a well-known passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):--
+
+ 'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo
+ Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada
+ Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
+ L' un l' altro ha spento, ed giunta la spada
+ Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme
+ Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'
+
+
+[129] See especially Peter de Andlo (_De Imperio Romano_); Ralph
+Colonna (_De translatione Imperii Romani_); Dante (_De Monarchia_);
+Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_); Marsilius Patavinus (_De
+translatione Imperii Romani_); neas Sylvius Piccolomini (_De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_); Zoannetus (_De Imperio Romano atque ejus
+Iurisdictione_); and the writers in Schardius's _Sylloge_, and in
+Goldast's Collection of Tracts, entitled _Monarchia Imperii_.
+
+[130] Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in _Chron.
+Salernit._ in Mur. _S. R. I._; also given by Baronius, _Ann. Eccl._ ad
+ann. 871.
+
+[131] 'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti: Vicarius es Christi.'--Wippo,
+_Vita Chuonradi_ (_ap._ Pertz), c. 3.
+
+[132] Letter in Radewic, _ap._ Murat, _S. R. I._
+
+[133] Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, 'Gentis human,
+orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus presse.'--Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius Illustratus_.
+
+[134] In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (A.D. 1529) the
+Emperor is called 'Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit.'
+Hieronymus Balbus, writing about the same time, puts the question
+whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things,
+as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and answers it by saying, 'Cum
+ambo ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et eadem semita incedant, de utroque
+idem puto sentiendum.'
+
+[135] 'Non magis ad Papam depositio seu remotio pertinet quam ad
+quoslibet regum prlatos, qui reges suos prout assolent, consecrant et
+inungunt.'--_Letter of Frederick II_ (lib. i. c. 3).
+
+[136] _Liber Ceremonialis Romanus_, lib. i. sect. 5; with which
+compare the _Coronatio Romana_ of Henry VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's
+Dissertation in vol. i. of the _Antiquitates Itali Medii vi_.
+
+[137] See Goldast, _Collection of Imperial Constitutions_; and Moser,
+_Rmische Kayser_.
+
+[138] The abbot Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_) quotes
+Origen and Jerome to this effect, and proceeds himself to explain,
+from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling away will precede the coming of
+Antichrist. There will be a triple 'discessio,' of the kingdoms of the
+earth from the Roman Empire, of the Church from the Apostolic See, of
+the faithful from the faith. Of these, the first causes the second;
+the temporal sword to punish heretics and schismatics being no longer
+ready to work the will of the rulers of the Church.
+
+[139] A full statement of the views that prevailed in the earlier
+Middle Age regarding Antichrist--as well as of the singular prophecy
+of the Frankish Emperor who shall appear in the latter days, conquer
+the world, and then going to Jerusalem shall lay down his crown on the
+Mount of Olives and deliver over the kingdom to Christ--may be found
+in the little treatise, _Vita Antichristi_, which Adso, monk and
+afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der, compiled (cir. 950) for the
+information of Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist is
+to be born a Jew of the tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), 'non de episcopo
+et monacha, sicut alii delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
+meretrice et crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in peccato concipietur, in
+peccato generabitur, in peccato nascetur.' His birthplace is Babylon:
+he is to be brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.
+
+Adso's book may be found printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.
+
+[140] S. Thomas explains the prophecy in a remarkable manner, shewing
+how the decline of the Empire is no argument against its fulfilment.
+'Dicendum quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in
+spirituale, ut dicit Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo
+discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a temporali sed
+etiam a spirituali, scilicit a fide Catholica Roman Ecclesi. Est
+autem hoc conveniens signum nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
+imperium omnibus dominabatur: ita e contra signum adventus Antichristi
+est discessio ab eo.'--_Comment. ad 2 Thess._ ii.
+
+[141] See note 149, page 119. The Papal party sometimes insisted that
+both swords were given to Peter, while the imperialists assigned the
+temporal sword to John. Thus a gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_ says,
+'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het nu de paves: dat andere
+hadde Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'
+
+[142] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
+
+[143] St. Augustine, however, though he states the view (applying the
+passage to the Roman Empire) which was generally received in the
+Middle Ages, is careful not to commit himself positively to it.
+
+[144] _Jordanis Chronica_ (written towards the close of the thirteenth
+century).
+
+[145] Compare with this the words which Pope Hadrian I. had used some
+twenty-three years before, of Charles as representative of
+Constantine: 'Et sicut temporibus Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
+a sanct recordationis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore, per eius
+largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
+atque exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperi partibus largiri
+dignatus est, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
+nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati Petri apostoli germinet
+atque exsultet, ut omnes gentes qu hc audierint edicere valeant,
+'Domine salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die in qua invocaverimus
+te;' quia ecce novus Christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his
+temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanct su ecclesi beati
+apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est.'--_Letter XLIX of
+Cod. Carol._, A.D. 777 (in Mur. _Scriptores Rerum Italicarum_).
+
+This letter is memorable as containing the first allusion, or what
+seems an allusion, to Constantine's Donation.
+
+The phrase 'sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,' is worth
+noting.
+
+[146] The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's _Decameron_
+is laid.
+
+[147] So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs.
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their _New History of Painting in Italy_,
+vol. ii. pp. 85 _sqq._
+
+[148] Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.
+
+[149] There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture,
+which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a
+conspicuous figure.
+
+It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
+hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one
+else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a
+death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GERMAN KINGDOM.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Union of the Roman Empire with the German kingdom.]
+
+This was the office which Otto the Great assumed in A.D. 962. But it
+was not his only office. He was already a German king; and the new
+dignity by no means superseded the old. This union in one person of
+two characters, a union at first personal, then official, and which
+became at last a fusion of the two into something different from
+either, is the key to the whole subsequent history of Germany and the
+Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany and its monarchy.]
+
+Of the German kingdom little need be said, since it differs in no
+essential respect from the other kingdoms of Western Europe as they
+stood in the tenth century. The five or six great tribes or
+tribe-leagues which composed the German nation had been first brought
+together under the sceptre of the Carolingians; and, though still
+retaining marks of their independent origin, were prevented from
+separating by community of speech and a common pride in the great
+Frankish Empire. When the line of Charles the Great ended in A.D. 911,
+by the death of Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf), Conrad, duke of the
+Franconians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of the Saxons, was
+chosen to fill the vacant throne. By his vigorous yet conciliatory
+action, his upright character, his courage and good fortune in
+repelling the Hungarians, Henry laid deep the foundations of royal
+power: under his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's
+coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the realm did
+him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians, Suabians, Thuringians,
+and Lorrainers gathered round the Saxon monarch, is the inauguration
+of a true Teutonic realm, which, though it called itself not German
+but East Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of the
+Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency in many
+respects different.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism.]
+
+There had been under those princes a singular mixture of the old
+German organization by tribes or districts (the so-called
+Gauverfassung), such as we find in the earliest records, with the
+method introduced by Charles of maintaining by means of officials,
+some fixed, others moving from place to place, the control of the
+central government. In the suspension of that government which
+followed his days, there grew up a system whose seeds had been sown as
+far back as the time of Clovis, a system whose essence was the
+combination of the tenure of land by military service with a peculiar
+personal relation between the landlord and his tenant, whereby the one
+was bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and obedience.
+This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman
+soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into
+Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet
+under Pipin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the
+impress which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his
+successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be
+possible here to examine its social and moral influence. Politically
+it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of
+land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt
+thereon: an annexation of personal to territorial authority more
+familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive
+Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained,
+feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each
+tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants
+held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so
+uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly
+bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society
+that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have
+scarcely shaken off.
+
+[Sidenote: The feudal king.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Germanic feudal polity generally.]
+
+Now by the middle of the tenth century, Germany, less fully committed
+than France to feudalism's worst feature, the hopeless bondage of the
+peasantry, was otherwise thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality
+of all the freeborn save the sacred line which we find in the Germany
+of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation of ranks and a
+concentration of power in the hands of a landholding caste, so had the
+monarch lost his ancient character as leader and judge of the people,
+to become the head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of
+the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in arms and
+money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at pleasure declare war or
+make peace. But all these rights he exercised far less as sovereign of
+the nation than as standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal
+tenants, a relation in its origin strictly personal, and whose
+prominence obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And
+great as these rights might become in the hands of an ambitious and
+politic ruler, they were in practice limited by the corresponding
+duties he owed to his vassals, and by the difficulty of enforcing them
+against a powerful offender. The king was not permitted to retain in
+his own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he had held
+before coming to the throne; he could not interfere with the
+jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands, nor prevent them from
+waging war or forming leagues with each other like independent
+princes. Chief among the nobles stood the dukes, who, although their
+authority was now delegated, theoretically at least, instead of
+independent, territorial instead of personal, retained nevertheless
+much of that hold on the exclusive loyalty of their subjects which had
+belonged to them as hereditary leaders of the tribe under the ancient
+system. They were, with the three Rhenish archbishops, by far the
+greatest subjects, often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable
+to resist its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto made upon
+their privileges, especially through the institution of the Counts
+Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy, but not their importance. It was
+not till the thirteenth century that they disappeared with the rise of
+the second order of nobility. That order, at this period far less
+powerful, included the counts, margraves or marquises and landgraves,
+originally officers of the crown, now feudal tenants; holding their
+lands of the dukes, and maintaining against them the same contest
+which they in turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons
+and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen, the
+increasing one of serfs. The institutions of primitive Germany were
+almost all gone; supplanted by a new system, partly the natural result
+of the formation of a settled from a half-nomad society, partly
+imitated from that which had arisen upon Roman soil, west of the Rhine
+and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the Heerban of the whole
+nation, which had been wont to follow the king on foot in distant
+expeditions, but a cavalry militia of barons and their retainers,
+bound to service for a short period, and rendering it unwillingly
+where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent popular
+assemblies, whereof under the names of the Mallum, the Placitum, the
+Mayfield, we hear so much under Clovis and Charles, were now never
+summoned, and the laws that had been promulgated there were, if not
+abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council existed, save the
+Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and clerical, met their
+sovereign, sometimes to decide on foreign war, oftener to concur in
+the grant of a fief or the proscription of a rebel. Every district had
+its own rude local customs administered by the court of the local
+lord: other law there was none, for imperial jurisprudence had in
+these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place left empty
+by the disuse of the barbarian codes.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire and the German kingdom.]
+
+This condition of things was indeed better than that utter confusion
+which had gone before, for a principle of order had begun to group and
+bind the tossing atoms; and though the union into which it drove men
+was a hard and narrow one, it was something that they should have
+learnt to unite themselves at all. Yet nascent feudality was but one
+remove from anarchy; and the tendency to isolation and diversity
+continued, despite the efforts of the Church and the Carolingian
+princes, to be all-powerful in Western Europe. The German kingdom was
+already a bond between the German races, and appears strong and united
+when we compare it with the France of Hugh Capet, or the England of
+Ethelred II; yet its history to the twelfth century is little else
+than a record of disorders, revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless
+struggle on the part of the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a
+resistance by his vassals equally obstinate and more frequently
+successful. What the issue of the contest might have been if Germany
+had been left to take her own course is matter of speculation, though
+the example of every European state except England and Norway may
+incline the balance in favour of the crown. But the strife had
+scarcely begun when a new influence was interposed: the German king
+became Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more unlike than those
+whose headship became thus vested in one person: the one centralized,
+the other local; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the
+rude offspring of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands
+of an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights and
+authorizing resistance to his commands; the one demanding the equality
+of all citizens as creatures equal before Heaven, the other bound up
+with an aristocracy the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the
+most exact, that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant could
+not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if they met must
+strive till one swallowed up the other. It was not so. In the fusion
+which began from the first, though it was for a time imperceptible,
+each of the two characters gave and each lost some of its attributes:
+the king became more than German, the Emperor less than Roman, till,
+at the end of six centuries, the monarch in whom two 'persons' had
+been united, appeared as a third different from either of the former,
+and might not inappropriately be entitled 'German Emperor[150].' The
+nature and progress of this change will appear in the after history of
+Germany, and cannot be described here without in some measure
+anticipating subsequent events. A word or two may indicate how the
+process of fusion began.
+
+[Sidenote: Results of this union in one person.]
+
+It was natural that the great mass of Otto's subjects, to whom the
+imperial title, dimly associated with Rome and the Pope, sounded
+grander than the regal, without being known as otherwise different,
+should in thought and speech confound them. The sovereign and his
+ecclesiastical advisers, with far clearer views of the new office and
+of the mutual relation of the two, found it impossible to separate
+them in practice, and were glad to merge the lesser in the greater.
+For as lord of the world, Otto was Emperor north as well as south of
+the Alps. When he issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his
+Teutonic subjects in both capacities; when as Emperor he led the
+armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the standard of their
+feudal superior that his armed vassals followed; when he founded
+churches and appointed bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal
+lands, partly as protector of the faith, charged to guide the Church
+in matters temporal. Thus the assumption of the imperial crown brought
+to Otto as its first result an apparent increase of domestic
+authority; it made his position by its historical associations more
+dignified, by its religious more hallowed; it raised him higher above
+his vassals and above other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in
+ecclesiastical affairs, and by necessary consequence gave to
+ecclesiastics a more important place at court and in the
+administration of government than they had enjoyed before. Great as
+was the power of the bishops and abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it
+stood nowhere so high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double
+position, as head both of Church and State, required the two
+organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh century a full
+half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small part of its
+military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen: their influence
+predominated in the Diet; the archchancellorship of the Empire,
+highest of all offices, belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz,
+as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
+must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy
+was thus advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the
+aristocracy by raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have
+been so, and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the
+clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than those whom
+they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's judgment, historians
+have often forgotten in what position he stood to the Church, and how
+it behoved him, according to the doctrine received, to establish in
+her an order like in all things to that which he found already
+subsisting in the State.
+
+[Sidenote: Changes in title.]
+
+The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire thus to merge the king
+in the Emperor[151]. Charles had called himself 'Imperator Csar
+Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus;' and again, 'Carolus serenissimus
+Augustus, Pius, Felix, Romanorum gubernans Imperium, qui et per
+misericordiam Dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.' Otto and his
+first successors, who until their coronation at Rome had used the
+titles of 'Rex Francorum,' or 'Rex Francorum Orientalium,' or oftener
+still 'Rex' alone, discarded after it all titles save the highest of
+'Imperator Augustus;' seeming thereby, though they too had been
+crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of Csar through
+all their dominions. Tracing as we are the history of a title, it is
+needless to dwell on the significance of the change[152]. Charles, son
+of the Ripuarian allies of Probus, had been a Frankish chieftain on
+the Rhine; Otto, the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan Arminius, would
+rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed from the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Imperial power feudalized.]
+
+Nevertheless, the imperial element did not in every respect
+predominate over the royal. The monarch might desire to make good
+against his turbulent barons the boundless prerogative which he
+acquired with his new crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and
+they, disputing neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right to
+wear it, refused with good reason to let their own freedom be
+infringed upon by any act of which they had not been the authors. So
+far was Otto from embarking on so vain an enterprise, that his rule
+was even more direct and more personal than that of Charles had been.
+There was no scheme of mechanical government, no claim of absolutism;
+there was only the resolve to make the energetic assertion of the
+king's feudal rights subserve the further aims of the Emperor. What
+Otto demanded he demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as
+king; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial office was
+itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas. Feudality needing, to
+make its theory complete, a lord paramount of the world, from whose
+grant all ownership in land must be supposed to have emanated, and
+finding such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord of
+all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch, himself, as it
+was expressed, 'holding' the world from God. There were not wanting
+Roman institutions to which these notions could attach themselves.
+Constantine, imitating the courts of the East, had made the
+dignitaries of his household great officials of the State: these were
+now reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal, the
+chamberlain of the Empire, so soon to become its electoral princes.
+The holding of land on condition of military service was Roman in its
+origin: the divided ownership of feudal law found its analogies in the
+Roman tenure of emphyteusis. Thus while Germany was Romanized the
+Empire was feudalized, and came to be considered not the antagonist
+but the perfection of an aristocratic system. And it was this
+adaptation to existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to
+assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they
+seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism (if
+one may use a now perverted word) and that of feudalism a deep and
+lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a
+measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman
+government had been, but from the necessities of their position,
+raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects,
+surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus
+were they driven to reduce local independence, and assimilate the
+various races through their vast territories. It was Otto who made the
+Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding
+them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its
+collective greatness to the consciousness of national life, never
+thenceforth to be extinguished.
+
+[Sidenote: The Commons.]
+
+One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy which Roman
+traditions as well as present needs might have suggested, it was
+scarcely possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship
+of the Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of
+freemen, which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the
+population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did
+not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the
+most part, after the Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the
+Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean that free democratic
+communities maintained themselves. Town-life there was none, till
+Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in
+fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher
+class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state.
+But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of
+its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the
+crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses
+upon both, the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people.
+More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial name
+invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of
+its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet
+lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to
+Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint
+of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[150] Although this was of course never his legal title. Till 1806 he
+was 'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus;' 'Rmischer Kaiser.'
+
+[151] Ptter, _Dissertationes de Instauratione Imperii Romani_; cf.
+Goldast's _Collection of Constitutions_; and the proclamations and
+other documents collected in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. I.
+
+[152] Ptter (_De Instauratione Imperii Romani_) will have it that
+upon this mistake, as he calls it, of Otto's, the whole subsequent
+history of the Empire turned; that if Otto had but continued to style
+himself 'Francorum Rex,' Germany would have been spared all her
+Italian wars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately
+amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every
+step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent
+theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are
+stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which,
+even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity
+of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people
+must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would
+be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions
+conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and
+how many things there are which he believes without realizing:
+believes sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
+governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of
+theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more
+violent and their conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in
+modern society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
+spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they
+would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that
+while everyone believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of
+divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or
+interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed
+was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated
+to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative
+any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
+limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in
+Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where
+therefore he was forced to rule merely as emperor, and not also as
+king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from
+insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account
+of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome is a not unfitting
+comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in
+the history of the Apostolic Chair.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great in Rome.]
+
+After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the
+partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves
+in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who
+found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
+renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even
+scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade
+Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of
+the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most
+profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But
+he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony,
+'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however,
+Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a
+party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope,
+but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the
+nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
+they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled into the Campagna
+to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's.
+Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by
+inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
+tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy.
+Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list
+of them:--'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen
+the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of
+Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him
+ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They
+said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the
+pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting;
+had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
+houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and
+hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had
+drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked
+the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
+matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making
+the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not
+speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is
+to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret
+for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they
+had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the
+clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope hath not
+committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and
+even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles,
+the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and
+opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be
+bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on
+the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart
+from us, for we will not know Thy ways."'
+
+The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the
+council: a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms,
+recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear
+to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of
+compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.
+
+'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the
+bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope: if
+you do this, by Almighty God I excommunicate you, so that you may not
+have power to perform mass or to ordain no one[153].'
+
+[Sidenote: Deposition of John XII.]
+
+To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of humorous
+expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his
+Latin. But the messenger who bore it could not find John: he had
+repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by
+going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had
+been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto,
+who still led their deliberations, demanded the condemnation of the
+Pope; the assembly deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his
+reprobate life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
+in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a
+layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Revolt of the Romans.]
+
+Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than
+that of any of his predecessors. Within little more than a year from
+his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of
+Charles himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
+installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves
+to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy
+See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his crown
+which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn
+engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the
+Emperor's consent[154]. But he had yet to learn what this obedience
+and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the
+expulsion of John; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified
+to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual
+licence of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
+privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the
+strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not
+sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly
+turned to rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
+dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms,
+blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and
+his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed
+over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter;
+yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time,
+after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth
+returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily
+closed by the sword of an injured husband[155], the people chose a new
+Pope in defiance of the Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued
+and again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third time, in
+A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant.
+Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the
+consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the
+government of the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
+not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up any claims to
+independence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of
+his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an
+authority which must be exercised according to the discretion of his
+sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
+papal elections in A.D. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII,
+a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed
+that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be
+read in the collections of the canon law[156]. The vigorous exercise
+of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the
+apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that
+the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the
+city are a type of those which his successors were destined to
+experience. Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
+enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not all the efforts
+of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they
+were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they
+must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of
+strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity under the sun of
+Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna[157]. Rome soon resumed
+her turbulent independence.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's rule in Italy.]
+
+Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes from gaining a firm
+footing throughout Italy. Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for
+the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
+substantial authority there. The _missi dominici_ had ceased to
+traverse the country; the local governors had thrown off control, a
+crowd of petty potentates had established principalities by
+aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great
+nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the
+cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a
+republican system, could traces of political order be found, or the
+arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror,
+ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less
+submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
+progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something to still
+the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization
+for which her natural features are not less answerable than the
+mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was
+wildest, that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
+nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly on the use
+of a common language and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes
+of thought. But though already jealous of the Tedescan, national
+feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
+cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself
+of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened
+the existence of his empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with
+Germany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
+keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor
+sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his
+government[158].
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's foreign policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Towards Byzantium.]
+
+The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman crown urged him to
+resume the plans of foreign conquest which had lain neglected since
+the days of Charles: the growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now
+definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
+era of the Marks--Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his
+hands a force to execute those plans which his predecessors had
+wanted. In this, as in his other enterprises, the great Emperor was
+active, wise, successful. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and
+unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to
+annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the
+vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace
+them in arms. Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
+legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as
+Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the
+princess Theophano. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in
+an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new
+Empires[159]. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they
+preserved the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd
+as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by
+reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title altogether;
+and when the Pope had, in a letter addressed '_Imperatori Grcorum_,'
+asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Romans,
+the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,' said he, 'but wretched
+Lombards: what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome
+migrated hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans,
+while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name,
+and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master.
+'"Roman" is the most contemptuous name we can use--it conveys the
+reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be
+expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus? to his asylum
+were gathered the offscourings of the nations: thence came these
+[Greek: kosmokratores].' Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province of
+Rome as the price of compliance[160]; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and
+Theophano became the bride of Otto II.
+
+[Sidenote: Towards the West Franks.]
+
+Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate
+the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant
+that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it
+by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
+feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the
+same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis
+d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul.
+These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by
+arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
+instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been.
+The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising
+greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed
+itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast
+absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger.
+Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987,
+and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally
+admitted.
+
+[Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.]
+
+Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
+Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The
+former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king,
+Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as
+mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto,
+and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a
+separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification
+of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
+Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
+itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for
+thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son
+of Rudolf II).
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.]
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor
+of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed
+Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes
+were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
+free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he
+forced to forsake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear
+of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over
+more distant lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
+the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the Saxon name,
+may have wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea[162], and
+it was perhaps partly with this intent that he gained for Otto the
+hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of
+supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when,
+exaggerating the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors, he
+called himself 'Basileus and imperator of Britain[163],' thereby
+seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the nations of the island
+similar to that which the Roman Emperor claimed over the states of
+Christendom.
+
+[Sidenote: Extent of Otto's Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Comparison between it and that of Charles.]
+
+This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the
+Carolingian, was in many respects different. It was less wide,
+including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds
+of Italy; or counting in subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy,
+Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character was
+less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of
+his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the
+heathen: he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
+Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
+administration: he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and
+did not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It
+was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that
+name anything more than the right to universal dominion and a certain
+oversight of matters spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be
+treading in the steps of the Csars. He could not speak Latin, he had
+few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied
+cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles.
+Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not
+permit similar attempts at wide organization. The local potentates
+would have submitted to no _missi dominici_; separate laws and
+jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
+_placita_ at which those laws were framed or published would not have
+been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he
+did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions,
+he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left
+everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
+became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle
+among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome
+and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy
+stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture
+hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany
+became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who
+trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their
+arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived
+Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West
+had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and
+more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had
+wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as
+it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to
+represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power
+to unite and civilize Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.]
+
+[Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of
+Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.]
+
+The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era
+of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly
+dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad,
+full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
+princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through
+the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed
+the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the
+dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
+accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous
+blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of
+Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era
+of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of
+the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire,
+victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as
+Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by
+the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany
+rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the
+age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
+government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the
+turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in
+whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving
+the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes
+entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
+extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating
+successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert,
+whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of
+Constantine: Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and
+learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own
+soul, purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last
+carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the
+profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy
+which raised it from the abyss of the tenth century to the point where
+Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power
+by their most disinterested acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Schemes of Otto III: Changes of style and usage.]
+
+With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him, Otto laboured
+on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense
+religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world--in his
+proclamations he calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of
+Jesus Christ[165]'--together with the ambitious antiquarianism of a
+fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he
+represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange
+mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. 'We have ordained
+this,' says an edict, 'in order that, the church of God being freely
+and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our
+knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman people may be extended
+and the commonwealth be restored; so may we be found worthy after
+living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from
+the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
+exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '_Romanorum
+Imperator_' instead of the simple '_Imperator_' of his predecessors.
+His seals bear a legend resembling that used by Charles, '_Renovatio
+Imperii Romanorum_;' even the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that
+name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be
+re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
+healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular
+administrative system of government for his capital--naming a
+patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges, who were commanded to
+recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has
+been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy
+of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city
+and the whole world.' He introduced into the simple German court the
+ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
+many of his followers[166]. His father's wish to draw Italy and
+Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the
+chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining
+a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue
+with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and
+far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived
+to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that
+whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in
+the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a Greek
+than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with no such tight hand
+as his grandfather had been wont to do; he neglected the schemes of
+northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of
+tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than
+conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,' as his own
+generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the
+victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of
+Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and
+slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with
+laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the pages of monkish
+chroniclers, and buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen
+some fifty paces from the tomb of Charles beneath the central dome.
+Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to
+Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting
+on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open
+before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the
+neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire
+from his Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his acts,
+Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or
+came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city
+again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece
+to their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so forgot
+the present to live in the light of the ancient order; no other soul
+was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the
+glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the medival Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy independent.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry II Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Southern Italy.]
+
+The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks
+might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II[167], Italy was nowise
+affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom
+could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes
+placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved
+partly by the growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more by
+the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since
+Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
+him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited
+Henry[168]; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he
+received the imperial crown, A.D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
+that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously to
+Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently
+attempted to recover their independence. For the former had often
+little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
+home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery
+and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was irresistible, and the
+disunion of Italy promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial
+vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once
+their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted
+to their former condition, and Tuscany was little more dependent than
+France. In Southern Italy the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome
+was an outpost instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious
+evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
+Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the
+Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually
+date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople[169], seldom
+mentioning the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him the
+Western becomes _Imperator_, the Greek, appearing more rarely, is
+_Imperator Constantinopolitanus_. Assailed by the Saracens, masters
+already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to
+Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of
+returning under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the Greeks
+in the South favoured the rise of the Norman kingdom, so did the
+liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the
+Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were
+only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of
+them self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the rural
+nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the
+Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad II.]
+
+The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the great Franconian
+line, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or,
+as it is after this time more often called, the kingdom of Arles[170].
+Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
+and the states were at length persuaded to consent to its reunion to
+the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent
+dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On
+Rudolf's death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured to
+seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from which he was
+dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty. Unlike Italy, it became an
+integral member of the Germanic realm: its prelates and nobles sat in
+imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
+Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however,
+seldom effective in these outlying territories, exposed always to the
+intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry III.]
+
+[Sidenote: His reform of the Popedom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV, A.D. 1056-1106.]
+
+Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire attained the meridian of
+its power. At home Otto the Great's prerogative had not stood so high.
+The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
+vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself
+retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some
+years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine
+feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
+the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by
+conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was
+enforced by war, the country made almost a province, and compelled to
+pay tribute. In Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A
+disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had
+shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and
+appointed their successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
+constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges
+of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further
+authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod
+passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
+pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of
+the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant corruption
+of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their
+bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and so
+pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than
+the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to
+himself, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call
+it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly
+in A.D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were
+gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[153] 'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
+audivimus dicere quia vos vultis alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
+da Deum omnipotentem excommunico vos, ut non habeatis licentiam missam
+celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'--Liudprand, _ut supra_. The 'da' is
+curious, as shewing the progress of the change from Latin to Italian.
+The answer sent by Otto and the council takes exception to the double
+negative.
+
+[154] 'Cives fidelitatem promittunt hc addentes et firmiter iurantes
+nunquam se papam electuros aut ordinaturos prter consensum atque
+electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis Csaris Augusti filiique ipsius
+Ottonis.'--Liudprand, _Gesta Ottonis_, lib. vi.
+
+[155] 'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo est percussus ut infra dierum octo
+spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,' says the chronicler, crediting
+with but little of his wonted cleverness the supposed author of John's
+death, who well might have desired a long life for so useful a
+servant.
+
+He adds a detail too characteristic of the time to be omitted--'Sed
+eucharisti viaticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
+percepit.'
+
+[156] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii., '_In synodo_.' A decree
+which is probably substantially genuine, although the form in which we
+have it is evidently of later date.
+
+[157] Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines--
+
+ 'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,
+ Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,
+ Roman febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'
+
+[158] There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
+kingdom of Burgundy.
+
+[159] Liudprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_.
+
+[160] 'Sancti imperii nostri olim servos principes, Beneventanum
+scilicet, tradat,' &c. The epithet is worth noticing.
+
+[161] Liudprand calls the Eastern Franks 'Franci Teutonici' to
+distinguish them from the Romanized Franks of Gaul or 'Francigen,' as
+they were frequently called. The name 'Frank' seems even so early as
+the tenth century to have been used in the East as a general name for
+the Western peoples of Europe. Liudprand says that the Greek Emperor
+included 'sub Francorum nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.' Probably
+this use dates from the time of Charles.
+
+[162] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[163] Basileus was a favourite title of the English kings before the
+Conquest. Titles like this used in these early English charters prove,
+it need hardly be said, absolutely nothing as to the real existence of
+any rights or powers of the English king beyond his own borders. What
+they do prove (over and above the taste for florid rhetoric in the
+royal clerks) is the impression produced by the imperial style, and by
+the idea of the emperor's throne as supported by the thrones of kings
+and other lesser potentates.
+
+[164] The coins of Crescentius are said to exhibit the insignia of the
+old Empire.--Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. 715. But probably
+some at least of them are forgeries.
+
+[165] Proclamation in Pertz, _M. G. H._ ii.
+
+[166] 'Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem iam ex magna parte
+deletam suis cupiens renovare temporibus multa faciebat qu diversi
+diverse sentiebant.'--Thietmar, _Chron._ ix.; ap. Pertz, _M. G. H._ t.
+iii.
+
+[167] _Annales Quedlinb._, ad ann. 1002.
+
+[168] Henry had already entered Italy in 1004.
+
+[169] _Annales Beneventani_, in Pertz, _M. G. H._
+
+[170] See Appendix, Note A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+STRUGGLE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY.
+
+
+Reformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees, the Papacy had
+resumed in the middle of the eleventh century the schemes of polity
+shadowed forth by Nicholas I, and which the degradation of the last
+age had only suspended. Under the guidance of her greatest mind,
+Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Rome, she now advanced to their
+completion, and proclaimed that war of the ecclesiastical power
+against the civil power in the person of the Emperor, which became the
+centre of the subsequent history of both. While the nature of the
+struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their previous
+connection, the vastness of the subject warns one from the attempt to
+draw even its outlines, and restricts our view to those relations of
+Popedom and Empire which arise directly out of their respective
+positions as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal Christian
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of the Papal power.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+The eagerness of Christianity in the age immediately following her
+political establishment to purchase by submission the support of the
+civil power, has been already remarked. The change from independence
+to supremacy was gradual. The tale we smile at, how Constantine,
+healed of his leprosy, granted the West to bishop Sylvester, and
+retired to Byzantium that no secular prince might interfere with the
+jurisdiction or profane the neighbourhood of Peter's chair, worked
+great effects through the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay
+more, its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat of
+government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus that made the Pope the
+greatest personage in the city, and in the prostration after Alaric's
+invasion he was seen to be so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and
+effective, though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to the
+revived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as Augustus and
+Tiberius had been to the faint continuance of their earlier
+prototypes. Pope Leo the First asserted the universal jurisdiction of
+his see[171], and his persevering successors slowly enthralled Italy,
+Illyricum, Gaul, Spain, Africa, dexterously confounding their
+undoubted metropolitan and patriarchal rights with those of oecumenical
+bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his writings and the
+fame of his personal sanctity, by the conversion of England and the
+introduction of an impressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than
+any other pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority. Yet his
+tone to Maurice of Constantinople was deferential, to Phocas
+adulatory; his successors were not consecrated till confirmed by the
+Emperor or the Exarch; one of them was dragged in chains to the
+Bosphorus, and banished thence to Scythia. When the iconoclastic
+controversy and the intervention of Pipin broke the allegiance of the
+Popes to the East, the Franks, as patricians and Emperors, seemed to
+step into the position which Byzantium had lost[172]. At Charles's
+coronation, says the Saxon poet,
+
+ 'Et summus eundem
+ Prsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim
+ Principibus fuit antiquis.'
+
+[Sidenote: Temporal power of the Popes.]
+
+Their relations were, however, no longer the same. If the Frank
+vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of free gift. What Christendom
+saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook as
+his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Roman
+Church. The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even
+more favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who
+summoned him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath of
+fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the Emperor, the
+pontiff, and the people--represented by their senate and consuls, or
+by the demagogue of the hour--the most steady, prudent, and
+far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no
+minorities, as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its
+own army--the host of churchmen through Europe. Boniface's conversion
+of Germany under its direct sanction, gave it a hold on the rising
+hierarchy of the greatest European state; the extension of the rule of
+Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and
+pretensions. The first disputes turned on the right of the prince to
+confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have
+been granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as
+'_Hadrianus Papa_[173].' This '_ius eligendi et ordinandi summum
+pontificem_,' which Lewis I appears as yielding by the '_Ego
+Ludovicus_[174],' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt
+themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the
+troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto
+the Great by his nominee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in
+the purest spirit, by Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of
+all, and most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there had
+grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal chair to be itself the
+source of the imperial dignity. In submitting to a fresh coronation,
+Lewis the Pious admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed
+one: Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John
+VIII[175], that to him alone the Emperor owed his crown; and the
+council of Pavia[176], when it chose him king of Italy, repeated the
+assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better than to apply to the chiefs of
+Saxon and Franconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian had
+not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon was only hid
+behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the
+moment should come. There were also two other great steps which papal
+power had taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals
+it had provided itself with a legal system suited to any emergency,
+and which gave it unlimited authority through the Christian world in
+causes spiritual and over persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical
+ingenuity found it easy in one way or another to make this include all
+causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is always and wrong is often
+sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect the clergy.
+On the gift of Pipin and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
+Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable
+authority of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to the
+sovereignty of Rome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the
+exarchate. Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant by
+the donors to convey full dominion over the districts--that belonged
+to the head of the Empire--but only as in the case of other church
+estates, a perpetual usufruct or _dominium utile_. They were, in fact,
+mere endowments. Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into
+possession: the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of
+the neighbouring barons. They were not, however, denied, and might be
+made a formidable engine of attack: appealing to them, the Pope could
+brand his opponents as unjust and impious; and could summon nobles and
+cities to defend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better
+original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of Naples
+and Sicily.
+
+The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial power at Henry the
+Third's death was externally respectful. The right of a German king to
+the crown of the city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful
+subject. Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil
+magistrate. But the secret of the pontiff's strength lay in this: he,
+and he alone, could confer the crown, and had therefore the right of
+imposing conditions on its recipient. Frequent interregna had weakened
+the claim of the Transalpine monarch and prevented his power from
+taking firm root; his title was never by law hereditary: the holy
+Church had before sought and might again seek a defender elsewhere.
+And since the need of such defence had originated this transference of
+the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the
+Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope's duty as well as his
+right to see that the candidate was capable of fulfilling his task, to
+degrade him if he rejected or misperformed it.
+
+[Sidenote: Hildebrandine reforms.]
+
+The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution of the
+Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the supreme pontiff. This
+Nicholas II did in A.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV
+and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses
+and depravity of the last century, advanced apace. It had two main
+objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on the secular
+clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the
+extinction of simony. In the former, the Emperors and a large part of
+the laity were not unwilling to join: the latter no one dared to
+defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for
+the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a
+layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to
+the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of
+the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots,
+who would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass under that
+of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be
+impossible.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV and Gregory VII.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 1077.]
+
+Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other: after this decree war
+was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at
+Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor[177] replied by
+convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the
+dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on
+which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Supported by
+his own princes, the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no
+external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place
+had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the
+signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through all Germany the
+Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of
+disaffection. Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what
+seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince,
+titular lord of the world, a suppliant before the successor of the
+Apostle. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him;
+driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an
+anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had
+raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered life a
+power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless had all other
+humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess
+Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent standing barefoot and
+woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who
+sat within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark a decisive
+change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased.
+Its wearer could no more, with the same lofty confidence, claim to be
+the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone.
+Gregory had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of
+the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so sternly;
+proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all mankind are subject,
+and all rulers responsible: so that he, the giver of the crown, may
+also excommunicate and depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he
+says[178]: 'For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at
+different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed the sun
+and the moon, lights that outshine all others; so lest the creature
+whom His goodness hath formed after His own image in this world should
+be drawn astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic
+and royal dignities the means of ruling it through divers offices....
+If I, therefore, am to answer for thee on the dreadful day of judgment
+before the just Judge who cannot lie, the creator of every creature,
+bethink thee whether I must not very diligently provide for thy
+salvation, and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not
+without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the land of the
+living.'
+
+Gregory was not the inventor nor the first propounder of these
+doctrines; they had been long before a part of medival Christianity,
+interwoven with its most vital doctrines. But he was the first who
+dared to apply them to the world as he found it. His was that rarest
+and grandest of gifts, an intellectual courage and power of
+imaginative belief which, when it has convinced itself of aught,
+accepts it fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from
+acting at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end of his
+own career proved, for men were found less ready than he had thought
+them to follow out with unswerving consistency like his the principles
+which all acknowledged. But it was the very suddenness and boldness of
+his policy that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing men's
+minds and making that seem realized which had been till then a vague
+theory. His premises once admitted,--and no one dreamt of denying
+them,--the reasonings by which he established the superiority of
+spiritual to temporal jurisdiction were unassailable. With his
+authority, in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell, whose word
+can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other
+earthly authority can compete or interfere: if his power extends into
+the infinite, how much more must he be supreme over things finite? It
+was thus that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue: the
+wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were not obeyed
+more implicitly. In the second sentence of excommunication which
+Gregory passed upon Henry the Fourth are these words:--
+
+'Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes,
+Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye
+are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on
+earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away
+empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and
+the possessions of all men. For if ye judge spiritual things, what
+must we believe to be your power over worldly things? and if ye judge
+the angels who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to
+their slaves?'
+
+[Sidenote: Results of the struggle.]
+
+Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at all temporal
+governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces of later days slow
+to apply them so. On the Empire, however, the blow fell first and
+heaviest. As when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken,
+Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution
+dishonoured and helpless; allegiance was no longer undivided, for who
+could presume to fix in each case the limits of the civil and
+ecclesiastical jurisdictions? The potentates of Europe beheld in the
+Papacy a force which, if dangerous to themselves, could be made to
+repel the pretensions and baffle the designs of the strongest and
+haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the Teutonic
+conqueror by gaining the papal sanction for the leagues of her cities.
+The German princes, anxious to narrow the prerogative of their head,
+were the natural allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more
+terrible than their own lances, could enable them to depose an
+aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions they desired.
+Their altered tone is marked by the promise they required from Rudolf
+of Swabia, whom they set up as a rival to Henry, that he would not
+endeavour to make the throne hereditary.
+
+[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms, A.D. 1122.]
+
+It is not possible here to dwell on the details of the great struggle
+of the Investitures, rich as it is in the interest of adventure and
+character, momentous as were its results for the future. A word or two
+must suffice to describe the conclusion, not indeed of the whole
+drama, which was to extend over centuries, but of what may be called
+its first act. Even that act lasted beyond the lives of the original
+performers. Gregory the Seventh passed away at Salerno in A.D. 1087,
+exclaiming with his last breath 'I have loved justice and hated
+iniquity, therefore I die in exile.' Nineteen years later, in A.D.
+1106, Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son whom the hatred of
+a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against him. But that
+son, the emperor Henry the Fifth, so far from conceding the points in
+dispute, proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his
+father. He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics
+that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his coronation in
+Rome, A.D. 1112, Pope Paschal II refused to complete the rite until he
+should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and cardinals and
+compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which
+he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his
+extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years
+longer, until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel
+between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in
+A.D. 1122, was in form a compromise, designed to spare either party
+the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy remained master of the
+field. The Emperor retained but one-half of those rights of
+investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the
+position of Henry III; his wishes or intrigues might influence the
+proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference.
+He had entered the strife in the fulness of dignity; he came out of it
+with tarnished glory and shattered power. His wars had been hitherto
+carried on with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble;
+now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant, and had
+enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates of his realm.
+At any moment his sceptre might be shivered in his hand by the bolt of
+anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from every convent and
+cathedral.
+
+[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
+
+Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.
+The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of
+all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war
+against the enemies of the faith, to head the church militant in her
+carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife,
+this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into
+being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first
+three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the
+theory of the medival Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never
+again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe.
+Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have
+used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had
+belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV's proscription
+excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise
+have led--nay, more, committed it to the guidance of his foes. The
+religious feeling which the Crusades evoked--a feeling which became
+the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the
+two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the
+opponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of
+the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century
+and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against
+the Emperor himself.
+
+Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of that fear and
+hatred wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard
+the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by
+the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers
+of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to
+resist Italian priestcraft.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitations of imperial prerogative.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lothar II, 1125-1138.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad III, 1138-1152.]
+
+The changes in the internal constitution of Germany which the long
+anarchy of Henry IV's reign had produced are seen when the nature of
+the prerogative as it stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first
+Franconian Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V's death. All
+fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be granted afresh only
+by consent of the States; the jurisdiction of the crown is less wide;
+the idea is beginning to make progress that the most essential part of
+the Empire is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes and
+barons. The greatest triumph of these feudal magnates is in the
+establishment of the elective principle, which when confirmed by the
+three free elections of Lothar II, Conrad III, and Frederick I, passes
+into an undoubted law. The Prince-Electors are mentioned in A.D. 1156
+as a distinct and important body[179]. The clergy, too, whom the
+policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had raised, are now not less
+dangerous than the dukes, whose power it was hoped they would balance;
+possibly more so, since protected by their sacred character and their
+allegiance to the Pope, while able at the same time to command the
+arms of their countless vassals. Nor were the two succeeding Emperors
+the men to retrieve those disasters. The Saxon Lothar the Second is
+the willing minion of the Pope; performs at his coronation a menial
+service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath to defend the
+Holy See, that he may purchase its support against the Swabian faction
+in his own dominions. Conrad the Third, the first Emperor of the great
+house of Hohenstaufen[180], represents the anti-papal party; but
+domestic troubles and an unfortunate crusade prevented him from
+effecting anything in Italy. He never even entered Rome to receive the
+crown.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[171] 'Roma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta.'--See note _i_,
+p. 32.
+
+[172] 'Claves tibi _ad regnum_ dimisimus.'--Pope Stephen to Charles
+Martel, in _Codex Carolinus_, ap. Muratori, _S. R. I._ iii. Some,
+however, prefer to read 'ad rogum.'
+
+[173] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii. c. 22.
+
+[174] Dist. lxiii. c. 30. This decree is, however, in all probability
+spurious.
+
+[175] 'Nos elegimus merito et approbavimus una cum annisu et voto
+patrum amplique senatus et gentis togat,' &c., ap. Baron. _Ann.
+Eccl._, ad ann. 876.
+
+[176] 'Divina vos pietas B. principum apostolorum Petri et Pauli
+interventione per vicarium ipsorum dominum Ioannem summum pontificem
+... ad imperiale culmen S. Spiritus iudicio provexit.'--_Concil.
+Ticinense_, in Mur., _S. R. I._ ii.
+
+[177] Strictly speaking, Henry was at this time only king of the
+Romans: he was not crowned Emperor at Rome till 1084.
+
+[178] Letter of Gregory VII to William I, A.D. 1080. I quote from
+Migne, t. cxlviii. p. 568.
+
+[179] 'Gradum statim post Principes Electores.'--Frederick I's
+Privilege of Austria, in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[180] Hohenstaufen is a castle in what is now the kingdom of
+Wrtemberg, about four miles from the Gppingen station of the railway
+from Stuttgart to Ulm. It stands, or rather stood, on the summit of a
+steep and lofty conical hill, commanding a boundless view over the
+great limestone plateau of the Rauhe Alp, the eastern declivities of
+the Schwartzwald, and the bare and tedious plains of western Bavaria.
+Of the castle itself, destroyed in the Peasants' War, there remain
+only fragments of the wall-foundations: in a rude chapel lying on the
+hill slope below are some strange half-obliterated frescoes; over the
+arch of the door is inscribed 'Hic transibat Csar.' Frederick
+Barbarossa had another famous palace at Kaiserslautern, a small town
+in the Palatinate, on the railway from Mannheim to Treves, lying in a
+wide valley at the western foot of the Hardt mountains. It was
+destroyed by the French and a house of correction has been built upon
+its site; but in a brewery hard by may be seen some of the huge
+low-browed arches of its lower story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE EMPERORS IN ITALY: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick of Hohenstaufen, 1152-1189.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the First, better known under his Italian
+surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant in the annals of the Empire.
+Its territory had been wider under Charles, its strength perhaps
+greater under Henry the Third, but it never appeared in such pervading
+vivid activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under the
+prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of their national
+heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic type of Teutonic
+character, honoured by picture and statue, in song and in legend,
+through the breadth of the German lands. The reverential fondness of
+his annalists and the whole tenour of his life go far to justify this
+admiration, and dispose us to believe that nobler motives were joined
+with personal ambition in urging him to assert so haughtily and carry
+out so harshly those imperial rights in which he had such unbounded
+confidence. Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its greatest
+effort to subdue the two antagonists which then threatened and were
+fated in the end to destroy it--Italian nationality and the Papacy.
+
+[Sidenote: His relations to the Popedom.]
+
+Even before Gregory VII's time it might have been predicted that two
+such potentates as the Emperor and the Pope, closely bound together,
+yet each with pretensions wide and undefined, must ere long come into
+collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing, the
+unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining, the supremacy
+of clerical authority, inspired their supporters with a zeal and
+courage which more than compensated the advantages of the Emperor in
+defending rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred was
+soon very bitter. But even had men's passions permitted a
+reconciliation, it would have been found difficult to bring into
+harmony adverse principles, each irresistible, mutually destructive.
+As the spiritual power, in itself purer, since exercised over the soul
+and directed to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was
+entitled to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy; so the
+spiritual person, to whom, according to the view then universally
+accepted, there had been imparted by ordination a mysterious sanctity,
+could not without sin be subject to the lay magistrate, be installed
+by him in office, be judged in his court, and render to him any
+compulsory service. Yet it was no less true that civil government was
+indispensable to the peace and advancement of society; and while it
+continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could not be suffered to
+interfere with its workings, nor one-half of the people be altogether
+removed from its control. Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced
+into hostility as champions of opposite systems, however fully each
+might admit the strength of his adversary's position, however bitterly
+he might bewail the violence of his own partisans. There had also
+arisen other causes of quarrel, less respectable but not less
+dangerous. The pontiff demanded and the monarch refused the lands
+which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Holy See;
+Frederick claiming them as feudal suzerain, the Pope eager by their
+means to carry out those schemes of temporal dominion which
+Constantine's donation sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation
+of the sovereignty of Rome had done much to encourage. As feudal
+superior of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily, as protector of the
+towns and barons of North Italy who feared the German yoke, the
+successor of Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate.
+
+[Sidenote: Contest with Hadrian IV.]
+
+No man was less likely than Frederick to submit to these
+encroachments. He was a sort of imperialist Hildebrand, strenuously
+proclaiming the immediate dependence of his office on God's gift, and
+holding it every whit as sacred as his rival's. On his first journey
+to Rome, he refused to hold the Pope's stirrup[181], as Lothar had
+done, till Pope Hadrian the Fourth's threat that he would withhold the
+crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising not long after on some
+other ground, the Pope exhorted Frederick by letter to shew himself
+worthy of the kindness of his mother the Roman Church, who had given
+him the imperial crown, and would confer on him, if dutiful, benefits
+still greater. This word benefits--_beneficia_--understood in its
+usual legal sense of 'fief,' and taken in connection with the picture
+which had been set up at Rome to commemorate Lothar's homage, provoked
+angry shouts from the nobles assembled in diet at Besanon; and when
+the legate answered, 'From whom, then, if not from our Lord the Pope,
+does your king hold the Empire?' his life was not safe from their
+fury. On this occasion Frederick's vigour and the remonstrances of the
+Transalpine prelates obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious
+word, and remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed by
+other causes, and came to centre itself round the Pope's demand that
+Rome should be left entirely to his government. Frederick, in reply,
+appeals to the civil law, and closes with the words, 'Since by the
+ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in
+nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the
+Roman city be wrested from my hands.' That such a claim should need
+assertion marks the change since Henry III; how much more that it
+could not be enforced. Hadrian's tone rises into defiance; he mingles
+the threat of excommunication with references to the time when the
+Germans had not yet the Empire. 'What were the Franks till Zacharias
+welcomed Pipin? What is the Teutonic king now till consecrated at Rome
+by holy hands? The chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its
+gifts.'
+
+[Sidenote: With Pope Alexander III.]
+
+The schism that followed Hadrian's death produced a second and more
+momentous conflict. Frederick, as head of Christendom, proposed to
+summon the bishops of Europe to a general council, over which he
+should preside, like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite
+text of the two swords, 'On earth,' he continues, 'God has placed no
+more than two powers: above there is but one God, so here one Pope and
+one Emperor. The Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire as a remedy against continued schism[182].' The plan failed;
+and Frederick adopted the candidate whom his own faction had chosen,
+while the rival claimant, Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence
+which the issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen
+throughout Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty years
+that followed, while apparently a dispute between rival Popes, was in
+substance an effort by the secular monarch to recover his command of
+the priesthood; not less truly so than that contemporaneous conflict
+of the English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with which it
+was constantly involved. Unsupported, not all Alexander's genius and
+resolution could have saved him: by the aid of the Lombard cities,
+whose league he had counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of
+Rome, by which the conquering German host was suddenly annihilated, he
+won a triumph the more signal, that it was over a prince so wise and
+so pious as Frederick. At Venice, who, inaccessible by her position,
+maintained a sedulous neutrality, claiming to be independent of the
+Empire, yet seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two
+powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced to meet by the
+mediation of the doge Sebastian Ziani. Three slabs of red marble in
+the porch of St. Mark's point out the spot where Frederick knelt in
+sudden awe, and the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the
+kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given
+an undeserved currency[183], tells how the pontiff set his foot on the
+neck of the prostrate king, with the words, 'The lion and the dragon
+shalt thou trample under feet[184].' It needed not this exaggeration
+to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning
+for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd
+that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation
+by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life
+had been devoted: it was the abandonment by the secular power of a
+contest in which it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not
+renew under more favourable conditions.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of the study of the civil law.]
+
+Authority maintained so long against the successor of Peter would be
+far from indulgent to rebellious subjects. For it was in this light
+that the Lombard cities appeared to a monarch bent on reviving all the
+rights his predecessors had enjoyed: nay, all that the law of ancient
+Rome gave her absolute ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a
+re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never perished from
+Gaul and Italy, had been the groundwork of some codes, and the whole
+substance, modified only by the changes in society, of many others.
+The Church excepted, no agent did so much to keep alive the memory of
+Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld the study
+cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge and ardour,
+expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First in Italy and the schools of
+the South, then in Paris and Oxford, they were expounded, commented
+on, extolled as the perfection of human wisdom, the sole, true, and
+eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought expended from
+that time to this in the elucidation of the civil law, the most
+competent authorities declare that in acuteness, in subtlety, in all
+those branches of learning which can subsist without help from
+historical criticism, these so-called Glossatores have been seldom
+equalled and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers of the
+canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of the civilian, and
+were accustomed to recur to his books where their own were silent,
+spread through Europe the fame and influence of the Roman
+jurisprudence; while its own professors were led both by their feeling
+and their interest to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and
+the fullest application. Men just emerging from barbarism, with minds
+unaccustomed to create and blindly submissive to authority, viewed
+written texts with an awe to us incomprehensible. All that the most
+servile jurists of Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes
+was directly transferred to the Csarean majesty who inherited their
+name. He was 'Lord of the world,' absolute master of the lives and
+property of all his subjects, that is, of all men; the sole fountain
+of legislation, the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines,
+which the great Bolognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and
+others who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied, as
+matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of
+the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and
+Italian partisans. 'To the Emperor belongs the protection of the whole
+world,' says bishop Otto of Freysing. 'The Emperor is a living law
+upon earth[185].' To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop of Milan
+speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy: 'Do and ordain
+whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law; as it is written, "Quicquid
+principi placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne
+suum imperium et potestatem concesserit[186]." The Hohenstaufen
+himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of
+dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according
+to law rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a
+more vehement assertion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by
+what seemed a divine ordinance.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick in Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rome under Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy. The Emperors might
+appear to consider it a conquered country without privileges to be
+respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets,
+and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the
+Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs
+whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the
+banks of the Rhine might be adorned but could not be influenced by the
+presence of barons from the southern kingdom[187]. In practice,
+however, the imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for
+it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the personal
+vigour and present armed support of each invader. The theoretic
+sovereignty of the Emperor-king was nowise disputed: in the cities
+toll and tax were of right his: he could issue edicts at the Diet, and
+require the tenants in chief to appear with their vassals. But the
+revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV's time, was felt
+as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, proud of
+riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany or the
+kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a
+turbulent independence. For republicanism and popular freedom
+Frederick had little sympathy. At Rome the fervent Arnold of Brescia
+had repeated, but with far different thoughts and hopes, the part of
+Crescentius[188]. The city had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and
+a commonwealth under consuls and senate professed to emulate the
+spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic. Its
+leaders had written to Conrad III[189], asking him to help them to
+restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian;
+but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of
+the Pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they
+repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from
+Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language
+on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing
+the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner
+hardly consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city.
+Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: 'Is this your Roman
+wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your
+honours and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls,
+senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto
+that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by
+their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the
+same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the
+people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate[190].' This
+was Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire[191].'
+
+[Sidenote: The Lombard Cities.]
+
+He who had been so stern to his own capital was not likely to deal
+more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by
+which Frederick is chiefly known to history, he is commonly painted as
+the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor[192],
+crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and
+industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the
+despot liberty is always licence; yet Frederick was the advocate of
+admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours;
+the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his
+officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of
+oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself[193].
+Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we
+recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization. Their resistance
+was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the
+enforcement of imposts less offensive in former days than now, and by
+long dereliction apparently obsolete[194]. Republican principles were
+not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of
+the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave them clearer
+notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope
+was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the
+barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The Church' ere long
+their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual
+support by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed.
+Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the
+last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government--freedom little
+understood and terribly abused, self-government which the cities who
+claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of
+them, through their divine power of stimulating effort and quickening
+sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal
+monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose above the slavish
+Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were
+resisting a Transalpine invader without its effect; there was as yet
+no distinct national feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as
+rural nobles, fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of
+liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased
+that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter
+justification.
+
+[Sidenote: Temporary success of Frederick.]
+
+The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was taken, Milan razed
+to the ground, her name apparently lost: greater obstacles had been
+overcome, and a fuller authority was now exercised than in the days of
+the Ottos or the Henrys. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror
+were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his admirers
+to the hero whose canonization he had procured, and whom he strove in
+all things to imitate[195]. 'He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only
+to Charles in piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: 'Ut
+ad Caroli imitationem ius ecclesiarum statum reipublic et legum
+integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus[196].' But the hold
+the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in
+which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better
+witnesses than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings[197]:--
+
+ 'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici
+ Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici;
+ Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici
+ Reprsentat Karolum dextera victrici.'
+
+The diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over the
+re-establishment of order by the destruction of the dens of unruly
+burghers.
+
+[Sidenote: Victory of the Lombard league.]
+
+This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless ashes uprose
+Milan; Cremona, scorning old jealousies, helped to rebuild what she
+had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to an all but hopeless
+strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the
+Empire's banner went down before the carroccio[198] of the free city.
+Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled at the
+distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation had arisen, slowly
+reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds
+conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of
+nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that
+grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a
+delusive name. Frederick, though harsh in war, and now balked of his
+most cherished hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it was
+beyond his power to change: he signed cheerfully and kept dutifully
+the peace of Constance, which left him little but a titular supremacy
+over the Lombard towns.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick as German king.]
+
+At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so much respected and so
+generally prosperous. Uniting in his person the Saxon and Swabian
+families, he healed the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates
+were faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel disturbed
+the public peace. Germany was proud of a hero who maintained her
+dignity so well abroad, and he crowned a glorious life with a happy
+death, leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman.
+Frederick, the greatest of the Crusaders, is the noblest type of
+medival character in many of its shadows, in all its lights.
+
+[Sidenote: The German cities.]
+
+Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost absolute, the government
+of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly
+by the difficulty of coercing refractory vassals. All depended on the
+monarch's character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick
+could generally lead the majority with him and terrify the rest. A
+false impression of the real strength of his prerogative might be
+formed from the readiness with which he was obeyed. He repaired the
+finances of the kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more
+splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by
+multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards the 'college of
+princes,' and by trying to substitute the civil law and Lombard feudal
+code for the old Teutonic customs, different in every province. If not
+successful in this project, he fared better with another. Since Henry
+the Fowler's day towns had been growing up through Southern and
+Western Germany, especially where rivers offered facilities for trade.
+Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Nrnberg, Ulm, Regensburg,
+Augsburg, were already considerable cities, not afraid to beard their
+lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance the
+power of the territorial oligarchy. Policy or instinct led Frederick
+to attach them to the throne, enfranchising many, granting, with
+municipal institutions, an independent jurisdiction, conferring
+various exemptions and privileges; while receiving in turn their
+good-will and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should
+come. His immediate successors trode in his steps, and thus there
+arose in the state a third order, the firmest bulwark, had it been
+rightly used, of imperial authority; an order whose members, the Free
+Cities, were through many ages the centres of German intellect and
+freedom, the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest hope
+of future peace and union. In them national congresses to this day
+sometimes meet: from them aspiring spirits strive to diffuse those
+ideas of Germanic unity and self-government, which they alone have
+kept alive. Out of so many flourishing commonwealths, four[199] have
+been spared by foreign conquerors and faithless princes. To the
+primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing out of the towns,
+except in Swabia and Switzerland, Frederick further commended himself
+by allowing them to be admitted to knighthood, by restraining the
+licence of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice in
+every way more accessible and impartial. To the south-west of the
+green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of
+the Untersberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to
+the glen and lake of Berchtesgaden. There, far up among its limestone
+crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of
+the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and
+tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted
+sleep[200], waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover
+round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend
+with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age of peace
+and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fall
+of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and
+anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day
+when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his
+shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of
+help to the poor and the oppressed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[181] A great deal of importance seems to have been attached to this
+symbolic act of courtesy. See Art. I of the Sachsenspiegel.
+
+[182] Letter to the German bishops in Radewic; Mur., _S. R. I._, t.
+vi. p. 833.
+
+[183] A picture in the great hall of the ducal palace (the Sala del
+Maggio Consiglio) represents the scene. See Rogers' Italy.
+
+[184] Psalm xci.
+
+[185] Document of 1230, quoted by Von Raumer, v. p. 81.
+
+[186] Speech of archbishop of Milan, in Radewic; Mur. vi.
+
+[187] Frederick's election (at Frankfort) was made 'non sine quibusdam
+Itali baronibus.'--Otto Fris. i. But this was the exception.
+
+[188] See also _post_, Chapter XVI.
+
+[189] 'Senatus Populusque Romanus urbis et orbis totius domino
+Conrado.'
+
+[190] Otto of Freysing.
+
+[191] Later in his reign, Frederick condescended to negotiate with
+these Roman magistrates against a hostile Pope, and entered into a
+sort of treaty by which they were declared exempt from all
+jurisdiction but his own.
+
+[192] See the first note to Shelley's _Hellas_. Sismondi is mainly
+answerable for this conception of Barbarossa's position.
+
+[193] They say rebelliously, says Frederick, 'Nolumus hunc regnare
+super nos ... at nos maluimus honestam mortem quam ut,' &c.--Letter in
+Pertz. _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[194]
+
+ 'De tributo Csaris nemo cogitabat;
+ Omnes erant Csares, nemo censum dabat;
+ Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat,
+ Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.'
+
+Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by
+Grimm.
+
+[195] Charles the Great was canonized by Frederick's anti-pope and
+confirmed afterwards.
+
+[196] _Acta Concil. Hartzhem._ iii., quoted by Von Raumer, ii. 6.
+
+[197] Poems relating to Frederick I, _ut supra_.
+
+[198] The carroccio was a waggon with a flagstaff planted on it, which
+served the Lombards for a rallying-point in battle.
+
+[199] Lbeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfort.
+
+[Since this was first written Frankfort has been annexed by Prussia,
+and her three surviving sisters have, by their entrance into the North
+German confederation, lost something of their independence.]
+
+[200] The legend is one which appears under various forms in many
+countries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.
+
+
+The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest point at which to
+turn aside from the narrative history of the Empire to speak shortly
+of the legal position which it professed to hold to the rest of
+Europe, as well as of certain duties and observances which throw a
+light upon the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of its
+greatest power: that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously the era
+when its ideal dignity stood highest: for that remained scarcely
+impaired till three centuries had passed away. But it was under the
+Hohenstaufen, owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of
+that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy of the
+Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical influence of the
+Empire most fully coincided. There can therefore be no better
+opportunity for noticing the titles and claims by which it announced
+itself the representative of Rome's universal dominion, and for
+collecting the various instances in which they were (either before or
+after Frederick's time) more or less admitted by the other states of
+Europe.
+
+The territories over which Barbarossa would have declared his
+jurisdiction to extend may be classed under four heads:--
+
+First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone, the Emperor
+was, up till the death of Frederick the Second, effective sovereign.
+
+Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire, where the Emperor
+was acknowledged as sole monarch, but in practice little regarded.
+
+Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to the Empire, but
+governed by kings of their own.
+
+Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while in most cases
+admitting the superior rank of the Emperor, were virtually independent
+of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Limits of the Empire.]
+
+Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy Empire were included
+only districts coming under the first and second of the above classes,
+i.e. Germany, the northern half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy
+or Arles--that is to say, Provence, Dauphin, the Free County of
+Burgundy (Franche Comt), and Western Switzerland. Lorraine, Alsace,
+and a portion of Flanders were of course parts of Germany. To the
+north-east, Bohemia and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and
+Pomerania were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather
+dependent outliers. Beyond the march of Brandenburg, from the Oder to
+the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians or Prussians[201], free till the
+establishment among them of the Teutonic knights.
+
+[Sidenote: Hungary.]
+
+Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days of Otto I.
+Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the Holy See; Frederick wished
+to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the
+reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered
+from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years
+that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the
+Constitution of Augsburg, A.D. 1566[202].
+
+[Sidenote: Poland.]
+
+Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the Great, and
+continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the
+beginning of the Great Interregnum (as it is called) in 1254. Its duke
+was present at the election of Richard, A.D. 1258. Thereafter
+Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the
+country became independent, though some of its provinces were long
+afterwards reunited to the German state. Silesia, originally Polish,
+was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, and so became part of the
+Empire; Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, A.D.
+1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland
+remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the
+twelfth century[203].
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark.]
+
+Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the Danish king Harold, on
+his baptism at Mentz, A.D. 826; Otto the Great's victories over Harold
+Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the march of
+Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but the boundary
+soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the
+inscription,--
+
+ 'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'
+
+King Peter[204] attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage,
+and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his own crown. Since the
+Interregnum Denmark has been always free[205].
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty the French kings
+had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their
+attempts to enforce it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the
+Fair, offered the French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to
+Albert I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize. The
+precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated
+Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest. Blondel denies the
+Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in A.D. 1648 the French envoys
+at Mnster refused for some time to admit what no other European state
+disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves,
+'Archicancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,' preserved the
+memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of
+France might seem to have reversed.
+
+[Sidenote: Sweden.]
+
+No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us that Sweden was
+granted by Frederick I to Waldemar the Dane[206]; the fact is
+improbable, and we do not hear that such pretensions were ever put
+forth before or after.
+
+[Sidenote: Spain.]
+
+Nor does it appear that authority was ever exercised by any Emperor in
+Spain. Nevertheless the choice of Alfonso X by a section of the German
+electors, in A.D. 1258, may be construed to imply that the Spanish
+kings were members of the Empire. And when, A.D. 1053, Ferdinand the
+Great of Castile had, in the pride of his victories over the Moors,
+assumed the title of 'Hispani Imperator,' the remonstrance of Henry
+III declared the rights of Rome over the Western provinces indelible,
+and the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was forced to
+resign the usurped dignity[207].
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been done by any of the
+Emperors in England, though as heirs of Rome they might be thought to
+have better rights over it than over Poland or Denmark[208]. There
+was, however, a vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms,
+must depend on the Empire: a notion which appears in Conrad III's
+letter to John of Constantinople[209]; and which was countenanced by
+the submissive tone in which Frederick I was addressed by the
+Plantagenet Henry II[210]. English independence was still more
+compromised in the next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden,
+'Consilio matris su deposuit se de regno Angli et tradidit illud
+imperatori (Henrico VIto) sicut universorum domino.' But as Richard
+was at the same time invested with the kingdom of Arles by Henry VI,
+his homage may have been for that fief only; and it was probably in
+that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire, at the
+election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel in the claims of
+England over the Scottish king, doubtful, to say the least, as regards
+the domestic realm of the latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he
+had long held from the Southern crown[211]. But Germany had no Edward
+I. Henry VI is said at his death to have released Richard from his
+submission (this too may be compared with Richard's release to the
+Scottish William the Lion), and Edward II declared, 'regnum Angli ab
+omni subiectione imperiali esse liberrimum[212].' Yet the idea
+survived: the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when he named Edward III his
+vicar in the great French war, demanded, though in vain, that the
+English monarch should kiss his feet[213]. Sigismund[214], visiting
+Henry V at London, before the meeting of the council of Constance, was
+met by the Duke of Gloucester, who, riding into the water to the ship
+where the Emperor sat, required him, at the sword's point, to declare
+that he did not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in
+the realm of England[215]. One curious pretension of the imperial
+crown called forth many protests. It was declared by civilians and
+canonists that no public notary could have any standing, or attach any
+legality to the documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma
+from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a doctrine so
+injurious was issued by the parliament of Scotland under James
+III[216].
+
+[Sidenote: Naples.]
+
+The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although of course claimed as a part
+of the Empire, was under the Norman dynasty (A.D. 1060-1189) not
+merely independent, but the most dangerous enemy of the German power
+in Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, obtained
+possession of it by marrying Constantia the last heiress of the Norman
+kings. But both he and Frederick II treated it as a separate
+patrimonial state, instead of incorporating it with their more
+northerly dominions. After the death of Conradin, the last of the
+Hohenstaufen, it passed away to an Angevin, then to an Aragonese
+dynasty, continuing under both to maintain itself independent of the
+Empire, nor ever again, except under Charles V, united to the Germanic
+crown.
+
+[Sidenote: Venice.]
+
+One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity of situation
+enabled her through long centuries of obscurity and weakness, slowly
+ripening into strength, to maintain her freedom unstained by any
+submission to the Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in
+deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from Aquileia in
+the days of Attila: it is at least probable that her population never
+received an intermixture of Teutonic settlers, and continued during
+the ages of Lombard and Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine
+sovereigns as the representatives of their ancient masters. In the
+tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they had said, 'We
+wish to be the servants of the Emperors of the Romans' (the
+Constantinopolitan), and though they overthrew this very Eastern
+throne in A.D. 1204, the pretext had served its turn, and had aided
+them in defying or evading the demands of obedience made by the
+Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics, Venice never,
+down to her extinction by France and Austria in A.D. 1796, recognized
+within her walls any secular authority save her own.
+
+[Sidenote: The East.]
+
+The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI to confess themselves
+his vassals and ask his help. Over remote Eastern lands, where
+Frankish foot had never trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the
+indestructible rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to
+Saladin, amusing from its absolute identification of his own Empire
+with that which had sent Crassus to perish in Parthia, and had blushed
+to see Mark Antony 'consulum nostrum'[217] at the feet of Cleopatra,
+is preserved by Hoveden: it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the
+dominions of Rome, else will she, with her new Teutonic defenders, of
+whom a pompous list follows, drive him from them with all her ancient
+might.
+
+[Sidenote: The Byzantine Emperors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry of the two Empires.]
+
+Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western Europe to admit the
+territorial supremacy of the Emperor, the proudest among them never
+refused, until the end of the Middle Ages, to recognize his precedence
+and address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very different was
+the attitude of the Byzantine princes, who denied his claim to be an
+Emperor at all. The separate existence of the Eastern Church and
+Empire was not only, as has been said above, a blemish in the title of
+the Teutonic sovereigns; it was a continuing and successful protest
+against the whole system of an Empire Church of Christendom, centering
+in Rome, ruled by the successor of Peter and the successor of
+Augustus. Instead of the one Pope and one Emperor whom medival theory
+presented as the sole earthly representatives of the invisible head of
+the Church, the world saw itself distracted by the interminable feud
+of rivals, each of whom had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy
+for the Latins to call the Easterns schismatics and their Emperor an
+usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone him or reduce
+them to obedience: while even in controversy no one could treat the
+pretensions of communities who had been the first to embrace
+Christianity and retained so many of its most ancient forms, with the
+contempt which would have been felt for any Western sectaries.
+Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the Greeks seems to us
+to affect the claims of the Teutonic Empire, calling in question its
+legitimacy and marring its pretended universality, those who lived at
+the time seem to have troubled themselves little about it, finding
+themselves in practice seldom confronted by the difficulties it
+raised. The great mass of the people knew of the Greeks not even by
+name; of those who did, the most thought of them only as perverse
+rebels, Samaritans who refused to worship at Jerusalem, and were
+little better than infidels. The few ecclesiastics of superior
+knowledge and insight had their minds preoccupied by the established
+theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to suffer anything
+else to come into collision with it: they do not seem to have even
+apprehended all that was involved in this one defect. Nor, what is
+still stranger, in all the attacks made upon the claims of the
+Teutonic Empire, whether by its Papal or its French antagonists, do we
+find the rival title of the Greek sovereigns adduced in argument
+against it. Nevertheless, the Eastern Church was then, as she is to
+this day, a thorn in the side of the Papacy; and the Eastern Emperors,
+so far from uniting for the good of Christendom with their Western
+brethren, felt towards them a bitter though not unnatural jealousy,
+lost no opportunity of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to
+deny their right to the imperial name. The coronation of Charles was
+in their eyes an act of unholy rebellion; his successors were
+barbarian intruders, ignorant of the laws and usages of the ancient
+state, and with no claim to the Roman name except that which the
+favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves
+long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more
+than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued
+to call themselves Romans, and preserved most of the titles and
+ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian.
+They were weak, although by no means so weak as modern historians have
+been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the
+higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon
+the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial
+splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified
+their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes.
+Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the
+name of 'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an
+emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, _Basileus_ was only the
+Greek for _rex_, and need not mean 'Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would
+not call Otto I anything but 'King of the Lombards[218],' Conrad III
+was addressed by Calo-Johannes as 'amice imperii mei Rex[219];' Isaac
+Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief prince of
+Alemannia[220].' The great Emperor, half-resentful, half-contemptuous,
+told the envoys that he was 'Romanorum imperator,' and bade their
+master call himself 'Romaniorum' from his Thracian province. Though
+these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness,
+the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former
+capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of
+the conquering Manuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the
+heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his
+rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously
+declined[221]. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much
+alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have
+seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the
+victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.
+
+[Sidenote: Dignities and titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The four crowns.]
+
+Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save
+their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities were happily
+not yet in being), they did not therefore endeavour to unite their
+several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct
+coronations at the four capitals of their Empire[222]. These are
+concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of
+Frederick's household[223]:--
+
+ 'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post hc Arelati,
+ Inde Modoeti regali sede locari
+ Post solet Itali summa corona dari:
+ Csar Romano cum vult diademate fungi
+ Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'
+
+By the crowning at Aachen, the old Frankish capital, the monarch
+became 'king;' formerly 'king of the Franks,' or, 'king of the Eastern
+Franks;' now, since Henry II's time, 'king of the Romans, always
+Augustus.' At Monza, (or, more rarely, at Milan) in later times, at
+Pavia in earlier times, he became king of Italy, or of the
+Lombards[224]; at Rome he received the double crown of the Roman
+Empire, 'double,' says Godfrey, as 'urbis et orbis:'--
+
+ 'Hoc quicunque tenet, summus in orbe sedet;'
+
+though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown, it typifies
+spiritual as well as secular authority. The crown of Burgundy[225] or
+the kingdom of Arles, first gained by Conrad II, was a much less
+splendid matter, and carried with it little effective power. Most
+Emperors never assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life,
+when an interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These four
+crowns[226] furnish matter of endless discussion to the old writers;
+they tell us that the Roman was golden, the German silver, the Italian
+iron, the metal corresponding to the dignity of each realm[227].
+Others say that that of Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and
+give elaborate reasons why it should be so[228]. There seems to be no
+doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all three crowns
+were of gold, though in that of Italy there was and is inserted a
+piece of iron, a nail, it was believed, of the true Cross.
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the four coronations.]
+
+Why, it may well be asked, seeing that the Roman crown made the
+Emperor ruler of the whole habitable globe, was it thought necessary
+for him to add to it minor dignities which might be supposed to have
+been already included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial
+office was conceived of as something different in kind from the regal,
+and as carrying with it not the immediate government of any particular
+kingdom, but a general suzerainty over and right of controlling all.
+Of this a pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of
+Frederick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the famous jurists
+who surrounded him whether it was really true that he was 'lord of the
+world,' one of them simply assented, another, Bulgarus, answered, 'Not
+as respects ownership.' In this dictum, which is evidently conformable
+to the philosophical theory of the Empire, we have a pointed
+distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty, which supposes the
+prince original owner of the soil of his whole kingdom, and imperial
+sovereignty, which is irrespective of place, and exercised not over
+things but over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor, as
+has been said already, was also the East Frankish king, uniting in
+himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct 'persons,' and
+hence he might acquire more direct and practically useful rights over
+a portion of his dominions by being crowned king of that portion, just
+as a feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships whereof he
+was already feudal superior; or, to take a better illustration, just
+as a bishop may hold livings in his own diocese. That the Emperors,
+while continuing to be crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call
+themselves kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably
+merely because these titles seemed insignificant compared to that of
+Roman Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Emperor' not assumed till the Roman coronation.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin and results of this practice.]
+
+In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours were blent
+and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the German king to assume it
+till actually crowned at Rome by the Pope[229]. Matters of phrase and
+title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and
+superstitiously antiquarian: and this restriction had the most
+important consequences. The first barbarian kings had been
+tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion which was universal,
+yet in a sense territorial, they could not separate their title from
+the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose
+name they ruled. 'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing
+that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress
+of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since
+she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she
+ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth[230].' The
+crown was therefore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the
+supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital.
+Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for instance, or
+Otto's, this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each successive
+transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic,
+strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is
+incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free
+discussion. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a
+forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed
+to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII[231], which
+prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor
+till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so
+favourable to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy; Hadrian
+IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and through the efforts of the
+clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed
+into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till
+the Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to depend on his
+will, enabled him to exact conditions from every candidate, and gave a
+colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every
+honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine
+commission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must
+not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom
+even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived
+considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and
+other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232]
+authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party:
+first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the
+picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the
+followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in
+Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,--
+
+ 'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.'
+
+Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that this
+dependence of the imperial name on a coronation in the city injured
+the German sovereign[234]. With strange inconsistency it was not
+pretended that the Emperor's rights were any narrower before he
+received the rite: he could summon synods, confirm papal elections,
+exercise jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown itself
+could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents,
+be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of
+the German nation to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral
+princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master.
+The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they
+could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which the poet who
+sang the glories of Barbarossa[235], describes the result of the
+conquest of Charles the Great:--
+
+ 'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum
+ Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo
+ Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni
+ Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem
+ Prficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma
+ Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.'
+
+But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the
+pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his reign each Emperor undertook
+a long and dangerous expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and
+ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved
+conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home.
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Holy Empire.']
+
+At this epoch appears another title, of which more must be said. To
+the accustomed 'Roman Empire' Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of
+'Holy.' Of its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Salic), which some
+have supposed[236], there is no documentary trace, though there is
+also no proof to the contrary[237]. So far as is known it occurs first
+in the famous Privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick in the fourth
+year of his reign, the second of his empire, 'terram Austri qu
+clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur[238]:' then afterwards,
+in other manifestos of his reign; for example, in a letter to Isaac
+Angelus of Byzantium[239], and in the summons to the princes to help
+him against Milan: 'Quia ... urbis et orbis gubernacula tenemus ...
+sacro imperio et div reipublic consulere debemus[240];' where the
+second phrase is a synonym explanatory of the first. Used occasionally
+by Henry VI and Frederick II, it is more frequent under their
+successors, William, Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV's time it
+becomes habitual, for the last few centuries indispensable. Regarding
+the origin of so singular a title many theories have been advanced.
+Some declared it a perpetuation of the court style of Rome and
+Byzantium, which attached sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus
+David Blondel, contending for the honour of France, calls it a mere
+epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his government[241].
+Others saw in it a religious meaning, referring to Daniel's prophecy,
+or to the fact that the Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or
+to Christ's birth under it[242]. Strong churchmen derived it from the
+dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There were not wanting
+persons to maintain that it meant nothing more than great or splendid.
+We need not, however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning and
+purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person, the palace, the
+letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so common in the later ages
+of Rome, had been partly retained in the German court. Liudprand calls
+Otto 'imperator sanctissimus[243].' Still this sanctity, which the
+Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is something
+personal, is nothing more than the divinity that always hedges a king.
+Far more intimate and peculiar was the relation of the revived Roman
+Empire to the church and religion. As has been said already, it was
+neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its secular
+side, the Christian society organized as a state under a form divinely
+appointed, and therefore the name 'Holy Roman Empire' was the needful
+and rightful counterpart to that of 'Holy Catholic Church.' Such had
+long been the belief, and so the title might have had its origin as
+far back as the tenth or ninth century, might even have emanated from
+Charles himself. Alcuin in one of his letters uses the phrase
+'imperium Christianum.' But there was a further reason for its
+introduction at this particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had
+claimed for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme
+jurisdiction, the papal party had not ceased to speak of the civil
+power as being, compared with that of their own chief, merely secular,
+earthly, profane. It may be conjectured that to meet this reproach, no
+less injurious than insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use
+in public documents the expression 'Holy Empire;' thereby wishing to
+assert the divine institution and religious duties of the office he
+held. Previous Emperors had called themselves 'Catholici,'
+'Christiani,' 'ecclesi defensores[244];' now their State itself is
+consecrated an earthly theocracy. 'Deus Romanum imperium adversus
+schisma ecclesi prparavit[245],' writes Frederick to the English
+Henry II. The theory was one which the best and greatest Emperors,
+Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III, had most striven to carry out; it
+continued to be zealously upheld when it had long ceased to be
+practicable. In the proclamations of medival kings there is a
+constant dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an age of
+violence sought to justify while it enforced its commands, to make
+brute force less brutal by appeals to a higher sanction. This is seen
+nowhere more than in the style of the German sovereigns: they delight
+in the phrases 'maiestas sacrosancta[246],' 'imperator divina
+ordinante providentia,' 'divina pietate,' 'per misericordiam Dei;'
+many of which were preserved till, like those used now by other
+European kings, like our own 'Defender of the Faith,' they had become
+at last more grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the end
+of the eighteenth century, was 'Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Vicar of Christ,' 'Imperial head of the faithful,' 'Leader of the
+Christian army,' 'Protector of Palestine, of general councils, of the
+Catholic faith[247].'
+
+The title, if it added little to the power, yet certainly seems to
+have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by consequence the
+jealousy of other states, of France especially. This did not, however,
+go so far as to prevent its recognition by the Pope and the French
+king[248], and after the sixteenth century it would have been a breach
+of diplomatic courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been
+wanting[249]: witness such titles as 'Most Christian king,' 'Catholic
+king,' 'Defender of the Faith[250].'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[201] 'Pruzzi,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'quorum Deus est
+venter et avaritia iuncta cum morte.'--_M. G. H._ t. iv.
+
+It is curious that this non-Teutonic people should have given their
+name to the great German kingdom of the present.
+
+[202] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_. It is hardly necessary to observe
+that the connection of Hungary with the Hapsburgs is of comparatively
+recent origin, and of a purely dynastic nature. The position of the
+archdukes of Austria as kings of Hungary had nothing to do legally
+with the fact that many of them were also chosen Emperors, although
+practically their possession of the imperial crown had greatly aided
+them in grasping and retaining the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia.
+
+[203] Cf. Pfeffel, _Abrg Chronologique_.
+
+[204] Letter of Frederick I to Otto of Freising, prefixed to the
+latter's History. This king is also called Sweyn.
+
+[205] See Appendix, Note B.
+
+[206] Albertus Stadensis apud Conringium, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[207] There is an allusion to this in the poems of the Cid. Arthur
+Duck, _De Usu et Authoritate Iuris Civilis_, quotes the view of some
+among the older jurists, that Spain having been, as far as the Romans
+were concerned, a _res derelicta_, recovered by the Spaniards
+themselves from the Moors, and thus acquired by _occupatio_, ought not
+to be subject to the Emperors.
+
+[208] One of the greatest of English kings appears performing an act
+of courtesy to the Emperor which was probably construed into an
+acknowledgment of his own inferior position. Describing the Roman
+coronation of the Emperor Conrad II, Wippo (c. 16) tells us 'His ita
+peractis in duorum regum prsentia Ruodolfi regis Burgundi et
+Chnutonis regis Anglorum divino officio finito imperator duorum regum
+medius ad cubiculum suum honorifice ductus est.'
+
+[209] Letter in Otto Fris. i.: 'Nobis submittuntur Francia et
+Hispania, Anglia et Dania.'
+
+[210] Letter in Radewic says, 'Regnum nostrum vobis exponimus....
+Vobis imperandi cedat auctoritas, nobis non deerit voluntas
+obsequendi.'
+
+[211] The alleged instances of homage by the Scots to the Saxon and
+early Norman kings are almost all complicated in some such way. They
+had once held also the earldom of Huntingdon from the English crown,
+and some have supposed (but on no sufficient grounds) that homage was
+also done by them for Lothian.
+
+[212] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii.
+
+[213] Edward refused upon the ground that he was '_rex inunctus_.'
+
+[214] Sigismund had shortly before given great offence in France by
+dubbing knights.
+
+[215] Sigismund answered, 'Nihil se contra superioritatem regis
+prtexere.'
+
+[216] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii. Nevertheless,
+notaries in Scotland, as elsewhere, continued for a long time to style
+themselves 'Ego M. auctoritate imperiali (or papali) notarius.'
+
+[217] It is not necessary to prove this letter to have been the
+composition of Frederick or his ministers. If it be (as it doubtless
+is) contemporary, it is equally to the purpose as an evidence of the
+feelings and ideas of the age. As a reviewer of a former edition of
+this book has questioned its authenticity, I may mention that it is to
+be found not only in Hoveden, but also in the 'Itinerarium regis
+Ricardi,' in Ralph de Diceto, and in the 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae.'
+[See Mr. Stubbs' edition of Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 356.]
+
+[218] Liutprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_. Nicephorus says, 'Vis
+maius scandalum quam quod se imperatorem vocat.'
+
+[219] Otto of Freising, i.
+
+[220] 'Isaachius a Deo constitutus Imperator, sacratissimus,
+excellentissimus, potentissimus, moderator Romanorum, Angelus totius
+orbis, heres coron magni Constantini, dilecto fratri imperii sui,
+maximo principi Alemanni.' A remarkable speech of Frederick's to the
+envoys of Isaac, who had addressed a letter to him as 'Rex Alemani'
+is preserved by Ansbert (_Historia de Expeditione Friderici
+Imperatoris_):--'Dominus Imperator divina se illustrante gratia
+ulterius dissimulare non valens temerarium fastum regis (_sc._
+Grcorum) et usurpantem vocabulum falsi imperatoris Romanorum, hc
+inter ctera exorsus est:--"Omnibus qui san mentis sunt constat, quia
+unus est Monarchus Imperator Romanorum, sicut et unus est pater
+universitatis, pontifex videlicet Romanus; ideoque cum ego Romani
+imperii sceptrum plusquam per annos XXX absque omnium regum vel
+principum contradictione tranquille tenuerim et in Romana urbe a summo
+pontifice imperiali benedictione unctus sim et sublimatus, quia
+denique Monarchiam prdecessores mei imperatores Romanorum plusquam
+per CCCC annos etiam gloriose transmiserint, utpote a Constantinopolitana
+urbe ad pristinam sedem imperii, caput orbis Romam, acclamatione
+Romanorum et principum imperii, auctoritate quoque summi pontificis et
+S. catholic ecclesi translatam, propter tardum et infructuosum
+Constantinopolitani imperatoris auxilium contra tyrannos ecclesi,
+mirandum est admodum cur frater meus dominus vester Constantinopolitanus
+imperator usurpet inefficax sibi idem vocabulum et glorietur stulte
+alieno sibi prorsus honore, cum liquido noverit me et nomine dici et
+re esse Fridericum Romanorum imperatorem semper Augustum."'
+
+Isaac was so far moved by Frederick's indignation that in his next
+letter he addressed him as 'generosissimum imperatorem Alemani,' and
+in a third thus:--
+
+'Isaakius in Christo fidelis divinitus coronatus, sublimis, potens,
+excelsus, hres coron magni Constantini et Moderator Romeon Angelus
+nobilissimo Imperatori antiqu Rom, regi Alemani et dilecto fratri
+imperii sui, salutem,' &c., &c. (Ansbert, _ut supra_.)
+
+[221] Baronius, ad ann.
+
+[222] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[223] Godefr. Viterb., _Pantheon_, in Mur., _S. R. I._, tom. vii.
+
+[224] Dnniges, _Deutsches Staatsrecht_, thinks that the crown of
+Italy, neglected by the Ottos, and taken by Henry II, was a
+recognition of the separate nationality of Italy. But Otto I seems to
+have been crowned king of Italy, and Muratori (_Ant. It._ Dissert.
+iii.) believes that Otto II and Otto III were likewise.
+
+[225] See Appendix, note A.
+
+[226] Some add a fifth crown, of Germany (making that of Aachen
+Frankish), which they say belonged to Regensburg--Marquardus Freherus.
+
+[227] 'Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar kronet men mit der Yseren Krone, so
+is he Konig over alle Dudesche Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de is
+Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen. Dy drdde is tho Rome; dy is guldin,
+so is he Keyser over alle dy Werlt.'--Gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_,
+quoted by Pfeffinger. Similarly Peter de Andlo.
+
+[228] Cf. Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu imperii Romani_. One would expect
+some ingenious allegorizer to have discovered that the crown of
+Burgundy must be, and therefore is, of copper or bronze, making the
+series complete, like the four ages of men in Hesiod. But I have not
+been able to find any such.
+
+[229] Hence the numbers attached to the names of the Emperors are
+often different in German and Italian writers, the latter not
+reckoning Henry the Fowler nor Conrad I. So Henry III (of Germany)
+calls himself 'Imperator Henricus Secundus;' and all distinguish the
+years of their _regnum_ from those of the _imperium_. Cardinal
+Baronius will not call Henry V anything but Henry III, not recognizing
+Henry IV's coronation, because it was performed by an antipope.
+
+[230] Life of S. Adalbert (written at Rome early in the eleventh
+century, probably by a brother of the monastery of SS. Boniface and
+Alexius) in Pertz, _M. G. H._ iv.
+
+[231] Given by Glaber Rudolphus. It is on the face of it a most
+impudent forgery: 'Ne quisquam audacter Romani Imperii sceptrum
+prpostere gestare princeps appetat neve Imperator dici aut esse
+valeat nisi quem Papa Romanus morum probitate aptum elegerit, eique
+commiserit insigne imperiale.'
+
+[232] Universal and undisputed in the West, which, for practical
+purposes, meant the world. The denial of the supreme jurisdiction of
+Peter's chair by the eastern churches affected very slightly the
+belief of Latin Christendom, just as the existence of a rival emperor
+at Constantinople with at least as good a legal title as the Teutonic
+Csar, was readily forgotten or ignored by the German and Italian
+subjects of the latter.
+
+[233] Odious especially for the inscription,--
+
+ 'Rex venit ante fores nullo prius urbis honore;
+ Post homo fit Pap, sumit quo dante coronam.'--Radewic.
+
+[234] Medival history is full of instances of the superstitious
+veneration attached to the rite of coronation (made by the Church
+almost a sacrament), and to the special places where, or even utensils
+with which it was performed. Everyone knows the importance in France
+of Rheims and its sacred _ampulla_; so the Scottish king must be
+crowned at Scone, an old seat of Pictish royalty--Robert Bruce risked
+a great deal to receive his crown there; so no Hungarian coronation
+was valid unless made with the crown of St. Stephen; the possession
+whereof is still accounted so valuable by the Austrian court.
+
+Great importance seems to have been attached to the imperial globe
+(Reichsapfel) which the Pope delivered to the Emperor at his
+coronation.
+
+[235] Whether the poem which passes under the name of Gunther
+Ligurinus be his work or that of some scholar in a later age is for
+the present purpose indifferent.
+
+[236] Zedler, _Universal Lexicon_, s. v. _Reich_.
+
+[237] It does not occur before Frederick I's time in any of the
+documents printed by Pertz; and this is the date which Boeclerus also
+assigns in his treatise, _De Sacro Imperio Romano_, vindicating the
+terms 'sacrum' and 'Romanum' against the aspersions of Blondel.
+
+[238] Pertz, _M. G. H._, tom. iv. (legum ii.)
+
+[239] Ibid. iv.
+
+[240] Radewic. _ap._ Pertz.
+
+[241] Blondellus adv. Chiffletium. Most of these theories are stated
+by Boeclerus. Jordanes (_Chronica_) says, 'Sacri imperii quod non est
+dubium sancti Spiritus ordinatione, secundum qualitatem ipsam et
+exigentiam meritorum humanorum disponi.'
+
+[242] Marquard Freher's notes to Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii.
+
+[243] So in the song on the capture of the Emperor Lewis II by
+Adalgisus of Benevento, we find the words, 'Ludhuicum comprenderunt
+sancto, pio, Augusto.' (Quoted by Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt
+Rom im Mittelalter_, iii. p. 185.)
+
+[244] Goldast, _Constitutiones_.
+
+[245] Pertz, _M. G. H._, legg. ii.
+
+[246] 'Apostolic majesty' was the proper title of the king of Hungary.
+The Austrian court has recently revived it.
+
+[247] Moser, _Rmische Kayser_.
+
+[248] Urban IV used the title in 1259: Francis I (of France) calls the
+Empire 'sacrosanctum.'
+
+[249] Cf. 'Holy Russia.'
+
+[250] It is almost superfluous to observe that the beginning of the
+title 'Holy' has nothing to do with the beginning of the Empire
+itself. Essentially and substantially, the Holy Roman Empire was, as
+has been shewn already, the creation of Charles the Great. Looking at
+it more technically, as the monarchy, not of the whole West, like that
+of Charles, but of Germany and Italy, with a claim, which was never
+more than a claim, to universal sovereignty, its beginning is fixed by
+most of the German writers, whose practice has been followed in the
+text, at the coronation of Otto the Great. But the title was at least
+one, and probably two centuries later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.
+
+
+In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has been described in
+what is not only the most brilliant but the most momentous period of
+its history; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief
+place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with
+the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no
+less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors
+influenced the development of European politics. The reform of the
+Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his
+successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts
+of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the grand period of the
+Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and
+creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to
+speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious,
+during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry III's
+purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's attempt to subject
+all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of
+the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing
+pretensions of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although destined in
+the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect of this struggle
+was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling; and, in
+opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate
+wonderfully their power of political organization. It was this impulse
+that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping
+forth as the rightful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve
+their own ends: it was thus too that they struck the alliance--strange
+as such an alliance seems now--with the rebellious cities of Lombardy,
+and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the
+third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the
+thirteenth century. In the foundation of the two great orders of
+ecclesiastical knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans
+and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated:
+in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her
+in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself
+exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow,
+following with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and glory
+which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VI, 1190-1197.]
+
+[Sidenote: Philip, 1198-1208.]
+
+[Sidenote: Innocent III and Otto IV.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto IV, 1208 (1198)-1212.]
+
+It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing,
+the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed
+likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and
+successor of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited all his
+father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his
+marriage with Constance, the heiress of the Norman kings, he had
+become master of Naples and Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of
+what had been hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest
+enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north,
+Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the
+history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to
+lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the
+Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no
+further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should
+pronounce the crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest
+importance would have followed this change, which Henry advocated by
+setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant
+to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong
+in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the
+Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services,
+and built up a firm centralized system, like that which was already
+beginning to develope itself in France. First, however, the Saxon
+princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed
+the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to
+content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second
+chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was
+set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick
+and Philip of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the
+Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an
+opportunity of extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist.
+The Pope moved heaven and earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had
+been the constant rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself
+willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's personal
+merits and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived
+the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while
+it seemed to vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party
+without a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the
+whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne
+more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he
+had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline,
+anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman
+Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and
+Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical
+supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the
+Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the
+champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and
+extinguish his house.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick the Second, 1212-1250.]
+
+Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Emperor and Pope
+girded themselves up for the last time, the narrative of Frederick the
+Second's career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of
+marvellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a
+curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even
+possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the
+fortunes of the German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy,
+but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to
+Italian history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself.
+Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is,
+with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a
+frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton[251].
+There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of
+his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these,
+and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from
+his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the
+orange-groves of Palermo--a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect
+refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable
+it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the
+outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the
+curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary
+personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a
+politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth
+fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while
+himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and
+ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one
+cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and
+succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon
+the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the
+terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled
+from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But
+while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy
+threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the
+imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce
+deliver to the flames of hell[252].
+
+[Sidenote: Struggle of Frederick with the Papacy.]
+
+Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible for its head not to
+be involved in war with the constantly aggressive Popedom--aggressive
+in her claims of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was
+Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over
+him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful
+enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk,
+and his delay to fulfil the vow was branded as impious neglect.
+Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and
+was excommunicated for going: having concluded an advantageous peace,
+he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for
+returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled,
+but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon
+the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth while to
+descant: the real causes were always the same, and could only be
+removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them
+was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which
+Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his
+son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for
+some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the
+Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his
+rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the
+means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But
+although the struggle was far more of a territorial and political one
+than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former
+source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the
+spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and Hildebrand, of
+Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again the unquenchable hatred of
+Italian factions: the pontiff asserted the transference of the Empire
+as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two
+keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law,
+to the indelible rights of Csar; and denounced his foe as the
+antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's second vicar whom
+he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice
+of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity
+not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and
+heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to
+the heir of Denmark, to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in
+raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Yet
+throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the
+Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the
+hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence,
+whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from
+the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the
+possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of
+strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the
+false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as
+the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no
+profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death
+than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor;
+their heritage destroyed him.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad IV, 1250-1254.]
+
+With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the
+greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a
+long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could
+never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the
+last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its
+strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at
+last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin--a
+hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any
+other foe--was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was
+done by the minions of Charles of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy lost to the Empire.]
+
+The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's armies and
+the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming
+population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that
+South Italy too had passed away from a German line--first to an
+Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty--it was plain that the
+peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should
+they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse
+than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a
+Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would
+be all the greater in a narrower sphere.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of imperial power in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Great Interregnum]
+
+[Sidenote: Double election, of Richard of England and Alfonso of
+Castile.]
+
+[Sidenote: State of Germany during the Interregnum.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1272-1292.]
+
+So indeed it might once have been, but now it was too late. The German
+kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be
+universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political
+existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes
+with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the
+support of their own princes, the ease with which in their absence the
+magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found
+in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and
+set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these
+were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that
+territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of
+the Great Interregnum[253]. Frederick II had by two Pragmatic
+Sanctions, A.D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather confirmed, rights
+already customary, such as to give the bishops and nobles legal
+sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the
+Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became
+restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately
+dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became
+altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of
+the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to
+fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father
+Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field, but
+rejected by the Swabian party: on his death a new election was called
+for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his
+brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not
+strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the
+Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry
+III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and
+was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that his
+bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and
+chose Alfonso X of Castile[254], who, shrewder than his competitor,
+continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his
+title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now
+and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was
+frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than
+the prtorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the
+outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate
+of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by
+war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery
+of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had
+not been seen for centuries. Things were even worse than under the
+Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been
+in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the
+extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only
+in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had
+already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and maintained a
+struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal
+brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt
+that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no
+courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was
+the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved
+the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany
+beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the
+electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose,
+in A.D. 1272, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of the house of
+Austria[255].
+
+[Sidenote: Change in the position of the Empire.]
+
+From this point there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire
+revived in A.D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to
+his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A.D. 962, on the
+narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the
+Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line
+of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to
+make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy
+and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally
+and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with
+resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been more
+decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The
+Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was
+concerned, ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor could it
+have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen.
+That it did not so expire, but lived on six hundred years more, till
+it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than
+ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it
+was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing
+partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary
+part of the world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
+this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans had
+confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long, and had
+grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose
+possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe,
+that it was now too late for them to separate the local from the
+universal monarch. If a German king was to be maintained at all, he
+must be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must still be. Deeply,
+nay, mortally wounded as the event proved his power to have been by
+the disasters of the Empire to which it had been linked, the time was
+by no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state of
+society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates, no force
+save feudalism was able to hold society together; and its efficacy for
+that purpose depended, as the anarchy of the recent interregnum
+shewed, upon the presence of the recognized feudal head.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of the regal power in Germany as compared with
+France and England.]
+
+That head, however, was no longer what he had been. The relative
+position of Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that
+which they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as
+conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III of France, as the
+Franconian Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian
+Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had
+been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the
+monarch, even in England not to diminish it: in Germany alone had
+political union become weaker, and the independence of the princes
+more confirmed. The causes of this change are not far to seek. They
+all resolve themselves into this one, that the German king attempted
+too much at once. The rulers of France, where manners were less rude
+than in the other Transalpine lands, and where the Third Estate rose
+into power more quickly, had reduced one by one the great feudataries
+by whom the first Capetians had been scarcely recognized. The English
+kings had annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had obtained a
+prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and exercised no doubtful sway
+through every corner of their country. Both had won their successes by
+the concentration on that single object of their whole personal
+activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby their feudal
+rights, personal, judicial, and legislative, could be applied to
+fetter the vassal. Meantime the German monarch, whose utmost efforts
+it would have needed to tame his fierce barons and maintain order
+through wide territories occupied by races unlike in dialect and
+customs, had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the Normans
+of South Italy, and had been for full two centuries the object of the
+unrelenting enmity of the Roman pontiff. And in this latter contest,
+by which more than by any other the fate of the Empire was decided, he
+fought under disadvantages far greater than his brethren in England
+and France. William the Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus
+had resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry the Fourth and Barbarossa
+had to cope with prelates who were Hildebrand and Anselm in one; the
+spiritual heads of Christendom as well as the primates of their
+special realm, the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of
+Germany were a body more formidable from their possessions than those
+of any other European country, and enjoying far larger privileges, the
+Emperor could not, or could with far less effect, win them over by
+invoking against the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of
+Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+After repeated defeats, each more crushing than the last, the imperial
+power, so far from being able to look down on the papal, could not
+even maintain itself on an equal footing. Against no pontiff since
+Gregory VII had the monarch's right to name or confirm a pope,
+undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III, been made good.
+It was the turn of the Emperor to repel a similar claim of the Holy
+See to the function of reviewing his own election, examining into his
+merits, and rejecting him if unsound, that is to say, impatient of
+priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was the first to make
+this demand in terms, was inserted by Gregory IX in his digest of the
+Canon Law, the inexhaustible armoury of the churchman, and continued
+to be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the sixteenth
+century[256]. It was not difficult to find grounds on which to base
+such a doctrine. Gregory VII deduced it with characteristic boldness
+from the power of the keys, and the superiority over all other
+dignities which must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal
+weal or woe. Others took their stand on the analogy of clerical
+ordination, and urged that since the Pope in consecrating the Emperor
+gave him a title to the obedience of all Christian men, he must have
+himself the right of approving or rejecting the candidate according to
+his merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament, shewed how
+Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David in his room, and argued that
+the Pope now must have powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew
+prophets. But the ascendancy of the doctrine dates from the time of
+Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an historical
+basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared, that the Empire
+was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person
+of Charles[257], and the authority which Leo then exercised as God's
+representative must abide thenceforth and for ever in his successors,
+who can therefore at any time recall the gift, and bestow it on a
+person or a nation more worthy than its present holders. This is the
+famous theory of the Translation of the Empire, which plays so large a
+part in controversy down till the seventeenth century[258], a theory
+with plausibility enough to make it generally successful, yet one
+which to an impartial eye appears far removed from the truth of the
+facts[259]. Leo III did not suppose, any more than did Charles
+himself, that it was by his sole pontifical authority that the crown
+was given to the Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by
+any of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory VII in
+particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his prerogative,
+appeals to the substitution by papal interference of Pipin for the
+last Merovingian king, and even goes back to cite the case of
+Theodosius humbling himself before St. Ambrose, but says never a word
+about this 'translatio,' excellently as it would have served his
+purpose.
+
+Sound or unsound, however, these arguments did their work, for they
+were urged skilfully and boldly, and none denied that it was by the
+Pope alone that the crown could be lawfully imposed[260]. In some
+instances the rights claimed were actually made good. Thus Innocent
+III withstood Philip and overthrew Otto IV; thus another haughty
+priest commanded the electors to choose the Landgrave of Thuringia
+(A.D. 1246), and was by some of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled
+the recognition of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes to the
+vicariate of the Empire during interregna the Germans never
+admitted[261]. Still their place was now generally felt to be higher
+than that of the monarch, and their control over the three spiritual
+electors and the whole body of the clergy was far more effective than
+his. A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the
+exactions and shameless subservience to France of the papal court at
+Avignon[262]; and the infant democracy of industry and intelligence
+represented by the cities and by the English Franciscan Occam,
+supported Lewis IV in his conflict with John XXII, till even the
+princes who had risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose
+him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of Constance, but the
+imperial power which might have floated onwards and higher on the
+turning tide of popular opinion lacked men equal to the occasion: the
+Hapsburg Frederick the Third, timid and superstitious, abased himself
+before the Romish court, and his house has generally adhered to the
+alliance then struck.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[251] I quote from the Liber Augustalis printed among Petrarch's works
+the following curious description of Frederick: 'Fuit armorum
+strenuus, linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, epicurus, nihil
+curans vel credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus Romanae ecclesiae.'
+
+As Otto III had been called 'mirabilia mundi,' so Frederick II is
+often spoken of in his own time as 'stupor mundi Fridericus.'
+
+[252] 'Qu entro lo secondo Federico.'--_Inferno_, canto x.
+
+[253] The interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before
+Richard's election; by others, as the whole period from the death of
+Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in
+1273.
+
+[254] Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, 'the Wise.'
+
+[255] Hapsburg is a castle in the Aargau on the banks of the Aar, and
+near the line of railway from Olten to Zrich, from a point on which a
+glimpse of it may be had. 'Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,'
+says Gibbon, 'the castle of Hapsburg, the abbey of Knigsfeld, and the
+town of Bruck have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may
+compare the monuments of Roman conquests, of feudal or Austrian
+tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be
+truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and happiness of his
+own time.'
+
+[256] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_: 'Ius et authoritas examinandi personam electam in regem
+et promovendam ad imperium, ad nos spectat, qui eum inungimus,
+consecramus, et coronamus.'
+
+[257] 'Illis principibus,' writes Innocent, 'ius et potestatem
+eligendi regem [Romanorum] in imperatorem postmodum promovendum
+recognoscimus, ad quos de iure ac antiqua consuetudine noscitur
+pertinere, prsertim quum ad eos ius et potestas huiusmodi ab
+apostolica sede pervenerit, qu Romanum imperium in persona magnifici
+Caroli a Grcis transtulit in Germanos.'--Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_.
+
+[258] Its influence, however, as Dllinger (_Das Kaiserthum Karls des
+Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_) remarks, first became great when this
+letter, some forty or fifty years after Innocent wrote it, was
+inserted in the digest of the canon law.
+
+[259] Vid. supra, pp. 52-58.
+
+[260] Upon this so-called 'Translation of the Empire,' many books
+remain to us: many more have probably perished. A good although far
+from impartial summary of the controversy may be found in Vagedes, _De
+Ludibriis Aul Roman in transferendo Imperio Romano_.
+
+[261] 'Vacante imperio Romano, cum in illo ad scularem iudicem
+nequeat haberi recursus, ad summum pontificem, cui in persona B. Petri
+terreni simul et coelestis imperii iura Deus ipse commisit, imperii
+prdicti iurisdictio regimen et dispositio devolvitur.'--Bull _Si
+fratrum_ (of John XXI, in A.D. 1316), in _Bullar. Rom._ So again:
+'Attendentes quod Imperii Romani regimen cura et administratio tempore
+quo illud vacare contingit ad nos pertinet, sicut dignoscitur
+pertinere.' So Boniface VIII, refusing to recognize Albert I, because
+he was ugly and one-eyed ('est homo monoculus et vultu sordido, non
+potest esse Imperator'), and had taken a wife from the serpent brood
+of Frederick II ('de sanguine viperali Friderici'), declared himself
+Vicar of the Empire, and assumed the crown and sword of Constantine.
+
+[262] Avignon was not yet in the territory of France: it lay within
+the bounds of the kingdom of Arles. But the French power was nearer
+than that of the Emperor; and pontiffs many of them French by
+extraction sympathized, as was natural, with princes of their own
+race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Territorial Sovereignty of the Princes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adolf, 1292-1298.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert I, 1298-1308.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, 1308-1314.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis IV, 1314-1347.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic
+power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the
+Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made
+the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the
+Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify
+their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to
+coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
+Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign
+of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the
+civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival
+claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
+successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these
+circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the
+crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now
+became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
+jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
+privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were
+without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The
+numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the
+crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of
+Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single
+tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it
+was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed
+themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
+were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this
+last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors,
+already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and
+forming for themselves the first considerable principalities.
+Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states
+before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics
+almost from its beginning.
+
+[Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]
+
+The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his
+present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown
+entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to
+confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of
+Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it
+from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect
+all their present immunities, including those which they had just
+extorted as the price of their votes; they checked all his attempts to
+recover lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
+anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor sought
+only to make the most of his short tenure, using his position to
+aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown estates and
+privileges. His individual action and personal relation to the subject
+was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he represented order
+and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the
+political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned:
+unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when they
+assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without
+the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty-seven
+years.
+
+[Sidenote: Power of the cities.]
+
+[Sidenote: Financial distress.]
+
+How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn
+by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign potentates, who could
+not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not
+to speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was proposed
+against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against
+Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad,
+king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a
+Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support
+of the cities. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had
+increased wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness: the
+Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed
+the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the Rhine formed great
+commercial leagues, maintained regular wars against the
+counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an
+alliance with the Swiss, on the point of turning West Germany into a
+federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however, was still too
+strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and
+the thoughtless Wenzel let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the
+losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past
+redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts. The
+Empire was poor. The crown lands, which had suffered heavily under
+Frederick II, were further usurped during the confusion that followed;
+till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who
+sought only their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and
+fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian
+Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights,
+the second fiscal resource, had fared no better--tolls, customs,
+mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were
+either seized or granted away: even the advowsons of churches had been
+sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an
+inglorious traffic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under
+Rudolf that the electors refused to make his son Albert king of the
+Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which
+with difficulty supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at
+the same time[263]. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio
+spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germani principibus
+successurus esset, qui prter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud
+eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum[264].' Patritius,
+the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the
+Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors[265]. Poverty
+such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater
+after each election, not only involved the failure of the attempts
+which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights[266], but put
+every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a
+jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors,
+princes, and cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence
+selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from
+dying of inanition.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles IV (A.D. 1347-1378), and his electoral
+constitution.]
+
+The changes thus briefly described were in progress when Charles the
+Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that blind king John of Bohemia who
+fell at Cressy, and grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
+ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy aimed at settling
+what he perhaps despaired of reforming, and the famous instrument
+which, under the name of the Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of
+the Germanic constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of
+the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous
+defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections,
+followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which
+Charles set himself to redress.
+
+[Sidenote: German kingdom not originally elective.]
+
+The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic
+invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the
+elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had,
+as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from
+among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose
+the bravest or the most popular as king[267]. That the German crown
+came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England,
+and most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary
+succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in
+three successive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles,
+who, since they were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard
+the royal power, did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the
+churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own
+law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to
+gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto
+which they claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial
+office as one too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal,
+transmissible by blood. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms,
+remained merely local, feudal, and national, it would without doubt
+have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by
+the Roman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race
+being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could
+not be confined to any family, nor pass like a private estate by the
+ordinary rules of descent.
+
+[Sidenote: Electoral body in primitive times.]
+
+The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest ages, to
+the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which must have been very
+irregularly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but
+the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to
+complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and St.
+Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke were chosen[268]. Though even
+tradition might have commemorated what extant records place beyond a
+doubt, it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth
+century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the
+privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory
+V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as 'lex a pontifice de
+imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in
+posterum esset[269].' St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from the times
+of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V
+established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the
+holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged
+expedient for Christ's faithful people[270].' Since it tended to exalt
+the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt honestly
+accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And indeed, like so many
+other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto
+III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
+succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the nation,
+and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end
+become hereditary[271].
+
+[Sidenote: Encroachments of the great nobles.]
+
+Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was
+theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers
+being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to
+an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of
+these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the
+father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it
+might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by
+the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II,
+A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the
+so-called right of prtaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
+future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their
+approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will
+and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further
+exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the
+Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient
+constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic
+throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely
+elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry
+VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the
+keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of
+prtaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election,
+vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility
+being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the
+double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was
+as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor
+afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts
+and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
+
+[Sidenote: The Seven Electors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]
+
+The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate and obscure.
+It is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a
+distinct body; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in
+A.D. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom
+the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the
+seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and
+Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz,
+Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees,
+represented the German church: the other four ought, according to the
+ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations,
+Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the
+four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms
+the two first named were now extinct, and their place and power in the
+state, as well as the household offices they had held, had descended
+upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
+Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon
+duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and
+office of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would
+have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and
+the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the great house of
+Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed
+so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to
+the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king
+of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince[274], might on
+the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the
+electors. The dispute between these rival claimants, as well as all
+the rules and requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
+Fourth in the Golden Bull, thenceforward a fundamental law of the
+Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king;
+fixed Frankfort as the place of election; named the archbishop of
+Mentz convener of the electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to
+the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A
+majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each
+electorate there was attached a great office, it was supposed that
+this was the title by which the vote was possessed; though it was in
+truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were
+archchancellors of Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
+Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony marshal, and
+Brandenburg chamberlain[275].
+
+[Sidenote: Eighth Electorate.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ninth Electorate.]
+
+These arrangements, under which disputed elections became far less
+frequent, remained undisturbed till A.D. 1618, when on the breaking
+out of the Thirty Years' War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an
+unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick
+(king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of
+England) of his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own
+partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace of Westphalia the
+Palsgrave was reinstated as an eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her
+place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple
+was felt in making further changes. In A.D. 1692, the Emperor Leopold
+I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Lneburg,
+which was then in possession of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to
+the throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in A.D. 1708, the assent of
+the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings
+came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
+
+It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues
+to entitle himself Elector[276] should be one who never did (and of
+course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under
+the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A.D. 1803,
+Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
+procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves,
+annexing their territories to France, and gave the title of Elector,
+as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Wrtemburg, the
+Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop
+of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
+title became meaningless.
+
+As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy
+not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to
+consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character
+of elective monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
+and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain
+class of political theorists.
+
+[Sidenote: Objects of an elective monarchy: how far attained in
+Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Choice of the fittest.]
+
+First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult, one might
+almost say impossible, it was found to maintain in practice the
+elective principle. In point of law, the imperial throne was from the
+tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely open to any orthodox
+Christian candidate. But as a matter of fact, the competition was
+confined to a few very powerful families, and there was always a
+strong tendency for the crown to become hereditary in some one of
+these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from A.D. 1024 till 1125,
+the Hohenstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
+century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of Bohemia) enjoyed it
+through three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it
+fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain
+it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished
+out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme
+of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest
+man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even
+then rather by good fortune than design.
+
+[Sidenote: Restraint of the sovereign.]
+
+No such objection can be brought against the second ground on which an
+elective system has sometimes been advocated, its operation in
+moderating the power of the crown, for this was attained in the
+fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the
+fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house
+swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not
+moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to
+purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to
+his predecessors, and must repeat the same shameful policy later in
+his reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the same time
+that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated
+it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make
+out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the
+strength of their position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert
+an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have
+aspired to.
+
+[Sidenote: Recognition of the popular will.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conception of the electoral function.]
+
+Modern political speculation supposes the method of appointing a ruler
+by the votes of his subjects, as opposed to the system of hereditary
+succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the
+ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that
+he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the
+Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This will best appear
+when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its
+history is compared with the corresponding changes in the composition
+of the electoral body which have been described as in progress from
+the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe
+chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble
+family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power
+circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the
+tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the
+hands of the magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
+the same measure had the relation of prince and subject taken a new
+aspect. We must not expect to find, in such rude times, any very clear
+apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne
+had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election
+was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded,
+not as a delegation of authority by the nobles and people, with a
+power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of
+themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and
+ill-defined prerogative. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn
+above, the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout of the
+host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral
+princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established,
+and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a
+majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
+conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
+penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign did
+not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right, but by the choice
+of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration
+of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is
+nevertheless a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
+They only named the person who was to receive what it was not theirs
+to give. God, say the medival writers, not deigning to interfere
+visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven
+princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged
+to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
+in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself that the
+authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have no relation towards
+him except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when
+the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the
+belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
+of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any
+notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of Charles IV's policy.]
+
+Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the institutions of Charles
+IV, which removed one fruitful cause of civil war. But these seven
+electoral princes acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked
+and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full
+regalian rights in their territories[277]; causes were not to be
+evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied:
+their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their
+persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the
+Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon
+gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular reverence, as well as
+that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German
+Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
+unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and
+to them, while appearing to exalt by elaborate ceremonies its ideal
+dignity, he deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The
+object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
+Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden
+Bull, whose seal bears the legend,--
+
+ 'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi[278],'
+
+there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany he was indirectly
+a benefactor, by the foundation of the University of Prague, the
+mother of all her schools: otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy,
+and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
+ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election of his son
+Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been
+amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what
+lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy
+the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome
+with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate
+of an Avignonese Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the
+last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he
+could now despise.
+
+Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically
+powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority
+that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and
+tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he
+claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[263] Quoted by Moser, _Rmische Kayser_, from _Chron. Hirsang._:
+'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contrit vix uni alendo regi
+sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'
+
+[264] At Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased
+greatly, there were, we are told, many bishops better off than the
+Emperor.
+
+[265] 'Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix
+suppetant.'--Quoted by Moser.
+
+[266] Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the
+grasp of the Rhenish electors.
+
+[267] The thelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, and
+the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achmenids of
+Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.
+
+[268] Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says,
+'Inter confinia Mogunti et Wormati convenerunt cuncti primates et,
+ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni.' So Bruno says that Henry IV was
+elected by the '_populus_.' So Gunther Ligurinus of Frederick I's
+election:--
+
+ 'Acturi sacr de successione coron
+ Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'
+
+So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his
+election, says, 'Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi
+et aliis Itali dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum ex
+Transalpino regno.'--Quoted by Mur. _Antiq._ Diss. iii. And see many
+other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius illustratus_.
+
+[269] Alciatus, _De Formula Romani Imperii_. He adds that the Gauls
+and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too
+Radulfus de Columna.
+
+[270] Quoted by Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu Sacri Imperii Romani_,
+himself a violent advocate of Gregory's decree, though living as late
+as the days of Ferdinand II. As late as A.D. 1648 we find Pope
+Innocent X maintaining that the sacred number _Seven_ of the electors
+was 'apostolica auctoritate olim prfinitus.' Bull _Zelo domus_ in
+_Bullar. Rom._
+
+[271] Sometimes we hear of a decree made by Pope Sergius IV and his
+cardinals (of course equally fabulous with Otto's). So John Villani,
+iv. 2.
+
+[272] In 1152 we read, 'Id iuris Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur ut
+non per sanguinis propaginem sed per principum electionem reges
+creentur.'--Otto Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing not much later, says
+(quoted by Freher),--
+
+ 'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum
+ Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum
+ Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'
+
+[273] Innocent III, during the contest between Philip and Otto IV,
+speaks of 'principes ad quos principaliter spectat regis Romani
+electio.'
+
+[274] 'Rex Bohemi non eligit, quia non est Teutonicus,' says a writer
+early in the fourteenth century.
+
+[275] The names and offices of the seven are concisely given in these
+lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, _De Imperio
+Romano_:--
+
+ 'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,
+ Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;
+ Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,
+ Marchio prpositus camer, pincerna Bohemus,
+ Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per scula summum.'
+
+It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's
+ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of
+Rudolf is described:--
+
+ 'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
+ Im alterthmlichen Saale,
+ Sass Knig Rudolphs heilige Macht
+ Beim festlichen Krnungsmahle.
+ Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,
+ Es schenkte der Bhme des perlenden Weins,
+ Und alle die Whler, die Sieben,
+ Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,
+ Umstanden geschftig den Herrscher der Welt,
+ Die Wrde des Amtes zu ben.'
+
+It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to
+bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home,
+mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war.
+
+[276] The electoral prince (Kurfrst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention
+of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily
+to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy
+(Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the
+above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system
+has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866,
+and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants,
+whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to
+the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of
+Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer
+to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the
+historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to
+associate with the Austrian house.]
+
+[277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the
+splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_
+a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the
+territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express
+concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:--
+
+ 'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,
+ Berg-, Salz- und Mnz-regal euch angehren soll.'
+
+[278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Theory of the Roman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries.]
+
+That the Roman Empire survived the seemingly mortal wound it had
+received at the era of the Great Interregnum, and continued to put
+forth pretensions which no one was likely to make good where the
+Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its identification
+with the German kingdom, in which some life was still left. But this
+was far from being the only cause which saved it from extinction. It
+had not ceased to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
+by the same singular theory which had in the ninth and tenth been
+strong enough to re-establish it in the West. The character of that
+theory was indeed somewhat changed, for if not positively less
+religious, it was less exclusively so. In the days of Charles and
+Otto, the Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition
+from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that with the
+visible Church there must be coextensive a single Christian state
+under one head and governor. But now that the Emperor's headship had
+been repudiated by the Pope, and his interference in matters of
+religion denounced as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that the
+memory of mutual injuries had kindled an unquenchable hatred between
+the champions of the ecclesiastical and those of the civil power, it
+was natural that the latter, while they urged, fervently as ever, the
+divine sanction given to the imperial office, should at the same time
+be led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its claims.
+What that basis was, and how they were guided to it, will best appear
+when a word or two has been said on the nature of the change that had
+passed on Europe in the course of the three preceding centuries, and
+the progress of the human mind during the same period.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of learning and literature, A.D. 1100-1400.]
+
+Such has been the accumulated wealth of literature, and so rapid the
+advances of science among us since the close of the Middle Ages, that
+it is not now possible by any effort fully to enter into the feelings
+with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in
+them their only possession. It is indeed true that modern art and
+literature and philosophy have been produced by the working of new
+minds upon old materials: that in thought, as in nature, we see no new
+creation. But with us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the
+new till its origin is forgotten: to them ancient books were the only
+standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the only stimulus to
+reflection. Hence it was that the most learned man was in those days
+esteemed the greatest: hence the creative energy of an age was exactly
+proportioned to its knowledge of and its reverence for the written
+monuments of those that had gone before. For until they can look
+forward, men must look back: till they should have reached the level
+of the old civilization, the nations of medival Europe must continue
+to live upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common dream of
+all mankind had power; but to them, as to the ancient world, that
+golden age which seems now to glimmer on the horizon of the future was
+shrouded in the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries that we are accustomed to assign that new birth of
+the human spirit--if it ought not rather to be called a renewal of its
+strength and quickening of its sluggish life--with which the modern
+time begins. And the date is well chosen, for it was then first that
+the transcendently powerful influence of Greek literature began to
+work upon the world. But it must not be forgotten that for a long time
+previous there had been in progress a great revival of learning, and
+still more of zeal for learning, which being caused by and directed
+towards the literature and institutions of Rome, might fitly be called
+the Roman Renaissance. The twelfth century saw this revival begin with
+that passionate study of the legislation of Justinian, whose influence
+on the doctrines of imperial prerogative has been noticed already. The
+thirteenth witnessed the rapid spread of the scholastic philosophy, a
+body of systems most alien, both in subject and manner, to anything
+that had arisen among the ancients, yet one to whose development Greek
+metaphysics and the theology of the Latin fathers had largely
+contributed, and the spirit of whose reasonings was far more free than
+the presumed orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the
+fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great masters of
+painting and song; and the literature of the new languages, springing
+into the fulness of life in the Divina Commedia, adorned not long
+after by the names of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place
+as a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.
+
+[Sidenote: Growing freedom of spirit.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of thought upon the arrangements of society.]
+
+Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused by, partly causing
+it, there had been also a wonderful stirring and uprising in the mind
+of Europe. The yoke of church authority still pressed heavily on the
+souls of men; yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more
+murmured in secret. The tendency was one which shewed itself in
+various and sometimes apparently opposite directions. The revolt of
+the Albigenses, the spread of the Cathari and other so-called
+heretics, the excitement created by the writings of Wickliffe and
+Huss, witnessed to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the
+dominant theology. It was present, however skilfully disguised, among
+those scholastic doctors who busied themselves with proving by natural
+reason the dogmas of the Church: for the power which can forge fetters
+can also break them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more
+direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated from
+Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and corruptions of the
+clergy, and above all of the papal court. For the agitation was not
+merely speculative. There was beginning to be a direct and rational
+interest in life, a power of applying thought to practical ends, which
+had not been seen before. Man's life among his fellows was no longer a
+mere wild beast struggle; man's soul no more, as it had been, the
+victim of ungoverned passion, whether it was awed by supernatural
+terrors or captivated by examples of surpassing holiness. Manners were
+still rude, and governments unsettled; but society was learning to
+organize itself upon fixed principles; to recognize, however faintly,
+the value of order, industry, equality; to adapt means to ends, and
+conceive of the common good as the proper end of its own existence. In
+a word, Politics had begun to exist, and with them there had appeared
+the first of a class of persons whom friends and enemies may both,
+though with different meanings, call ideal politicians; men who,
+however various have been the doctrines they have held, however
+impracticable many of the plans they have advanced, have been
+nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest interests of
+humanity, and have frequently been derided as theorists in their own
+age to be honoured as the prophets and teachers of the next.
+
+[Sidenote: Separation of the peoples of Europe into hostile kingdoms:
+consequent need of an international power.]
+
+Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes and sympathies of
+these political speculators as well as of the jurists and poets of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were constantly directed. The cause
+may be gathered from the circumstances of the time. The most
+remarkable event in the history of the last three hundred years had
+been the formation of nationalities, each distinguished by a peculiar
+language and character, and by steadily increasing differences of
+habits and institutions. And as upon this national basis there had
+been in most cases established strong monarchies, Europe was broken up
+into disconnected bodies, and the cherished scheme of a united
+Christian state appeared less likely than ever to be realized. Nor was
+this all. Sometimes through race-hatred, more often by the jealousy
+and ambition of their sovereigns, these countries were constantly
+involved in war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with
+more destructive results than in time past the peace of the religious
+community; while each of them was at the same time torn within by
+frequent insurrections, and desolated by long and bloody civil wars.
+The new nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that by
+their extinction a remedy might be applied to these evils. They had
+grown up in spite of the Empire and the Church, and were not likely to
+yield in their strength what they had won in their weakness. But it
+still appeared possible to soften, if not to overcome, their
+antagonism. What might not be looked for from the erection of a
+presiding power common to all Europe, a power which, while it should
+oversee the internal concerns of each country, not dethroning the
+king, but treating him as an hereditary viceroy, should be more
+especially charged to prevent strife between kingdoms, and to maintain
+the public order of Europe by being not only the fountain of
+international law, but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer
+of its sentences?
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes as international Judges.]
+
+To such a position had the Popes aspired. They were indeed excellently
+fitted for it by the respect which the sacredness of their office
+commanded; by their control of the tremendous weapons of
+excommunication and interdict; above all, by their exemption from
+those narrowing influences of place, or blood, or personal interest,
+which it would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there
+had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were worthy of their
+exalted office, and whose interference was gratefully remembered by
+those who found no other helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by
+its conduct as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even when
+its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most pure, one motive
+had always biassed its decisions--a partiality to the most submissive.
+During the greater part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon
+the willing tool of France: in the pursuit of a temporal principality
+it had mingled in and been contaminated by the unhallowed politics of
+Italy; its supreme council, the college of cardinals, was distracted
+by the intrigues of two bitterly hostile factions. And while the power
+of the Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the days of
+Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great prelates and the vices
+of the inferior clergy had provoked throughout Western Christendom a
+reaction against the pretensions of all sacerdotal authority. As there
+is no theory at first sight more attractive than that which entrusts
+all government to a supreme spiritual power, which, knowing what is
+best for man, shall lead him to his true good by appealing to the
+highest principles of his nature, so there is no disappointment more
+bitter than that of those who find that the holiest office may be
+polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder; that craft and
+hypocrisy lead while fanaticism follows; that here too, as in so much
+else, the corruption of the best is worst. Some such disappointment
+there was in Europe now, and with it a certain disposition to look
+with favour on the secular power: a wish to escape from the unhealthy
+atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of positive law, harsher,
+it might be, yet surely less corrupting. Espousing the cause of the
+Roman Empire as the chief opponent of priestly claims, this tendency
+found it, with shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in
+some respects for the office of an international judge and mediator
+than it had been as a great national power. For though far less widely
+active, it was losing that local character which was fast gathering
+round the Papacy. With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and
+removed, except in his patrimonial lands, from direct contact with the
+subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously a German
+and a feudal king, and occupied an ideal position far less marred by
+the incongruous accidents of birth and training, of national and
+dynastic interests.
+
+[Sidenote: Duties attributed to the Empire by the developed theory.]
+
+[Sidenote: Divine right of the Emperor.]
+
+To that position three cardinal duties were attached. He who held it
+must typify spiritual unity, must preserve peace, must be a fountain
+of that by which alone among imperfect men peace is preserved and
+restored, law and justice. The first of these three objects was sought
+not only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for a wider
+brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever since the barrier between
+Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations
+of the higher minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed
+in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one
+body, reminding them of their common faith, their common blood, their
+common interest in each other's welfare. And he was therefore above
+all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the representative of
+the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and to redress the
+injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each other; to punish
+offenders against the public order of Christendom; to maintain through
+the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and
+quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither
+arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and
+flourish. The medival Empire was in its essence what the modern
+despotisms that mimic it profess themselves: the Empire was
+peace[279]: the oldest and noblest title of its head was 'Imperator
+pacificus[280].' And that he might be the peacemaker, he must be the
+expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment,
+positive law; chief legislator and supreme judge of appeal, like his
+predecessor the compiler of the Corpus Iuris, the one and only source
+of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and
+administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, Lord
+of the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same sense in
+which the soil of France or England belongs to their respective kings:
+he is the steward of Him who has received the heathen for his
+possession and the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance.
+It is, therefore, by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired
+not by force but by legitimate devolution from those whom God himself
+had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an external and
+positive basis for that idea is a problem which it has at all times
+been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing
+to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by
+reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire historically how
+its existing arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt to represent
+human government as an emanation from divine: a view from which all
+the similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine
+right which have prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been
+said already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor
+reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of the people,
+for such a theory would have seemed to the men of the middle ages an
+absurd and wicked perversion of the true order. Nor do his powers come
+to him from those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral
+princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having such an origin, his
+rights exist irrespective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary
+abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them. Boniface the
+Eighth[281] reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till
+the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like other
+princes, is of right and must ever remain subject to the Roman
+Emperor. And the sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the
+Emperor in language, and yield to him a precedence, which admitted the
+inferiority of their own position[282].
+
+There was in this theory nothing that was absurd, though much that was
+impracticable. The ideas on which it rested are still unapproached in
+grandeur and simplicity, still as far in advance of the average
+thought of Europe, and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply
+them, as when they were promulgated five hundred years ago. The
+practical evil which the establishment of such a universal monarchy
+was intended to meet, that of wars and hardly less ruinous
+preparations for war between the states of Europe, remains what it was
+then. The remedy which medival theory proposed has been in some
+measure applied by the construction and reception of international
+law; the greater difficulty of erecting a tribunal to arbitrate and
+decide, with the power of enforcing its decisions, is as far from a
+solution as ever.
+
+[Sidenote: Roman Empire why an international power.]
+
+It is easy to see how it was to the Roman Emperor, and to him only,
+that the duties and privileges above mentioned could be attributed.
+Being Roman, he was of no nation, and therefore fittest to judge
+between contending states, and appease the animosities of race. His
+was the imperial tongue of Rome, not only the vehicle of religion and
+law, but also, since no other was understood everywhere in Europe, the
+necessary medium of diplomatic intercourse. As there was no Church but
+the Holy Roman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him that
+the communion of the saints in its outward form, its secular side, was
+represented, and to his keeping that the sanctity of peace must be
+entrusted. As direct heir of those who from Julius to Justinian had
+shaped the existing law of Europe[283], he was, so to speak, legality
+personified[284]; the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of
+power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer upon others
+rights equally valid. And as he claimed to perpetuate the greatest
+political system the world had known, a system which still moves the
+wonder of those who see before their eyes empires as much wider than
+the Roman as they are less symmetrical, and whose vast and complex
+machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth century possessed or
+could hope to establish, it was not strange that he and his government
+(assuming them to be what they were entitled to be) should be taken as
+the ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Right of creating Kings.]
+
+Of the many applications and illustrations of these doctrines which
+medival documents furnish, it will suffice to adduce two or three. No
+imperial privilege was prized more highly than the power of creating
+kings, for there was none which raised the Emperor so much above them.
+In this, as in other international concerns, the Pope soon began to
+claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then separate and
+independent. But the older and more reasonable view assigned it, as
+flowing from the possession of supreme secular authority, to the
+Emperor; and it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia,
+Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the regal title[285].
+The prerogative was his in the same manner in which that of conferring
+titles is still held to belong to the sovereign in every modern
+kingdom. And so when Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy,
+proposed to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was from
+Frederick III that he sought permission to do so. The Emperor,
+however, was greedy and suspicious, the Duke uncompliant; and when
+Frederick found that terms could not be arranged between them, he
+stole away suddenly, and left Charles to carry back, with
+ill-concealed mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had
+brought ready-made to the place of interview.
+
+[Sidenote: Chivalry.]
+
+In the same manner, as representing what was common to and valid
+throughout all Europe, nobility, and more particularly knighthood,
+centred in the Empire. The great Orders of Chivalry were international
+institutions, whose members, having consecrated themselves a military
+priesthood, had no longer any country of their own, and could
+therefore be subject to no one save the Emperor and the Pope. For
+knighthood was constructed on the analogy of priesthood, and knights
+were conceived of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly
+what priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to it in
+its religious aspect: to the one body was given the sword of the
+flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit; each was universal, each
+had its autocratic head[286]. Singularly, too, were these notions
+brought into harmony with the feudal polity. Csar was lord paramount
+of the world: its countries great fiefs whose kings were his tenants
+in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him homage, fealty, and
+military service against the infidel.
+
+[Sidenote: Persons eligible as Emperors.]
+
+One illustration more of the way in which the empire was held to be
+something of and for all mankind, cannot be omitted. Although from the
+practical union of the imperial with the German throne none but
+Germans were chosen to fill it[287], it remained in point of law
+absolutely free from all restrictions of country or birth. In an age
+of the most intense aristocratic exclusiveness, the highest office in
+the world was the only secular one open to all Christians. The old
+writers, after debating at length the qualifications that are or may
+be desirable in an Emperor, and relating how in pagan times Gauls and
+Spaniards, Moors and Pannonians, were thought worthy of the purple,
+decide that two things, and no more, are required of the candidate for
+Empire: he must be free-born, and he must be orthodox[288].
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the new learning.]
+
+[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Empire's rights and functions never
+carried out in fact.]
+
+It is not without a certain surprise that we see those who were
+engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt indirectly their
+stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of the Roman Empire. Still
+more difficult is it to estimate the respective influence exerted by
+each of the three revivals which it has been attempted to distinguish.
+The spirit of the ancient world by which the men who led these
+movements fancied themselves animated, was in truth a pagan, or at
+least a strongly secular spirit, in many respects inconsistent with
+the associations which had now gathered round the imperial office. And
+this hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning of
+the sixteenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance, a direct and
+for the time irresistible sway was exercised by the art and literature
+of Greece, when the mythology of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that
+which had fired the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of
+St. Francis; when men forsook the image of the saint in the cathedral
+for the statue of the nymph in the garden; when the uncouth jargon of
+scholastic theology was equally distasteful to the scholars who formed
+their style upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their
+inspiration from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity did
+ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire, was due partly
+indeed to the false notions that were entertained regarding the early
+Csars, yet still more to the common hostility of both sects to the
+Papacy. It was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her
+traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide a dominion; yet
+no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his republicans arise, claiming
+liberty in the name of the ancient constitution of the republic, than
+they found in the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned for help to
+the secular monarch against the clergy. With similar aversion did the
+Romish court view the revived study of the ancient jurisprudence, so
+soon as it became, in the hands of the school of Bologna and
+afterwards of the jurists of France, a power able to assert its
+independence and resist ecclesiastical pretensions. In the ninth
+century, Pope Nicholas the First had himself judged in the famous case
+of Teutberga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law: in the
+thirteenth, his successors[289] forbade its study, and the canonists
+strove to expel it from Europe[290]. And as the current of educated
+opinion among the laity was beginning, however imperceptibly at first,
+to set against sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Empire would
+find sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost position.
+Thus the Emperors became, or might have become had they seen the
+greatness of the opportunity and been strong enough to improve it, the
+exponents and guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part
+at least, of the Reformation. But the revival came too late to arrest,
+if not to adorn, the decline of their office. The growth of a national
+sentiment in the several countries of Europe, which had already gone
+too far to be arrested, and was urged on by forces far stronger than
+the theories of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the
+resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts of political
+freedom, that form of narrowly local patriotism which they still
+retain. It can hardly be said that upon any occasion, except the
+gathering of the council of Constance by Sigismund, did the Emperor
+appear filling a truly international place. For the most part he
+exerted in the politics of Europe no influence greater than that of
+other princes. In actual resources he stood below the kings of France
+and England, far below his vassals the Visconti of Milan[291]. Yet
+this helplessness, such was men's faith or their timidity, and such
+their unwillingness to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent
+his dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language by
+writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo of traditional
+glory which surrounded it.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the men of letters.]
+
+We are thus brought back to ask, What was the connection between
+imperialism and the literary revival?
+
+[Sidenote: Petrarch.]
+
+To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the heathen persecuting
+power, it is strange to find it depicted as the model of a Christian
+commonwealth. It is stranger still that the study of antiquity should
+have made men advocates of arbitrary power. Democratic Athens,
+oligarchic Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus: the moderns who
+have striven to catch their spirit have been men like Algernon Sidney,
+and Vergniaud, and Shelley. The explanation is the same in both
+cases[292]. The ancient world was known to the earlier middle ages by
+tradition, freshest for what was latest, and by the authors of the
+Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty despotism and a
+civilization brilliant far beyond their own. Writings of the fourth
+and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us, were to them authorities as
+high as Tacitus or Livy; yet Virgil and Horace too had sung the
+praises of the first and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of
+poetry and law, Rome meant universal monarchy[293]; to those of
+religion, her name called up the undimmed radiance of the Church under
+Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch, the apostle of the dawning
+Renaissance, is excited by the least attempt to revive even the shadow
+of imperial greatness: as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV
+into Italy, and execrates his departure. The following passage is
+taken from his letter to the Roman people asking them to receive back
+Rienzi:--'When was there ever such peace, such tranquillity, such
+justice, such honour paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the
+good and punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely
+guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one head, and that
+head Rome; the very time wherein God deigned to be born of a virgin
+and dwell upon earth. To every single body there has been given a
+head; the whole world therefore also, which is called by the poet a
+great body, ought to be content with one temporal head. For every
+two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more horrible and hideous a
+portent must be a creature with a thousand different heads, biting and
+fighting against one another! If, however, it is necessary that there
+be more heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought to
+be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the peace of the
+whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly both in heaven and in earth
+the sovereignty of one has always been best.'
+
+[Sidenote: Dante.]
+
+His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and the ordered peace to
+which it brought the world, is the centre of Dante's political hopes:
+he is no more an exiled Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid
+imagination sees a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its
+rightful lord. Italy, the spoil of so many Teutonic conquerors, is the
+garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome the mourning
+widow, whom Albert is denounced for neglecting[294]. Passing through
+purgatory, the poet sees Rudolf of Hapsburg seated gloomily apart,
+mourning his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy[295]. In
+the deepest pit of hell's ninth circle lies Lucifer, huge,
+three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches between his
+teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to Christ, in the others the
+two traitors to the first Emperor of Rome, Brutus and Cassius[296]. To
+multiply illustrations from other parts of the poem would be an
+endless task; for the idea is ever present in Dante's mind, and
+displays itself in a hundred unexpected forms. Virgil himself is
+selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and purgatory,
+not so much as being the great poet of antiquity, as because he 'was
+born under Julius and lived beneath the good Augustus;' because he was
+divinely charged to sing of the Empire's earliest and brightest
+glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be the glory of
+another. For Virgil's melancholy panegyrics upon the destroyer of the
+republic are no more like Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of
+Italy than is Csar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Jurists.]
+
+The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded by the more
+sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror, theologian, and jurist,
+Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his
+enduring work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's
+creed[297]: the phrases 'legibus solutus,' 'lex regia,' whatever else
+tended in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative of
+him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name
+of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of
+the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to
+be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and
+observe every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be
+connected with her representative.
+
+[Sidenote: Imitations of old Rome.]
+
+Of the many instances that might be collected, it would be tedious to
+enumerate more than a few. The offices of the imperial household,
+instituted by Constantine the Great, were attached to the noblest
+families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation
+at Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and
+Livia[298]; a bare sword was borne before them by the prtorian
+prefect; their processions were adorned by the standards, eagles,
+wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or
+Theodosius[299]. The constant title of the Emperor himself, according
+to the style introduced by Probus, was 'semper Augustus,' or
+'perpetuus Augustus,' which erring etymology translated 'at all times
+increaser of the Empire[300].' Edicts issued by a Franconian or
+Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels[301] in the Corpus Juris, in
+the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The
+_pontificatus maximus_ of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be
+preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's
+at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen[302]. Sometimes we even find him
+talking of his consulship[303]. Annalists invariably number the place
+of each sovereign from Augustus downwards[304]. The notion of an
+uninterrupted succession, which moves the stranger's wondering smile
+as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the
+portraits of the Csars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from
+Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was
+to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial
+was inconceivable.
+
+[Sidenote: Reverence for ancient forms and phrases in the Middle
+Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of the idea of change or progress.]
+
+And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call it, which
+gathers round the Empire, is but one instance, though the most
+striking, of that eager wish to cling to the old forms, use the old
+phrases, and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of
+medival Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions,
+as when a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, _Tribu moti
+sunt_, or talks of the 'senate and people of the Franks,' when he
+means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked
+warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on
+Roman precedents; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a
+different source, represented the old _collegia_; villenage was the
+offspring of the system of _coloni_ under the later Empire. Even in
+remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns, and stamped
+their coins with Roman devices; called themselves 'Basileis' and
+'Augusti[305].' Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her
+most lasting boon to the conquered, municipal self-government; those
+of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others
+who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zrich and Augsburg, could trace back
+their institutions to the _coloni_ and _municipia_ of the first
+centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Nrnberg[306] the traveller
+still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words 'Senatus
+populusque Norimbergensis,' and is borne in thought from the quiet
+provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages:
+thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater prototype. For, in
+truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages,
+men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as
+they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay
+between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to
+look back. We who are centuries removed can see that there had passed
+a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature,
+and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is
+to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive
+basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless
+varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each
+generation felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that
+perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed from year to
+year; while the few who had learning enough to study antiquity through
+its contemporary records, were prevented by the utter want of
+criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing
+how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they
+admired. There is nothing more modern than the critical spirit which
+dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in
+another; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and
+judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit
+was, before the last century or two, wholly foreign to art as well as
+to metaphysics. The converse and the parallel of the fashion of
+calling medival offices by Roman names, and supposing them therefore
+the same, is to be found in those old German pictures of the siege of
+Carthage or the battle between Porus and Alexander, where in the
+foreground two armies of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging
+each other like Crusaders, lance, in rest, while behind, through the
+smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers of the
+beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember that the notion of
+progress and development, and of change as the necessary condition
+thereof, was unwelcome or unknown in medival times, we may better
+understand, though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting
+that the political system of antiquity had descended to them, modified
+indeed, yet in substance the same, should have believed that the
+Frank, the Saxon, and the Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which
+seems to us not less fantastic than that fabled charter whereby
+Alexander the Great[307] bequeathed his empire to the Slavic race for
+the love of Roxolana.
+
+It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which the history of
+the Middle Ages is full, that this belief had hardly any influence on
+practical politics. The more abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so
+much the more sonorous is the language in which the dignity of his
+crown is described. His power, we are told, is eternal, the provinces
+having resumed their allegiance after the barbarian irruptions[308];
+it is incapable of diminution or injury: exemptions and grants by him,
+so far as they tend to limit his own prerogative, are invalid[309]:
+all Christendom is still of right subject to him, though it may
+contumaciously refuse obedience[310]. The sovereigns of Europe are
+solemnly warned that they are resisting the power ordained of
+God[311]. No laws can bind the Emperor, though he may choose to live
+according to them: no court can judge him, though he may condescend to
+be sued in his own: none may presume to arraign the conduct or
+question the motives of him who is answerable only to God[312]. So
+writes neas Sylvius, while Frederick the Third, chased from his
+capital by the Hungarians, is wandering from convent to convent, an
+imperial beggar; while the princes, whom his subserviency to the Pope
+has driven into rebellion, are offering the imperial crown to
+Podiebrad the Bohemian king.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, A.D. 1308-1313.]
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Henry VII.]
+
+But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is the most remarkable
+illustration of the Emperor's position: and imperialist doctrines are
+set forth most strikingly in the treatise which the greatest spirit of
+the age wrote to herald the advent of that hero, the _De Monarchia_ of
+Dante[313]. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, none of them
+crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the Italian Ghibelines who
+battled away in the name of their throne. Concerned only to restore
+order and aggrandize his house, and thinking apparently that nothing
+more was to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content never to
+receive it, and purchased the Pope's goodwill by surrendering his
+jurisdiction in the capital, and his claims over the bequest of the
+Countess Matilda. Henry the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course;
+urged perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps in
+despair at effecting anything with his slender resources against the
+princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian dominions with a
+scanty following of knights, and descending from the Cenis upon Turin,
+he found his prerogative higher in men's belief after sixty years of
+neglect than it had stood under the last Hohenstaufen. The cities of
+Lombardy opened their gates; Milan decreed a vast subsidy; Guelf and
+Ghibeline exiles alike were restored, and imperial vicars appointed
+everywhere: supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the
+restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV, Henry had
+the interdict of the Church as well as the ban of the Empire at his
+command. But the illusion of success vanished as soon as men,
+recovering from their first impression, began to be again governed by
+their ordinary passions and interests, and not by an imaginative
+reverence for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts broke out
+in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples held St. Peter's, and the
+coronation must take place in St. John Lateran, on the southern bank
+of the Tiber. The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the
+Florentines, Guelfs even against the Pope, obliged Henry to depart
+from his impartial and republican policy, and to purchase the aid of
+the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them the government of cities. With
+few troops, and encompassed by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained
+an unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in A.D. 1313, he sank
+beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan summer. His German followers
+believed, nor has history wholly rejected the tale, that poison was
+given him by a Dominican monk, in sacramental wine.
+
+[Sidenote: Later Emperors in Italy.]
+
+Others after him descended from the Alps, but they came, like Lewis
+the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, at the behest of a faction, which found
+them useful tools for a time, then flung them away in scorn; or like
+Charles the Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions of a
+French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh ends the history of
+the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a
+prophecy. A sketch of its argument will convey a notion of the
+feelings with which the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the
+spirit in which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: Dante's feelings and theories.]
+
+Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, of the factions
+within every city against each other, seeing municipal freedom, the
+only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic
+tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still the
+tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but
+to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless
+Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic: he is
+alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician:
+the poet of the Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed
+energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a
+glowing metaphor.
+
+[Sidenote: The 'De Monarchia.']
+
+Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful form of
+government. Men's objects are best attained during universal peace:
+this is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the
+Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to
+God. There must, in every system of forces, be a 'primum mobile;' to
+be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is
+gathered, by which all is controlled[314]. Justice is best secured by
+a supreme arbiter of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since
+his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and
+happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist for one's own
+sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us;
+other forms of government are perverted[315], and exist for the
+benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that
+very end appointed[316].
+
+Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history. Since the world
+began there has been but one period of perfect peace, and but one of
+perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord's birth,
+under the sceptre of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and
+the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against
+their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince[317]. The universal
+dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved
+to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt
+Rome shewn through her whole history[318]. Her virtues deserved
+honour: Virgil is quoted to prove those of neas, who by descent and
+marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia through Assaracus
+and Creusa; of Africa by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of
+Atlas) and Dido; of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was
+approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous
+deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after
+Cann. Justice is also the advantage of the state: that advantage was
+the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes
+of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and
+therefore justly, as Cicero attests[319]; so that their sway was not
+so much 'imperium' as 'patrocinium orbis terrarum.' Nature herself,
+the fountain of all right, had, by their geographical position and by
+the gift of a genius so vigorous, marked them out for universal
+dominion:--
+
+ 'Excudent alii spirantia mollius ra,
+ Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
+ Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
+ Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
+ Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
+ H tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
+ Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
+
+Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and death under
+Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires
+that the procurator should have been a lawful judge[320], which he was
+not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.
+
+The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and
+the passages of Scripture (tradition being rejected), to which the
+advocates of the Papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The
+argument from the sun and moon[321] does not hold, since both lights
+existed before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless,
+he needed no controlling powers. Else _accidentia_ would have preceded
+_propria_ in creation. The moon, too, does not receive her being nor
+all her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more
+effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided
+in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult
+text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and Judah, Samuel and
+Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi[322]; the two swords,
+the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine's
+donation was illegal: no single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the
+everlasting foundations of their respective thrones: the one had no
+right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third
+gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: '_usurpatio iuris non facit
+ius_.' It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one
+individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in
+kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom
+the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter's see, and
+was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Csar. The temporal power
+of the Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine
+ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against its own Form and
+Essence, the life of Christ, who said, 'My kingdom is not of this
+world.'
+
+Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incorruptible: he has
+therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the enjoyment of the
+sight of God hereafter; the one to be attained by practice conformed
+to the precepts of philosophy, the other by the theological virtues.
+Hence two guides are needed, the pontiff and the Emperor, the latter
+of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the
+teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must preserve
+universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained
+of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the
+secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiff, since
+earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. 'Let Csar, therefore,
+shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honours his
+father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favour, he
+may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule
+of which he has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both
+spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor.' So ends the treatise.
+
+Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions. No suspicion is
+breathed against Constantine's donation; no proof is adduced, for no
+doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate
+continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian.
+Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected
+of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[279] See esp. gidi, _Der Frstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_,
+and the passages by him quoted.
+
+[280] The archbishop of Mentz addresses Conrad II on his election
+thus: 'Deus quum a te multa requirat tum hoc potissimum desiderat ut
+facias iudicium et iustitiam et pacem patri qu respicit ad te, ut
+sis defensor ecclesiarum et clericorum, tutor viduarum et
+orphanorum.'--Wippo, Vita Chuonradi, c. 3, _ap._ Pertz. So Pope Urban
+IV writes to Richard: 'Ut consternatis Imperii Romani inimicis, in
+pacis pulchritudine sedeat populus Christianus et requie opulenta
+quiescat.' Compare also the 'Edictum de crimine ls maiestatis'
+issued by Henry VII in Italy: 'Ad reprimenda multorum facinora qui
+ruptis totius debit fidelitatis habenis adversus Romanum imperium, in
+cuius tranquillitate totius orbis regularitas requiescit, hostili
+animo armati conentur nedum humana, verum etiam divina prcepta,
+quibus iubetur quod omnis anima Romanorum principi sit subiecta,
+scelestissimis facinoribus et rebellionibus demoliri,' &c.--Pertz, _M.
+G. H._, legg. ii. p. 544.
+
+See also a curious passage in the Life of St. Adalbert, describing the
+beginning of the reign at Rome of the Emperor Otto III, and his cousin
+and nominee Pope Gregory V: 'Ltantur cum primatibus minores
+civitatis: cum afflicto paupere exultant agmina viduarum, quia novus
+imperator dat iura populis; dat iura novus papa.'
+
+[281] 'Imperator est monarcha omnium regum et principum terrenorum ...
+nec insurgat superbia Gallicorum qu dicat quod non recognoscit
+superiorem, mentiuntur, quia de iure sunt et esse debent sub rege
+Romanorum et Imperatore.'--Speech of Boniface VIII. It is curious to
+compare with this the words addressed nearly five centuries earlier by
+Pope John VIII to Lewis, king of Bavaria: 'Si sumpseritis Romanum
+imperium, omnia regna vobis subiecta existent.'
+
+[282] So Alfonso, king of Naples, writes to Frederick III: 'Nos reges
+omnes debemus reverentiam Imperatori, tanquam summo regi, qui est
+Caput et Dux regum.'--Quoted by Pfeffinger, _Vitriarius illustratus_,
+i. 379. And Francis I (of France), speaking of a proposed combined
+expedition against the Turks, says, 'Csari nihilominus principem ea
+in expeditione locum non gravarer ex officio cedere.'--For a long time
+no European sovereign save the Emperor ventured to use the title of
+'Majesty.' The imperial chancery conceded it in 1633 to the kings of
+England and Sweden; in 1641 to the king of France.--Zedler, _Universal
+Lexicon_, _s. v._ Majestt.
+
+[283] For with the progress of society and the growth of commerce the
+old feudal customs were through the greater part of Western Europe,
+and especially in Germany, either giving way to or being remodelled
+and supplemented by the civil law.
+
+[284] 'Imperator est animata lex in terris.'--Quoted by Von Raumer, v.
+81.
+
+[285] Thus we are told of the Emperor Charles the Bald, when he
+confirmed the election of Boso, king of Burgundy and Provence, 'Dedit
+Bosoni Provinciam (_sc._ Carolus Calvus), et corona in vertice capitis
+imposita, eum regem appellari iussit, ut more priscorum imperatorum
+regibus videretur dominari.'--_Regin. Chron._ Frederick II made his
+son Enzio (that famous Enzio whose romantic history every one who has
+seen Bologna will remember) king of Sardinia, and also erected the
+duchy of Austria into a kingdom, although for some reason the title
+seems never to have been used; and Lewis IV gave to Humbert of
+Dauphin the title of King of Vienne, A.D. 1336.
+
+[286] It is probably for this reason that the _Ordo Romanus_ directs
+the Emperor and Empress to be crowned (in St. Peter's) at the altar of
+St. Maurice, the patron saint of knighthood.
+
+[287] See especially Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad Auream Bullam_;
+and Augustinus Stenchus, _De Imperio Romano_; quoted by Marquard
+Freher. It was keenly debated, while Charles V and Francis I (of
+France) were rival candidates, whether any one but a German was
+eligible. By birth Charles was either a Spaniard or a Fleming; but
+this difficulty his partisans avoided by holding that he had been,
+according to the civil law, _in potestate_ of Maximilian his
+grandfather. However, to say nothing of the Guidos and Berengars of
+earlier days, the examples of Richard and Alfonso are conclusive as to
+the eligibility of others than Germans. Edward III of England was, as
+has been said, actually elected; Henry VIII was a candidate. And
+attempts were frequently made to elect the kings of France.
+
+[288] The medival practice seems to have been that which still
+prevails in the Roman Catholic Church--to presume the doctrinal
+orthodoxy and external conformity of every citizen, whether lay or
+clerical, until the contrary be proved. Of course when heresy was rife
+it went hard with suspected men, unless they could either clear
+themselves or submit to recant. But no one was required to pledge
+himself beforehand, as a qualification for any office, to certain
+doctrines. And thus, important as an Emperor's orthodoxy was, he does
+not appear to have been subjected to any test, although the Pope
+pretended to the right of catechizing him in the faith and rejecting
+him if unsound. In the _Ordo Romanus_ we find a long series of
+questions which the Pontiff was to administer, but it does not appear,
+and is in the highest degree unlikely, that such a programme was ever
+carried out.
+
+The charge of heresy was one of the weapons used with most effect
+against Frederick II.
+
+[289] Honorius II in 1229 forbade it to be studied or taught in the
+University of Paris. Innocent IV published some years later a still
+more sweeping prohibition.
+
+[290] See Von Savigny, _History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol.
+iii. pp. 81, 341-347.
+
+[291] Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a potentate incomparably
+stronger than the Emperor Frederick III from whom he sought the regal
+title.
+
+[292] Cf. Sismondi, _Rpubliques Italiennes_, iv. chap. xxvii.
+
+[293] See Dante, _Paradiso_, canto vi.
+
+[294]
+
+ 'Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piange
+ Vedova, sola, e di e notte chiama:
+ "Cesare mio, perch non m' accompagne?"'
+ _Purgatorio_, canto vi.
+
+[295] _Purgatorio_, canto vii.
+
+[296] _Inferno_, canto xxxiv.
+
+[297] Not that the doctors of the civil law were necessarily political
+partisans of the Emperors. Savigny says that there were on the
+contrary more Guelfs than Ghibelines among the jurists of
+Bologna.--_Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol. iii. p. 80.
+
+[298] Cf. Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, vol. ii. (of Otto and
+Adelheid). The _Ordo Romanus_ talks of a 'Camera Iuli' in the Lateran
+palace, reserved for the Empress.
+
+[299] See notes to _Chron. Casin._ in Muratori, _S. R. I._ iv. 515.
+
+[300] Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des Reichs.
+
+[301] _Novell Constitutiones_.
+
+[302] Marquard Freher. The question whether the seven electors vote as
+_singuli_ or as a _collegium_, is solved by shewing that they have
+stepped into the place of the senate and people of Rome, whose duty it
+was to choose the Emperor, though (it is navely added) the soldiers
+sometimes usurped it.--Peter de Andlo, _De Imperio Romano_.
+
+[303] Thus Charles, in a capitulary added to a revised edition of the
+Lombard law issued in A.D. 801, says, 'Anno consulatus nostri primo.'
+So Otto III calls himself 'Consul Senatus populique Romani.'
+
+[304] Francis II, the last Emperor, was one hundred and twentieth from
+Augustus. Some chroniclers call Otto the Great Otto II, counting in
+Salvius Otho, the successor of Galba.
+
+[305] See p. 45 and note to p. 143.
+
+[306] Nrnberg herself was not of Roman foundation. But this makes the
+imitation all the more curious. The fashion even passed from the
+cities to rural communities like some of the Swiss cantons. Thus we
+find 'Senatus populusque Uronensis.'
+
+[307] See Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. p. 379.
+
+[308] neas Sylvius, _De Ortu et Authoritate Imperii Romani_.
+
+[309] Thus some civilians held Constantine's Donation null; but the
+canonists, we are told, were clear as to its legality.
+
+[310] 'Et idem dico de istis aliis regibus et principibus, qui negant
+se esse subditos regi Romanorum, ut rex Franci, Angli, et similes.
+Si enim fatentur ipsum esse Dominum universalem, licet ab illo
+universali domino se subtrahant ex privilegio vel ex prscriptione vel
+consimili, non ergo desunt esse cives Romani, per ea qu dicta sunt.
+Et per hoc omnes gentes qu obediunt S. matri ecclesi sunt de populo
+Romano. Et forte si quis diceret dominum Imperatorem non esse dominum
+et monarcham totius orbis, esset hreticus, quia diceret contra
+determinationem ecclesi et textum S. evangelii, dum dicit, "Exivit
+edictum a Csare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis." Ita et
+recognovit Christus Imperatorem ut dominum.'--Bartolus, _Commentary on
+the Pandects_, xlviii. i. 24; _De Captivis et postliminio reversis_.
+
+[311] Peter de Andlo, _multis locis_ (see esp. cap. viii.), and other
+writings of the time. Cf. Dante's letter to Henry VII: 'Romanorum
+potestas nec metis Itali nec tricornis Sicili margine coarctatur.
+Nam etsi vim passa in angustum gubernacula sua contraxit undique,
+tamen de inviolabili iure fluctus Amphitritis attingens vix ab inutili
+unda Oceani se circumcingi dignatur. Scriptum est enim
+
+ "Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Csar,
+ Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris."'
+
+So Fr. Zoannetus, in the sixteenth century, declares it to be a mortal
+sin to resist the Empire, as the power ordained of God.
+
+[312] neas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II), _De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_. Cf. Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad
+Auream Bullam_.
+
+[313] It has hitherto been the common opinion that the _De Monarchia_
+was written in the view of Henry's expedition. But latterly weighty
+reasons have been advanced for believing that its date must be placed
+some years later.
+
+[314] Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the
+Areopagite.
+
+[315] Quoting Aristotle's _Politics_.
+
+[316] 'Non enim cives propter consules nec gens propter regem, sed e
+converso consules propter cives, rex propter gentem.'
+
+[317] 'Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur
+Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi,' having quoted 'Quare
+fremuerunt gentes.'
+
+[318] Especially in the opportune death of Alexander the Great.
+
+[319] Cic., _De Off._, ii. 'Ita ut illud patrocinium orbis terrarum
+potius quam imperium poterat nominari.'
+
+[320] 'Si Pilati imperium non de iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non
+fuit adeo punitum.'
+
+[321] There is a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV (figured in J. M.
+Heineccius, _De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum
+sigillis_), on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of
+the Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot explain it, but there seems to
+be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord
+of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the
+accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favoured candidate of
+Pope Innocent III.
+
+The analogy between the lights of heaven and the princes of earth is
+one which medival writers are very fond of. It seems to have
+originated with Gregory VII.
+
+[322] Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by
+distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which his Vicar can
+rightfully demand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+
+'It is related,' says Sozomen in the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical
+History, 'that when Alaric was hastening against Rome, a holy monk of
+Italy admonished him to spare the city, and not to make himself the
+cause of such fearful ills. But Alaric answered, "It is not of my own
+will that I do this; there is One who forces me on, and will not let
+me rest, bidding me spoil Rome[323]."'
+
+Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohemian Woitech, famous in
+after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook his bishopric of Prague to
+journey into Italy, and settled himself in the Roman monastery of
+Sant' Alessio. After some few years passed there in religious
+solitude, he was summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and
+laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen. Soon, however,
+the old longing came over him: he resought his cell upon the brow of
+the Aventine, and there, wandering among the ancient shrines, and
+taking on himself the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily
+for a space. At length the reproaches of his metropolitan, the
+archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of Pope Gregory the
+Fifth, drove him back over the Alps, and he set off in the train of
+Otto the Third, lamenting, says his biographer, that he should no more
+enjoy his beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the
+Apostles, golden Rome. A few months later he died a martyr among the
+pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic[324].
+
+Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after the time of
+Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his friend John Colonna:--
+
+'Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which there has
+never been any like nor ever shall be; which even an enemy called a
+city of kings; of whose people it hath been written, "Great is the
+valour of the Roman people, great and terrible their name;" concerning
+whose unexampled glory and incomparable empire, which was, and is, and
+is to be, divine prophets have sung; where are the tombs of the
+apostles and martyrs and the bodies of so many thousands of the saints
+of Christ[325]?'
+
+It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the warrior, the monk,
+and the scholar towards the mystical city which was to medival Europe
+more than Delphi had been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the
+Jerusalem of Christianity, the city which had once ruled the earth,
+and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits[326]. For there was
+then, as there is now, something in Rome to attract men of every
+class. The devout pilgrim came to pray at the shrine of the Prince of
+the Apostles, too happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the
+forests of Saxony or by the bleak Atlantic shore the bone of some holy
+martyr; the lover of learning and poetry dreamed of Virgil and Cicero
+among the shattered columns of the Forum; the Germanic kings, in spite
+of pestilence, treachery and seditions, came with their hosts to seek
+in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of temporal dominion.
+Nor has the spell yet wholly lost its power. To half the Christian
+nations Rome is the metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of
+art. In her streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world, may
+every form of human speech be heard: she is more glorious in her decay
+and desolation than the stateliest seats of modern power.
+
+But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome herself?
+
+The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome, when he has
+looked out upon the Campagna from the summit of St. Peter's, paced the
+chilly corridors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of
+the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and
+republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the
+twelve hundred years that lie between Constantine and Pope Julius the
+Second. 'Where,' he asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of
+Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so
+many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence came the
+commands at which kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the
+brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne
+and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of
+Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of Venice?'
+
+To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has
+scarcely a building to commemorate those times, for to her they were
+times of turmoil and misery, times in which the shame of the present
+was embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless a
+minute scrutiny may still discover, hidden in dark corners or
+disguised under an unbecoming modern dress, much that carries us back
+to the medival town, and helps us to realize its social and political
+condition. Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the
+Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments which the
+visitor may still examine for himself, may not be without its use, and
+is at any rate no unfitting pendant to an account of the institution
+which drew from the city its name and its magnificent pretensions.
+Moreover, as will appear more fully in the sequel, the history of the
+Roman people is an instructive illustration of the influence of those
+ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as well in their weakness
+as in their strength[327].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the rapid decay of the city.]
+
+It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from the more
+destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, that the material and
+social ruin of Rome must be dated, but rather from the repeated sieges
+which she sustained in the war of Belisarius with the Ostrogoths. This
+struggle however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have proved
+so fatal had the previous condition of the city been sound and
+healthy. Her wealth and population in the middle of the fifth century
+were probably little inferior to what they had been in the most
+prosperous days of the imperial government. But this wealth was
+entirely gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate
+aristocracy. The crowd that filled her streets was composed partly of
+poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from
+political rights; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves,
+gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than
+their masters. There was no middle class, and no system of municipal
+institutions, for although the senate and consuls with many of the
+lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for centuries enjoyed
+no effective power, and were nowise fitted to lead and rule the
+people. Hence it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent
+inroads of the Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the
+framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced. In a state
+rotten to the core there was no vital force left for reconstruction.
+The old forms of political activity had been too long dead to be
+recalled to life: the people wanted the moral force to produce new
+ones, and all the authority that could be said to exist in the midst
+of anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new religious
+society.
+
+[Sidenote: Peculiarities in the position of Rome.]
+
+So far Rome's condition was like that of the other great towns of
+Italy and Gaul. But in two points her case differed from theirs, and
+to these the difference of her after fortunes may be traced. Her
+bishop had no temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check
+his ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away at
+Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal election or
+punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition. Her population
+received an all but imperceptible infusion of that Teutonic blood and
+those Teutonic customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of
+northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere the old
+institutions had perished of decay: in Rome alone there was nothing
+except the ecclesiastical system out of which new ones could arise.
+Her condition was therefore the most pitiable in which a community can
+find itself, one of struggle without purpose or progress. The citizens
+were divided into three orders: the military class, including what was
+left of the ancient aristocracy; the clergy, a host of priests, monks
+and nuns, attached to the countless churches and convents; and the
+people or _plebs_, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble
+without trade, without industry, without any municipal organization to
+bind them together. Of these two latter classes the Pope was the
+natural leader, the first was divided into factions headed by some
+three or four of the great families, whose quarrels kept the town in
+incessant bloodshed. The internal history of Rome from the sixth to
+the twelfth century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest of
+these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as a whole with
+the slowly growing power of the Church.
+
+[Sidenote: Her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries.]
+
+The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East,
+followed as it was by the reception of the Franks as patricians and
+emperors, is an event of the highest importance in the history of
+Italy and of the popedom. In the domestic constitution of Rome it made
+little change. With the instinct of a profound genius, Charles the
+Great saw that Rome, though it might be ostensibly the capital, could
+not be the real centre of his dominions. He continued to reside in
+Germany, and did not even build a palace at Rome. For a time the awe
+of his power, the presence of his _missus_ or lieutenant, and the
+occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II to the city,
+repressed her internal disorders. But after the death of the prince
+last named, and still more after the dissolution of the Carolingian
+Empire itself, Rome relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism
+to which, even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism
+which had inherited all the vices of civilization without any of its
+virtues. The papal office in particular seems to have lost its
+religious character, as it had certainly lost all claim to moral
+purity. For more than a century the chief priest of Christendom was no
+more than a tool of some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal
+means had raised him to the throne; violence, sometimes going the
+length of mutilation or murder, deprived him of it. The marvel is, a
+marvel in which papal historians have not unnaturally discovered a
+miracle, that after sinking so low, the Papacy should ever have risen
+again. Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was
+accomplished not by the Romans but by the efforts of the Transalpine
+Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon and Franconian Emperors. Yet
+even the religious reform did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was
+not till the twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in
+politics, which ennobled if it could not heal the sufferings of the
+Roman people.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of a republican feeling: hostility to the Popes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Short-sighted policy of the Emperors.]
+
+Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had revolted against the
+haughty behaviour of the Teutonic emperors. From still earlier times
+they had been jealous of sacerdotal authority, and now watched with
+alarm the rapid extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth
+century gave these feelings a definite direction. It was the time of
+the struggle of the Investitures, in which Hildebrand and his
+disciples had been striving to draw all the things of this world as
+well as of the next into their grasp. It was the era of the revived
+study of Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions of the
+decretalists could be resisted. The Lombard and Tuscan towns had
+become flourishing municipalities, independent of their bishops, and
+at open war with their Emperor. While all these things were stirring
+the minds of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform,
+denouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps, like some
+others of the so-called schismatics of his time, denying the need of a
+sacerdotal order, but at any rate urging its restriction to purely
+spiritual duties. On the minds of the Romans such teaching fell like
+the spark upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope[328],
+drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate and the
+equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their own coins, and
+professed to treat the German Emperors as their nominees and
+dependants. To have successfully imitated the republican constitution
+of the cities of northern Italy would have been much, but with this
+they were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way that there had
+been a Roman republic before there was a Roman empire, they fed their
+vanity with visions of a renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw
+in fancy their senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills
+and ruling over the kings of the earth. Stepping, as it were, into the
+arena where Pope and Emperor were contending for the headship of the
+world, they rejected the one as a priest, and declaring the other to
+be only their creature, they claimed as theirs the true and lawful
+inheritance of the world-dominion which their ancestors had won.
+Antiquity was in one sense on their side, and to us now it seems less
+strange that the Roman people should aspire to rule the earth than
+that a German barbarian should rule it in their name. But practically
+the scheme was absurd, and could not maintain itself against any
+serious opposition. As a modern historian aptly expresses it, 'they
+were setting up ruins:' they might as well have raised the broken
+columns that strewed their Forum and hoped to rear out of them a
+strong and stately temple. The reverence which the men of the Middle
+Ages felt for Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place,
+nowise to the people. As for power, they had none: so far from holding
+Italy in subjection, they could scarcely maintain themselves against
+the hostility of Tusculum. But it would have been well worth the while
+of the Teutonic Emperors to have made the Romans their allies, and
+bridled by their help the temporal ambition of the Popes. The offer
+was actually made to them, first to Conrad the Third, who seems to
+have taken no notice of it; and afterwards, as has been already
+stated, to Frederick the First, who repelled in the most contumelious
+fashion the envoys of the senate. Hating and fearing the Pope, he
+always respected him: towards the Romans he felt all the contempt of a
+feudal king for burghers, and of a German warrior for Italians. At the
+demand of Pope Hadrian, whose foresight thought no heresy so dangerous
+as one which threatened the authority of the clergy, Arnold of Brescia
+was seized by the imperial prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast
+into the Tiber, lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But
+the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes of his
+followers. The republican constitution continued to exist, and rose
+from time to time, during the weakness or the absence of the Popes,
+into a brief and fitful activity[329]. Once awakened, the idea,
+seductive at once to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of
+the Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries after
+Arnold's time it found a more brilliant if less disinterested exponent
+in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.
+
+[Sidenote: Character and career of the tribune Rienzi.]
+
+The career of this singular personage is misunderstood by those who
+suppose him to have been possessed of profound political insight, a
+republican on modern principles. He was indeed, despite his
+overweening conceit, and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a
+patriot and a man of genius, in temperament a poet, filled with
+soaring ideas. But those ideas, although dressed out in gaudier
+colours by his lively fancy, were after all only the old ones,
+memories of the long-faded glories of the heathen republic, and a
+series of scornful contrasts levelled at her present oppressors, both
+of them shewing no vista of future peace except through the revival of
+those ancient names to which there were no things to correspond. It
+was by declaiming on old texts and displaying old monuments that the
+tribune enlisted the support of the Roman populace, not by any appeal
+to democratic principles; and the whole of his acts and plans, though
+they astonished men by their boldness, do not seem to have been
+regarded as novel or impracticable[330]. In the breasts of men like
+Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they hated her people, the
+enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic echo: others scorned and
+denounced him as an upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends
+and enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as natural his
+feelings and designs, which were altogether those of his age. Being,
+however, a mere matter of imagination, not of reason, having no
+anchor, so to speak, in realities, no true relation to the world as it
+then stood, these schemes of republican revival were as transient and
+unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour. As the
+authority of the Popes became consolidated, and free municipalities
+disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy, the dream of a renovated Rome
+at length withered up and fell and died. Its last struggle was made in
+the conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas the
+Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question of the
+supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the struggle for independence.]
+
+It is never without a certain regret that we watch the disappearance
+of a belief, however illusive, around which the love and reverence for
+mankind once clung. But this illusion need be the less regretted that
+it had only the feeblest influence for good on the state of medival
+Rome. During the three centuries that lie between Arnold of Brescia
+and Porcaro, the disorders of Rome were hardly less violent than they
+had been in the Dark Ages, and to all appearance worse than those of
+any other European city. There was a want not only of fixed authority,
+but of those elements of social stability which the other cities of
+Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lombardy and Tuscany the
+bulk of the population were artizans, hard working orderly people;
+while above them stood a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in
+commerce, and having in their system of trade-guilds an organization
+both firm and flexible. It was by foreign trade that Genoa, Venice,
+and Pisa became great, as it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing
+industry that enabled Milan and Florence to overcome and incorporate
+the territorial aristocracies which surrounded them.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal condition of the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: The people.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The bishop.]
+
+Rome possessed neither source of riches. She was ill-placed for trade;
+having no market she produced no goods to be disposed of, and the
+unhealthiness which long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made
+its fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands now, lonely
+and isolated, a desert at her very gates. As there was no industry, so
+there was nothing that deserved to be called a citizen class. The
+people were a mere rabble, prompt to follow the demagogue who
+flattered their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of
+danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national pride, but
+they lived too near sacred things to feel much reverence for them:
+they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to
+their shrines: they were probably the only community in Europe who
+sent no recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and all
+the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court formed a large
+part of the population; while of the rest many were supported in a
+state of half mendicancy by the countless religious foundations,
+themselves enriched by the gifts or the plunder of Latin Christendom.
+The noble families were numerous, powerful, ferocious; they were
+surrounded by bands of unruly retainers, and waged a constant war
+against each other from their castles in the adjoining country or in
+the streets of the city itself. Had things been left to take their
+natural course, one of these families, the Colonna, for instance, or
+the Orsini, would probably have ended by overcoming its rivals, and
+have established, as was the case in the republics of Romagna and
+Tuscany, a 'signoria' or local tyranny, like those which had once
+prevailed in the cities of Greece. But the presence of the sacerdotal
+power, as it had hindered the growth of feudalism, so also it stood in
+the way of such a development as this, and in so far aggravated the
+confusion of the city. Although the Pope was not as yet recognized as
+legitimate sovereign, he was not only the most considerable person in
+Rome, but the only one whose authority had anything of an official
+character. But the reign of each pontiff was short; he had no military
+force, he was frequently absent from his see. He was, moreover, very
+often a member of one of the great families, and, as such, no better
+than a faction leader at home, while venerated by the rest of Europe
+as the universal priest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Visits of the Emperors to Rome.]
+
+It remains only to speak of the person who should have been to Rome
+what the national king was to the cities of France, or England, or
+Germany, that is to say, of the Emperor. As has been said already, his
+power was a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext to
+the Colonna and other Ghibeline chieftains for their opposition to the
+papal party. Even his abstract rights were matter of controversy. The
+Popes, whose predecessors had been content to govern as the
+lieutenants of Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a
+spiritual city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction, and
+that she was therefore no part of the Roman Empire, though at the same
+time its capital. Not only, it was urged, had Constantine yielded up
+Rome to Sylvester and his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his
+coronation formally renounced his sovereignty by doing homage to the
+pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The Popes felt then as
+they feel now, that their dignity and influence would suffer if they
+should even appear to admit in their place of residence the
+jurisdiction of a civil potentate, and although they could not secure
+their own authority, they were at least able to exclude any other.
+Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an Emperor came to them
+to be crowned, that they raised up difficulties in his path, and
+endeavoured to be rid of him as soon as possible. And here something
+must be said of the programme, as one may call it, of these imperial
+visits to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the Germans
+left behind them, remembering always that after the time of Frederick
+the Second it was rather the exception than the rule for an Emperor to
+be crowned in his capital at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Their approach.]
+
+The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he most commonly
+does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in by the railway before he is
+aware, is huddled into a vehicle at the terminus, and set down at his
+hotel in the middle of the modern town before he has seen anything at
+all. If he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road that
+passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he has indeed from
+the slopes of the Ciminian range a splendid prospect of the sea-like
+Campagna, girdled in by glittering hills, but of the city he sees no
+sign, save the pinnacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls.
+Far otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers of every
+grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new-made archbishop who came in
+the pomp of a lengthy train to receive from the Pope the pallium of
+his office, approached from the north or north-east side; following a
+track along the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until
+they halted on the brow of Monte Mario[331]--the Mount of Joy--and saw
+the city of their solemnities lie spread before them, from the great
+pile of the Lateran far away upon the Coelian hill, to the basilica of
+St. Peter's at their feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy
+cupolas, but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick
+towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin, then larger
+far than now; while over all rose those two monuments of the best of
+the heathen Emperors, monuments that still look down, serenely
+changeless, on the armies of new nations and the festivals of a new
+religion--the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
+
+[Sidenote: Their entrance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hostility of Pope and people to the Germans.]
+
+From Monte Mario the Teutonic host descended, when they had paid their
+orisons, into the Neronian field, the piece of flat land that lies
+outside the gate of St. Angelo. Here it was the custom for the elders
+of the Romans to meet the elected Emperor, present their charters for
+confirmation, and receive his oath to preserve their good
+customs[332]. Then a procession was formed: the priests and monks, who
+had come out with hymns to greet the Emperor, led the way; the knights
+and soldiers of Rome, such as they were, came next; then the monarch,
+followed by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into the
+city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope, surrounded by his
+clergy, stood on the great staircase of the basilica to welcome and
+bless the Roman king. On the next day came the coronation, with
+ceremonies too elaborate for description[333], ceremonies which, we
+may well believe, were seldom duly completed. Far more usual were
+other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no mention, unless they
+are to be counted among the 'good customs of the Romans;' the clang of
+war bells, the battle cry of German and Italian combatants. The Pope,
+when he could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, required him to
+leave the bulk of his host without the walls, and if foiled in this,
+sought his safety in raising up plots and seditions against his too
+powerful friend. The Roman people, on the other hand, violent as they
+often were against the Pope, felt nevertheless a sort of national
+pride in him. Very different were their feelings towards the Teutonic
+chieftain, who came from a far land to receive in their city, yet
+without thanking them for it, the ensign of a power which the prowess
+of their forefathers had won. Despoiled of their ancient right to
+choose the universal bishop, they clung all the more desperately to
+the belief that it was they who chose the universal prince; and were
+mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously scouted
+their claims, and paraded before their eyes his rude barbarian
+cavalry. Thus it was that a Roman sedition was the all but invariable
+accompaniment of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto
+the Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the Third, in
+spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was met by the same
+faithlessness and hatred, and departed at last in despair at the
+failure of his attempts at conciliation[334]. A century afterwards
+Henry the Fifth's coronation produced violent tumults, which ended in
+his seizing the Pope and cardinals in St. Peter's, and keeping them
+prisoners till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this, Pope
+Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of Frederick
+Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the rapidity of their
+movements disconcerted his plans and anticipated the resistance of the
+Roman populace. Having established himself in the Leonine city[335],
+Frederick barricaded the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned
+in St. Peter's. But the rite was scarcely finished when the Romans,
+who had assembled in arms on the Capitol, dashed over the bridge, fell
+upon the Germans, and were with difficulty repulsed by the personal
+efforts of Frederick. Into the city he did not venture to pursue them,
+nor was he at any period of his reign able to make himself master of
+the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled, his successors
+at last accepted their position, and were content to take the crown on
+the Pope's conditions and depart without further question.
+
+[Sidenote: Memorials of the Germanic Emperors in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Third.]
+
+Coming so seldom and remaining for so short a time, it is not
+wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors should, in the seven centuries
+from Charles the Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of
+their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer
+and less considerable even than those which tradition attributes to
+those whom it calls Servius Tullius and the elder Tarquin. Those
+monuments which do exist are just sufficient to make the absence of
+all others more conspicuous. The most important dates from the time of
+Otto the Third, the only Emperor who attempted to make Rome his
+permanent residence. Of the palace, probably nothing more than a
+tower, which he built on the Aventine, no trace has been discovered;
+but the church, founded by him to receive the ashes of his friend the
+martyred St. Adalbert, may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber.
+Having received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of
+Bartholomew the Apostle[336], it became dedicated to that saint, and
+is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola, whose quaintly
+picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now grey with extreme age, looks
+out from among the orange trees of a convent garden over the
+swift-eddying yellow waters of the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Second.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Frederick the Second.]
+
+Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, died at Rome, and lies buried
+in the crypt of St. Peter's, the only Emperor who has found a
+resting-place among the graves of the Popes[337]. His tomb is not far
+from that of his nephew Pope Gregory the Fifth: it is a plain one of
+roughly chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus
+in which he lay for a time now serves as the great font of St.
+Peter's, and may be seen in the baptismal chapel, on the left of the
+entrance of the church, not far from the tombs of the Stuarts. Last of
+all must be mentioned a curious relic of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second, the prince whom of all others one would least expect to see
+honoured in the city of his foes. It is an inscription in the palace
+of the Conservators upon the Capitoline hill, built into the wall of
+the great staircase, and relates the victory of Frederick's army over
+the Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio[338] of the rebel city,
+which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans. These are all or
+nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords that Rome has preserved
+till now. Pictures indeed there are in abundance, from the mosaic of
+the Scala Santa at the Lateran[339] and the curious frescoes in the
+church of Santi Quattro Incoronati[340], down to the paintings of the
+Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the Vatican, where the
+triumphs of the Popedom over all its foes are set forth with matchless
+art and equally matchless unveracity. But these are mostly long
+subsequent to the events they describe, and these all the world knows.
+
+Associations of the highest interest would have attached to the
+churches in which the imperial coronation was performed--a ceremony
+which, whether we regard the dignity of the performers or the
+splendour of the adjuncts, was probably the most imposing that modern
+Europe has known. But old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of the
+fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman coronation, that of
+Frederick the Third, while the basilica of St. John Lateran, in which
+Lothar the Saxon and Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so
+wofully modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as the
+same building[341].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the want of medival monuments in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barbarism of the aristocracy.]
+
+Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Rome during the
+middle ages, it becomes easier to understand the architectural
+barrenness which at first excites the visitor's surprise. Rome had no
+temporal sovereign, and there were therefore only two classes who
+could build at all, the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former
+had seldom the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled
+them to construct palaces graceful as the Venetian or massively grand
+as the Florentine and Genoese. Moreover, the constant practice of
+domestic war made defence the first object of a house, beauty and
+convenience the second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted
+ancient edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials
+those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still frown over the
+narrow streets in the older parts of Rome. We may judge of their
+number from the statement that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one
+hundred and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one exception,
+that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these towers are the only
+domestic buildings in the city older than the middle of the fifteenth
+century. The vast palaces to which strangers now flock for the sake of
+the picture galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in
+the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, some even later. Among the
+earliest is that Palazzo Cenci[342], whose gloomy low-browed arch so
+powerfully affected the imagination of Shelley.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy.]
+
+It was no want of wealth that hampered the architectural efforts of
+the clergy, for vast revenues flowed in upon them from every corner of
+Christendom. A good deal was actually spent upon the erection or
+repairs of churches and convents, although with a less liberal hand
+than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of Lincoln or
+Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always needed money for their
+projects of ambition, and in times when disorder or corruption were at
+their height the work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that
+after the time of the Carolingians scarcely a church was erected until
+the beginning of the twelfth century, when the reforms of Hildebrand
+had breathed new zeal into the priesthood. The Babylonish captivity of
+Avignon, as it was called, with the great schism of the West that
+followed upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission,
+which lasted nearly a century and a half.
+
+[Sidenote: Tendency of the Roman builders to adhere to the ancient
+manner.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of Gothic in Rome.]
+
+At every time, however, even when his work went on most briskly, the
+labours of the Roman architect took the direction of restoring and
+readorning old churches rather than of erecting new ones. While the
+Transalpine countries, except in a few favoured spots, such as
+Provence and part of the Rhineland, remained during several ages with
+few and rudely built stone churches, Rome possessed, as the
+inheritance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion of houses
+of worship, some of them still unsurpassed in splendour, and far more
+than adequate to the needs of her diminished population. In repairing
+these from time to time, their original form and style of work were
+usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing new ones,
+the abundance of models beautiful in themselves and hallowed as well
+by antiquity as by religious feeling, enthralled the invention of the
+workman, bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and forbade
+him to deviate at pleasure from the old established manner. Thus it
+befel that while his brethren throughout the rest of Europe were
+passing by successive steps from the old Roman and Byzantine styles to
+Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect
+scarcely departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive
+basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little of Gothic
+work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque like that of Pisa. What
+there is appears chiefly in the pointed window, more rarely in the
+arch, seldom or never in spire or tower or column. Only one of the
+existing churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the
+Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built by foreign
+monks. In some of the other churches, and especially in the cloisters
+of the convents, instances may be observed of the same style: in
+others slight traces, by accident or design almost obliterated[343].
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction and alteration of the old buildings:]
+
+[Sidenote: By invaders.]
+
+[Sidenote: By the Romans of the Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: By modern restorers of churches.]
+
+The mention of obliteration suggests a third cause of the comparative
+want of medival buildings in the city--the constant depredations and
+changes of which she has been the subject. Ever since the time of
+Constantine Rome has been a city of destruction, and Christians have
+vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the fatal work.
+Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard[344], the ally of Hildebrand
+against Henry the Fourth, was far more ruinous than the attacks of the
+Goths or Vandals: and itself yields in atrocity to the sack of Rome in
+A.D. 1526 by the soldiers of the Catholic king and most pious Emperor
+Charles the Fifth[345]. Since the days of the first barbarian
+invasions the Romans have gone on building with materials taken from
+the ancient temples, theatres, law-courts, baths and villas, stripping
+them of their gorgeous casings of marble, pulling down their walls for
+the sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels on
+the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus it has been with
+the memorials of paganism: a somewhat different cause has contributed
+to the disappearance of the medival churches. What pillage, or
+fanaticism, or the wanton lust of destruction did in the one case, the
+ostentatious zeal of modern times has done in the other. The era of
+the final establishment of the Popes as temporal sovereigns of the
+city, is also that of the supremacy of the Renaissance style in
+architecture. After the time of Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff
+against whom, it will be remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom
+made its last struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built
+in Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique produced a
+corresponding dislike to everything medival, a dislike conspicuous in
+men like Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur
+of modern Rome may be said to begin. Not long after their time the
+great religious movement of the sixteenth century, while triumphing in
+the north of Europe, was in the south met and overcome by a
+counter-reformation in the bosom of the old church herself, and the
+construction or restoration of ecclesiastical buildings became again
+the passion of the devout[346]. No employment, whether it be called an
+amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to the court and
+aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent; wealthy, and fond of
+displaying their wealth; full of good taste, and anxious, especially
+when advancing years had chased away youth's pleasures, to be full of
+good works also. Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great
+families vied with one another in building new churches and restoring
+or enlarging those they found till little of the old was left; raising
+over them huge cupolas, substituting massive pilasters for the
+single-shafted columns, adorning the interior with a profusion of rare
+marbles, of carving and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the
+best masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None but a
+bigoted medivalist can refuse to acknowledge the warmth of tone, the
+repose, the stateliness, of the churches of modern Rome; but even in
+the midst of admiration the sated eye turns away from the wealth of
+ponderous ornament, and we long for the clear pure colour, the simple
+yet grand proportions that give a charm to the buildings of an earlier
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: Existing relics of the Dark and Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Mosaics.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Bell-towers.]
+
+Few of the ancient churches have escaped untouched; many have been
+altogether rebuilt. There are also some, however, in which the
+modernizers of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries have spared two
+features of the old structure, its round apse or tribune and its
+bell-tower. The apse has its interior usually covered with mosaics,
+exceedingly interesting, both from the ideas they express and as the
+only monuments of pictorial art that remain to us from the Dark Ages.
+To speak of them, however, as they deserve to be spoken of, would
+involve a digression for which there is no space here. The campanile
+or bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of no great
+height, usually standing detached from the church, and having in its
+topmost, sometimes also in its other upper stories, several arcade
+windows, divided by tiny marble pillars[347]. What with these
+campaniles, then far more numerous than they are now, and with the
+huge brick fortresses of the nobles, towers must have held in the
+landscape of the medival city very much the part which domes do now.
+Although less imposing, they were probably more picturesque, the
+rather as in the earlier part of the Middle Ages the houses and
+churches, which are now mostly crowded together on the flat of the
+Campus Martius, were scattered over the heights and slopes of the
+Coelian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills[348]. Modern Rome lies chiefly
+on the opposite or north-eastern side of the Capitol, and the change
+from the old to the new site of the city, which can hardly be said to
+have distinctly begun before the destruction of the south-western part
+of the town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until the sixteenth
+century. In A.D. 1536 the Capitol was rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in
+anticipation of the entry of Charles the Fifth, upon foundations that
+had been laid by the first Tarquin; and the palace of the Senator, the
+greatest municipal edifice of Rome, which had hitherto looked towards
+the Forum and the Coliseum, was made to front in the direction of St.
+Peter's and the modern town.
+
+[Sidenote: Changed aspect of the city of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Analogy between her architecture and her civil and
+ecclesiastical constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of an antique character in both.]
+
+The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of Rienzi than she is to
+the city of Trajan; just as the Roman church of the nineteenth century
+differs profoundly, however she may strive to disguise it, from the
+church of Hildebrand. But among all their changes, both church and
+city have kept themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion of
+foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have faithfully preserved
+at all times something of an old Roman character. Latin Christianity
+inherited from the imperial system of old that firmly knit yet
+flexible organization, which was one of the grand secrets of its
+power: the great men whom medival Rome gave to or trained up for the
+Papacy were, like their progenitors, administrators, legislators,
+statesmen; seldom enthusiasts themselves, but perfectly understanding
+how to use and guide the enthusiasm of others--of the French and
+German crusaders, of men like Francis of Assisi and Dominic and
+Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism in Germany or
+England there was always, as there is still, a very perceptible
+difference. So also, if the analogy be not too fanciful, was it with
+Rome the city. Socially she seemed always drifting towards feudalism;
+yet she never fell into its grasp. Materially, her architecture was at
+one time considerably influenced by Gothic forms, yet Gothic never
+became, as in the rest of Europe, the dominant style. It approached
+Rome late, and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice its
+presence, and seem to pass almost without a break from the old
+Romanesque[349] to the Grco-Roman of the Renaissance. Thus regarded,
+the history of the city, both in her political state and in her
+buildings, is seen to be intimately connected with that of the Holy
+Empire itself. The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed
+the idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient world;
+Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully preserved their
+traditions: the names of her magistracies, the character of her
+buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and gave it a strange and shadowy
+life in the midst of new races and new forms of faith.
+
+[Sidenote: Relation of the City and the Empire.]
+
+In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the unity of
+mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman dominion by which the
+old nationalities had been destroyed, with the addition of the
+Christian element which had created a new nationality that was also
+universal. By the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects
+heathen Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively, even the
+local dwelling-place of the civilized races of man. By the theology of
+the time Christian Rome had been made the mystical type of humanity,
+the one flock of the faithful scattered over the whole earth, the holy
+city whither, as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should
+come up to worship. She was not merely an image of the mighty world,
+she was the mighty world itself in miniature. The pastor of her local
+church is also the universal bishop; the seven suffragans who
+consecrate him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium, and
+the like, towns lying close round Rome: the cardinal priests and
+deacons who join these seven in electing him derive their title to be
+princes of the Church, the supreme spiritual council of the Christian
+world, from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts of
+the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is ruler of mankind; he
+is chosen by the acclamations of her people[350]: he can be lawfully
+crowned nowhere but in one of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem of
+old, the mother of us all.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Florentine republic, A.D. 1530.]
+
+There is yet another way in which the record of the domestic contests
+of Rome throws light upon the history of the Empire. From the eleventh
+century to the fifteenth her citizens ceased not to demand in the name
+of the old republic their freedom from the tyranny of the nobles and
+the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large. These
+efforts--selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet men like Petrarch
+did not disdain to them their sympathy--issued from the same theories
+and were directed to the same ends as those which inspired Otto the
+Third and Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness to the
+same incapacity to form any ideal for the future except a revival of
+the past; the same belief that one universal state is both desirable
+and possible, but possible only through the means of Rome: the same
+refusal to admit that a right which has once existed can ever be
+extinguished. In the days of the Renaissance these notions were
+passing silently away: the succeeding century brought with it
+misfortunes that broke the spirit of the nation. Italy was the
+battle-field of Europe: her wealth became the prey of a rapacious
+soldiery: the last and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an
+unfeeling Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a selfish
+Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence had been lost, the people
+turned away from politics to live for art and literature, and found,
+before many generations had passed, how little such exclusive devotion
+could compensate for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit,
+and the activity of civic life. A century after the golden days of
+Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become frigid and
+affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the modern Italians towards Rome.]
+
+At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters were
+troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless contentment under the
+paternal sway of the Popes, received new ideas from the advent of the
+revolutionary armies of France, and have found the Papal system, since
+its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic
+despotism, far less tolerable than it was of yore. Our own days have
+seen the name of Rome become again a rallying-cry for the patriots of
+Italy, but in a sense most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of
+Arnold and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to universal
+domination: their descendants, more wisely, yet not more from
+patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek only to be the
+capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed for a monarchy of the
+world, a reign of peace and Christian brotherhood: those who invoke
+his name as the earliest prophet of their creed strive after an idea
+that never crossed his mind--the national union of Italy[351].
+
+Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do not understand
+this passion for Rome as a capital, and think it their duty to lecture
+the Italians on their flightiness. The latter do not themselves
+pretend that the shores of the Tiber are a suitable site for a
+capital: Rome is lonely, unhealthy, and in a bad strategical position;
+she has no particular facilities for trade: her people, with some fine
+qualities, are less orderly and industrious than the Tuscans or the
+Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy cries with one voice for Rome,
+firmly believing that national life can never thrill with a strong and
+steady pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation's
+heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome--Rome pagan as well as
+Christian--that they once played so grand a part in the drama of
+European history, and that they have now been able to attain that
+fervid sentiment of unity which has brought them at last together
+under one government. Whether they are right, whether if right they
+are likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it
+deserves to be noted that this enthusiasm for a famous name--for it is
+nothing more--is substantially the same feeling as that which created
+and hallowed the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the
+last few years on both sides of the Atlantic have proved that men are
+not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly governed by
+calculations of material profit and loss. Sentiments, fancies,
+theories, have not lost their power; the spirit of poetry has not
+wholly passed away from politics. And strange as seems to us the
+worship paid to the name of medival Rome by those who saw the sins
+and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an intenser
+feeling than is the imaginative reverence wherewith the Italians of
+to-day look on the city whence, as from a fountain, all the streams of
+their national life have sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they
+are all again to mingle.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[323] Hist. Eccl. l. ix. c. 6: [Greek: ton de phanai, hs ouch hekn
+tade epicheirei, alla tis synechs enochln auton biazetai, kai
+epitattei tn Rhmn porthein.]
+
+[324] See the two Lives of St. Adalbert in Pertz, _M. G. H._, iv.,
+evidently compiled soon after his death.
+
+[325] Another letter of Petrarch's to John Colonna, written
+immediately after his arrival in the city, deserves to be quoted, it
+is so like what a stranger would now write off after his first day in
+Rome:--'In prsens nihil est quod inchoare ausim, miraculo rerum
+tantarum et stuporis mole obrutus ... prsentia vero, mirum dictu,
+nihil imminuit sed auxit omnia: vere maior fuit Roma maioresque sunt
+reliqui quam rebar: iam non orbem ab hac urbe domitum sed tam sero
+domitum miror. Vale.'
+
+[326] The idea of the continuance of the sway of Rome under a new
+character is one which medival writers delight to illustrate. In
+Appendix, Note D, there is quoted as a specimen a poem upon Rome, by
+Hildebert (bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours),
+written in the beginning of the twelfth century.
+
+[327] In writing this chapter I have derived much assistance from the
+admirable work of Ferdinand Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im
+Mittelalter_. Unfortunately no English translation of it exists; but I
+am informed by the author that one is likely ere long to appear.
+
+[328] Republican forms of some sort had existed before Arnold's
+arrival, but we hear the name of no other leader mentioned; and
+doubtless it was by him chiefly that the spirit of hostility to the
+clerical power was infused into the minds of the Romans.
+
+[329] The series of papal coins is interrupted (with one or two slight
+exceptions) from A.D. 984 (not long after the time of Alberic) to A.D.
+1304. In their place we meet with various coins struck by the
+municipal authorities, some of which bear on the obverse the head of
+the Apostle Peter, with the legend Roman. Pricipe: on the reverse the
+head of the Apostle Paul, legend, Senat. Popul. Q. R. Gregorovius, _ut
+supra_.
+
+[330] Rienzi called himself Augustus as well as tribune; 'tribuno
+Augusto de Roma.' (He pretended, or his friends pretended for him--it
+was at any rate believed--that he was an illegitimate son of the
+Emperor Henry the Seventh.) He cited, on his appointment, the Pope and
+cardinals to appear before the people of Rome and give an account of
+their conduct; and after them the Emperor. 'Ancora citao lo Bavaro
+(Lewis the Fourth). Puoi citao li elettori de lo imperio in Alemagna,
+e disse "Voglio vedere che rascione haco nella elettione," che
+trovasse scritto che passato alcuno tempo la elettione recadeva a li
+Romani.'--_Vita di Cola di Rienzi_, c. xxvi (written by a
+contemporary). I give the spelling as it stands in Muratori's edition.
+
+[331] The Germans called this hill, which is the highest in or near
+Rome, conspicuous from a beautiful group of stone-pines upon its brow,
+Mons Gaudii; the origin of the Italian name, Monte Mario, is not
+known, unless it be, as some think, a corruption of Mons Malus.
+
+It was on this hill that Otto the Third hanged Crescentius and his
+followers.
+
+[332] I quote this from the _Ordo Romanus_ as it stands in Muratori's
+third Dissertation in the _Antiquitates Itali medii vi_.
+
+[333] Great stress was laid on one part of the procedure,--the holding
+by the Emperor of the Pope's stirrup for him to mount, and the leading
+of his palfrey for some distance. Frederick Barbarossa's omission of
+this mark of respect when Pope Hadrian IV met him on his way to Rome,
+had nearly caused a breach between the two potentates, Hadrian
+absolutely refusing the kiss of peace until Frederick should have gone
+through the form, which he was at last forced to do in a somewhat
+ignominious way.
+
+[334] A remarkable speech of expostulation made by Otto III to the
+Roman people (after one of their revolts) from the tower of his house
+on the Aventine has been preserved to us. It begins thus: 'Vosne estis
+mei Romani? Propter vos quidem meam patriam, propinquos quoque
+reliqui; amore vestro Saxones et cunctos Theotiscos, sanguinem meum,
+proieci; vos in remotas partes imperii nostri adduxi, quo patres
+vestri cum orbem ditione premerent numquam pedem posuerunt; scilicet
+ut nomen vestrum et gloriam ad fines usque dilatarem; vos filios
+adoptavi: vos cunctis prtuli.'--_Vita S. Bernwardi_; in Pertz, _M. G.
+H._, t. iv.
+
+(It is from this form 'Theotiscus' that the Italian 'Tedesco' seems to
+have been derived.)
+
+[335] The Leonine city, so called from Pope Leo IV, lay between the
+Vatican and St. Peter's and the river.
+
+[336] It would seem that Otto was deceived, and that in reality they
+are the bones of St. Paulinus of Nola.
+
+[337] The only other of the Teutonic Emperors buried in Italy were, so
+far as I know, Lewis the Second (whose tomb, with an inscription
+commemorating his exploits, is built into the wall of the north aisle
+of the famous church of S. Ambrose at Milan), Henry the Sixth and
+Frederick the Second, who lie at Palermo, Conrad IV, buried at Foggia,
+and Henry the Seventh, whose sarcophagus may be seen in the Campo
+Santo of Pisa, a city always conspicuous for her zeal on the imperial
+side.
+
+Six Emperors lie buried at Speyer, three or four at Prague, two at
+Aachen, two at Bamberg, one at Innsbruck, one at Magdeburg, one at
+Quedlinburg, two at Munich, and most of the later ones at Vienna.
+
+[338] See note 198, p. 178.
+
+[339] See p. 117.
+
+[340] These highly curious frescoes are in the chapel of St. Sylvester
+attached to the very ancient church of Quattro Santi on the Coelian
+hill, and are supposed to have been executed in the time of Pope
+Innocent III. They represent scenes in the life of the Saint, more
+particularly the making of the famous donation to him by Constantine,
+who submissively holds the bridle of his palfrey.
+
+[341] The last imperial coronation, that of Charles the Fifth, took
+place in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna, Pope Clement VII
+being unwilling to receive Charles in Rome. It is a grand church, but
+the choir, where the ceremony took place, seems to have been
+'restored,' that is to say modernized, since Charles' time.
+
+[342] The name of Cenci is a very old one at Rome: it is supposed to
+be an abbreviation of Crescentius. We hear in the eleventh century of
+a certain Cencius, who on one occasion made Gregory VII prisoner.
+
+[343] Thus in the church of San Lorenzo without the walls there are
+several pointed windows, now bricked up; and similar ones may be seen
+in the church of Ara Coeli on the summit of the Capitol. So in the apse
+of St. John Lateran there are three or four windows of Gothic form:
+and in its cloister, as well as in that of St. Paul without the walls,
+a great deal of beautiful Lombard work. The elegant porch of the
+church of Sant' Antonio Abate is Lombard. In the apse of the church of
+San Giovanni e Paolo on the Coelian hill there is an external arcade
+exactly like those of the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are these the only
+instances.
+
+The ruined chapel attached to the fortress of the Caetani family--the
+family to which Boniface the Eighth belonged, and whose head is now
+the first of the Roman nobility--is a pretty little building, more
+like northern Gothic than anything within the walls of Rome. It stands
+upon the Appian Way, opposite the tomb of Ccilia Metella, which the
+Caetani used as a stronghold.
+
+[344] A good deal of the mischief done by Robert Guiscard, from which
+the parts of the city lying beyond the Coliseum towards the river and
+St. John Lateran never recovered, is attributed to the Saracenic
+troops in his service. Saracen pirates are said to have once before
+sacked Rome. Genseric was not a heathen, but he was a furious Arian,
+which, as far as respect to the churches of the orthodox went, was
+nearly the same thing. He is supposed to have carried off the
+seven-branched candlestick and other vessels of the Temple, which
+Titus had brought from Jerusalem to Rome.
+
+[345] We are told that one cause of the ferocity of the German part of
+the army of Charles was their anger at the ruinous condition of the
+imperial palace.
+
+[346] Under the influence, partly of this anti-pagan spirit, partly of
+his own restless vanity, partly of a passion to be doing something,
+Pope Sixtus the Fifth did a great deal of mischief in the way of
+destroying or spoiling the monuments of antiquity.
+
+[347] These campaniles are generally supposed to date from the ninth
+and tenth centuries. I am informed, however, by Mr. J. H. Parker, of
+Oxford, whose antiquarian skill is well known, that he is led to
+believe by an examination of their mouldings that few or none, unless
+it be that of San Prassede, are older than the twelfth century.
+
+This of course applies only to the existing buildings. The type of
+tower may be, and indeed no doubt is, older.
+
+Somewhat similar towers may be observed in many parts of the Italian
+Alps, especially in the wonderful mountain land north of Venice, where
+such towers are of all dates from the eleventh or twelfth down to the
+nineteenth century, the ancient type having in these remote valleys
+been adhered to because the builder had no other models before him. In
+the valley of Cimolais I have seen such a campanile in course of
+erection, precisely similar to others in the neighbouring villages
+some eight centuries old.
+
+The very curious round towers of Ravenna, some four or five of which
+are still standing, seem to have originally had similar windows,
+though these have been all, or nearly all, stopped up. The Roman
+towers are all square.
+
+[348] The Palatine hill seems to have been then, as it is for the most
+part now, a waste of stupendous ruins. In the great imperial palace
+upon its northern and eastern sides was the residence of an official
+of the Eastern court in the beginning of the eighth century. In the
+time of Charles, some seventy years later, this palace was no longer
+habitable.
+
+[349] Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica
+form.
+
+[350] It was thus that most of the earlier Teutonic Emperors, and
+notably Charles and Otto, professed to have obtained the crown;
+although practically it was partly a matter of conquest and partly of
+private arrangement with the Pope. In later times, the seven Germanic
+princes were recognized as the legally qualified electoral body, but
+their appearance on the stage was a result of the confusion of the
+German kingdom with the Roman Empire, and in strictness they had
+nothing to do with the Roman crown at all. The right to bestow it
+could only--on principle--belong to some Roman authority, and those
+who felt the difficulty were driven to suppose a formal cession of
+their privilege by the Roman people to the seven electors. See p. 227
+_supra_: and cf. Matthew Villani (iv. 77), 'Il popolo Romano, non da
+se, ma la chiesa per lui, concedette la elezione degli Imperadori a
+sette principi della Magna.'
+
+[351] That which Dante, Arnold of Brescia, and the rest really have in
+common with the modern Italian 'party of movement' is their hostility
+to the temporal power of the Popes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Wenzel, 1378-1400.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rupert, 1400-1410.]
+
+[Sidenote: Sigismund, 1410-1438.]
+
+[Sidenote: Council of Constance.]
+
+In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its lowest point. It
+had shot forth a fitful gleam under Sigismund, who in convoking and
+presiding over the council of Constance had revived one of the highest
+functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the first great
+oecumenical councils, and especially of the council of Nica, had
+established the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more
+properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from
+the whole Christian world[352]. The tenet commended itself to the
+reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the chancellor of
+Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith,
+to correct the abuses which had grown up in discipline and government,
+and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general
+councils, to whom there was now attributed an immunity from error
+superior even to that which resided in the successor of Peter. And
+although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian
+people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious
+consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing of that
+fuller freedom which was soon to follow. The existence of the Holy
+Empire and the existence of general councils were, as has been already
+remarked, necessary parts of one and the same theory[353], and it was
+therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion on which the
+whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single
+commonwealth[354] was also the last on which that commonwealth's
+lawful temporal head appeared in the exercise of his international
+functions. Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything
+more than a German monarch.
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness of Germany as compared with the other states of
+Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert II. 1438-1440. Frederick III. 1440-1493.]
+
+It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain a monarch at all.
+When in A.D. 1493 the calamitous reign of Frederick the Third ended,
+it was impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the condition
+into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire.
+The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had been protected
+rather by the weakness of their enemies than by their own strength.
+From France there had been little to fear while the English menaced
+her on one side and the Burgundian dukes on the other: from England
+still less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lancaster. But
+now throughout Western Europe the power of the feudal oligarchies was
+broken; and its chief countries were being, by the establishment of
+fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the
+larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and aggressive
+military monarchies. Thus Spain became a great state by the union of
+Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in
+England there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus France,
+enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successors,
+began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe
+which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her
+people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition of her
+rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding century. Meantime
+there had appeared in the far East a foe still more terrible. The
+capture of Constantinople gave Turks a firm hold on Europe, and
+inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what
+Abderrahman and his Saracens had so nearly effected in the eighth--of
+establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed
+the Western as well as the Eastern Csars. The navies of the Ottoman
+Sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well-appointed armies pierced
+Hungary and threatened Vienna.
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen without: the
+frontiers of Germany herself were exposed by the loss of those
+adjoining territories which had formerly owned allegiance to the
+Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the
+interregnum, and had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the
+Teutonic knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck deeper
+roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the privileges she had
+obtained from Charles the Fourth, and the subsequent acquisition of
+Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless
+Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent
+inroads on her eastern border.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy.]
+
+Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Henry the Seventh.
+Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of
+Florence; Frederick the Third received the Lombard crown, but it no
+longer conveyed the slightest power. In the beginning of the
+fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country
+from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty years later
+Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any
+purpose south of the Alps[355]. Nevertheless the phantom of imperial
+authority lingers on for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline
+tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic
+neighbours: even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet
+venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its
+exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of
+Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to have any sense or meaning; the Pope
+was no longer the protector nor the Emperor the assailant of municipal
+freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared. But
+the old war-cries of the Church and the Empire were still repeated as
+they had been three centuries before, and the rival principles that
+had once enlisted the noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side
+had now sunk into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere
+unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long before in Greece was
+seen to be true here; the spirit of faction outlived the cause of
+faction, and became itself the new and prolific source of a useless,
+endless strife.
+
+[Sidenote: Burgundy.]
+
+After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in Rome, and almost
+the only trace of that connection between Germany and Italy to
+maintain which so much had been risked and lost, was to be found in
+the obstinate belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims,
+though often purely dynastic and personal, could be enforced by an
+appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors. Because
+Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy with a Transalpine host they fancied
+themselves entitled to demand duchies for themselves and their
+relatives, and to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but
+their own was involved.
+
+The kingdom of Arles, if it had never added much strength to the
+Empire, had been useful as an outwork against France. And thus its
+loss--Dauphin passing over, partly in A.D. 1350, finally in 1457,
+Provence in 1486--proved a serious calamity, for it brought the French
+nearer to Switzerland, and opened to them a tempting passage into
+Italy. The Emperors did not for a time expressly renounce their feudal
+suzerainty over these lands, but if it was hard to enforce a feudal
+claim over a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how much harder to
+control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in Europe.
+
+On the north-west frontier, the fall in A.D. 1477 of the great
+principality which the dukes of French Burgundy were building up, was
+seen with pleasure by the Rhinelanders whom Charles the last duke had
+incessantly alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave
+France and Germany directly confronting each other, and it was soon
+seen that the balance of strength lay on the side of the less numerous
+but better organized and more active nation.
+
+[Sidenote: Switzerland.]
+
+Switzerland, too, could no longer be considered a part of the Germanic
+realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons, in A.D. 1313, was against the
+oppressions practised in the name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather
+than against the legitimate authority of Albert the Emperor. But
+although several subsequent sovereigns, and among them conspicuously
+Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured the Swiss liberties, yet
+while the antipathy between the Confederates and the territorial
+nobility gave a peculiar direction to their policy, the accession of
+new cantons to their body, and their brilliant success against Charles
+the Bold in A.D. 1477, made them proud of a separate national
+existence, and not unwilling to cast themselves loose from the
+stranded hulk of the Empire. Maximilian tried to reconquer them, but
+after a furious struggle, in which the valleys of Western Tyrol were
+repeatedly laid waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to
+give way, and in A.D. 1500 recognized them by treaty as practically
+independent. Not, however, till the peace of Westphalia, in A.D. 1648,
+was the Swiss Confederation in the eye of public law a sovereign
+state, and even after that date some of the towns continued to stamp
+their coins with the double eagle of the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal weakness.]
+
+If those losses of territory were serious, far more serious was the
+plight in which Germany herself lay. The country had now become not so
+much an empire as an aggregate of very many small states, governed by
+sovereigns who would neither remain at peace with each other nor
+combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an
+Emperor who had little lawful authority, and could not exert what he
+had[356].
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the theory of the Empire as an international
+power upon the Germanic constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Emperor in Germany, compared with that of
+his predecessors in Europe.]
+
+There was another cause, besides those palpable and obvious ones
+already enumerated, to which this state of things must be ascribed.
+That cause is to be found in the theory which regarded the Empire as
+an international power, supreme among Christian states. From the day
+when Otto the Great was crowned at Rome, the characters of German king
+and Roman Emperor were united in one person, and it has been shewn how
+that union tended more and more to become a fusion. If the two
+offices, in their nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by
+different persons, the Roman Empire would most probably have soon
+disappeared, while the German kingdom grew into a robust national
+monarchy. Their connection gave a longer life to the one and a feebler
+life to the other, while at the same time it transformed both. So long
+as Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed beneath their
+sceptre it was possible for the Emperors, though we need not suppose
+they troubled themselves with speculations on the matter, to
+distinguish their imperial authority, as international and more than
+half religious, from their royal, which was, or was meant to be,
+exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed bounds of
+Germany these international functions had ceased to have any meaning,
+when the rulers of England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hungary, Poland,
+Italy, Burgundy, had in succession repudiated their control, and the
+Lord of the World found himself obeyed by none but his own people, he
+would not sink from being lord of the world into a simple Teutonic
+king, but continued to play in the more contracted theatre the part
+which had belonged to him in the wider. Thus did Germany instead of
+Europe become the sphere of his international jurisdiction; and her
+electors and princes, originally mere vassals, no greater than a Count
+of Champagne in France, or an Earl of Chester in England, stepped into
+the place which it had been meant that the several monarchs of
+Christendom should fill. If the power of their head had been what it
+was in the eleventh century, the additional dignity so assigned to
+them might have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and
+justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation to
+the sovereign had a great though at the time scarcely perceptible
+influence in changing the German Empire, as we may now begin to call
+it, from a state into a sort of confederation or body of states,
+united indeed for some of the purposes of government, but separate and
+independent for others more important. Thus, and that in its
+ecclesiastical as well as its civil organization, Germany became a
+miniature of Christendom[357]. The Pope, though he retained the wider
+sway which his rival had lost, was in an especial manner the head of
+the German clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity: the three Rhenish
+prelates sat in the supreme college beside the four temporal electors:
+the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots was as essential a part of
+the constitution and as influential in the deliberations of the Diet
+as were the dukes, counts, and margraves of the Empire. The
+world-embracing Christian state was to have been governed by a
+hierarchy of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority
+should exactly correspond with those of the temporal magistracy, who
+were to be like them endowed with worldly wealth and power, and to
+enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate although distinct. This system, which
+it was in vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh
+and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which prevailed
+in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth century onwards. And
+conformably to the analogy which may be traced between the position of
+the archdukes of Austria in Germany and the place which the four Saxon
+and the two first Franconian Emperors had held in Europe, both being
+recognized as leaders and presidents in all that concerned the common
+interest, in the one case of the Christian, in the other of the whole
+German people, while neither of them had any power of direct
+government in the territories of local kings and lords; so the plan by
+which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to strengthen their
+national monarchy was in substance that which the Popes had followed
+when they conferred the crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The
+pontiffs then, like the electors now, finding that they could not give
+with the title the power which its functions demanded, were driven to
+the expedient of selecting for the office persons whose private
+resources enabled them to sustain it with dignity. The first Frankish
+and the first Saxon Emperors were chosen because they were already the
+mightiest potentates in Europe; Maximilian because he was the
+strongest of the German princes. The parallel may be carried one step
+further. Just as under Otto and his successors the Roman Empire was
+Teutonized, so now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the
+sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the Teutonic Empire tends more
+and more to lose itself in an Austrian monarchy.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of the Hapsburg influence in Germany.]
+
+Of that monarchy and of the power of the house of Hapsburg, Maximilian
+was, even more than Rudolph his ancestor, the founder[358]. Uniting in
+his person those wide domains through Germany which had been dispersed
+among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming by his
+marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories of Charles the
+Bold, he was a prince greater than any who had sat on the Teutonic
+throne since the death of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke
+of Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Carinthia, feudal
+superior of lands, in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, that he was
+great, not as Roman Emperor. For just as from him the Austrian
+monarchy begins, so with him the Holy Empire in its old meaning ends.
+That strange system of doctrines, half religious half political, which
+had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete, and the
+theory which had wrought such changes on Germany and Europe, passed
+ere long so completely from remembrance that we can now do no more
+than call up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have
+been.
+
+[Sidenote: Character of the epoch of Maximilian.]
+
+[Sidenote: The discovery of America.]
+
+For it is not only in imperial history that the accession of
+Maximilian is a landmark. That time--a time of change and movement in
+every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and
+books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were
+replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing
+the face of war--was especially marked by one event, to which the
+history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery
+of America. The cloud which from the beginning of things had hung
+thick and dark round the borders of civilization was suddenly lifted:
+the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm
+plain of earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer,
+vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an
+insignificant globe, which, so far from being the centre of the
+universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of
+its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto prevailed
+regarding the life of man and his relations to nature and the
+supernatural, were rudely shaken by the knowledge that was soon gained
+of tribes in every stage of culture and living under every variety of
+condition, who had developed apart from all the influences of the
+Eastern hemisphere. In A.D. 1453 the capture of Constantinople and
+extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal blow to the
+prestige of tradition and an immemorial name: in A.D. 1492 there was
+disclosed a world whither the eagles of all-conquering Rome had never
+winged their flight. No one could now have repeated the arguments of
+the _De Monarchia_.
+
+[Sidenote: The Renaissance.]
+
+Another movement, too, widely different, but even more momentous, was
+beginning to spread from Italy beyond the Alps. Since the barbarian
+tribes settled in the Roman provinces, no change had come to pass in
+Europe at all comparable to that which followed the diffusion of the
+new learning in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Enchanted by
+the beauty of the ancient models of art and poetry, more particularly
+those of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion and contempt all
+that had been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those of
+Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the writers who lived
+after Tacitus was debased: the architecture of the Middle Ages was
+barbarous: the scholastic philosophy was an odious and unmeaning
+jargon: Aristotle himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had been
+for three centuries more than a prophet or an apostle, was hurled from
+his throne, because his name was associated with the dismal quarrels
+of Scotists and Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical
+or sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular, for it is more or less
+all of these--the spirit which was the exact antithesis of medival
+mysticism, had swept in and carried men away, with all the force of a
+pent-up torrent. People were content to gratify their tastes and their
+senses, caring little for worship, and still less for doctrine: their
+hopes and ideas were no longer such as had made their forefathers
+crusaders or ascetics: their imagination was possessed by associations
+far different from those which had inspired Dante: they did not revolt
+against the church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had
+enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and graceful and intelligible. From
+all that was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of feudalism or
+monkery, they turned away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so, in
+the midst of the Renaissance, so, under the consciousness that former
+things were passing from the earth, and a new order opening, so, with
+the other beliefs and memories of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights
+of the Roman Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here and
+there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy its universal
+supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless hearers on its duty to
+protect the Holy See; but to Germany it had become an ancient device
+for holding together the discordant members of her body, to its
+possessors an engine for extending the power of the house of Hapsburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Empire henceforth German.]
+
+Henceforth, therefore, we must look upon the Holy Roman Empire as lost
+in the German; and after a few faint attempts to resuscitate
+old-fashioned claims, nothing remains to indicate its origin save a
+sounding title and a precedence among the states of Europe. It was not
+that the Renaissance exerted any direct political influence either
+against the Empire or for it; men were too busy upon statues and coins
+and manuscripts to care what befel Popes or Emperors. It acted rather
+by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines upon which the
+Empire had rested, and thus leaving it, since it had previously no
+support but that of opinion, without any support at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Attempts to reform the Germanic Constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the projects of reform.]
+
+During Maximilian's eventful reign several efforts were made to
+construct a new constitution, but it is to German, rather than to
+imperial history that they properly belong. Here, indeed, the history
+of the Holy Empire might close, did not the title unchanged beckon us
+on, and were it not that the events of these later centuries may in
+their causes be traced back to times when the name of Roman was not
+wholly a mockery. It may be enough to remark that while the
+preservation of peace and the better administration of justice were in
+some measure attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber,
+established in A.D. 1495, schemes still more important failed through
+the bad constitution of the Diet, and the unconquerable jealousy of
+the Emperor and the Estates. Maximilian refused to have his
+prerogative, indefinite though weak, restricted by the appointment of
+an administrative council[359], and when the Estates extorted it from
+him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet, which consisted
+of three colleges, electors, princes, and cities, the lower nobility
+and knights of the Empire were unrepresented, and resented every
+decree that affected their position, refusing to pay taxes in voting
+which they had no voice. The interests of the princes and the cities
+were often irreconcilable, while the strength of the crown would not
+have been sufficient to make its adhesion to the latter of any effect.
+The policy of conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried,
+succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content to gain their
+point by raising factions among the territorial magnates, and so to
+stave off the unwelcome demand for reform. After many earnest attempts
+to establish a representative system, such as might resist the
+tendency to local independence and cure the evils of separate
+administration, the hope so often baffled died away. Forces were too
+nearly balanced: the sovereign could not extend his personal control,
+nor could the reforming party limit him by a strong council of
+government, for such a measure would have equally trenched on the
+independence of the states. So ended the first great effort for German
+unity, interesting from its bearing on the events and aspirations of
+our own day; interesting, too, as giving the most convincing proof of
+the decline of the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not
+propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian the
+authority his predecessors had once enjoyed, but by setting up a body
+which would resemble far more nearly the senate of a federal state
+than the administrative council which surrounds a monarch. The
+existing system developed itself further: relieved from external
+pressure, the princes became more despotic in their own territories:
+distinct codes were framed, and new systems of administration
+introduced: the insurgent peasantry were crushed down with more
+confident harshness. Already had leagues of princes and cities been
+formed[360] (that of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in
+Germany, and often the monarch's firmest support); now alliances begin
+to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a direction of
+formidable import from the rivalry which the pretensions on Naples and
+Milan of Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled
+between their house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have
+friends in the heart of the enemy's country, such as French intrigue
+found in the Elector Palatine and the count of Wrtemberg.
+
+[Sidenote: Germanic nationality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Change of Titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Imperator Electus.']
+
+Nevertheless this was also the era of the first conscious feeling of
+German nationality, as distinct from imperial. Driven in on all hands,
+with Italy and the Slavic lands and Burgundy hopelessly lost,
+Teutschland learnt to separate itself from Welschland[361]. The Empire
+became the representative of a narrower but more practicable national
+union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this date there appear
+several notable changes of style. 'Nationis Teutonic' (Teutscher
+Nation) is added to the simple 'sacrum imperium Romanum.' The title of
+'Imperator electus,' which Maximilian obtains leave from Pope Julius
+the Second to assume, when the Venetians prevent him from reaching his
+capital, marks the severance of Germany from Rome. No subsequent
+Emperor received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the Fifth
+was indeed crowned by the Pope's hands, but the ceremony took place at
+Bologna, and was therefore of at least questionable validity); each
+assumed after his German coronation[362] the title of Emperor
+Elect[363], and employed this in all documents issued in his name. But
+the word 'elect' being omitted when he was addressed by others, partly
+from motives of courtesy, partly because the old rules regarding the
+Roman coronation were forgotten, or remembered only by antiquaries, he
+was never called, even when formality was required, anything but
+Emperor. The substantial import of another title now first introduced
+is the same. Before Otto the First, the Teutonic king had called
+himself either 'rex' alone, or 'Francorum orientalium rex,' or
+'Francorum atque Saxonum rex:' after A.D. 962, all lesser dignities
+had been merged in the 'Romanorum Imperator[364].' To this Maximilian
+appended 'Germani rex,' or, adding Frederick the Second's
+bequest[365], 'Knig in Germanien und Jerusalem.' It has been thought
+that from a mixture of the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor,
+has been formed the phrase 'German Emperor,' or less correctly,
+'Emperor of Germany[366].' But more probably the terms 'German
+Emperor' and 'Emperor of Germany' are nothing but convenient
+corruptions of the technical description of the Germanic
+sovereign[367].
+
+That the Empire was thus sinking into a merely German power cannot be
+doubted. But it was only natural that those who lived at the time
+should not discern the tendency of events. Again and again did the
+restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery of Burgundy and
+Italy,--his last scheme was to adjust the relations of Papacy and
+Empire by becoming Pope himself: nor were successive Diets less
+zealous to check private war, still the scandal of Germany, to set
+right the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial officials
+permanent, and their administration uniform throughout the country.
+But while they talked the heavens darkened, and the flood came and
+destroyed them all.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[352] See Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the History of the Eastern
+Church_, Lecture II.
+
+[353] It is not without interest to observe that the council of Basel
+shewed signs of reciprocating imperial care by claiming those very
+rights over the Empire to which the Popes were accustomed to pretend.
+
+[354] The councils of Basel and Florence were not recognized from
+first to last by all Europe, as was the council of Constance. When the
+assembly of Trent met, the great religious schism had already made a
+general council, in the true sense of the word, impossible.
+
+[355] 'E pero venendo gl'imperadori della Magna col supremo titolo, e
+volendo col senno e colla forza della Magna reggiere gli Italiani, non
+lo fanno e non lo possono fare.'--M. Villani, iv. 77.
+
+Matthew Villani's etymology of the two great faction names of Italy is
+worth quoting, as a fair sample of the skill of medivals in such
+matters:--'La Italia tutta e divisa mistamente in due parti, l'una che
+seguita ne' fatti del mondo la santa chiesa--e questi son dinominati
+Guelfi; cio, guardatori di f. E l'altra parte seguitano lo 'mperio o
+fedele o enfedele che sia delle cose del mondo a santa chiesa. E
+chiamansi Ghibellini, quasi guida belli; cio, guidatori di
+battaglie.'
+
+[356] 'Nam quamvis Imperatorem et regem et dominum vestrum esse
+fateamini, precario tamen ille imperare videtur: nulla ei potentia
+est; tantum ei paretis quantum vultis, vultis autem minimum.'--neas
+Sylvius to the princes of Germany, quoted by Hippolytus a Lapide.
+
+[357] See gidi, _Der Frstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_; a book
+which throws more light than any other with which I am acquainted on
+the inner nature of the Empire.
+
+[358] The two immediately preceding Emperors, Albert II (1438-1439)
+and Frederick III, father of Maximilian (1439-1493), had been
+Hapsburgs. It is nevertheless from Maximilian that the ascendancy of
+that family must be dated.
+
+[359] Reichsregiment.
+
+[360] Wenzel had encouraged the leagues of the cities, and incurred
+thereby the hatred of the nobles.
+
+[361] The Germans, like our own ancestors, called foreign, _i. e._
+non-Teutonic nations, Welsh. Yet apparently not all such nations, but
+only those which they in some way associated with the Roman Empire,
+the Cymry of Roman Britain, the Romanized Kelts of Gaul, the Italians,
+the Roumans or Wallachs of Transylvania and the Principalities. It
+does not appear that either the Magyars or any Slavonic people were
+called by any form of the name Welsh.
+
+[362] The German crown was received at Aachen, the ancient Frankish
+capital, where may still be seen, in the gallery of the basilica, the
+marble throne on which the Emperors from the days of Charles to those
+of Ferdinand I were crowned. It was upon this chair that Otto III had
+found the body of Charles seated, when he opened his tomb in A.D.
+1001. After Ferdinand I, the coronation as well as the election took
+place at Frankfort. An account of the ceremony may be found in
+Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_. Aachen, though it remained and
+indeed is still a German town, lay in too remote a corner of the
+country to be a convenient capital, and was moreover in dangerous
+proximity to the West Franks, as stubborn old Germans continue to call
+them. As early as A.D. 1353 we find bishop Leopold of Bamberg
+complaining that the French had arrogated to themselves the honours of
+the Frankish name, and called themselves 'reges Franci,' instead of
+'reges Franci occidentalis.'--Lupoldus Bebenburgensis, apud
+Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[363] Erwhlter Kaiser. See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[364] Romanorum rex (after Henry II) till the coronation at Rome.
+
+[365] But the Emperor was only one of many claimants to this kingdom;
+they multiplied as the prospect of regaining it died away.
+
+[366] The latter does not occur, even in English books, till
+comparatively recent times. English writers of the seventeenth century
+always call him 'The Emperor,' pure and simple, just as they
+invariably say 'the French king.' But the phrase 'Empereur d'Almayne'
+may be found in very early French writers.
+
+[367] See Moser, _Rmische Kayser_; Goldast's and other collections of
+imperial edicts and proclamations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of course not as a
+religious movement, but as the cause of political changes, which still
+further rent the Empire, and struck at the root of the theory by which
+it had been created and upheld. Luther completed the work of
+Hildebrand. Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the
+German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic; the very Diet
+of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg proclaimed to an astonished
+church and Emperor that the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had
+framed and presented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central
+council of government. The great religious schism put an end to all
+such hopes, for it became a source of political disunion far more
+serious and permanent than any that had existed before, and it taught
+the two factions into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard
+each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile nations.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Charles V (1519-1558).]
+
+The breach came at the most unfortunate time possible. After an
+election, more memorable than any preceding, an election in which
+Francis the First of France and Henry the Eighth of England had been
+his competitors, a prince had just ascended the imperial throne who
+united dominions vaster than any Europe had seen since the days of his
+great namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders, and other parts of the
+Burgundian lands, as well as large regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed
+Charles: he drew inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the
+Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute and profound
+than that of Maximilian his grandfather, might have well been able,
+despite the stringency of his coronation engagements[368], and the
+watchfulness of the electors[369], to override their usurped
+privileges, and make himself practically as well as officially the
+head of the nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of his
+manner[370] and his Flemish speech never a favourite among the
+Germans, was in point of fact far stronger than Maximilian or any
+other Emperor who had reigned for three centuries. In Italy he
+succeeded, after long struggles with the Pope and the French, in
+rendering himself supreme: England he knew how to lead, by flattering
+Henry and cajoling Wolsey: from no state but France had he serious
+opposition to fear. To this strength his imperial dignity was indeed a
+mere accident: its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of
+Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once achieved, might
+could lose itself in right; and as an earlier Charles had veiled the
+terror of the Frankish sword under the mask of Roman election, so
+might his successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name of
+Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion as wide and more
+enduring.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of Charles towards the religious movement.]
+
+One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had Charles
+espoused the reforming cause. His reverence for the Pope's person is
+sufficiently seen in the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement;
+the traditions of his office might have led him to tread in the steps
+of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even the timid Lewis the
+Fourth and the unstable Sigismund had sometimes ventured; the
+awakening zeal of the German people, exasperated by the exactions of
+the Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and enabled him,
+while moderating the excesses of change, to fix his throne on the deep
+foundations of national love. It may well be doubted--Englishmen at
+least have reason for the doubt--whether the Reformation would not
+have lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled in the
+meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside Charles's personal
+leaning to the old faith, and forgetting that he was king of the most
+bigoted race of Europe, his position as Emperor made him almost
+perforce the Pope's ally. The Empire had been called into being by
+Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic See as its highest
+earthly privilege, had latterly been wont, especially in Hapsburg
+hands, to lean on the papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on
+prescription and the traditions of immemorial reverence, how could it
+abandon the cause which the longest prescription and the most solemn
+authority had combined to consecrate? With the German clergy, despite
+occasional quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the lay
+aristocracy; their heads had been the chief ministers of the crown;
+the advocacies of their abbeys were the last source of imperial
+revenue to disappear. To turn against them now, when furiously
+assailed by heretics; to abrogate claims hallowed by antiquity and a
+hundred laws, would be to pronounce its own sentence, and the fall of
+the eternal city's spiritual dominion must involve the fall of what
+still professed to be her temporal. Charles would have been glad to
+see some abuses corrected; but a broad line of policy was called for,
+and he cast in his lot with the Catholics[371].
+
+[Sidenote: Ultimate failure of the repressive policy of Charles.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand I, 1558-1564.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maximilian II, 1564-1576.]
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction of the Germanic state-system.]
+
+Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed here. The
+reconstruction of the old imperial system, upon the basis of Hapsburg
+power, proved in the end impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed
+actually accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league had been dissolved
+and its leaders captured, the whole country lay prostrate before
+Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg by the Spanish soldiery: he
+forced formularies of doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set
+up and pulled down whom he would throughout Germany, amid the muttered
+discontent of his own partisans. Then, as in the beginning of the year
+1552, he lay at Innsbruck, fondly dreaming that his work was done,
+waiting the spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic
+fathers had again met to settle the world's faith for it, news was
+suddenly brought that North Germany was in arms, and that the revolted
+Maurice of Saxony had seized Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the
+Bavarian Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled
+southwards over the snows of the Brenner, then eastwards, under the
+blood-red cliffs of dolomite that wall in the Pusterthal, far away
+into the valleys of Carinthia: the council of Trent broke up in
+consternation: Europe saw and the Emperor acknowledged that in his
+fancied triumph over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than
+block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When this last effort
+to produce religious uniformity by violence had failed as hopelessly
+as the previous devices of holding discussions of doctrine and calling
+a general council, a sort of armistice was agreed to in 1554, which
+lasted in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years. Four
+years after this disappointment of the hopes and projects which had
+occupied his busy life, Charles, weighed down by cares and with the
+shadow of coming death already upon him, resigned the sovereignty of
+Spain and the Indies, of Flanders and Naples, into the hands of his
+son Philip the Second; while the imperial sceptre passed to his
+brother Ferdinand, who had been some time before chosen King of the
+Romans. Ferdinand was content to leave things much as he found them,
+and the amiable Maximilian II, who succeeded him, though personally
+well inclined to the Protestants, found himself fettered by his
+position and his allies, and could do little or nothing to quench the
+flame of religious and political hatred. Germany remained divided into
+two omnipresent factions, and so further than ever from harmonious
+action, or a tightening of the long-loosened bond of feudal
+allegiance. The states of either creed being gathered into a league,
+there could no longer be a recognized centre of authority for judicial
+or administrative purposes. Least of all could a centre be sought in
+the Emperor, the leader of the papal party, the suspected foe of every
+Protestant. Too closely watched to do anything of his own authority,
+too much committed to one party to be accepted as a mediator by the
+other, he was driven to attain his own objects by falling in with the
+schemes and furthering the selfish ends of his adherents, by becoming
+the accomplice or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes
+addressed themselves to reduce a power of which they had still an
+over-sensitive dread, and found when they exacted from each successive
+sovereign engagements more stringent than his predecessor's, that in
+this, and this alone, their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to
+join them. Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient
+privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little influence on
+the government except that which his intrigues might exercise. Nay, it
+became almost impossible to maintain a government at all. For when the
+Reformers found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they declared that in
+matters of religion a majority ought not to bind a minority. As the
+measures were few which did not admit of being reduced to this
+category, for whatever benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic
+prince injured the Protestants, nothing could be done save by the
+assent of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce anything was
+done; and even the courts of justice were stopped by the disputes that
+attended the appointment of every judge or assessor.
+
+[Sidenote: Alliance of the Protestants with France.]
+
+In the foreign politics of Germany another result followed. Inferior
+in military force and organization, the Protestant princes at first
+provided for their safety by forming leagues among themselves. The
+device was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch himself
+before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous forms of the
+imperial system. Soon they began to look beyond the Vosges, and found
+that France, burning heretics at home, was only too happy to smile on
+free opinions elsewhere. The alliance was easily struck; Henry the
+Second assumed in 1552 the title of 'Protector of the Germanic
+liberties,' and a pretext for interference was never wanting in
+future.
+
+[Sidenote: The Reformation spirit, and its influence upon the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of the Reformation on the doctrines regarding the
+Visible Church.]
+
+These were some of the visible political consequences of the great
+religious schism of the sixteenth century. But beyond and above them
+there was a change far more momentous than any of its immediate
+results. There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented
+in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has been called
+a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races
+against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the
+universal monarchy of the Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of
+long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold
+abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a renewal of the youth of
+the church by a return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these
+indeed to some extent it was; but it was also something more profound,
+and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its
+essence the assertion of the principle of individuality--that is to
+say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto the personal consciousness
+had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obedience had
+been held the first of religious duties; truth had been conceived as a
+something external and positive, which the priesthood who were its
+stewards were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving
+virtue lay not in its being felt and known by him to be truth, but in
+a purely formal and unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which
+medival Christianity still cherished were obscured by the limited,
+rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been forced on them in times of
+ignorance and barbarism. That which was in its nature abstract, had
+been able to survive only by taking a concrete expression. The
+universal consciousness became the Visible Church: the Visible Church
+hardened into a government and degenerated into a hierarchy. Holiness
+of heart and life was sought by outward works, by penances and
+pilgrimages, by gifts to the poor and to the clergy, wherein there
+dwelt often little enough of a charitable mind. The presence of divine
+truth among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence on
+earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope; under another, by the
+reception of the present Deity in the sacrifice of the mass; in a
+third, by the doctrine that the priest's power to remit sins and
+administer the sacraments depended upon a transmission of miraculous
+gifts which can hardly be called other than physical. All this system
+of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the church as a
+worldly and therefore obstructive power, have expanded, renewed, and
+purified itself during the four centuries that had elapsed since its
+completion[372], and thus remained in harmony with the growing
+intelligence of mankind, was suddenly rent in pieces by the convulsion
+of the Reformation, and flung away by the more religious and more
+progressive peoples of Europe. That which was external and concrete,
+was in all things to be superseded by that which was inward and
+spiritual. It was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it
+continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless an
+independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force, and was to be
+in all things active rather than passive. Truth was no longer to be
+truth to the soul until it should have been by the soul recognized,
+and in some measure even created; but when so recognized and felt, it
+is able under the form of faith to transcend outward works and to
+transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes the living
+principle within each man's breast, infinite itself, and expressing
+itself infinitely through his thoughts and acts. He who as a spiritual
+being was delivered from the priest, and brought into direct relation
+with the Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, to be enrolled a member
+of a visible congregation of his fellows, that he might live a pure
+and useful life among them. Thus by the Reformation the Visible Church
+as well as the priesthood lost that paramount importance which had
+hitherto belonged to it, and sank from being the depositary of all
+religious tradition, the source and centre of religious life, the
+arbiter of eternal happiness or misery, into a mere association of
+Christian men, for the expression of mutual sympathy and the better
+attainment of certain common ends. Like those other doctrines which
+were now assailed by the Reformation, this medival view of the nature
+of the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be said,
+necessarily developed between the third and the twelfth century, and
+must therefore have represented the thoughts and satisfied the wants
+of those times. By the Visible Church the flickering lamp of knowledge
+and literary culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended
+through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the whole
+theological fabric of which it formed a part, it was now hard and
+unfruitful, identified with its own worst abuses, capable apparently
+of no further development, and unable to satisfy minds which in
+growing stronger had grown more conscious of their strength. Before
+the awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and lifeless
+system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked the free activity of
+thought, whose bestowal of worldly power and wealth on spiritual
+pastors drew them away from their proper duties, and which by
+maintaining alongside of the civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival
+government, maintained also that separation of the spiritual element
+in man from the secular, which had been so complete and so pernicious
+during the Middle Ages, which debases life, and severs religion from
+morality.
+
+[Sidenote: Consequent effect upon the Empire.]
+
+The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement: and it is
+the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The
+distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is but another name for
+the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how medival theory
+constructed the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman Empire
+was the shadow of the Popedom--designed to rule men's bodies as the
+pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground
+that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One
+government[373]. And, therefore, since it was this very principle of
+Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became a revolt
+against despotism of every kind; it erected the standard of civil as
+well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though
+needed in a different measure, for the worthy development of the
+individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the
+antagonist of popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth,
+far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of
+Germany. But submission, and submission on the ground of indefeasible
+transmitted right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the duty
+of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as
+the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant
+claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Csar it had passed
+through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a
+constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights.
+And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the
+province of government and exalt the privileges of the subject was as
+plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of
+private judgment was to the pretensions of the Papacy and the
+priesthood.
+
+[Sidenote: Immediate influence of the Reformation on political and
+religious liberty.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conduct of the Protestant States.]
+
+The remark must not be omitted in passing, how much less than might
+have been expected the religious movement did at first actually effect
+in the way of promoting either political progress or freedom of
+conscience. The habits of centuries were not to be unlearnt in a few
+years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and
+activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time. By a few
+inflammable minds liberty was carried into antinomianism, and produced
+the wildest excesses of life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects
+arose, refusing to conform to the ordinary rules without which human
+society could not subsist. But these commotions neither spread widely
+nor lasted long. Far more pervading and more remarkable was the other
+error, if that can be called an error which was the almost unavoidable
+result of the circumstances of the time. The principles which had led
+the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have
+taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from
+the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with
+the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have
+enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own
+shewing, had no value save when it was freely given. A church which
+does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of
+the truth may possibly be with its adversaries: a church which permits
+or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right
+first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not
+convinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had
+done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they
+welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that
+religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with
+politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the
+greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or
+more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy
+continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost
+every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself
+with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages,
+while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It
+was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the
+several countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to
+the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be
+co-extensive with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and
+exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive
+powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of
+theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest,
+for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical
+transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any
+one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could
+not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it
+may be worth, '_Securus iudicat orbis terrarum_.' But in practice
+these difficulties were soon got over, for the dominant party in each
+state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it
+was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to
+nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England,
+or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland,
+imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the
+practices of medival intolerance without their justification.
+Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic
+and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those
+who were not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their
+neighbours, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and
+venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to
+others. If union with the visible church by participation in a
+material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be
+held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
+heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be
+possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external
+forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the
+intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than
+those practised by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible;
+for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives
+of political expediency, or, more often, the mere headstrong passion
+of a ruler or a faction to silence the expressions of any opinions but
+their own. To enlarge upon this theme, did space permit it, would not
+be to digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the
+Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far less an
+institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is not too much to
+say, that the ideas which have but recently ceased to prevail
+regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uniformity in doctrine
+and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which
+that doctrine established between the Roman Church and the Roman
+Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Reformation on the name and associations
+of the Empire.]
+
+Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the Empire have been
+now described: its immediate political results, and its far more
+profound doctrinal importance, as implanting new ideas regarding the
+nature of freedom and the province of government. A third, though
+apparently almost superficial, cannot be omitted. Its name and its
+traditions, little as they retained of their former magic power, were
+still such as to excite the antipathy of the German reformers. The
+form which the doctrine of the supreme importance of one faith and one
+body of the faithful had taken was the dominion of the ancient capital
+of the world through her spiritual head, the Roman bishop, and her
+temporal head, the Emperor. As the names of Roman and Christian had
+been once convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and
+Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts what had hitherto
+been one conception, attacked Romanism but not Catholicity, and formed
+religious communities which, while continuing to call themselves
+Christian, repudiated the form with which Christianity had been so
+long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded upon the
+assumption that the limits of Church and State are exactly
+co-extensive, a change which withdrew half of its subjects from the
+one body while they remained members of the other, transformed it
+utterly, destroyed the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and
+forced the Emperor into a strange and incongruous position. To his
+Protestant subjects he was merely the head of the administration, to
+the Catholics he was also the Defender and Advocate of their church.
+Thus from being chief of the whole state he became the chief of a
+party within it, the Corpus Catholicorum, as opposed to the Corpus
+Evangelicorum; he lost what had been hitherto his most holy claim to
+the obedience of the subject; the awakened feeling of German
+nationality was driven into hostility to an institution whose title
+and history bound it to the centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting
+for seven centuries in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic
+nations cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors had
+resisted Julius Csar and Germanicus. Two mutually repugnant systems
+could not exist side by side without striving to destroy one another.
+The instincts of theological sympathy overcame the duties of political
+allegiance, and men who were subjects both of the Empire and of their
+local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who espoused their
+doctrines and protected their worship. For in North Germany, princes
+as well as people were mostly Lutheran: in the southern and especially
+the south-eastern lands, where the magnates held to the old faith,
+Protestants were scarcely to be found except in the free cities. The
+same causes which injured the Emperor's position in Germany swept away
+the last semblance of his authority through other countries. In the
+great struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and France,
+of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of
+the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he of whom it had been believed a
+century before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of
+Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines
+either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The
+earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany was felt through Europe; its
+states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners,
+and with the Empire's expiring power vanished that united Christendom
+it had been created to lead[374].
+
+[Sidenote: Troubles of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf II, 1576-1612.]
+
+[Sidenote: Matthias, 1612-1619.]
+
+Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew themselves as early as
+that famous Diet of Worms, from Luther's appearance at which, in A.D.
+1521, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the
+end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier
+than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the
+Edict of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than a century
+of doubtful strife that the new order of things was fully and finally
+established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most
+treaties on the basis of _uti possidetis_, were no better than a
+hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken.
+The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors
+urged the Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing ground
+of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of its antagonists
+sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of
+worship, and the smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the
+troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.
+
+[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand II, A.D. 1619-37.]
+
+[Sidenote: Plans of Ferdinand II.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand III, 1637-1658.]
+
+[Sidenote: The peace of Westphalia.]
+
+The imperial sceptre had now passed from the indolent and vacillating
+Rudolf II (1576-1612), the corrupt and reckless policy of whose
+ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds of
+the Protestants, into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second[375].
+Jealous, bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing his
+plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in action, the house
+of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more unpopular leader in
+their second attempt to turn the German Empire into an Austrian
+military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the
+accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Leagued
+with Spain, backed by the Catholics of Germany, served by such a
+leader as Wallenstein, Ferdinand proposed nothing less than the
+extension of the Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his
+crown's full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland
+were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be reconquered with the
+help of Spain: Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded
+with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general
+was all but master of Northern Germany when the successful resistance
+of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (A.D.
+1630), Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an
+impending reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings
+had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he
+had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the
+Empire: he had transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated
+the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned
+out at his pleasure; had unsettled all possession by requiring the
+restitution of church property occupied since A.D. 1555. The
+Protestants were helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of
+the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it:
+the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four
+campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor;
+devastated his lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at last so
+enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again
+formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the
+Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and
+the Calvinist party--some, like the Saxon elector, most inglorious of
+his inglorious house, bribed by the cunning Austrian; others afraid to
+stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his
+vengeance--that the issue of the long protracted contest would have
+gone against them but for the interference of France. It was the
+leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of
+Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited: hence he fostered Protestantism
+abroad while trampling it down at home. The triumph he did not live to
+see was sealed in A.D. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the
+combatants, and the treaties of Mnster and Osnabrck were
+thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[368] The so-called 'Wahlcapitulation.'
+
+[369] The electors long refused to elect Charles, dreading his great
+hereditary power, and were at last induced to do so only by their
+overmastering fear of the Turks.
+
+[370] Nearly all the Hapsburgs seem to have wanted that sort of genial
+heartiness which, apt as it is to be stifled by education in the
+purple, has nevertheless been possessed by several other royal lines,
+greatly contributing to their vitality; as for instance by more than
+one prince of the houses of Brunswick and Hohenzollern.
+
+[371] See this brought out with great force in the very interesting
+work of Padre Tosti, _Prolegomeni alla Storia Universale della
+Chiesa_, from which I quote one passage, which bears directly on the
+matter in hand: 'Il grido della riforma clericale aveva un eco
+terribile in tutta la compagnia civile dei popoli: essa percuoteva le
+cime del laicale potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la gerarchia sociale.
+Se l'imperadore Sigismondo nel concilio di Costanza non avesse
+fiutate queste consequenze nella eresia di Hus e di Girolamo di Praga,
+forse non avrebbe con tanto zelo mandati alle fiamme que' novatori.
+Rotto da Lutero il vincolo di suggezione al Papa ed ai preti in fatti
+di religione, avvenne che anche quello che sommetteva il vassallo al
+barone, il barone al imperadore si allentasse. Il popolo con la Bibbia
+in mano era prete, vescovo, e papa; e se prima contristato della
+prepotenza di chi gli soprastava, ricorreva al successore di San
+Pietro, ora ricorreva a se stesso, avendogli commesse Fra Martino le
+chiavi del regno dei Cieli.'--vol. ii. pp. 398, 9.
+
+[372] It was not till the end of the eleventh century that
+transubstantiation was definitely established as a dogma.
+
+[373] See the passages quoted in note 113, p. 98; and note 132, p. 110.
+
+[374] Henry VIII of England when he rebelled against the Pope called
+himself King of Ireland (his predecessors had used only the title
+'Dominus Hiberni') without asking the Emperor's permission, in order
+to shew that he repudiated the temporal as well as the spiritual
+dominion of Rome.
+
+So the Statute of Appeals is careful to deny and reject the authority
+of 'other foreign potentates,' meaning, no doubt, the Emperor as well
+as the Pope.
+
+[375] Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the exception perhaps
+of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, the most important of those
+attempts to reconstruct by diplomacy the European states-system which
+have played so large a part in modern history. It is important,
+however, not as marking the introduction of new principles, but as
+winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the revolt
+of Luther, sealing its results, and closing definitively the period of
+the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious
+movement called into being had now been at work for more than a
+hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became
+necessary to establish a system which should represent the altered
+relations of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous
+peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
+Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things
+already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new
+importance. To all parties alike the result of the Thirty Years' War
+was thoroughly unsatisfactory: to the Protestants, who had lost
+Bohemia, and still were obliged to hold an inferior place in the
+electoral college and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced
+to permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the church
+lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers: to the princes, who could
+not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who
+could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other conclusion
+was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and
+no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war
+continued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial
+advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal
+recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be
+placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the
+maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last
+preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified
+as rightful and necessary. For while the political situation, to use a
+current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the
+eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their
+fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or Lombard
+republicans in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and
+Swabian Csars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings,
+or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant
+jurists of the sixteenth or rather of the seventeenth century were the
+first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the
+world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German
+monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need
+prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for
+themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections
+made him the friend of their enemies.
+
+[Sidenote: The treatise of Hippolytus a Lapide.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rights of the Emperor and the Diet, as settled in A.D.
+1648.]
+
+It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or Peter de Andlo
+to a book published shortly before A.D. 1648, under the name of
+Hippolytus a Lapide[376], and notice the matter-of-fact way, the
+almost contemptuous spirit in which, disregarding the traditional
+glories of the Empire, he comments on its actual condition and
+prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz
+assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous, that the Germanic
+constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth: that the
+'lex regia' (so much discussed and so often misunderstood) and the
+whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperor had used so
+dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely
+incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz
+examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing
+contests of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral that
+the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more
+dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective
+against the policy of the Hapsburgs, an invective which the ambition
+and harshness of the late Emperor made only too plausible. The one
+real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states
+concisely--'domus Austriac extirpatio:' but, failing this, he would
+have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in every way, and provide
+means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which
+seem to have made a profound impression in Germany, that the states,
+or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the
+negotiations of Osnabrck and Mnster. By extorting a full recognition
+of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants
+alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from
+any direct interference with the administration, either in particular
+districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public importance,
+including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions,
+raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws,
+were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The
+Aulic Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial
+oppression, and always of imperial intrigue, was so restricted as to
+be harmless for the future. The 'reservata' of the Emperor were
+confined to the rights of granting titles and confirming tolls. In
+matters of religion, an exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality
+was established between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and the
+right of 'Itio in partes,' that is to say, of deciding questions in
+which religion was involved by amicable negotiations between the
+Protestant and Catholic states, instead of by a majority of votes in
+the Diet, was definitely conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
+declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic
+prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped,
+the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed
+was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its
+members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy
+Roman Church; and its constitution admitted schismatics to a full
+share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of
+the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the
+communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was
+therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory
+of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in
+this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth, who commanded
+his legate to protest against it, and subsequently declared it void by
+the bull 'Zelo domus Dei[377].'
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+The transference of power within the Empire, from its head to its
+members, was a small matter compared with the losses which the Empire
+suffered as a whole. The real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia
+were those who had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the
+Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac, the Austrian part of
+Alsace, and the lands of the three bishoprics in Lorraine--Metz, Toul,
+and Verdun, which her armies had seized in A.D. 1552: to Sweden,
+northern Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however, this
+difference between the position of the two, that whereas Sweden became
+a member of the German Diet for what she received (as the king of
+Holland was, until 1866-7, a member for Dutch Luxemburg, and as the
+kings of Denmark, up till the accession of the present sovereign, were
+for Holstein), the acquisitions of France were delivered over to her
+in full sovereignty, and for ever severed from the Germanic body. And
+as it was by their aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been
+won, these two states obtained at the same time what was more valuable
+than territorial accessions--the right of interfering at imperial
+elections, and generally whenever the provisions of the treaties of
+Osnabrck and Mnster, which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to
+be endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further narrowed by the
+final separation of two countries, once integral parts of Germany, and
+up to this time legally members of her body. Holland and Switzerland
+were, in A.D. 1648, declared independent.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany after the Peace.]
+
+[Sidenote: Number of petty independent states: effects of such a
+system on Germany.]
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly
+marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of
+Frederick the Second. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a
+mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name
+Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title purely
+and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an
+Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For
+it had no common treasury, no efficient common tribunals[378], no
+means of coercing a refractory member[379]; its states were of
+different religions, were governed according to different forms, were
+administered judicially and financially without any regard to each
+other. The traveller in Central Germany now is amused to find, every
+hour or two, by the change in the soldiers' uniforms, and the colour
+of the stripes on the railway fences, that he has passed out of one
+and into another of its miniature kingdoms. Much more surprised and
+embarrassed would he have been a century ago, when, instead of the
+present thirty-two there were three hundred petty principalities
+between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own
+courts (in which the ceremonious pomp of Versailles was faintly
+reproduced), its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and
+custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
+officials, presided over by a prime minister who was generally the
+unworthy favourite of his prince and the pensioner of some foreign
+court. This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature,
+and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some
+time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of
+Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had
+made them despots in their own territories. The impoverishment of the
+inferior nobility and the decline of the commercial cities caused by a
+war that had lasted a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to
+the power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism supreme
+just where absolutism wants all its justification, in states too small
+to have any public opinion, states in which everything depends on the
+monarch, and the monarch depends on his favourites. After A.D. 1648
+the provincial estates or parliaments became obsolete in most of these
+principalities, and powerless in the rest. Germany was forced to drink
+to its very dregs the cup of feudalism, feudalism from which all the
+feelings that once ennobled it had departed.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism in France, England, Germany.]
+
+It is instructive to compare the results of the system of feudality in
+the three chief countries of modern Europe. In France, the feudal head
+absorbed all the powers of the state, and left to the aristocracy only
+a few privileges, odious indeed, but politically worthless. In
+England, the medival system expanded into a constitutional monarchy,
+where the oligarchy was still strong, but the commons had won the full
+recognition of equal civil rights. In Germany, everything was taken
+from the sovereign, and nothing given to the people; the
+representatives of those who had been fief-holders of the first and
+second rank before the Great Interregnum were now independent
+potentates; and what had been once a monarchy was now an aristocratic
+federation. The Diet, originally an assembly of magnates meeting from
+time to time like our early English Parliaments, became in A.D. 1654 a
+permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities were
+represented by their envoys. In other words, it was now not a national
+council, but an international congress of diplomatists.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the continuance of the Empire.]
+
+Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal, rights to state
+rights was so complete, we may wonder that the farce of an Empire
+should have been retained at all. A mere German Empire would probably
+have perished; but the Teutonic people could not bring itself to
+abandon the venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans were of
+all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suffering; and as,
+if the Empire had fallen, something must have been erected in its
+place, they preferred to work on with the clumsy machine so long as it
+would work at all. Properly speaking, it has no history after this;
+and the history of the particular states of Germany which takes its
+place is one of the dreariest chapters in the annals of mankind. It
+would be hard to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French
+Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise; a
+single sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance in
+which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of
+their princes. The military history of those times will always be read
+with interest; but free and progressive countries have a history of
+peace not less rich and varied than that of war; and when we ask for
+an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century,
+we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling
+of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the Balance of power.]
+
+Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it was not without its
+importance to the neighbouring countries, with whose fortunes it had
+been linked by the Peace of Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the
+political system of Europe was to revolve: the scales, so to speak,
+which marked the equipoise of power that had become the grand object
+of the policy of all states. This modern caricature of the plan by
+which the theorists of the fourteenth century had proposed to keep the
+world at peace, used means less noble and attained its end no better
+than theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is desirable to
+prevent a universal monarchy in Europe. But it may be asked whether a
+system can be considered successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia
+to seize Silesia, which did not check the aggressions of Russia and
+France upon their neighbours, which was for ever bartering and
+exchanging lands in every part of Europe without thought of the
+inhabitants, which permitted and has never been able to redress that
+greatest of public misfortunes, the partitionment of Poland. And if it
+be said that bad as things have been under this system, they would
+have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain from asking whether
+any evils could have been greater than those which the people of
+Europe have suffered through constant wars with each other, and
+through the withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of
+their population from useful labour to be wasted in maintaining a
+standing army.
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Empire in Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness and stagnation of Germany.]
+
+The result of the extended relations in which Germany now found
+herself to Europe, with two foreign kings never wanting an occasion,
+one of them never the wish, to interfere, was that a spark from her
+set the Continent ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to
+spread hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or created
+so many thrones abroad. The Duke of Holstein acquired Denmark, the
+Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector of Saxony Poland, the Elector of
+Hanover England, the Archduke of Austria Hungary and Bohemia, while
+the Elector (originally Margrave) of Brandenburg obtained, on the
+strength of non-imperial territories to the north-eastward which had
+come into his hands, the style and title of King of Prussia. Thus the
+Empire seemed again about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far
+different from that which those words would have expressed under
+Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half is a dismal
+list of losses and disgraces. The chief external danger was from
+French influence, for a time supreme, always menacing. For though
+Lewis the Fourteenth, on whom, in A.D. 1658, half the electoral
+college wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end of his
+life an object of intense hatred, officially entitled 'Hereditary
+enemy of the Holy Empire[380],' France had nevertheless a strong party
+among the princes always at her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian
+electors were her favourite tools. The '_runions_' begun in A.D.
+1680, a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added
+Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comt to
+the monarchy of Lewis, and brought him nearer the heart of the Empire;
+his ambition and cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by
+the devastation of the Rhine countries; the ultimate though
+short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when Marshal Belleisle
+dictated the election of Charles VII in A.D. 1742. In the Turkish
+wars, when the princes left Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski,
+the Empire's weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There
+was, indeed, a complete loss of hope and interest in the old system.
+The princes had been so long accustomed to consider themselves the
+natural foes of a central government, that a request made by it was
+sure to be disregarded; they aped in their petty courts the pomp and
+etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should be required
+to garrison the great frontier fortresses which alone protected them
+from an encroaching neighbour. The Free Cities had never recovered the
+famines and sieges of the Thirty Years' War: Hanseatic greatness had
+waned, and the southern towns had sunk into languid oligarchies. All
+the vigour of the people in a somewhat stagnant age either found its
+sphere in rising states like the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or
+turned away from politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had
+become contemptible from the slowness with which it moved, and its
+tedious squabbles on matters the most frivolous. Many sittings were
+consumed in the discussion of a question regarding the time of keeping
+Easter, more ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western
+churches in the seventh century, the Protestants refusing to reckon by
+the reformed calendar because it was the work of a Pope. Collective
+action through the old organs was confessed impossible, when the
+common object of defence against France was sought by forming a league
+under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European congresses the
+Empire was not represented at all[381]. No change could come from the
+Emperor, whom the capitulation of A.D. 1658 deposed _ipso facto_ if he
+violated its provisions. As Dohm[382] said, to keep him from doing
+harm, he was kept from doing anything.
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold I, 1658-1705.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph I, 1705-1711.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VI, 1711-1742.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Hapsburg Emperors and their policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the long retention of the throne by Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VII, 1742-1745.]
+
+[Sidenote: Francis I, 1745-1765.]
+
+[Sidenote: Seven Years' War.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph II, 1765-1790.]
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold II, 1790-1792. Last phase of the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Diet.]
+
+Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have been hoped
+from his action? From the election of Albert the Second, A.D. 1437, to
+the death of Charles the Sixth, A.D. 1742, the sceptre had remained in
+the hands of one family. So far from being fit subjects for
+undistinguishing invective, the Hapsburg Emperors may be contrasted
+favourably with the contemporary dynasties of France, Spain, or
+England. Their policy, viewed as a whole from the days of Rudolf
+downwards, had been neither conspicuously tyrannical, nor faltering,
+nor dishonest. But it had been always selfish. Entrusted with an
+office which might, if there be any power in those memories of the
+past to which the champions of hereditary monarchy so constantly
+appeal, have stirred their sluggish souls with some enthusiasm for the
+heroes on whose throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and
+the happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought nothing,
+used the Empire as an instrument for nothing but the attainment of
+their own personal or dynastic ends. Placed on the eastern verge of
+Germany, the Hapsburgs had added to their ancient lands in Austria
+proper and Tyrol, non-German territories far more extensive, and had
+thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent state. They
+endeavoured to reconcile its interests with the interests of the
+Empire, so long as it seemed possible to recover part of the old
+imperial prerogative. But when such hopes were dashed by the defeats
+of the Thirty Years' War, they hesitated no longer between an elective
+crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported
+themselves thenceforth in European politics not as the representatives
+of Germany, but as heads of the great Austrian monarchy. There would
+have been nothing culpable in this had they not at the same time
+continued to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no concern:
+to waste her strength in tedious combats with the Turks, or plunge her
+into a new struggle with France, not to defend her frontiers or
+recover the lands she had lost, but that some scion of the house of
+Hapsburg might reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of
+their foreign policy, marking how in A.D. 1736 they had bartered away
+Lorraine for Tuscany, a German for a non-German territory, and seeing
+how at home they opposed every scheme of reform which could in the
+least degree trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to
+obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should interfere with their own
+Aulic council, men were driven to separate the body of the Empire from
+the imperial office and its possessors[383], and when plans for
+reinvigorating the one failed, to leave the others to their fate.
+Still the old line clung to the crown with that Hapsburg gripe which
+has almost passed into a proverb. Odious as Austria was, no one could
+despise her, or fancy it easy to shake her commanding position in
+Europe. Her alliances were fortunate: her designs were steadily
+pursued: her dismembered territories always returned to her. Though
+the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible not to be
+influenced by long prescription. Projects were repeatedly formed to
+set the Hapsburgs aside by electing a prince of some other line[384],
+or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or four,
+successive Emperors of the same house. France[385] ever and anon
+renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing
+from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family.
+But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and
+that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to
+be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes
+possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose
+size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were
+Protestants, and so excluded both by the connexion of the imperial
+office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the
+electoral college[386], who, however jealous they might be of Austria,
+were led both by habit and sympathy to rally round her in moments of
+peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were disregarded
+shewed their force. On the extinction of the male line of Hapsburg in
+the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy,
+Marshal Belleisle, procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
+who stood first among the Catholic princes. His reign was a succession
+of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven from Munich by the Austrians,
+the head of the Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of
+France, cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought the
+miseries of a protracted war[387]. The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis
+of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen of
+Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the crown to the only
+power capable of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her
+son, it again rested on the brow of a Hapsburg[388]. In the war of the
+Austrian succession, which followed on the death of Charles the Sixth,
+the Empire as a body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole
+might broke in vain against one resolute member. Under Frederick the
+Great Prussia approved herself at least a match for France and Austria
+leagued against her, and the semblance of unity which the predominance
+of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the
+avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the
+Second, a sort of philosopher-king, than whom few have more narrowly
+missed greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right,
+striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the
+Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant policy of his
+ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope[389], and presumed to visit Rome,
+whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three
+centuries, 'Evviva il nostro imperatore! Siete a casa vostra: siete il
+padrone[390].' But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen
+resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was
+not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which
+Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His
+successor, Leopold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a
+calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon Germany.
+The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects:
+there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal investiture now
+and then at Vienna (real feudal rights were obsolete[391]); a
+concourse of solemn old lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable
+suits[392]; and some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg[393], the
+relics of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a
+Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad barons, had
+issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic[394].
+The solemn triflings of this so-called 'Diet of Deputation' have
+probably never been equalled elsewhere[395]. Questions of precedence
+and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs
+of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less
+honourable green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver,
+how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on
+May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not
+to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed
+that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now crushed under a mountain of
+rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained.
+It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its
+substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which
+they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our
+timidity, not seeing that whatever is false must be also bad,
+maintains in being what once was good long after it has become
+helpless and hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century,
+strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which
+Charles had founded, and Frederick adorned, and Dante sung.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the German people.]
+
+The German mind, just beginning to put forth the blossoms of its
+wondrous literature, turned away in disgust from the spectacle of
+ceremonious imbecility more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed
+gone from princes and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one
+else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love of
+country I have no conception: it appears to me at best a heroic
+weakness which I am right glad to be without[396].' The Emperor Joseph
+II writes to his brother of France: 'You must know that the
+annihilation of German nationality is a necessary leading principle of
+my policy[397].' There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal
+such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul.
+Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of Prussia to
+preserve the existing condition of things, Johannes von Mller
+writes[398]: 'If the German Union serves for nothing better than to
+maintain the _status quo_, it is against the eternal order of God, by
+which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in
+the _status quo_, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist
+without law or justice, without security from arbitrary imposts,
+doubtful whether we can preserve from day to day our honours, our
+liberties, our rights, our lives, helpless before superior force,
+without a beneficial connexion between our states, without a national
+spirit at all, this is the _status quo_ of our nation. And it was this
+that the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and nothing more,
+then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would not hearken,
+the people gave answer to the king and spake, "What portion have we in
+David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O
+Israel: David, see to thine own house." See then to your own houses,
+ye princes.'
+
+Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse brought forth from
+some Egyptian sepulchre, ready to crumble at a touch, there seemed no
+reason why it should not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind,
+and slew it in the light.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[376] _De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico_.
+
+[377] Even then the Roman pontiffs had lapsed into that scolding,
+anile tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of Hildebrand, or the stern
+precision of Innocent III) which is now seldom absent from their
+public utterances. Pope Innocent the Tenth pronounces the provisions
+of the treaty, 'ipso iure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta,
+damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque et effectu vacua, omnino
+fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore.' In spite of which they were observed.
+
+This bull may be found in vol. xvii. of the _Bullarium_. It bears date
+Nov. 20th, A.D. 1648.
+
+[378] The Imperial Chamber (Kammergericht) continued, with frequent
+and long interruptions, to sit while the Empire lasted. But its
+slowness and formality passed that of any other legal body the world
+has yet seen, and it had no power to enforce its sentences. The Aulic
+council was little more efficient, and was generally disliked as the
+tool of imperial intrigue.
+
+[379] The 'matricula' specifying the quota of each state to the
+imperial army could not be any longer employed.
+
+[380] _Erbfeind des heiligen Reichs._
+
+[381] Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in
+1713.
+
+[382] Quoted by Ludwig Hasser, _Deutsche Geschichte_.
+
+[383] The distinction is well expressed by the German 'Reich' and
+'Kaiserthum,' to which we have unfortunately no terms to correspond.
+
+[384] So the Elector of Saxony proposed in 1532 that Albert II,
+Frederick III, and Maximilian having been all of one house, Charles
+V's successor should be chosen from some other.--Moser, _Rmische
+Kayser_. See the various attempts of France in Moser. The coronation
+engagements (Wahlcapitulation) of every Emperor bound him not to
+attempt to make the throne hereditary in his family.
+
+[385] In 1658 France offered to subsidize the Elector of Bavaria if he
+would become Emperor.
+
+[386] Whether an Evangelical was eligible for the office of Emperor
+was a question often debated, but never actually raised by the
+candidature of any but a Roman Catholic prince. The 'exacta qualitas'
+conceded by the Peace of Westphalia might appear to include so
+important a privilege. But when we consider that the peculiar relation
+in which the Emperor stood to the Holy Roman Church was one which no
+heretic could hold, and that the coronation oaths could not have been
+taken by, nor the coronation ceremonies (among which was a sort of
+ordination) performed upon a Protestant, the conclusion must be
+unfavourable to the claims of any but a Catholic.
+
+[387]
+
+ 'The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
+ Tries the dread summits of Csarian power.
+ With unexpected legions bursts away,
+ And sees defenceless realms receive his sway....
+ The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom
+ Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom;
+ His foes' derision and his subjects' blame,
+ And steals to death from anguish and from shame.'
+ JOHNSON, _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
+
+[388] The following nine reasons for the long continuance of the
+Empire in the House of Hapsburg are given by Pfeffinger (_Vitriarius
+Illustratus_), writing early in the eighteenth century:--
+
+ 1. The great power of Austria.
+
+ 2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.
+
+ 3. The majority of Catholics among the electors.
+
+ 4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances.
+
+ 5. Her moderation.
+
+ 6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.
+
+ 7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
+ the blood of former Csars.
+
+ 8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were
+ deprived of the crown.
+
+ 9. Her own eagerness to have it.
+
+[389] The Pope undertook a journey to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and
+met with a sufficiently cold reception. When he saw the famous
+minister Kaunitz and gave him his hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and
+shook it.
+
+[390] 'You are in your own house: be the master.'
+
+[391] Joseph II was foiled in his attempt to assert them.
+
+[392] Goethe spent some time in studying law at Wetzlar among those
+who practised in the Kammergericht.
+
+[393] Cf. Ptter, _Historical Developement of the Political
+Constitution of the German Empire_, vol. iii.
+
+[394] Frederick the Great said of the Diet, 'Es ist ein Schattenbild,
+eine Versammlung aus Publizisten die mehr mit Formalien als mit Sachen
+sich beschftigen, und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.'
+
+[395] Cf. Hasser, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Introduction.
+
+[396] Quoted by Hasser.
+
+[397] Rotteck and Welcker, _Staats Lexikon_, s. v. 'Deutsches Reich.'
+
+[398] _Deutschlands Erwartungen vom Frstenbunde_, quoted in the
+_Staats Lexikon_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis II, 1792-1806.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon, Emperor of the West.]
+
+[Sidenote: Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of
+Charlemagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon.]
+
+Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his
+childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the
+Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till
+space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the
+Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled.
+Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little
+cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with
+storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days
+of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin,
+and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should
+rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify
+religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the
+West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive
+the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It
+were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute
+historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the
+parallel between the heir of a long line of fierce Teutonic
+chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the
+monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican
+lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute
+profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
+ideas of the Encyclopdists, swept up into the seat of absolute power
+by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more
+unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper
+of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in
+this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
+conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity
+between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike
+nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods,
+the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and
+seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
+Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if
+it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and
+highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the
+kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
+so the other thought to model himself after Csar and Charlemagne.
+For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of
+the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to
+be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a
+connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no
+studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon to remind his
+subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who
+reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as
+he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the
+centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne
+and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe
+from Paris, as the Csars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this
+belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
+receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he
+talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had
+formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed
+the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to
+Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and
+inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he
+summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten
+centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last
+Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of
+the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at
+Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the
+Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French
+Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he
+bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the
+Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention
+to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead.
+Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the
+position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which
+Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Csars of Byzantium. It was
+curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his
+ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the
+Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he
+had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard
+enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings
+wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,'
+and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First
+with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the
+principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
+that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is
+much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for
+catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the
+protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and
+gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].
+
+[Sidenote: The French Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.]
+
+[Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.]
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Empire.]
+
+A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
+preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign
+of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title
+when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire
+Franaise.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and,
+by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French
+Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
+states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
+the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi
+Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions
+had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission
+by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come.
+He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia,
+claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had
+in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
+Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
+sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of
+that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court
+presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after
+what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so
+redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the
+Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
+name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the
+rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a
+code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him
+were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution,
+and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission--a mission more
+beneficent in its result than in its means[409]--to break up in
+Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken
+the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete
+feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and
+better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo
+Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of
+destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the
+Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with
+France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the
+arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated
+by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected,
+electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized,
+the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
+potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the
+dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the
+old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a
+spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
+partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to
+meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name
+of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself
+'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his
+former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may
+more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the
+traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of
+ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the
+Confederation[411] of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
+Bavaria, Wrtemberg, Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all,
+withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
+August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that
+his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate
+princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the
+Second resolved at once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
+declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
+His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of
+things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he
+considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic
+body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
+retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title
+of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
+(_Deutsches Reich_) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of
+Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid
+down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of
+its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo
+the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and
+fifty-eight years after Csar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy
+Roman Empire came to its end.
+
+[Sidenote: Congress of Vienna.]
+
+There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that
+the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change
+that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed.
+No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new
+order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's
+universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves
+again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the
+Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was
+indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover,
+representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still
+appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency
+of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining
+peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms,
+Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia,
+elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have
+disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to
+resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
+and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore
+made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting
+Germany by a federative bond[415], and the Congress of Vienna was
+decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
+was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is
+itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a
+mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and
+useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of
+liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes
+after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the
+restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the
+Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a
+head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such
+plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear
+than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[399] _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book i. The Rmer Saal is still one of
+the sights of Frankfort. The portraits, however, which one now sees in
+it, seem to be all or nearly all of them modern; and few have any
+merit as works of art.
+
+[400] _Jordanis Chronica_, ap. Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[401] In an address by Napoleon to the Senate in 1804, bearing date
+10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the words, 'Mes descendans conserveront
+longtemps ce trne, le premier de l'univers.' Answering a deputation
+from the department of the Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, 'La Providence, qui
+a voulu que je rtablisse le trne de Charlemagne, vous a fait
+naturellement rentrer, avec la Hollande et les villes ansatiques,
+dans le sein de l'Empire.'--_Oeuvres de Napolon_, tom. v. p. 521.
+
+'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne, parce que, comme Charlemagne, je
+runis la couronne de France celle des Lombards, et que mon Empire
+confine avec l'Orient.' (Quoted by Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii.
+417.)
+
+'Votre Saintet est souveraine de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'
+(Letter of Napoleon to Pope Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)
+
+'Dites bien,' says Napoleon to Cardinal Fesch, 'que je suis
+Charlemagne, leur Empereur [of the Papal Court] que je dois tre
+trait de mme. Je fais connaitre au Pape mes intentions en peu de
+mots, s'il n'y acquiesce pas, je le rduirai la mme condition qu'il
+tait avant Charlemagne.' (Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii. 420.)
+
+[402] Napoleon said on one occasion, 'Je n'ai pas succd a Louis
+Quatorze, mais Charlemagne.'--Bourrienne, _Vie de Napolon_, iv. In
+1804, shortly before he was crowned, he had the imperial insignia of
+Charles brought from the old Frankish capital, and exhibited them in a
+jeweller's shop in Paris, along with those which had just been made
+for his own coronation;--(Bourrienne, _ut supra_.) Somewhat in the
+same spirit in which he displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in order to
+incite his subjects to the conquest of England.
+
+[403] 'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands interts (of political order
+and the spiritual authority of the Pope) qu'en annulant les donations
+des Empereurs Franais, mes predecesseurs, et en runissant les tats
+romains la France.'--Proclamation issued in 1809: _Oeuvres_, iv.
+
+[404] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[405] Pope Pius VII wrote to the First Consul, 'Carissime in Christo
+Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt nobis tu voluntatis studia erga
+nos, ut _quotiescunque_ ope aliqua in rebus nostris indigemus, eam a
+te fidenter petere non dubitare debeamus.'--Quoted by gidi.
+
+[406] Let us place side by side the letters of Hadrian to Charles in
+the _Codex Carolinus_, and the following preamble to the Concordat of
+A.D. 1801, between the First Consul and the Pope (which I quote from
+the _Bullarium Romanum_), and mark the changes of a thousand years.
+
+'Gubernium reipublic [Gallic] recognoscit religionem Catholicam
+Apostolicam Romanam eam esse religionem quam longe maxima pars civium
+Gallic reipublic profitetur.
+
+'Summus pontifex pari modo recognoscit eandem religionem maximam
+utilitatem maximumque decus percepisse et hoc quoque tempore
+prstolari ex catholico cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon ex
+peculiari eius professione quam faciunt reipublic consules.'
+
+[407] Cf. Heeren, _Political System_, vol. iii. 273.
+
+[408] He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers, and so forth. The
+Legion of Honour, which was thought important enough to be mentioned
+in the coronation oath, was meant to be something like the medival
+orders of knighthood: whose connexion with the Empire has already been
+mentioned.
+
+[409] Napoleon's feelings towards Germany may be gathered from the
+phrase he once used, 'Il faut depayser l'Allemagne.'
+
+[410] Thus in documents issued by the Emperor during these two years
+he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect, Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
+(erwhlter Rmischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oesterreich).
+
+[411] This Act of Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed in
+Koch's _Traits_ (continued by Schll), vol. viii., and Meyer's
+_Corpus Iuris Confoederationis Germanic_, vol. i. It has every
+appearance of being a translation from the French, and was no doubt
+originally drawn up in that language. Napoleon is called in one place
+'Der nmliche Monarch, dessen Absichten sich stets mit den wahren
+Interessen Deutschlands bereinstimmend gezeigt haben.' The phrase
+'Roman Empire' does not occur: we hear only of the 'German Empire,'
+'body of German states' (Staatskrper), and so forth. This
+Confederation of the Rhine was eventually joined by every German State
+except Austria, Prussia, Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
+
+[412] _Histoire des Traits_, vol. viii. The original may be found in
+Meyer's _Corpus Iuris Confoederationis Germanic_, vol. i. p. 70. It is
+a document in no way remarkable, except from the ludicrous resemblance
+which its language suggests to the circular in which a tradesman,
+announcing the dissolution of an old partnership, solicits, and hopes
+by close attention to merit, a continuance of his customers' patronage
+to his business, which will henceforth be carried on under the name
+of, &c., &c.
+
+[413] Koch (Schll), _Histoire des Traits_, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
+Hasser, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. iv.
+
+[414] Great Britain had refused in 1806 to recognize the dissolution
+of the Empire. And it may indeed be maintained that in point of law
+the Empire was never extinguished at all, but lives on as a
+disembodied spirit to this day. For it is clear that, technically
+speaking, the abdication of a sovereign can destroy only his own
+rights, and does not dissolve the state over which he presides.
+
+[415] 'Les tats d'Allemagne seront independans et unis par un lien
+federatif.'--_Histoire des Traits_, xi. p. 257.
+
+[416] The late king of Prussia was actually elected Emperor by the
+revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in 1848. He refused the crown.
+
+[417] [Since the above was written (in A.D. 1865) sudden and momentous
+changes have been effected in Germany by the war of 1866; the Prussian
+kingdom has been enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hessen-Cassel,
+Nassau, and Frankfort; the establishment of the North German
+Confederation has brought all the states north of the Main under
+Prussian control; while even the potentates of the south have
+virtually accepted the hegemony of the house of Hohenzollern. It was
+the author's intention to have added here a chapter examining these
+changes by the light of the past history of Germany and the Empire,
+and tracing out the causes to which the success of Prussia is to be
+ascribed. But at this moment (July 15th, 1870) the French Emperor
+declares war against Prussia, and there rises to meet the challenge an
+united German people,--united for the time, at least, by the folly of
+the enemy who has so long plotted for and profited by its disunion.
+Whatever the result of the struggle may be, it is almost certain to
+alter still further the internal constitution of Germany; and there is
+therefore little use in discussing the existing system, and tracing
+the progress hitherto of a development which, if not suddenly
+arrested, is likely to be greatly accelerated by the events which we
+see passing.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+[Sidenote: General summary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
+
+After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the
+phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its
+nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help
+being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
+as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during
+which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the
+Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was
+extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
+imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a
+city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal
+weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as
+a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes
+of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
+found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering
+confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor
+raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more.
+Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
+successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European
+chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after
+promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks
+at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
+international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions
+so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first
+sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious
+mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever
+based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during
+three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her
+empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen
+with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the
+destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so
+limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its
+power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races
+whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
+weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal
+rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of
+honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city
+had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the
+theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new
+religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology,
+her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had
+never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes
+on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
+
+[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+[Sidenote: Russia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Greece.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks.]
+
+Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions
+by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political
+history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not
+insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason.
+It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine
+the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the
+Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria
+clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in
+Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
+there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more
+legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might
+pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire,
+and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as
+the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the
+self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the
+sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European
+politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called
+Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed
+of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Csars, and
+trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand
+years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an
+imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable
+engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
+Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political
+combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has
+embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived
+Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
+intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has
+more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern
+Csars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent
+assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his
+successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by
+twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the
+consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the
+Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
+legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction
+of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
+
+These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and
+illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of
+the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the
+offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her
+parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
+once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of
+her own approaching doom[420].
+
+Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was
+utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise
+of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those
+who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did
+not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained
+of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on
+so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of
+undisputed possession.
+
+Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for
+unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of
+that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something
+which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of
+sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in
+the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise
+above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true
+difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible
+Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and
+strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
+itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from
+the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful
+than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in
+heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
+militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church
+triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of
+traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great
+is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases
+we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the
+world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its
+feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is
+necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading
+one. Obedience, almost the first of medival virtues, is now often
+spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of
+praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual
+will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the
+belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
+a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an
+abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not,
+cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one
+all-pervading church exercised upon their medival forefathers. A life
+in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she
+blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper
+hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus
+of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by
+penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for
+contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle
+Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life
+of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed
+to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
+between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the
+portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already
+self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous medival
+document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
+feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven.
+For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely,
+heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
+
+Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on
+physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came,
+the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was
+firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the
+death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and
+Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a
+single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the
+Swabian Csars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the
+principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they
+resisted the spiritual power.
+
+[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
+
+Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power
+of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been
+said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances,
+but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the
+character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
+was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of
+Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous
+peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by
+controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by
+being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its
+old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of
+both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also
+within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
+sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the
+substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of
+the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never
+weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist
+unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
+them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for
+ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often
+useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as
+when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors,
+to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
+their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by
+the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that
+which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that
+no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to
+preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under
+conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed
+save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle
+Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in
+common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though
+it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a
+new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and
+represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a
+power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring,
+because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its
+contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great
+ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular
+life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
+sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is
+that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed
+the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights
+which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And
+as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays
+of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone
+with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
+
+[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
+
+The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly medival. Was it
+then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better
+than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a
+comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
+nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century
+every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a
+strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of
+those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable
+even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could
+scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether
+judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it
+existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had
+persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
+strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The
+thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and
+drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It
+has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for
+many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian
+was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
+that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek
+their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the
+palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had
+floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
+legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would
+have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Csar Octavianus Augustus;
+but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the
+childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palologus was installed! It
+was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger
+lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death
+lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it
+had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans
+is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might
+muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient
+contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and medival.]
+
+[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
+
+The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic
+representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed
+of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Csar and his subtle
+nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
+has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a
+certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or
+rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the
+name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the
+concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
+the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the
+maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of
+the influence of public opinion for the control of representative
+assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to
+characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before
+now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of
+aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that
+may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in
+the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and
+Antonine Csars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
+Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and
+government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Csars and
+the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
+upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley
+of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left
+them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none
+of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the
+strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the
+administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
+uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no
+one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the
+imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle
+Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
+the political character of the French people, whether it be the result
+of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the
+original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a
+claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the
+Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
+to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion,
+if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted
+with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is
+more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common
+idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states
+have been little more successful than their neighbours in the
+establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote,
+and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure
+without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable
+French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of
+government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a
+freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of
+politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like
+that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at
+Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or
+the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which
+the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours
+somewhat different from his.
+
+[Sidenote: Essential principles of the medival Empire.]
+
+There was, nevertheless, such a thing as medival imperialism, a
+theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government,
+which has been described once already, and need not be described
+again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its
+properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
+existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact
+coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its
+workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was
+its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political
+organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the
+degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local
+authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But
+although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a
+despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and
+blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on
+municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for
+religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which
+constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who
+was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
+power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an
+unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it
+now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because
+he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
+him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a
+time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those
+ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when
+thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
+from the bonds of sense.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
+
+The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be
+more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether
+unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry
+crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
+deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she
+suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people
+forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of
+the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
+compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the
+race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth
+century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of
+intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled
+and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
+the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted
+Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty
+from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still,
+cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous
+as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
+greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians,
+and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so
+great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the
+decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife
+with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
+universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring
+countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his
+feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation
+from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation
+of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish,
+justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own
+liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least
+occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
+people were deprived of all political training, and have found the
+lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
+
+For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some
+compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the
+ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
+never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful
+in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power,
+submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments
+of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories
+of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul
+and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received
+a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
+and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had
+not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the
+German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman
+conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire
+flowed all the richness of their medival life and literature: it
+first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history
+has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent
+politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
+future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion.
+When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the
+harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival
+displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety
+which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed
+the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue
+of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed
+the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as
+gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn
+that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a
+capital.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
+
+The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a
+brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The
+spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten
+years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
+States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of
+being the legitimate representative of the medival Empire, and
+declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could
+Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
+North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they
+replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true
+daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less
+aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of
+priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national
+feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and
+anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and
+Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest.
+The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is
+possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the
+Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
+some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and
+Swabian Csars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian
+people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians
+themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the
+races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
+spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of
+pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her,
+they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it
+when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like
+her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were
+composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of
+peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task
+of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of
+another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned
+in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze
+of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for medival faith and
+simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and
+is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
+Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in
+some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more
+recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings
+have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
+ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the
+treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes
+wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military
+monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of
+modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the
+old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
+greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the
+throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from
+Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog
+and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not
+how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old
+Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any
+harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those
+of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems
+to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is
+wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of
+Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of
+modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of medival chivalry,
+the noblest creation of medival thought.
+
+[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European
+civilization.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
+
+We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state
+rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us,
+but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its
+peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its
+height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts
+and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only
+less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many
+ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and
+through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of
+modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally
+and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other
+monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same
+origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
+prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance
+in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where
+the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old
+system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in
+Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have
+grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch
+was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be
+binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a
+faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally
+disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could
+not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages
+Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered
+how great are the services which German writers have rendered and
+continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this
+result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider
+import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty
+principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the
+need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That
+code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the
+private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the
+system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the
+last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
+creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome
+had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of
+positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice,
+and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only,
+title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
+Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived
+unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the
+Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren
+were also his own.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and
+the Popes.]
+
+The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which
+describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the
+ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In
+the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of
+Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss
+of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The
+struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political
+rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
+the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the
+death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a
+victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat.
+The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
+nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which
+alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
+once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining
+fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
+had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not
+the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to
+do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually
+exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of
+a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find
+medival writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves,
+expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two
+potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
+things eternal, Csar in things temporal. The relative position of the
+two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the
+days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and
+could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
+practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries
+later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas
+had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to
+its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance
+inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
+of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil
+administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration
+nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two
+following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
+power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
+Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the
+obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal
+responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not
+that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed
+to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the
+will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no
+means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual
+supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal
+salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
+also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind
+the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no
+way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever
+things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the
+world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most
+pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to
+extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the
+same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when
+the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
+when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from
+the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for
+supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes
+with every blast.
+
+[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
+
+Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less
+momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward
+dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the
+Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the
+formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the
+concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious
+state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire.
+Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the
+connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and
+the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it
+took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually
+rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
+it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness,
+and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier
+civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight
+upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that
+mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not
+the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman
+Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so
+by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a
+brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose
+sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
+
+[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
+
+As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic
+Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of
+which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of
+Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
+were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the
+emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary,
+Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism,
+menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded,
+after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in
+Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent
+principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few
+military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal
+kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
+physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the
+hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than
+necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to
+crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free
+towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere
+of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the
+necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the
+same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld
+from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
+absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual
+tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the
+proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the
+liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
+the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet,
+should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
+
+Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of
+Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of
+every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old
+forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the
+most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the
+Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has
+been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest
+province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so
+long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom
+Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the
+possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the
+Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since
+Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of
+the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has
+now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize,
+with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts
+confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all
+but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general
+reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may
+be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent
+intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the
+character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant
+prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common
+interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the
+history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
+studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible
+for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to
+repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one
+vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more
+and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great
+measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that
+the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler
+than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after
+summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his
+treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Csar found it
+the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless
+abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste,
+and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
+and even Csar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The
+blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet
+with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
+tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical
+night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
+in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher
+aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Csar had sprung
+up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national
+individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great
+founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second
+founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
+work of the medival Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered,
+while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to
+replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them
+within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature
+of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its
+subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose
+watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national
+hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth.
+And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a
+centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
+of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to
+that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above
+law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it
+is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what
+has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how
+many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
+after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
+not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions
+of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire
+gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to
+those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its
+existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian
+theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
+perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and
+the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
+
+This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost
+inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its
+profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue
+we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of
+expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least
+possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
+institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose
+outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly
+changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the
+difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to
+explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as
+it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which
+we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a
+heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able
+to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts
+and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
+see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition,
+planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from
+entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political
+philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth,
+analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
+the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of
+tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the
+Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is
+impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but
+that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by
+men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations
+are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we
+should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Csar
+when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
+he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when
+they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding
+generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than
+we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is
+medival, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and
+understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much
+as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things
+less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
+horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey
+onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it
+can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was
+gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the
+object of the expedition to Mexico.
+
+[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at
+Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal
+abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain,
+France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
+
+[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power
+claiming a more than spiritual authority.
+
+[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam coelum. Non enim propter
+coelum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam coelum.' From the
+tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban
+VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
+
+[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
+
+[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days,
+but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
+
+[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
+_Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_.
+The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
+
+[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das
+Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
+
+[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the
+feudal law of land.
+
+[427] Mommsen, _Rmische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE A.
+
+ON THE BURGUNDIES.
+
+It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its
+application at different times to different districts, has caused, and
+continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may,
+therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of
+those applications. Without going into the minuti of the subject, the
+following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most
+frequently to be met with:--
+
+I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded
+A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone,
+from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half
+of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
+
+II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundi_), mentioned
+occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality,
+confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of
+the older kingdom last named.
+
+III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinci seu
+Burgundi_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included
+Provence, Dauphin, the southern part of Savoy, and the country
+between the Saone and the Jura.
+
+IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia
+Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same
+year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and
+all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
+
+V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundi_, _regnum
+Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D.
+937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in
+1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by
+bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II
+(the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the
+thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now
+(since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss
+portion of it.
+
+VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund),
+corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the
+Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_
+the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
+from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the
+thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648,
+though practically independent long before that date.
+
+VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comt),
+(Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the
+Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a
+fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it
+in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
+
+VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western
+Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It
+was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned
+after the thirteenth century.
+
+IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division
+of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the
+Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
+Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary,
+daughter of Charles the Bold.
+
+X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most
+northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a
+fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the
+Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles
+the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure
+history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in
+the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois
+historian, to the _Archiv fr Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an
+admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled
+'The Franks and the Gauls.'
+
+
+NOTE B.
+
+ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE
+DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
+
+The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the
+Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great
+Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up
+with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the
+relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
+crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish
+kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has
+borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and
+interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
+Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as
+follows:--
+
+I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish
+Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their
+independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the
+Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and
+Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of
+Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time
+Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the
+treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for
+Holstein.
+
+II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as
+Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana
+(Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of
+Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great
+conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
+southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire,
+erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad
+II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his
+suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time
+the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since
+the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined,
+and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to
+sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
+
+III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at
+this day of the North German Bund.
+
+
+NOTE C.
+
+ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
+
+This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more
+than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use;
+for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time
+to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some
+clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of
+title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is
+very far from being a barren or a dull one.
+
+I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus
+serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
+Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam
+Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
+
+Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply
+'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was
+added[428].
+
+Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
+
+A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex
+Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it,
+simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have
+introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some
+authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
+
+Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor
+till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion
+which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the
+sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown,
+began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not,
+however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose
+proclamations it occurs constantly.
+
+From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice
+was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till
+his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator
+semper Augustus.'
+
+In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the
+Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call
+himself 'Imperator electus' (erwhlter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I
+(brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
+upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict
+legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in
+proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was
+however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was
+addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice
+he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
+
+Maximilian added the title 'Germani rex,' which had never been known
+before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed
+once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum
+Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A
+great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time.
+Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in
+virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
+
+It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the
+same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It
+is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous
+than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is
+given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and
+Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by
+new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with
+Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of
+King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times
+there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with
+a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and
+associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His
+office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature
+elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or
+the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War
+could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people
+could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of
+God.
+
+II. THE CROWNS.
+
+Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were
+those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy,
+sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at
+Rome.
+
+The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the
+Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the
+Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
+would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick
+I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most
+Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who
+obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
+manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his
+capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
+
+It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was
+necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have
+been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For
+as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son
+of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany,
+so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not
+kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings
+of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save
+the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider
+rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently
+relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and
+absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself
+crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
+
+III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (RMISCHER KNIG).
+
+It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the
+German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was
+not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to
+be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the
+latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be
+remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not
+only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.)
+This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as
+Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and
+dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed
+against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as
+the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on
+the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor
+during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his
+successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and
+took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the
+Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of
+Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at
+once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after
+the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before
+Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be
+crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch
+generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near
+relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts
+to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's
+death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
+
+The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of
+an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
+
+It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of
+Rome.
+
+
+NOTE D.
+
+LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
+
+ Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
+ Militia, populo, moenibus alta fui:
+ At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
+ Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
+ Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divm,
+ Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
+ Vix scio qu fuerim, vix Rom Roma recordor;
+ Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
+ Gratior hc iactura mihi successibus illis;
+ Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
+ Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Csare Petrus,
+ Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
+ Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
+ Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
+ Tunc miser plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
+ Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
+
+Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of
+Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,
+_Patrologi Cursus Completus_[436].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase
+'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but
+not in official documents.
+
+[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire
+people had begun to fancy that 'erwhlter' did not mean 'elect,' but
+'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
+
+[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the
+kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or
+Gallicized Franks (Francigen), which having been for some time
+'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum
+Franci,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
+
+[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as
+only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among
+even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the
+forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine
+documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance,
+are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be
+found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Ptter, and in the host of writers to
+whom they refer.
+
+[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement
+in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three
+Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
+
+[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from
+the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
+Confederation.
+
+[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some
+time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So
+Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis
+himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to
+the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be
+adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine
+Empire.
+
+[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
+Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the
+example.
+
+[436] See note 326, p. 270.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+ A.
+
+ Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
+
+ ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive
+ his ashes, 286.
+
+ ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
+
+ ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
+
+ ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
+
+ AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
+
+ ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 19.
+
+ ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
+
+ ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
+
+ Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
+
+ ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
+
+ ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
+
+ ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170;
+ their meeting at Venice, 171.
+
+ ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of
+ England, 212, 229.
+
+ America, discovery of, 311.
+
+ ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
+
+ ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
+
+ Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages,
+ 114 note; in later times, 334.
+
+ Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the
+ civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of
+ an antique character in both, 296.
+
+ ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
+
+ Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
+
+ Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
+
+ ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death
+ at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
+
+ ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
+
+ ATHANARIC, 17.
+
+ ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
+
+ ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting
+ the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
+
+ Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
+
+ AUGUSTINE, 94.
+
+ Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
+
+ Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 381.
+
+ Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
+
+ Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience
+ to France, 219, 243.
+
+ AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
+
+
+ B.
+
+ Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely
+ composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15;
+ their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire
+ to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman
+ officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
+
+ BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
+
+ BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
+
+ 'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
+
+ Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
+
+ BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
+
+ Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
+
+ BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
+
+ Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
+
+ BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
+
+ BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
+
+ BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
+
+ Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112;
+ perversion of its meaning, 114.
+
+ Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king
+ of, an elector, 230.
+
+ BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109,
+ 247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
+
+ BOSO, 81, 395.
+
+ Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
+
+ Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil
+ Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and
+ devices in, 258.
+
+ Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by
+ invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by
+ modern restorers of churches, 292.
+
+ Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added
+ to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on
+ the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten
+ senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
+
+ Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to,
+ 9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor,
+ 189.
+
+
+ C.
+
+ Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
+
+ Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris
+ Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
+
+ CAPET (Hugh), 142.
+
+ Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
+
+ Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
+
+ CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
+
+ Carolingian Emperors, 76.
+
+ Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78;
+ Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
+
+ Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
+
+ Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
+
+ Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
+
+ Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
+
+ Cenci, name of, 289 note.
+
+ CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
+
+ CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom,
+ 41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the
+ people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of
+ Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and
+ Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at
+ Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52;
+ its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53,
+ 64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the
+ transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four
+ centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his
+ reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution
+ suggested by Dllinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61;
+ defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the
+ successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63;
+ has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his
+ authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to
+ declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual
+ despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance
+ attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a
+ Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and
+ State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the
+ Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king,
+ 69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a
+ Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal
+ habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of
+ the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire
+ Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the
+ Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73,
+ 74; impress of his mind on medival society, 74; buried at
+ Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a
+ saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
+
+ CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
+
+ CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
+
+ CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his
+ Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236;
+ his object through life, 236; the University of Prague
+ founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
+
+ CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the
+ Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his
+ repressive policy, 322.
+
+ CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
+
+ CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
+
+ CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples
+ and Milan, 315.
+
+ CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
+
+ CHARLES of Valois, 223.
+
+ CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
+
+ CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of
+ the Empire, 339.
+
+ CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
+
+ Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
+
+ Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10;
+ alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization
+ of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11;
+ the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea,
+ 13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond
+ that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives
+ men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92,
+ 370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity
+ of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes
+ the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328;
+ position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129;
+ effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the
+ Empire upon the history of, 384.
+
+ Churches, national, 95, 330.
+
+ Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern
+ restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
+
+ Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their
+ power, 223.
+
+ Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study
+ forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
+
+ CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
+
+ Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of
+ political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century,
+ 128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to
+ the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle
+ Age, 290.
+
+ CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
+
+ Coins, papal, 278 note.
+
+ COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the
+ family of, 281.
+
+ Commons, the, 132, 314.
+
+ Concordat of Worms, 163.
+
+ Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
+
+ CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
+
+ CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the
+ prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V,
+ 165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
+
+ CONRAD III, 165, 277.
+
+ CONRAD IV, 210.
+
+ CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
+
+ Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of,
+ signed by Frederick I, 178.
+
+ CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43,
+ 100, 288 note.
+
+ Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
+
+ Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by
+ the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in
+ which they were performed, 284, 288.
+
+ Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon
+ Law, 101.
+
+ Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
+
+ Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
+
+ CRESCENTIUS, 146.
+
+ Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not
+ legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how
+ treated by the Popes, 82.
+
+ Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
+
+ Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
+
+
+ D.
+
+ DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his
+ treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264
+ et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
+
+ Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
+
+ Decretals, the False, 156.
+
+ Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184;
+ its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648,
+ 340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings,
+ 353.
+
+ DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
+
+ Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
+
+ DLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
+
+ Dominicans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note,
+ 261 note.
+
+ Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
+
+
+ E.
+
+ East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
+
+ Eastern Church, the, 191.
+
+ Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25;
+ decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the
+ Popes, 46.
+
+ Edict of Caracalla, 6.
+
+ EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's
+ independence of the Empire, 187.
+
+ EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187;
+ his election against Charles IV, 223.
+
+ EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation,
+ 58, 60.
+
+ Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining
+ the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of
+ the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233;
+ recognition of the popular will, 234.
+
+ Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages
+ upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
+
+ Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
+
+ Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
+
+ Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
+
+ Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230
+ note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
+
+ Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the
+ head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22,
+ 120; correspondence between his position and functions and
+ those of the Pope, 104; proofs from medival documents,
+ 109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations
+ from medival art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of
+ his functions with those of German King, 127; his office
+ feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards,
+ 189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the
+ title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin
+ and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his
+ office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246;
+ his right of creating kings, 249; his international place
+ at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316;
+ his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of
+ the word now-a-days, 402.
+
+ Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403;
+ persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their
+ short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to
+ Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284;
+ hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their
+ burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue
+ between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
+
+ Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
+
+ Emperors, Franconian, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in
+ Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to
+ set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the
+ throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
+
+ Emperors, Italian, 80.
+
+ Emperors, Saxon, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
+
+ Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their
+ short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286;
+ names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles
+ against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
+
+ Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration
+ of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from
+ without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the
+ policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of,
+ 9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of,
+ composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians,
+ 16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its
+ influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of
+ religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief
+ in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of
+ by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52,
+ 111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles,
+ 77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied
+ in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
+
+ Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103;
+ a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it
+ differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84;
+ identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved
+ from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its
+ union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between
+ the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in
+ Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France,
+ 185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in
+ Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet
+ 'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of
+ epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost
+ to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due
+ to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its
+ relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial
+ distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+ centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and
+ mediator, 244; why an international power, 248;
+ illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251,
+ 254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never
+ carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263,
+ 304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its
+ lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of
+ Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its
+ character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312;
+ effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence
+ upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its
+ bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its
+ relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in
+ Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching
+ fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its
+ re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states,
+ 364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of
+ its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent,
+ 368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the
+ Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373;
+ never truly medival, 373; sense in which it was Roman,
+ 374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential
+ principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria
+ as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe,
+ 383; ways in which it affected the political institutions
+ of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern
+ jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384;
+ influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387;
+ principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389;
+ its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390;
+ difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
+
+ Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences,
+ 102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216;
+ parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name,
+ 372.
+
+ Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
+
+ ENGELBERT, 113 note.
+
+ England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it
+ must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions
+ towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
+
+ Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great,
+ 132.
+
+ EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
+
+ Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on
+ the nationalities of, 390.
+
+
+ F.
+
+ False Decretals, the, 156.
+
+ FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
+
+ FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives
+ the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
+
+ Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
+
+ Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society,
+ 124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results
+ in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles
+ of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
+
+ Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
+
+ FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
+
+ Fontenay, battle of, 77.
+
+ France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial
+ authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's
+ precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325;
+ territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism
+ in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 376.
+
+ Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
+
+ FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
+
+ FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial
+ crown by, 1, 363.
+
+ Franciscans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Franconian Emperors, 133.
+
+ 'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
+
+ Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35;
+ Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due
+ to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
+
+ Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
+
+ Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note,
+ 404.
+
+ FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179;
+ his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope
+ Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way
+ to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III,
+ 170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions
+ of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy,
+ 174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175;
+ his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his
+ temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178;
+ his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and
+ happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his
+ jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his
+ letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
+
+ FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle
+ with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge
+ of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome,
+ 287.
+
+ FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220;
+ Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his
+ calamitous reign, 301.
+
+ FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by
+ Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
+
+ Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic
+ Emperors against, 388.
+
+
+ G.
+
+ Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
+
+ GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
+
+ 'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
+
+ Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the
+ theory of the Empire as an international power, 307;
+ attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed
+ to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
+
+ Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77;
+ chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79;
+ establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79;
+ desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86;
+ position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire
+ with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the
+ two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of,
+ generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth
+ century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope
+ against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court,
+ 169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179;
+ growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in,
+ 211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of
+ regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228;
+ kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately
+ became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228;
+ its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302;
+ its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal
+ weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with
+ that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the
+ Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its
+ nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its
+ troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the
+ peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty
+ independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its
+ political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign
+ thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression
+ upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular
+ feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354;
+ Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note;
+ influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
+
+ GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
+
+ Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
+
+ GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
+
+ Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28;
+ Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
+
+ Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth
+ centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman
+ Empire, 368.
+
+ Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire,
+ 210.
+
+ GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31;
+ means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority,
+ 154.
+
+ GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with
+ the Byzantine princes, 102.
+
+ GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour
+ against the Lombards, 39.
+
+ GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
+
+ GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures
+ to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his
+ letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second
+ excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle
+ between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the
+ rights of the Pope with respect to the election of
+ Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the
+ Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom,
+ 373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
+
+ GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives
+ the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
+
+ GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
+
+ GROTIUS, 384.
+
+ Guelf, the name of, 304.
+
+ GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
+
+ GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
+
+ GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
+
+ GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
+
+ GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
+
+
+ H.
+
+ HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the
+ Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to
+ Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
+
+ HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285;
+ his pretensions, 197.
+
+ HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis,
+ 30 note.
+
+ Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
+
+ Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
+
+ HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
+
+ HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
+
+ HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
+
+ HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector
+ of the German Liberties,' 325.
+
+ HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards
+ Frederick I, 186.
+
+ HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151;
+ his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his
+ encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
+
+ HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and
+ Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the
+ struggle, 162; his death, 162.
+
+ HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his
+ quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position,
+ 163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and
+ that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced
+ by his coronation, 285.
+
+ HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor
+ Sigismund, 187.
+
+ HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to
+ the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his
+ untimely death, 206.
+
+ HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
+
+ HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
+
+ Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
+
+ HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
+
+ HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past
+ and present of Rome, 406.
+
+ HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
+
+ HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
+
+ Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
+
+ Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
+
+ Holland, declared independent, 342.
+
+ Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ HUGH CAPET, 42.
+
+ HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
+
+ Hungarians, the, 143.
+
+ Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its
+ connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
+
+ HUSS, the writings of, 241.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
+
+ 'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
+
+ Imperialism, Roman, French, and Medival, 375.
+
+ Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
+
+ INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV,
+ 206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick
+ II, 208.
+
+ INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227
+ note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
+
+ International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman
+ Empire an, 248.
+
+ Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during,
+ 213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power,
+ 221.
+
+ Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
+
+ IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
+
+ Irminsl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning
+ of term, 69 note.
+
+ Italian Emperors, 80.
+
+ Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments
+ appeared, 140.
+
+ Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
+
+ Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to
+ establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by
+ Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of,
+ previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first
+ expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's
+ rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150;
+ Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire,
+ 211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation
+ at the present day, 389.
+
+ Italy, Southern, 150.
+
+
+ J.
+
+ JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
+
+ JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against
+ him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the
+ charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him,
+ 136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto,
+ 137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return
+ and death, 138.
+
+ JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
+
+ JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
+
+ JULIUS CSAR, 390, 392.
+
+ JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
+
+ Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31;
+ aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence
+ of the Empire on modern, 383.
+
+ Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
+
+ JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the
+ legislation of, 240, 256.
+
+ 'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory
+ IX, 102.
+
+ Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
+
+
+ K.
+
+ Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
+
+ Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
+
+
+ L.
+
+ LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire,
+ 21.
+
+ LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
+
+ Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the
+ Pope, 219.
+
+ Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
+
+ Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 53.
+
+ Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the
+ revived study of, 276.
+
+ Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
+
+ LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the
+ worship of images, 38.
+
+ LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44;
+ crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49;
+ charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the
+ act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
+
+ LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
+
+ Leonine city, the, 286 note.
+
+ LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
+
+ LEOPOLD II, 352.
+
+ LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
+
+ LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
+
+ LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
+
+ LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
+
+ LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and
+ Milan, 315.
+
+ LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
+
+ LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
+
+ LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
+
+ Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations
+ against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the
+ princess Theophano, 141.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the
+ exarchate, 38.
+
+ Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
+
+ Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion
+ to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks
+ against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by
+ Charlemagne, 41.
+
+ LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
+
+ LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
+
+ LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
+
+ Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
+
+ Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
+
+ LUTHER, 319.
+
+
+ M.
+
+ Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
+
+ Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
+
+ Mario (Monte), 283.
+
+ MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events
+ of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316,
+ 405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
+
+ Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ Medival art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
+
+ Medival monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
+
+ MICHAEL, 61.
+
+ MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
+
+ Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology
+ of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State
+ during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114;
+ art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133,
+ 261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms
+ and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or
+ progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of
+ the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the
+ clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by
+ the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for
+ unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity
+ of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the
+ political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of
+ saints during, 387.
+
+ Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the
+ rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287;
+ pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on,
+ 315.
+
+ Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
+
+ Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 54, 84.
+
+ MOMMSEN, 390.
+
+ Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
+
+ Monarchy, elective, 232.
+
+ Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ MLLER, Johannes von, 354.
+
+ Mnster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+
+ N.
+
+ Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of
+ Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
+
+ NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74;
+ extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West,
+ 357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne,
+ 358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in
+ Germany, 361.
+
+ Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations
+ of the Empire to the, 390.
+
+ Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against,
+ 388.
+
+ Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
+
+ Nica, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
+
+ NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
+
+ NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
+
+ NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope,
+ 158.
+
+ NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
+
+ Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of
+ the, 228.
+
+ Nrnberg, 259.
+
+
+ O.
+
+ OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
+
+ ODO, 81.
+
+ ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25;
+ his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title
+ of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
+
+ OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra
+ Donatistas_, 13 note.
+
+ Orsini, the family of, 281.
+
+ Osnabrck, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+ Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
+
+ OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first
+ expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to,
+ 84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of
+ Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to
+ sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire
+ under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the
+ Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the
+ imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128;
+ changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130;
+ the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which
+ befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and
+ manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136;
+ deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his
+ suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of
+ John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans
+ of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium,
+ 141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano,
+ 141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern
+ and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144;
+ comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial
+ results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
+
+ OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
+
+ OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense
+ religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason
+ for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early
+ death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in
+ which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with
+ Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people,
+ 285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
+
+ OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206;
+ overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal
+ of, 266 note.
+
+
+ P.
+
+ PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity
+ to Clovis, 30 note.
+
+ PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
+
+ Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
+
+ Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad
+ relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204;
+ growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire,
+ 153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon,
+ 359.
+
+ Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its
+ consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their
+ relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as
+ perpetuation of a name, 372.
+
+ Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
+
+ Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
+
+ PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
+
+ Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when
+ it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
+
+ PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of
+ the Empire, 224.
+
+ Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
+
+ Persecution, Protestant, 330.
+
+ Peter's (St.), old, 48.
+
+ PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the
+ city of Rome, 270.
+
+ PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
+
+ PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick
+ and, 206; his assassination, 206.
+
+ Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
+
+ PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice
+ rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of
+ Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date
+ at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
+
+ PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
+
+ Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
+
+ Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
+
+ Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
+
+ Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the
+ Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons
+ for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46;
+ their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57;
+ their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their
+ theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their
+ position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions,
+ 108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the
+ Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as
+ international judges, 243; reaction against their
+ pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of
+ ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans,
+ 284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors
+ and, 385.
+
+ PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
+
+ Prtaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
+
+ Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
+
+ Prague, University of, 237.
+
+ Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad
+ II and death of Henry V, 165.
+
+ Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
+
+ Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
+
+ Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation,
+ 330.
+
+ Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
+
+ Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the,
+ 313.
+
+
+ R.
+
+ RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the
+ separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
+
+ Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
+
+ Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude
+ towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire,
+ 319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the
+ doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent
+ effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence
+ on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the
+ Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name
+ and associations of the Empire, 332.
+
+ Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars
+ of, 330.
+
+ Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
+
+ 'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal
+ bearing legend of, 103.
+
+ Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation
+ of the, 362.
+
+ RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor
+ Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
+
+ RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with
+ Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
+
+ RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
+
+ RICIMER (patrician), 25.
+
+ RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting,
+ 255; his character and career, 278.
+
+ Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII,
+ 137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their
+ revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the
+ title of King of the, 404.
+
+ Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
+
+ Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7;
+ prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire,
+ 9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32;
+ claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown,
+ 57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83;
+ profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold
+ of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle
+ Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller
+ in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities
+ of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth
+ to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and
+ tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in,
+ 276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277;
+ causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in,
+ 280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her
+ nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to,
+ 282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the
+ Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II,
+ 287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of medival
+ monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289;
+ ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290;
+ tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner,
+ 290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291;
+ her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and
+ Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy
+ between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical
+ constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297;
+ feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of
+ the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's
+ lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
+
+ ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding,
+ 25.
+
+ RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
+
+ RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress
+ under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast
+ of, 231 note, 262.
+
+ RUDOLF II, 335.
+
+ RUDOLF III, 151.
+
+ RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
+
+ RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath
+ Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
+
+ Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
+
+
+ S.
+
+ Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
+
+ SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
+
+ Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
+
+ Saxon Emperors, 133.
+
+ Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the
+ Empire, 398.
+
+ Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
+
+ SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5,
+ 6.
+
+ SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
+
+ Seven Years' War, 352.
+
+ Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation,
+ 34.
+
+ Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
+
+ SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the
+ Council of Constance, 253, 301.
+
+ Simony, measures taken against, 158.
+
+ Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
+
+ Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
+
+ Southern Italy, 150.
+
+ Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany,
+ 303.
+
+ Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
+
+ STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
+
+ Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of,
+ 223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of,
+ respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
+
+ Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
+
+ Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of
+ Westphalia, 341.
+
+ Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
+
+ SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
+
+
+ T.
+
+ Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
+
+ TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21
+ note, 23 note.
+
+ TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
+
+ Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a
+ national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his
+ usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his
+ reign, 29.
+
+ THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose,
+ 12.
+
+ THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
+
+ Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336;
+ its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
+
+ THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of
+ Emperors, 227.
+
+ Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
+
+ Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
+
+ Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
+
+ Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
+
+ 'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
+
+ Transubstantiation, 326 note.
+
+ Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire,
+ 368.
+
+ TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
+
+
+ U.
+
+ University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
+
+ Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
+
+ URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king,
+ 229.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards,
+ 188; maintains her independence, 188.
+
+ Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
+
+ VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
+
+ Vienna, Congress of, 364.
+
+ VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304;
+ his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
+
+ Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by
+ the, 30.
+
+
+ W.
+
+ WALLENSTEIN, 335.
+
+ WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
+
+ Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France,
+ 341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history,
+ 342.
+
+ WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
+
+ WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
+
+ WIPPO, 227 note.
+
+ WITUKIND, 85 note.
+
+ WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
+
+ World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics
+ upon the theory, 97.
+
+ World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the
+ World-Empire, 92.
+
+ Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Holy Roman Empire
+
+Author: James Bryce
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2013 [EBook #44101]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Rowland, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tnbox">
+<p class="center"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b></p>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original
+document have been preserved.</p>
+</div>
+
+<h1>THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.</h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter p4">
+<img src="images/i_002.jpg" width="104" height="103" alt="Logo" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center p6"><span class="b12">THE</span><br />
+<br /><span class="b20">HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE</span></p>
+
+<p class="center p4">BY<br />
+<span class="b15">JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.</span><br />
+<span class="s08"><i>FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE</i></span><br />
+<span class="s08"><i>and</i></span><br />
+<span class="s08"><i>PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="center p4">THIRD EDITION REVISED</p>
+
+<p class="center p4"><span class="b13">London</span><br />
+<span class="b12">MACMILLAN AND CO.</span><br />
+1871</p>
+
+<p class="center p6 s08">
+OXFORD:<br />
+By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,<br />
+PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.</p>
+
+<h2>PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.</h2>
+
+<p>The object of this treatise is not so much to give a
+narrative history of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic
+Empire&mdash;Italy during the middle ages, Germany
+from the ninth century to the nineteenth&mdash;as to
+describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or
+system, the wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and
+traditions which have almost wholly passed away from
+the world. Such a description, however, would not be
+intelligible without some account of the great events
+which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial
+power; and it has therefore appeared best to give the
+book the form rather of a narrative than of a dissertation;
+and to combine with an exposition of what may be
+called the theory of the Empire an outline of the political
+history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
+of mediæval Italy. To make the succession of events
+clearer, a Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has
+been prefixed<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>The present edition has been carefully revised and
+corrected throughout; and a good many additions have
+been made to both text and notes.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="smcap i3">Lincoln's Inn</span>,<br />
+<span class="i2"><i>August 11, 1870</i>.</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_VII" id="Page_VII">vii</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Table of Contents">
+
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_1">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Introductory.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_5">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Roman Empire before the Invasion of the Barbarians.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Empire in the Second Century</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Obliteration of National distinctions</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Rise of Christianity</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Its Alliance with the State</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_14">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Barbarian Invasions.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Relations between the Primitive Germans and the Romans</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Their Feelings towards Rome and her Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Belief in its Eternity</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Theodoric the Ostrogothic King</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Gradual Dissolution of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Permanence of the Roman Religion and the Roman Law</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_34">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Restoration of the Empire in the West.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Franks</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Italy under Greeks and Lombards</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Iconoclastic Schism</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_38">38</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_VIII" id="Page_VIII">viii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Frankish Conquest of Italy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Adventures and Plans of Pope Leo III</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Coronation of Charles the Great</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_50">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Empire and Policy of Charles.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Import of the Coronation at Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Accounts given in the Annals of the time</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Question as to the Intentions of Charles</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Legal Effect of the Coronation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Position of Charles towards the Church</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Towards his German Subjects</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Towards the other Races of Europe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">General View of his Character and Policy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_76">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Carolingian and Italian Emperors.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Reign of Lewis I</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Beginnings of the German Kingdom</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Italian Emperors</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_80">80</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Otto the Saxon King</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Coronation of Otto at Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_89">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Theory of the Mediæval Empire.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The World Monarchy and the World Religion</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Unity of the Christian Church</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Influence of the Doctrine of Realism</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Popes as heirs to the Roman Monarchy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Character of the revived Roman Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Proofs and Illustrations</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Interpretations of Prophecy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_112">112</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Two remarkable Pictures</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_116">116</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_IX" id="Page_IX">ix</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_122">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The German or East Frankish Monarchy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Feudality in Germany</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
+the Character of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_127">127</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_133">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Saxon and Franconian Emperors.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Trial and Deposition of Pope John XII</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Position of Otto in Italy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">His European Policy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Emperor Henry III</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_153">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Origin and Progress of Papal Power</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Gregory's Ideas</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Concordat of Worms</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">General Results of the Contest</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_167">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Frederick and the Papacy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_167">167</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Revival of the Study of the Roman Law</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">His Policy as German King</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">178</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_X" id="Page_X">x</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_182">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Imperial Titles and Pretensions.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Territorial Limits of the Empire&mdash;Its Claims of Jurisdiction
+over other Countries</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hungary</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_183">183</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Poland</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Denmark</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">France</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sweden</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Spain</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">England</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Scotland</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Naples and Sicily</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Venice</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">The East</td>
+
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Rivalry of the Teutonic and Byzantine Emperors</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Four Crowns</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Origin and Meaning of the title 'Holy Empire'</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_204">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Fall of the Hohenstaufen.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Reign of Henry VI</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_205">205</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Contest of Philip and Otto IV</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Great Interregnum</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Rudolf of Hapsburg</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_213">213</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Change in the Character of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_214">214</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Haughty Demeanour of the Popes</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_221">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Germanic Constitution&mdash;the Seven Electors.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Germany in the Fourteenth Century</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_222">222</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Reign of the Emperor Charles IV</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
+Electoral Body</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_225">225</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XI" id="Page_XI">xi</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Golden Bull</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Results of Charles IV's Policy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_238">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Empire as an International Power.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Revival of Learning</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_240">240</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Beginnings of Political Thought</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Desire for an International Power</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Illustrations</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_249">249</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Relations of the Empire and the New Learning</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Men of Letters&mdash;Petrarch, Dante</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Jurists</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_256">256</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages: its Causes</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Emperor Henry VII in Italy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_262">262</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The <i>De Monarchia</i> of Dante</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_269">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The City of Rome in the Middle Ages.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Her Condition in the Dark Ages</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Social State of Mediæval Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Visits of the Teutonic Emperors</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Revolts against them</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Want of Mediæval, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
+Modern Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Causes of this; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Modern Restorations</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Surviving Features of truly Mediæval Architecture&mdash;the Bell-towers</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_294">294</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Roman Church and the Roman City</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Rome since the Revolution</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_299">299</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XII" id="Page_XII">xii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_301">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Weakness of Germany</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Loss of Imperial Territories</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Discovery of America</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Renaissance and its Effects on the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Projects of Constitutional Reform</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_313">313</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Changes of Title</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_319">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Reformation and its Effects upon the Empire.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Accession of Charles V</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">His Attitude towards the Reformation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Issue of his Attempts at Coercion</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_327">327</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">How far it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Its Effect upon the Mediæval Theory of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_332">332</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Dissensions in Germany</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Thirty Years' War</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_337">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline
+of the Empire.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_337">337</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Changes in the Germanic Constitution</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Narrowed Bounds of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Condition of Germany after the Peace</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Balance of Power</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_348">348</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XIII" id="Page_XIII">xiii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Emperor Charles VII</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_351">351</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Empire in its last Phase</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_352">352</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Feelings of the German People</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_356">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Fall of the Empire.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Emperor Francis II</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_356">356</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Napoleon as the Representative of the Carolingians</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The French Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_360">360</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Napoleon's German Policy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Confederation of the Rhine</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">End of the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The German Confederation</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_364">364</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="3"><a href="#Page_366">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdcname" colspan="3">Conclusion: General Summary.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_366">366</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Parallel instances: Claims now made to represent the Roman
+Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_367">367</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_369">369</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">In how far was the Empire really Roman</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_374">374</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Imperialism: Ancient and Modern</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_375">375</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Essential Principles of the Mediæval Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_377">377</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Influence of the Imperial System in Germany</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_378">378</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">The Claim of Modern Austria to represent the Mediæval Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_381">381</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_383">383</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Upon Modern Jurisprudence</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_383">383</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Upon the Development of the Ecclesiastical Power</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_384">384</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_388">388</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Its Relations, Past and Present, to the Nationalities of Europe</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_390">390</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang" colspan="2">Conclusion: Difficulties caused by the Nature of the Subject</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_392">392</a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XIV" id="Page_XIV">xiv</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<h2>APPENDIX.</h2>
+<table summary="Appendix Contents">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Note A.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang">On the Burgundies</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_395">395</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Note B.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang">On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark
+and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_398">398</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Note C.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang">On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_400">400</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdchap" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Note D.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang">Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_406">406</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdpad tdhang">INDEX</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_407">407</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XV" id="Page_XV">xv</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="s08">DATES OF</span><br /><br />
+SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS<br /><br />
+<span class="s08">IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+<table summary="Important Dates">
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2" class="tdr"><span class="s08">B.C.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Battle of Pharsalia</td>
+<td class="tdr">48</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td colspan="2" class="tdr"><span class="s08">A.D.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Council of Nicæa</td>
+<td class="tdr">325</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>End of the separate Western Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr">476</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Revolt of the Italians from the Iconoclastic Emperors</td>
+<td class="tdr">728</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Coronation of Charles the Great</td>
+<td class="tdr">800</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>End of the Carolingian Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr">888</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Coronation of Otto the Great</td>
+<td class="tdr">962</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Final Union of Italy to the Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr">1014</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII</td>
+<td class="tdr">1076</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>The First Crusade</td>
+<td class="tdr">1096</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Battle of Legnano</td>
+<td class="tdr">1176</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Death of Frederick II</td>
+<td class="tdr">1250</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>League of the three Forest Cantons of Switzerland</td>
+<td class="tdr">1308</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Career of Rienzi</td>
+<td class="tdr">1347-1354</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>The Golden Bull</td>
+<td class="tdr">1356</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Council of Constance</td>
+<td class="tdr">1415</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Extinction of the Eastern Empire</td>
+<td class="tdr">1453</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Discovery of America</td>
+<td class="tdr">1492</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Luther at the Diet of Worms</td>
+<td class="tdr">1521
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XVI" id="Page_XVI">xvi</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Beginning of the Thirty Years' War</td>
+<td class="tdr">1618</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Peace of Westphalia</td>
+<td class="tdr">1648</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Prussia recognized as a Kingdom</td>
+<td class="tdr">1701</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>End of the House of Hapsburg</td>
+<td class="tdr">1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Seven Years' War</td>
+<td class="tdr">1756-1763</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Peace of Luneville</td>
+<td class="tdr">1801</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Formation of the German Confederation</td>
+<td class="tdr">1815</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Establishment of the North German Confederation</td>
+<td class="tdr">1866</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XVII" id="Page_XVII">xvii</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><span class="s08">CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE</span><br />
+<span class="s05">of</span><br />
+EMPERORS AND POPES.</h2>
+
+<table summary="Emperors and Popes" class="emperors">
+<col width="8%" />
+<col width="42%" />
+<col width="42%" />
+<col width="8%" />
+<tr>
+<th>Year of Accession.</th>
+<th>Bishops of Rome, or Popes.</th>
+<th>Emperors.</th>
+<th>Year of Accession</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu"><span class="s08">A.D.</span></td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd"><span class="s08">B.C.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Augustus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">27</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd"><span class="s08">A.D.</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Tiberius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">14</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Caligula.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">37</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Claudius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">41</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">42</td>
+<td class="tdhang">St. Peter, (according to Jerome).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nero.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">54</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">67</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Linus, (according to Jerome, Irenæus, Eusebius).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">68</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement, (according to Tertullian and Rufinus).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">68</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">78</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anacletus (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Titus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">79</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Domitian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">81</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">91</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement, (according to later writers).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nerva.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">96</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Trajan.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">98</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">100</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Evaristus (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">109</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">117</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">119</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sixtus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">129</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Telesphorus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Antoninus Pius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">138</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">139</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hyginus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">143</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XVIII" id="Page_XVIII">xviii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">157</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anicetus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcus Aurelius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">161</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">168</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Soter.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">177</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eleutherius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Commodus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">180</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pertinax.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">190</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Didius Julianus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">191</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Niger.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">192</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">193</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Victor (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Septimius Severus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">193</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">202</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Zephyrinus (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Caracalla, Geta, Diadumenian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">211</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Opilius Macrinus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">217</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Elagabalus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">218</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">219</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Calixtus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander Severus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">222</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">223</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">230</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pontianus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">235</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anterius or Anteros.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Maximin.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">235</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">236</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Fabianus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">The two Gordians, Maximus Pupienus, Balbinus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">237</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gordian the Younger.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">238</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Philip.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">244</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Decius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">249</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">251</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Cornelius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gallus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">251</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">252</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lucius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Volusian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">252</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">253</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Æmilian, Valerian, Gallienus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">253</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">257</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sixtus II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">259</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Dionysius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Claudius II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">268</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">269</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Felix.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Aurelian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">270</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">275</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eutychianus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Tacitus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">275</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Probus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">276</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Carus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">282</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">283</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Caius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Carinus, Numerian, Diocletian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">284</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Maximian, joint Emperor with Diocletian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">286</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">296</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcellinus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdc">[305(?)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">304</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantius, Galerius.</td>
+<td class="tdc">304(?)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XIX" id="Page_XIX">xix</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Licinius.</td>
+<td class="tdc">or 307]</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">308</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcellus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Maximin.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">308</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine, Galerius, Licinius, Maximin, Maxentius, and Maximian reigning jointly.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">309</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">310</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eusebius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">311</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Melchiades.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">314</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sylvester I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine (the Great) alone.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">323</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">336</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">337</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Julius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine II, Constantius II, Constans.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">337</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Magnentius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">350</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">352</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Liberius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantius alone.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">353</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">356</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Felix (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Julian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">361</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Jovian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">363</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Valens and Valentinian I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">364</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">366</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Damasus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gratian and Valentinian I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">367</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Valentinian II and Gratian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">375</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodosius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">379</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">384</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Siricius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Arcadius (in the East), Honorius (in the West).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">395</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">398</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">402</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodosius II. (E)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">408</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">417</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Zosimus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">418</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">418</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eulalius (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">422</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Celestine I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Valentinian III. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">424</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">432</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sixtus III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">440</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo I (the Great).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcian. (E)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">450</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Maximus, Avitus. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">455</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Majorian. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">455</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo I. (E)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">457</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">461</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hilarius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Severus. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">461
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XX" id="Page_XX">xx</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">465</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anthemius. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">467</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">468</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Simplicius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Olybrius. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">472</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Glycerius. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">473</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Julius Nepos. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">474</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus (all E.)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">474</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Romulus Augustulus. (W)</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">475</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(End of the Western Line in Romulus Augustus.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">476)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>(Henceforth, till A.D. 800, Emperors reigning at Constantinople).</i></td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">483</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Felix III<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">491</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">492</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gelasius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">496</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">498</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Symmachus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">498</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Laurentius (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">514</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hormisdas.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Justin I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">518</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">523</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">526</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Felix IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Justinian.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">527</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">530</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">530</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Dioscorus (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">532</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">535</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Agapetus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">536</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Silverius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">537</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vigilius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">555</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pelagius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">560</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Justin II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">565</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">574</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">578</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pelagius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Tiberius II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">578</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Maurice.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">582</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">590</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory I (the Great).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Phocas.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">602</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">604</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sabinianus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">607</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">607</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Heraclius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">610</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">615</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Deus dedit.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">618</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXI" id="Page_XXI">xxi</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">625</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Honorius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">638</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Severinus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">640</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine III, Heracleonas, Constans II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">641</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">642</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodorus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">649</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Martin I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">654</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eugenius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">657</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vitalianus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine IV (Pogonatus).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">668</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">672</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Adeodatus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">676</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Domnus or Donus I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">678</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Agatho.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">682</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">683(?)</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">685</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Justinian II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">685</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">685(?)</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Conon.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">687</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sergius I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">687</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paschal (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">687</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodorus (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leontius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">694</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Tiberius.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">697</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">701</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">705</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Justinian II restored.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">705</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">708</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sisinnius.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">708</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Philippicus Bardanes.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">711</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">713</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">715</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodosius III.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">716</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo III (the Isaurian).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">718</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">731</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">741</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Zacharias.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine V (Copronymus).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">741</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">752</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen (II).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">752</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen II (or III).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">757</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paul I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">767</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">768</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen III (IV).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">772</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo IV.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">775</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Constantine VI.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">780</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">795</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Deposition of Constantine VI by Irene.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">797
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXII" id="Page_XXII">xxii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Charles I (the Great).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">800</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>(Following henceforth the new Western line).</i></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lewis I (the Pious).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">814</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">816</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">817</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paschal I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">824</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eugenius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">827</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Valentinus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">827</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lothar I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">840</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">844</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sergius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">847</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">855</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lewis II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">855</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">855</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">858</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nicholas I.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">867</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">872</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Charles II (the Bald).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">875</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Charles III (the Fat).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">881</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">882</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Martin II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">884</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">885</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">891</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Formosus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Guido.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">891</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lambert.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">894</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">896</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Arnulf.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">896</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">896</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">897</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Romanus.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">897</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Theodore II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">898</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>Lewis (the Child).</i><a name="FNanchor_dag" id="FNanchor_dag" href="#Footnote_dag" class="fnanchor">[&dagger;]</a></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">899</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">900</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lewis III (of Provence).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">901</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">903</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">903</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Christopher.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">904</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sergius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">911</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>Conrad I.</i></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">912(?)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">913</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lando.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">914</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Berengar.</td>
+<td class="tdrvu">915</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>Henry I (the Fowler).</i></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">918</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">928</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXIII" id="Page_XXIII">xxiii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">929</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">931</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">936</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>Otto I (the Great).</i></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">936</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">939</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">941</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Martin III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">946</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Agapetus II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">955</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Otto I, crowned at Rome.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">962</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">963</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">964</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">965</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">972</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Otto II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">973</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">974</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">974</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Domnus II (?).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">974</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">983</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XIV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Otto III</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">983</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">985</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">996</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">996</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XVI (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">999</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sylvester II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry II (the Saint).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1002</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1003</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XVII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1003</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XVIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1009</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sergius IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1012</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1024</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XIX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Conrad II (the Salic).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1024</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1033</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry III.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1039</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1044</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sylvester (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1045(?)</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1046</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1048</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Damasus II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1048</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1054</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Victor II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry IV.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1056</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1057</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Stephen IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1058</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1059</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nicholas II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1061</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1073</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory VII (Hildebrand).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1080</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Clement, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1086</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Victor III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1087</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXIV" id="Page_XXIV">xxiv</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1099</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paschal II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry V.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1106</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1118</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gelasius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1118</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory, (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1119</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Calixtus II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1121</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Celestine, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1124</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Honorius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lothar II (the Saxon).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1125</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1130</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Anacletus, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1138</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Victor (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a name="FNanchor_star" id="FNanchor_star" href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Conrad III.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1138</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1143</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Celestine II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1144</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lucius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1145</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eugenius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Frederick I (Barbarossa).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1152</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1153</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Anastasius IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1154</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1159</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1159</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Victor, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1164</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Paschal, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1168</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Calixtus, Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1181</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lucius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1185</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1187</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1187</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry VI.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1190</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1191</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Celestine III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1198</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Philip, Otto IV (rivals).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1198</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Otto IV.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1208</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Frederick II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1212</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1216</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Honorius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1227</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1241</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Celestine IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1241</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1243</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Conrad IV, <a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>William, (rivals).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1250</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1254</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><i>Interregnum.</i></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1254</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Richard (earl of Cornwall). <a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Alfonso (king of Castile), (rivals).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1257</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1261</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXV" id="Page_XXV">xxv</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1265</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1269</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1271</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Rudolf I (of Hapsburg).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1272</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1276</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1276</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1277</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XX or XXI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1277</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nicholas I</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1281</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Martin IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1285</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Honorius IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1289</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nicholas IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1292</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy.</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Adolf (of Nassau).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1292</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1294</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Celestine V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1294</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Albert I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1298</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1303</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1305</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Henry VII.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1308</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1314</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Vacancy.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Lewis IV.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1314</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Frederick of Austria, rival).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1316</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XXI or XXII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1334</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1342</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Charles IV.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1347</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1352</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Günther of Schwartzburg, rival).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1362</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1370</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1378</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban VI, Clement VII (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Wenzel.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1378</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1389</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Boniface IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1394</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Rupert.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1400</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1404</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1406</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1409</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1410</td>
+<td class="tdhang">John XXII or XXIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sigismund.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1410</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">(Jobst of Moravia, rival).</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1417</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Martin V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1431</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Eugene IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Albert II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1438</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1439</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Felix V (Anti-pope).</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXVI" id="Page_XXVI">xxvi</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Frederick III.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1440</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1447</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Nicholas V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1455</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Calixtus IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1458</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1464</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paul II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1471</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sixtus IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1484</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1493</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Maximilian I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1493</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1503</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1503</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Julius II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1513</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Charles V.<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1519</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1522</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Hadrian VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1523</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1534</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paul III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1550</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Julius III.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1555</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Marcellus II.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1555</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paul IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Ferdinand I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1558</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1559</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius IV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Maximilian II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1564</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1566</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1572</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Rudolf II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1576</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1585</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Sixtus V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1590</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1590</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XIV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1591</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1592</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1604</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1604</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Paul V.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Matthias.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1612</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Ferdinand II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1619</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1621</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1623</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Urban VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Ferdinand III.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1637</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1644</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1655</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Leopold I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1658</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1667</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_XXVII" id="Page_XXVII">xxvii</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1670</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement X.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1676</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1689</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Alexander VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1691</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1700</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement XI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Joseph I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1705</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Charles VI.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1711</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1720</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Innocent XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1724</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1740</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Benedict XIV.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Charles VII.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1742</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Francis I.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1745</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1758</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Joseph II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1765</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1769</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Clement XIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1775</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius VI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Leopold II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1790</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang"><a href="#Footnote_star" class="fnanchor">[&#42;]</a>Francis II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1792</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1800</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius VII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Abdication of Francis II.</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">1806</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1823</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Leo XII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1829</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius VIII.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1831</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Gregory XVI.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdrvu">1846</td>
+<td class="tdhang">Pius IX.</td>
+<td class="tdhang">&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="tdrvd">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_dag" id="Footnote_dag" href="#FNanchor_dag"><span class="label">[&dagger;]</span></a>The names in italics are those of German kings who never made any claim
+to the imperial title.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_star" id="Footnote_star" href="#FNanchor_star"><span class="label">[&#42;]</span></a>
+Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center b15 p6">THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE.</p>
+
+<h2 class="p2">CHAPTER I.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">INTRODUCTORY.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English
+newspapers that the Emperor Francis II had announced
+to the Diet his resignation of the imperial
+crown, there were probably few who reflected that the
+oldest political institution in the world had come to
+an end. Yet it was so. The Empire which a note
+issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the Danube
+extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew
+of Julius had won for himself, against the powers of
+the East, beneath the cliffs of Actium; and which had
+preserved almost unaltered, through eighteen centuries
+of time, and through the greatest changes in extent, in
+power, in character, a title and pretensions from which
+all meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so
+directly linked the old world to the new&mdash;nothing else
+displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and
+the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much
+of European history. From the days of Constantine till
+far down into the middle ages it was, conjointly with the
+Papacy, the recognised centre and head of Christendom,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span>
+exercising over the minds of men an influence such as
+its material strength could never have commanded. It
+is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power
+rather than of the external history of the Empire, that
+the following pages are designed to treat. That history
+is indeed full of interest and brilliance, of grand characters
+and striking situations. But it is a subject too
+vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of
+detail sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us
+a lively sympathy with the actors, a narrative history can
+have little value and still less charm. But to trace with
+any minuteness the career of the Empire, would be to
+write the history of Christendom from the fifth century
+to the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth
+to the nineteenth; while even a narrative of more restricted
+scope, which should attempt to disengage from
+a general account of the affairs of those countries the
+events that properly belong to imperial history, could
+hardly be compressed within reasonable limits. It is
+therefore better, declining so great a task, to attempt
+one simpler and more practicable though not necessarily
+inferior in interest; to speak less of events than
+of principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not
+as a State but as an Institution, an institution created by
+and embodying a wonderful system of ideas. In pursuance
+of such a plan, the forms which the Empire took
+in the several stages of its growth and decline must be
+briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great
+men who founded, guided, and overthrew it must from
+time to time be touched upon. But the chief aim of
+the treatise will be to dwell more fully on the inner
+nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of
+the fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span>
+civilization: to shew how such a combination was possible;
+how Charles and Otto were led to revive the
+imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns
+of their successors it preserved the memory of its
+origin, and influenced the European commonwealth of
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 <span class="s08">A.D.</span>, when
+a King of the Franks was crowned Emperor of the
+Romans by Pope Leo III, that the beginning of the Holy
+Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there is
+nothing isolated, and just as to explain a modern Act
+of Parliament or a modern conveyance of lands we must
+go back to the feudal customs of the thirteenth century,
+so among the institutions of the Middle Ages there is
+scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced
+up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic antiquity.
+Such a mode of inquiry is most of all needful in the case
+of the Holy Empire, itself no more than a tradition, a
+fancied revival of departed glories. And thus, in order
+to make it clear out of what elements the imperial system
+was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the antiquities
+of the Christian Church; to survey the constitution
+of Rome in the days when Rome was no more
+than the first of the Latin cities; nay, to travel back yet
+further to that Jewish theocratic polity whose influence
+on the minds of the mediæval priesthood was necessarily
+so profound. Practically, however, it may suffice to begin
+by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in
+the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era. We
+shall then see the old Empire with its scheme of absolutism
+fully matured; we shall mark how the new religion,
+rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by
+embracing and transforming it; and we shall be in a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span>
+position to understand what impression the whole huge
+fabric of secular and ecclesiastical government which
+Roman and Christian had piled up made upon the barbarian
+tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the
+ancient civilization.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE INVASIONS OF THE
+BARBARIANS.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Roman
+Empire in
+the second
+century.</p>
+
+<p>That ostentation of humility which the subtle policy
+of Augustus had conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy
+of Tiberius maintained, was gradually dropped by their
+successors, till despotism became at last recognised in
+principle as the government of the Roman Empire.
+With an aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an
+army no longer recruited from Italy, the semblance of
+liberty that yet survived might be swept away with impunity.
+Republican forms had never been known in the
+provinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial administration
+had originally assumed there, soon reacted
+on its position in the capital. Earlier rulers had disguised
+their supremacy by making a slavish senate the
+instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time
+went on, even this veil was withdrawn; and in the age of
+Septimius Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole
+Roman world as the single centre and source of power
+and political action. The warlike character of the Roman
+state was preserved in his title of General; his provincial
+lieutenants were military governors; and a more
+terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span>
+dependence on the army, at once the origin and support
+of all authority. But, as he united in himself every
+function of government, his sovereignty was civil as well
+as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted
+under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered
+on divinity. This increased concentration of power
+was mainly required by the necessities of frontier defence,
+for within there was more decay than disaffection. Few
+troops were quartered through the country: few fortresses
+checked the march of armies in the struggles which
+placed Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant
+crash of war from the Rhine or the Euphrates was
+scarcely heard or heeded in the profound quiet of the
+Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had disappeared.
+No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that
+calm, for all national distinctions were becoming merged
+<span class="sidenote">Obliteration
+of national
+distinctions.</span>
+in the idea of a common Empire. The gradual extension
+of Roman citizenship through the <i>coloniæ</i>, the working
+of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the even
+pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement
+of population caused by commerce and the slave
+traffic, were steadily assimilating the various peoples.
+Emperors who were for the most part natives of the
+provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate Rome:
+it was their policy to keep open for every subject a
+career by whose freedom they had themselves risen to
+greatness, and to recruit the senate from the most illustrious
+families in the cities of Gaul, Spain, and Asia.
+The edict by which Caracalla extended to all natives
+of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship,
+though prompted by no motives of kindness, proved in
+the end a boon. Annihilating legal distinctions, it completed
+the work which trade and literature and toleration
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span>
+to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left,
+so far as we can tell, only two nations still cherishing
+a national feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his
+religion: the Greek boasted his original intellectual superiority.
+Speculative philosophy lent her aid to this
+general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a
+universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between
+man and man seem insignificant: and by its
+teachers the idea of cosmopolitanism was for the first
+time proclaimed. Alexandrian Neo-Platonism, uniting
+the tenets of many schools, first bringing the mysticism
+of the East into connection with the logical philosophies
+of Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement
+or controversy for the minds of all the world. Yet
+<span class="sidenote">The Capital.</span>
+Rome's commanding position was scarcely shaken. Her
+actual power was indeed confined within narrow limits.
+Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose
+the sovereign: more rarely still could they control his
+policy; neither law nor custom raised them above other
+subjects, or accorded to them any advantage in the career
+of civil or military ambition. As in time past Rome had
+sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress
+of others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had
+descended to the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice
+had not wanted its reward. From her came the
+laws and the language that had overspread the world:
+at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour:
+she was the head of the Empire and of civilization, and
+in riches, fame, and splendour far outshone as well the
+cities of that time as the fabled glories of Babylon or
+Persepolis.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Diocletian
+and Constantine.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought
+about this unity, when other influences began to threaten
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span>
+it. New foes assailed the frontiers; while the loosening
+of the structure within was shewn by the long struggles
+for power which followed the death or deposition of each
+successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the
+fall of Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in
+every part of the Empire, and ruled great provinces as
+monarchs apart, owning no allegiance to the possessor
+of the capital.</p>
+
+<p>The founding of the kingdoms of modern Europe
+might have been anticipated by two hundred years, had
+the barbarians been bolder, or had there not arisen
+in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough to
+bind up the fragments before they had lost all cohesion,
+meeting altered conditions by new remedies. By
+dividing and localizing authority, he confessed that the
+weaker heart could no longer make its pulsations felt
+to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the supreme
+power among four persons, and then sought to give it a
+factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental
+pomp which his earlier predecessors would have scorned.
+The sovereign's person became more sacred, and was
+removed further from the subject by the interposition of
+a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was menaced
+by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness
+of Milan. Constantine trod in the same path,
+extending the system of titles and functionaries, separating
+the civil from the military, placing counts and
+dukes along the frontiers and in the cities, making the
+household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more
+important, though to a Roman eye degraded by their
+attachment to the monarch's person. The crown became,
+for the first time, the fountain of honour. These
+changes brought little good. Heavier taxation depressed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span>
+the aristocracy<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a>:
+population decreased, agriculture withered,
+serfdom spread: it was found more difficult to raise native
+troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal of
+the seat of power to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life
+of a part of the Empire, shook it as a whole, by making
+the separation of East and West inevitable. By it Rome's
+self-abnegation that she might Romanize the world, was
+completed; for though the new capital preserved her
+name, and followed her customs and precedents, yet now
+the imperial sway ceased to be connected with the city
+which had created it. Thus did the idea of Roman
+monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its
+local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so
+to speak, naturally, as a part of an order of things which
+a change in external conditions seemed incapable of disturbing.
+Henceforth the Empire would be unaffected by
+the disasters of the city. And though, after the partition
+of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian, and
+finally settled on the death of Theodosius, the seat of the
+Western government was removed first to Milan and then
+to Ravenna, neither event destroyed Rome's prestige, nor
+the notion of a single imperial nationality common to
+all her subjects. The Syrian, the Pannonian, the Briton,
+the Spaniard, still called himself a Roman<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Christianity.</p>
+
+<p>For that nationality was now beginning to be supported
+by a new and vigorous power. The Emperors
+had indeed opposed it as disloyal and revolutionary: had
+more than once put forth their whole strength to root it
+out. But the unity of the Empire, and the ease of communication
+through its parts, had favoured the spread of
+Christianity: persecution had scattered the seeds more
+widely, had forced on it a firm organization, had given it
+martyr-heroes and a history. When Constantine, partly
+perhaps from a genuine moral sympathy, yet doubtless
+far more in the well-grounded belief that he had more
+to gain from the zealous sympathy of its professors than
+he could lose by the aversion of those who still cultivated
+a languid paganism, took Christianity to be the religion
+of the Empire, it was already a great political force, able,
+and not more able than willing, to repay him by aid and
+submission.
+<span class="sidenote">Its alliance
+with the
+State.</span>
+Yet the league was struck in no mere mercenary
+spirit, for the league was inevitable. Of the evils
+and dangers incident to the system then founded, there
+was as yet no experience: of that antagonism between
+Church and State which to a modern appears so natural,
+there was not even an idea. Among the Jews, the State
+had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion
+had been an integral part of the political constitution, a
+matter far more of national or tribal or family feeling
+than of personal<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a>. Both in Israel and at Rome the
+mingling of religious with civic patriotism had been harmonious,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span>
+giving strength and elasticity to the whole body
+politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible
+in the Roman Empire, for the new faith had already a
+governing body of her own in those rulers and teachers
+whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of sacerdotalism
+its necessary consequence, was making every day more
+powerful, and marking off more sharply from the mass
+of the Christian people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical
+organization could not be identical with the civil, it became
+its counterpart. Suddenly called from danger and
+ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her inexperience
+perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied,
+the Church was compelled to frame herself upon the
+model of the secular administration. Where her own
+machinery was defective, as in the case of doctrinal disputes
+affecting the whole Christian world, she sought the
+interposition of the sovereign; in all else she strove not
+to sink in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system.
+And just as with the extension of the Empire all
+the independent rights of districts, towns, or tribes had
+disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and diversity
+of individual Christians and local Churches, already circumscribed
+by the frequent struggles against heresy, was
+finally overborne by the idea of one visible catholic
+Church, uniform in faith and ritual; uniform too in her
+relation to the civil power and the increasingly oligarchical
+character of her government. Thus, under the
+combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs,
+there shaped itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans,
+and bishops, their jurisdiction, although still
+chiefly spiritual, enforced by the laws of the State,
+their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to
+the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span>
+patriarch yet enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy,
+the head of the Church&mdash;so far as she could be said
+to have a head&mdash;was virtually the Emperor himself.
+The inchoate right to intermeddle in religious affairs
+which he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus
+was readily admitted; and the clergy, preaching the
+duty of passive obedience now as it had been preached
+in the days of Nero and Diocletian<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>,
+were well pleased
+to see him preside in councils, issue edicts against
+heresy, and testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal
+for the advancement of the faith and the overthrow of
+pagan rites. But though the tone of the Church remained
+humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were
+occasions wanting which revealed the future that was
+in store for her. The resistance and final triumph of
+Athanasius proved that the new society could put forth
+a power of opinion such as had never been known before:
+the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before
+Ambrose the Archbishop admitted the supremacy of
+spiritual authority. In the decrepitude of old institutions,
+in the barrenness of literature and the feebleness
+of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings
+of the people sought more and more to attach themselves;
+and when in the fifth century the horizon grew
+black with clouds of ruin, those who watched with despair
+or apathy the approach of irresistible foes, fled for
+comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes
+revered.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">It embraces
+and preserves
+the
+imperial
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>But that which we are above all concerned to remark
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span>
+here is, that this church system, demanding a more rigid
+uniformity in doctrine and organization, making more
+and more vital the notion of a visible body of worshippers
+united by participation in the same sacraments,
+maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single
+Roman people throughout the world. Christianity as
+well as civilization became conterminous with the Roman
+Empire<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Barbarians.</p>
+
+<p>Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians of the
+North descend. From the dawn of history they shew as
+a dim background to the warmth and light of the Mediterranean
+coast, changing little while kingdoms rise and fall
+in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm
+comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes
+that they are known. The Romans never forgot the
+invasion of Brennus; and their fears, renewed by the
+irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not let them
+rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and
+the Danube removed Italy from immediate danger. A
+little more perseverance under Tiberius, or again under
+Hadrian, would probably have reduced all Germany as
+far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or jealous
+advice of Augustus<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>
+ was followed, and it was only along
+the frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the
+Teutonic races. Commerce was brisk; Roman envoys
+penetrated the forests to the courts of rude chieftains;
+adventurous barbarians entered the provinces, sometimes
+to admire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a>,
+to take
+service under the Roman flag, and rise to a distinction in
+the legion which some feud denied them at home. This
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Admitted
+to Roman
+titles and
+honours.</span>
+was found even more convenient by the hirer than by the
+employed; till by degrees barbarian mercenaries came
+to form the largest, or at least the most effective, part of
+the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had
+been so composed; the prætorians were generally selected
+from the bravest frontier troops, most of them German;
+the practice could not but increase with the extinction of
+the free peasantry, the growth of villenage, and the effeminacy
+of all classes. Emperors who were, like Maximin,
+themselves foreigners, encouraged a system by
+whose means they had risen, and whose advantages they
+knew. After Constantine, the barbarians form the majority
+of the troops; after Theodosius, a Roman is the
+exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the
+time of Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of
+whom had been settled in the provinces; while in the
+West, Stilicho<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+ can oppose Rhodogast only by summoning
+the German auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along
+with this practice there had grown up another, which did
+still more to make the barbarians feel themselves members
+of the Roman state. Whatever the pride of the old republic
+might assert, the maxim of the Empire had always
+been that birth and race should exclude no subject from
+any post which his abilities deserved. This principle,
+which had removed all obstacles from the path of the
+Spaniard Trajan, the Pannonian Maximin, the Numidian
+Philip, was afterwards extended to the conferring of
+honour and power on persons who did not even profess
+to have passed through the grades of Roman service, but
+remained leaders of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been
+soothed by the title of Friend of the Roman People; in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span>
+the third century the insignia of the consulship<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a>
+ were
+conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his Alemanni
+entered as an independent body into the service of Rome;
+along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of
+Laeti, lands within the provinces on condition of military
+service; and the foreign aid which the Sarmatian had
+proffered to Vespasian against his rival, and Marcus
+Aurelius had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius,
+became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire,
+in civil as well as in external strife.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken
+down&mdash;Romans admitting barbarians to rank and office,
+barbarians catching something of the manners and culture
+of their neighbours. And thus when the final movement
+came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves
+through the provinces, they entered not as savage
+strangers, but as colonists knowing something of the
+system into which they came, and not unwilling to be
+considered its members; despising the degenerate provincials
+who struck no blow in their own defence, but full
+of respect for the majestic power which had for so many
+centuries confronted and instructed them.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Their feelings
+towards
+the
+Roman
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Great during all these ages, but greatest when they
+were actually traversing and settling in the Empire, must
+have been the impression which its elaborate machinery
+of government and mature civilization made upon the
+minds of the Northern invaders. With arms whose fabrication
+they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in
+the forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns
+whose busy workshops, marts stored with the productions
+of distant countries, and palaces rich in monuments of
+art, equally roused their wonder. To the beauty of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span>
+statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the
+rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles
+with which vanity or devotion, or the passion for amusement,
+had adorned Milan and Verona, Arles, Treves, and
+Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as they
+gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial
+of Christianity, most unlike their own rude sacrifices.
+The exclamation of the Goth Athanaric, when led into
+the market-place of Constantinople, may stand for the
+feelings of his nation: 'Without doubt the Emperor is a
+God upon earth, and he who attacks him is guilty of his
+own blood<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>The social and political system, with its cultivated language
+and literature, into which they came, would impress
+fewer of the conquerors, but by those few would be admired
+beyond all else. Its regular organization supplied
+what they most needed and could least construct for
+themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among
+them were the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol
+Attila excepted, there is among these terrible hosts no
+destroyer; the wish of each leader is to maintain the existing
+order, to spare life, to respect every work of skill
+and labour, above all to perpetuate the methods of
+Roman administration, and rule the people as the deputy
+or successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him
+<span class="sidenote">Their desire
+to preserve
+its institutions.</span>
+were the highest honours they knew: they were also the
+only means of acquiring something like a legal claim to
+the obedience of the subject, and of turning a patriarchal
+or military chieftainship into the regular sway of an
+hereditary monarch. Civilis had long since endeavoured
+to govern his Batavians as a Roman general<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>. Alaric
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span>
+became master-general of the armies of Illyricum. Clovis
+exulted in the consulship; his son Theodebert received
+Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as the
+gift of Justinian. Sigismund the Burgundian king,
+created count and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius,
+professed the deepest gratitude and the firmest faith to
+that Eastern court which was absolutely powerless to help
+or to hurt him. 'My people is yours,' he writes, 'and
+to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the
+hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us
+account those the highest honours which your military
+titles convey; we have always preferred what an Emperor
+gave to all that our ancestors could bequeath. In ruling
+our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants: you,
+whose divinely-appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose
+blessed beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant
+Gaul, employ us to administer the remoter regions of
+your Empire: your world is our fatherland<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a>.' A contemporary
+historian has recorded the remarkable disclosure of
+his own thoughts and purposes, made by one of the ablest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span>
+of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the
+brother-in-law and successor of Alaric. 'It was at first
+my wish to destroy the Roman name, and erect in its
+place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the place and the
+powers of Cæsar Augustus. But when experience taught
+me that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not
+suffer them to live beneath the sway of law, and that the
+abolition of the institutions on which the state rested
+would involve the ruin of the state itself, I chose the glory
+of renewing and maintaining by Gothic strength the fame
+of Rome, desiring to go down to posterity as the restorer
+of that Roman power which it was beyond my power to
+replace. Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>Historians have remarked how valuable must have been
+the skill of Roman officials to princes who from leaders
+of tribes were become rulers of wide lands; and in particular
+how indispensable the aid of the Christian bishops,
+the intellectual aristocracy of their new subjects, whose
+advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate the
+vanquished. Not only is this true; it is but a small part
+of the truth; one form of that manifold and overpowering
+influence which the old system exercised over its foes not
+less than its own children. For it is hardly too much to
+say that the thought of antagonism to the Empire and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span>
+wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the barbarians<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>.
+The conception of that Empire was too universal,
+too august, too enduring. It was everywhere
+around them, and they could remember no time when it
+had not been so. It had no association of people or
+place whose fall could seem to involve that of the whole
+fabric; it had that connection with the Christian Church
+which made it all-embracing and venerable.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The belief
+in its
+eternity.</p>
+
+<p>There were especially two ideas whereon it rested, and
+from which it obtained a peculiar strength and a peculiar
+direction. The one was the belief that as the dominion
+of Rome was universal, so must it be eternal. Nothing
+like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander
+had lasted a short lifetime; and within its wide compass
+were included many arid wastes, and many tracts where
+none but the roving savage had ever set foot. That of
+the Italian city had for fourteen generations embraced all
+the most wealthy and populous regions of the civilized
+world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep
+that they seemed destined to last for ever. If Rome
+moved slowly for a time, her foot was always planted
+firmly: the ease and swiftness of her later conquests
+proved the solidity of the earlier; and to her, more justly
+than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian
+historian be applied: that she advanced farthest in prosperity,
+and in adversity drew back the least. From the
+end of the republican period her poets, her orators, her
+jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of world-dominion,
+and confidently predict its eternity<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>. The proud belief of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span>
+his countrymen which Virgil had expressed&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Imperium sine fine dedi'&mdash;</span></p>
+</div></div>
+<p>was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for
+the persecuting power whose fall would bring Antichrist
+upon earth. Lactantius writes: 'When Rome the head
+of the world shall have fallen, who can doubt that the end
+is come of human things, aye, of the earth itself. She,
+she alone is the state by which all things are upheld even
+until now; wherefore let us make prayers and supplications
+to the God of heaven, if indeed his decrees and his
+purposes can be delayed, that that hateful tyrant come
+not sooner than we look for, he for whom are reserved
+fearful deeds, who shall pluck out that eye in whose
+extinction the world itself shall perish<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a>.' With the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span>
+triumph of Christianity this belief had found a new basis.
+For as the Empire had decayed, the Church had grown
+stronger; and now while the one, trembling at the approach
+of the destroyer, saw province after province torn
+away, the other, rising in stately youth, prepared to fill
+her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to
+adopt and sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a
+universal and unending state.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Sanctity of
+the imperial
+name.</p>
+
+<p>The second chief element in this conception was the
+association of such a state with one irresponsible governor,
+the Emperor. The hatred to the name of King,
+which their earliest political struggles had left in the Romans,
+by obliging their ruler to take a new and strange
+title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of
+the world. To the provincials especially he became an
+awful impersonation of the great machine of government
+which moved above and around them. It was not merely
+that he was, like a modern king, the centre of power and
+the dispenser of honour: his pre-eminence, broken by no
+comparison with other princes, by the ascending ranks of
+no aristocracy, had in it something almost supernatural.
+The right of legislation had become vested in him alone:
+the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the senate,
+and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three
+centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions; his domestic
+council, the consistory, was the supreme court
+of appeal; his interposition, like that of some terrestrial
+Providence, was invoked, and legally provided so to be,
+to reverse or overleap the ordinary rules of law<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>. From
+the time of Julius and Augustus his person had been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>
+hallowed by the office of chief pontiff<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
+ and the tribunician
+power; to swear by his head was considered the
+most solemn of all oaths<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a>;
+his effigy was sacred<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a>,
+even
+on a coin; to him or to his Genius temples were erected
+and divine honours paid while he lived<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>;
+and when, as it
+was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of
+Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a>.
+In the confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship
+of the Emperor was the only worship common to the
+whole Roman world, and was therefore that usually proposed
+as a test to the Christians on their trial. Under
+the new religion the form of adoration vanished, the
+sentiment of reverence remained: the right to control
+Church as well as State, admitted at Nicæa, and habitually
+exercised by the sovereigns of Constantinople,
+made the Emperor hardly less essential to the new conception
+of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had
+been to the military despotism of old. These considerations
+explain why the men of the fifth century, clinging to
+preconceived ideas, refused to believe in that dissolution
+of the Empire which they saw with their own eyes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>
+Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the
+slowness of the change and its external aspect, as well
+as in the fortunes of the capital, something to favour the
+illusion. The Roman name was shared by every subject;
+the Roman city was no longer the seat of government,
+nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power,
+for the maxim was now accepted, Where the Emperor is,
+there is Rome<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a>. But her continued existence, not permanently
+occupied by any conqueror, striking the nations
+with an awe which the history or the external splendours
+of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna could nowise inspire,
+was an ever new assertion of the endurance of
+the Roman race and dominion. Dishonoured and defenceless,
+the spell of her name was still strong enough
+to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The
+irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or
+revenge, not of destruction: the Hun turned back from
+Aquileia with a vague fear upon him: the Ostrogoth
+adorned and protected his splendid prize.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Last days
+of the Western
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>In the history of the last days of the Western Empire,
+two points deserve special remark: its continued
+union with the Eastern branch, and the way in which its
+ideal dignity was respected while its representatives were
+despised. After Stilicho's death, and Alaric's invasion,
+its fall was a question of time. While one by one the
+provinces were abandoned by the central government,
+left either to be occupied by invading tribes or to maintain
+a precarious independence, like Britain and Armorica<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a>
+,
+by means of municipal unions, Italy lay at the
+mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by
+their leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span>
+have seemed to reign by hereditary right, but after their
+extinction in Valentinian III each phantom Emperor&mdash;Maximus,
+Avitus, Majorian, Anthemius, Olybrius&mdash;received
+the purple from the haughty Ricimer, general of
+the troops, only to be stripped of it when he presumed to
+forget his dependence. Though the division between
+Arcadius and Honorius had definitely severed the two
+realms for administrative purposes, they were still supposed
+to constitute a single Empire, and the rulers of the
+East interfered more than once to raise to the Western
+throne princes they could not protect upon it. Ricimer's
+insolence quailed before the shadowy grandeur of the
+imperial title: his ambition, and Gundobald his successor's,
+were bounded by the name of patrician. The bolder
+genius of Odoacer<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>,
+general of the barbarian auxiliaries,
+resolved to abolish an empty pageant, and extinguish the
+title and office of Emperor of the West. Yet over him too
+the spell had power; and as the Gaulish warrior had
+gazed on the silent majesty of the senate in a deserted
+city, so the Herulian revered the power before which the
+world had bowed, and though there was no force to
+check or to affright him, shrank from grasping in his
+own barbarian hand the sceptre of the Cæsars. When,
+at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus, the boy
+whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Its extinction
+by
+Odoacer,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 476.</span>
+Cæsar of Rome, had formally announced his resignation
+to the senate, a deputation from that body proceeded to
+the Eastern court to lay the insignia of royalty at the feet
+of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West, they declared,
+no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch
+sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom
+and courage to be the protector of their state, and upon
+him Zeno was entreated to confer the title of patrician and
+the administration of the Italian provinces<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a>. The Emperor
+granted what he could not refuse, and Odoacer, taking
+the title of King<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>,
+continued the consular office, respected
+the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of his subjects, and
+ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of the
+Eastern Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction
+of the Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East
+and West. In form, and to some extent also in the
+belief of men, things now reverted to their state during
+the first two centuries of the Empire, save that Byzantium
+instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government.
+The joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian,
+carried further by Constantine, renewed under
+Valentinian I and again at the death of Theodosius, had
+come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span>
+the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic
+Church<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>. To those who lived at the time, this year
+(476 <span class="s08">A.D.</span>) was no such epoch as it has since become,
+nor was any impression made on men's minds commensurate
+with the real significance of the event. For though
+it did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in
+fact, its consequences were from the first great. It hastened
+the development of a Latin as opposed to Greek
+and Oriental forms of Christianity: it emancipated the
+Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and
+government of the Teutonic rulers of the West. But
+the importance of remembering its formal aspect to those
+who witnessed it will be felt as we approach the era when
+the Empire was revived by Charles the Frank.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Odoacer.</p>
+
+<p>Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than
+those of his neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But
+the mercenary <i>fœderati</i> who supported it were a loose
+swarm of predatory tribes: themselves without cohesion,
+they could take no firm root in Italy. During the
+eighteen years of his reign no progress seems to have
+been made towards the re-organization of society; and
+the first real attempt to blend the peoples and maintain
+the traditions of Roman wisdom in the hands of a new
+and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous chieftain,
+the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the forerunner
+of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the
+<span class="sidenote">Theodoric.</span>
+Ostrogoth. The aim of his reign, though he professed
+allegiance to the Eastern court which had favoured his
+invasion<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a>,
+was the establishment of a national monarchy
+in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of Byzantium,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>
+he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and
+cultivated society and the principles by which it must be
+maintained; called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief
+over the plains of the Danube, he acquired along
+with the arts of command a sense of the superiority of
+his own people in valour and energy and truth. When
+the defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at
+his mercy, he sought no further conquest, easy as it would
+have been to tear away new provinces from the Eastern
+realm, but strove only to preserve and strengthen the
+ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying
+institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering
+the military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate
+by indulgence and gradually raise to the level of their
+masters the degenerate population of Italy. The Gothic
+nation appears from the first less cruel in war and more
+prudent in council than any of their Germanic brethren<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a>
+:
+all that was most noble among them shone forth now in
+the rule of the greatest of the Amali. From his palace at
+Verona<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a>,
+commemorated in the song of the Nibelungs, he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span>
+
+issued equal laws for Roman and Goth, and bade the
+intruder, if he must occupy part of the lands, at least
+respect the goods and the person of his fellow-subject.
+Jurisprudence and administration remained in native hands:
+two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other
+by the Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient
+state; and while agriculture and the arts revived in the
+provinces, Rome herself celebrated the visits of a master
+who provided for the wants of her people and preserved
+with care the monuments of her former splendour. With
+peace and plenty men's minds took hope, and the study
+of letters revived. The last gleam of classical literature
+gilds the reign of the barbarian. By the consolidation of
+the two races under one wise government, Italy might
+have been spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation.
+It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but
+toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox
+subjects: the Arian Goths were and remained strangers
+and enemies among the Catholic Italians. Scarcely had
+the sceptre passed from the hands of Theodoric to his
+unworthy offspring, when Justinian, who had viewed
+<span class="sidenote">Italy reconquered,
+by Justinian.</span>
+with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant,
+determined to assert his dormant rights over Italy; its
+people welcomed Belisarius as a deliverer, and in the
+struggle that followed the race and name of the Ostrogoths
+perished for ever. Thus again reunited in fact, as
+it had been all the while united in name, to the Roman
+Empire, the peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms,
+and obeyed the exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the
+Byzantine court, till the arrival of the Lombards in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 568
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span>
+drove him from some districts, and left him only a feeble
+authority in the rest.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Transalpine
+provinces.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population had
+now ceased to seek help from the Eastern court, the
+Empire's rights still subsisted in theory, and were never
+legally extinguished. As has been said, they were admitted
+by the conquerors themselves: by Athaulf, when
+he reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and
+recovered Spain from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient
+masters; by the Visigothic kings of Spain, when they
+permitted the Mediterranean cities to send tribute to
+Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of
+the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities,
+had been overpowered or absorbed, he received with delight
+from the Eastern emperor Anastasius the grant of a
+Roman dignity to confirm his possession. Arrayed like a
+Fabius or Valerius in the consul's embroidered robe, the
+Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of Tours,
+while the shout of the provincials hailed him Augustus<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a>.
+They already obeyed him, but his power was now legalised
+in their eyes, and it was not without a melancholy
+pride that they saw the terrible conqueror himself yield to
+the spell of the Roman name, and do homage to the
+enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Lingering
+influences
+of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot by degrees
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span>
+their original unity. As in the breaking up of the old
+society, which we trace from the sixth to the eighth
+century, rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as language
+and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic
+settlers, as men's thoughts and hopes and interests were
+narrowed by isolation from their fellows, as the organization
+of the Roman province and the Germanic tribe alike
+dissolved into a chaos whence the new order began to
+shape itself, dimly and doubtfully as yet, the memory of
+the old Empire, its symmetry, its sway, its civilization,
+must needs wane and fade. It might have perished altogether
+but for the two enduring witnesses Rome had left&mdash;her
+Church and her Law. The barbarians had at first
+<span class="sidenote">Religion.</span>
+associated Christianity with the Romans from whom they
+learned it: the Romans had used it as their only bulwark
+against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders
+of the people, and the necessary councillors of the king.
+Their power grew with the extinction of civil government
+and the spread of superstition; and when the Frank found
+it too valuable to be abandoned to the vanquished people,
+he insensibly acquired the feelings and policy of the order
+he entered.</p>
+
+<p>As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms
+which the conquerors had founded themselves began to
+dissolve, the Church clung more closely to her unity of
+faith and discipline, the common bond of all Christian
+men. That unity must have a centre, that centre
+was Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs
+extended her influence (the sanctity and the writings of
+Gregory the Great were famous through all the West):
+<span class="sidenote">Jurisprudence.</span>
+never occupied by barbarians, she retained her peculiar
+character and customs, and laid the foundations of a
+power over men's souls more durable than that which she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span>
+had lost over their bodies<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a>. Only second in importance
+to this influence was that which was exercised by the permanence
+of the old law, and of its creature the municipality.
+The barbarian invaders retained the customs of
+their ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people,
+as we see them in the Salic law or in the ordinances of
+Ina and Alfred. But the subject population and the
+clergy continued to be governed by that elaborate system
+which the genius and labour of many generations had
+raised to be the most lasting monument of Roman
+greatness.</p>
+
+<p>The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and
+Southern Gaul, nor was it utterly forgotten even in the
+North, in Britain, on the borders of Germany. Revised
+editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the Visigothic
+and Burgundian princes. For some centuries it
+was the patrimony of the subject population everywhere,
+and in Aquitaine and Italy has outlived feudalism. The
+presumption in later times was that all men were to be
+judged by it who could not be proved to be subject to
+some other<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety
+and precision, all recalled the strong and refined
+society which had produced it. Other motives, as well as
+those of kindness to their subjects, made the new kings
+favour it; for it exalted their prerogative, and the submission
+enjoined by it on one class of their subjects soon
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span>
+came to be demanded from the other, by their own laws
+the equals of the prince. Considering attentively how
+many of the old institutions continued to subsist, and
+studying the feelings of that time, as they are faintly preserved
+in its scanty records, it seems hardly too much to
+say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire still
+existed in the West: existed in men's minds as a power
+weakened, delegated, suspended, but not destroyed.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy for those who read the history of an age in
+the light of those that followed it, to perceive that in this
+men erred; that the tendency of events was wholly different;
+that society had entered on a new phase, wherein
+every change did more to localize authority and strengthen
+the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic.
+We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise
+for the distant future, had already begun to shew themselves:
+they&mdash;with no type of power or beauty, but that
+which had filled the imagination of their forefathers, and
+now loomed on them grander than ever through the mist
+of centuries&mdash;mistook, as it has been said of Rienzi in
+later days, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the
+renewal of its strength. Events were at hand by which
+these hopes seemed destined to be gratified.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that
+the thoughts and hopes of the men of the sixth and
+seventh centuries were constantly directed. Yet not from
+Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the exhausted soil of
+Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we may
+suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in
+the Western provinces was beginning to vanish away,
+there appeared in the furthest corner of Europe, sprung of
+a race but lately brought within the pale of civilization, a
+line of chieftains devoted to the service of the Holy See,
+and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
+heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity
+to which doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity
+almost divine.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The
+Franks.</p>
+
+<p>Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of
+Rome, that of the Franks was by far the greatest. In the
+third century they appear, with Saxons, Alemanni, and
+Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe leagues.
+The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race
+was a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid
+aside their former hostility to Rome, and her future representatives
+were thenceforth, with few intervals, her faithful
+allies. Many of their chiefs rose to high place: Malarich
+receives from Jovian the charge of the Western provinces;
+Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius
+and his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name)
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span>
+fights under Aetius against Attila in the great battle of
+Chalons; his countrymen endeavour in vain to save Gaul
+from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not till the Empire
+was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the booty;
+then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe,
+leaving his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the
+lower Rhine, advances from Flanders to wrest Gaul from
+the barbarian nations which had entered it some sixty
+years before.
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="s08">A.D.</span> 486.</span>
+Few conquerors have had a career of more
+unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor
+Syagrius he was left master of the northern provinces: the
+Burgundian kingdom in the valley of the Rhone was in
+no long time reduced to dependence: last of all, the
+Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle, and
+Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were
+the Frankish arms less prosperous on the other side of
+the Rhine. The victory of Tolbiac led to the submission
+of the Alemanni: their allies the Bavarians followed, and
+when the Thuringian power had been broken by Theodorich
+I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced
+all the tribes of western and southern Germany. The
+state thus formed, stretching from the Bay of Biscay to
+the Inn and the Ems, was of course in no sense a French,
+that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor, although the
+widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
+a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a
+united kingdom at all, but rather a congeries of principalities,
+held together by the predominance of a single
+nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul as masters
+over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
+hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes.
+But towards the middle of the eighth century a change
+began. Under the rule of Pipin of Herstal and his son
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span>
+Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the last feeble
+Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
+became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were
+able, while establishing a firmer government at home, to
+direct its whole strength in projects of foreign ambition.
+The form those projects took arose from a circumstance
+which has not yet been mentioned. It was not solely or
+even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed
+their past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited
+them, it was to the friendship of the clergy and the favour
+of the Apostolic See. The other Teutonic nations, Goths,
+Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians, Lombards, had been
+most of them converted by Arian missionaries who proceeded
+from the Roman Empire during the short period
+when Arian doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks,
+who were among the latest converts, were Catholics from
+the first, and gladly accepted the clergy as their teachers
+and allies. Thus it was that while the hostility of their orthodox
+subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in Africa and
+the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of
+the priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian
+and Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively
+easy for them to blend with the Roman population
+in the provinces. They had done good service against
+the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface
+in his mission to the heathen of Germany<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a>;
+and at
+length, as the most powerful among Catholic nations, they
+attracted the eyes of the ecclesiastical head of the West,
+now sorely bested by domestic foes.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Italy: the
+Lombards.</p>
+
+<p>Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>
+a complication of evils. The Lombards who had entered
+along with that chief in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 568 had settled in considerable
+numbers in the valley of the Po, and founded the duchies
+of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the country
+to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of
+the Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little
+better than nominal. Although too few to occupy the
+whole peninsula, the invaders were yet strong enough to
+harass every part of it by inroads which met with no resistance
+from a population unused to arms, and without
+the spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and
+repulsive, if we may believe the evidence of their enemies,
+than any other of the Northern tribes, the Lombards were
+certainly singular in their aversion to the clergy, never
+admitting them to the national councils. Tormented by
+their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
+Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their
+walls the Avars and Saracens, could give no support to
+the distant exarch of Ravenna.
+<span class="sidenote">The Popes.</span>
+The Popes were the
+Emperor's subjects; they awaited his confirmation, like
+other bishops; they had more than once been the victims
+of his anger<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a>. But as the city became more accustomed
+in independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance,
+real if not yet legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the
+Eastern patriarchs. In the controversies that had raged
+in the Church, he had had the wisdom or good fortune
+to espouse (though not always from the first) the orthodox
+side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
+deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Iconoclastic
+controversy.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains,
+where a purer faith may yet have lingered, and
+stung by the Mohammedan taunt of idolatry, determined
+to abolish the worship of images, which seemed fast obscuring
+the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
+sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks,
+excited in Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose
+with one heart in defence of what had become to them
+more than a symbol: the exarch was slain: the Pope,
+though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head
+and protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the
+prince whom he could not reclaim from so hateful a
+heresy. Liudprand, king of the Lombards, improved his
+opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the champion of
+images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor,
+he overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing
+the other. The Pope escaped for the moment, but saw
+his peril; placed between a heretic and a robber, he
+turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a Catholic chief who
+had just achieved a signal deliverance for Christendom
+on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
+communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace,
+and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>. As the crisis
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">The Popes
+appeal to
+the Franks.</span>
+becomes more pressing, Gregory III finds in the same
+quarter his only hope, and appeals to him, in urgent
+letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a>. Some
+accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the
+Roman people, the office of consul and patrician. It is
+at least certain that here begins the connection of the old
+imperial seat with the rising German power: here first
+the pontiff leads a political movement, and shakes off the
+ties that bound him to his legitimate sovereign. Charles
+died before he could obey the call; but his son Pipin
+(surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship
+with Rome. He was the third of his family who had
+ruled the Franks with a monarch's full power: it seemed
+time to abolish the pageant of Merovingian royalty; yet
+a departure from the ancient line might shock the feelings
+of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no
+one then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time
+invoked as an international power, pronounced the deposition
+of Childeric, and gave to the royal office of his
+successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto unknown; adding to
+the old Frankish election, which consisted in raising the
+chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman
+diadem and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact
+between the chair of Peter and the Teutonic throne
+was hardly sealed, when the latter was summoned to discharge
+its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
+Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the
+rescue: the second time at the bidding of a letter written
+in the name of St. Peter himself<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a>. Aistulf could make no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Pipin patrician
+of
+the Romans,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 754.</span>
+resistance; and the Frank bestowed on the Papal chair
+all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy, receiving
+as the meed of his services the title of Patrician<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Import of
+this title.</p>
+
+<p>As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to
+follow, this title requires a passing notice. Introduced by
+Constantine at a time when its original meaning had been
+long forgotten, it was designed to be, and for awhile remained,
+the name not of an office but of a rank, the highest
+after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was
+usually conferred upon provincial governors of the first
+class, and in time also upon barbarian potentates whose
+vanity the Roman court might wish to flatter. Thus
+Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
+Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor;
+so too in still later times it was given to Saracenic
+and Bulgarian princes<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>. In the sixth and seventh centuries
+an invariable practice seems to have attached it to
+the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and thus, as we may conjecture,
+a natural confusion of ideas had made men take
+it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an extensive
+though undefined authority, and implying in particular
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span>
+the duty of overseeing the Church and promoting
+her temporal interests. It was doubtless with such a
+meaning that the Romans and their bishop bestowed it
+upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
+for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing
+it as the title which bound its possessor to render to the
+Church support and defence against her Lombard foes.
+Hence the phrase is always '<i lang="la">Patricius Romanorum</i>;' not,
+as in former times, '<i lang="la">Patricius</i>' alone: hence it is usually
+associated with the terms '<i>defensor</i>' and '<i>protector</i>.' And
+since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of obedience
+on the part of those who profit by it, there must have
+been conceded to the new patrician more or less of the
+positive authority in Rome, although not such as to extinguish
+the supremacy of the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Extinction
+of the Lombard
+kingdom
+by
+Charles
+king of the
+Franks.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote"><span class="s08">A.D.</span> 774.</p>
+
+<p>So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a
+hostile kingdom from their new allies, this control remained
+little better than nominal. But when on Pipin's
+death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
+menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son
+Charles or Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind
+from the Alps at the call of Pope Hadrian, seized king
+Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself the Lombard
+crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral
+part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome
+at the head of his victorious army, the first of a long line
+of Teutonic kings who were to find her love more deadly
+than her hate, he was received by Hadrian with distinguished
+honours, and welcomed by the people as their
+leader and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of
+policy or from that sentiment of reverence to which his
+ambitious mind did not refuse to bow, he was moderate
+in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the pontiff the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span>
+place of honour in processions, and renewed, although
+in the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the
+Exarchate and Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to
+the Roman Church twenty years before.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Charles and
+Hadrian.</p>
+
+<p>It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of
+amusement, that in watching the progress of this grand
+historical drama, we recognise the meaner motives by
+which its chief actors were influenced. The Frankish
+king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two
+most powerful forces that urged the movement of the
+world, leading it on by swift steps to a mighty crisis of
+its fate, themselves guided, as it might well seem, by the
+purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their words and
+acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
+expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to
+leave an indelible impress on their own and many succeeding
+ages. Nevertheless in them too appears the
+undercurrent of vulgar human desires and passions.
+The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from
+the stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be
+excused, if not defended, as almost inseparable from
+an intense and restless genius, which, be it never so unselfish
+in its ends, must in pursuing them fix upon everything
+its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
+The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less
+noble. Ever since the extinction of the Western Empire
+had emancipated the ecclesiastical potentate from secular
+control, the first and most abiding object of his schemes
+and prayers had been the acquisition of territorial wealth
+in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
+a sort of justification&mdash;for Rome, a city with neither trade
+nor industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved
+on the bishop to provide. Yet the pursuit was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span>
+one which could not fail to pervert the purposes of the
+Popes and give a sinister character to all they did. It
+was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than
+for religion or the safety of the city&mdash;neither of which
+were really endangered by the Lombard attacks&mdash;that
+had prompted their passionate appeals to Charles Martel
+and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope of having
+these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's
+greater son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward
+in his cause. And it was the same lust after worldly
+wealth and pomp, mingled with the dawning prospect
+of an independent principality, that now began to seduce
+them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this
+is probably the very time, although the exact date cannot
+be established, to which must be assigned the extraordinary
+forgery of the Donation of Constantine, whereby
+it was pretended that power over Italy and the whole
+West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to
+Pope Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the
+Apostle.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Accession
+of Pope
+Leo III,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 796.</p>
+
+<p>For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet.
+The government of Rome was carried on in the name
+of the Patrician Charles, although it does not appear that
+he sent thither any official representative; while at the
+same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
+admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor,
+employing the years of his reign to date documents.
+In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 796, Leo the Third succeeded Pope Hadrian, and
+signalized his devotion to the Frankish throne by sending
+to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of the
+holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter,
+asking that some officer should be deputed to the city
+to receive from the people their oath of allegiance to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span>
+Patrician. He had soon need to seek the Patrician's
+help for himself. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 798 a sedition broke out: the
+Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to
+the church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by
+a band of armed men, headed by two officials of his
+court, nephews of his predecessor; was wounded and
+left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
+to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish
+lands. Charles had led his army against the revolted
+Saxons: thither Leo following overtook him at Paderborn
+in Westphalia. The king received with respect his
+spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
+some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under
+the escort of Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers;
+promising to follow ere long in person. After some
+months peace was restored in Saxony, and in the autumn
+of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more,
+while Leo revolved deeply the great scheme for whose
+accomplishment the time was now ripe.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Belief in the
+Roman
+Empire not
+extinct.</p>
+
+<p>Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since
+the last Cæsar of the West resigned his power into the
+hands of the senate, and left to his Eastern brother the
+sole headship of the Roman world. To the latter Italy
+had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
+only during one brief interval between the death of Totila
+the last Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the
+first Lombard, that his power had been really effective.
+In the further provinces, Gaul, Spain, Britain, it was only
+a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire as a necessary
+part of the world's order had not vanished: it had
+been admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it;
+it had been cherished by the Church; was still recalled
+by laws and customs; was dear to the subject populations,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span>
+who fondly looked back to the days when slavery
+was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have
+seen the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify
+himself with the system he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians,
+and Franks sought the title of consul or patrician,
+as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
+Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant
+England the fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used
+the names of Roman dignities, and before long began
+to call themselves <i lang="la">imperatores</i> and <i lang="la">basileis</i> of Britain.
+Within the last century and a half the rise of Mohammedanism<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
+had brought out the common Christianity
+of Europe into a fuller relief. The false prophet had
+left one religion, one Empire, one Commander of the
+faithful: the Christian commonwealth needed more than
+ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
+could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing
+ever feebler and more alien to the West. The name
+of <span lang="la">'respublica,'</span> permanent at the elder Rome, had never
+been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its government
+was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
+drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms
+of an Oriental despotism. Claudian had already sneered
+at 'Greek Quirites<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a>
+:' the general use, since Heraclius's
+reign, of the Greek tongue, and the difference of manners
+and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
+<span class="sidenote">Motives of
+the Pope.</span>
+The
+Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes,
+who while insulting his weakness had given him no help
+against the savage Lombards, and who for nearly seventy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span>
+years<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a>
+ had been contaminated by a heresy the more
+odious that it touched not speculative points of doctrine
+but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy
+their power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had
+asked their confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment
+of the intruding Frank to the patriciate, an office
+which it belonged to the Emperor to confer, was of itself
+an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights subsisted:
+they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
+must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman
+city. Nor could the spiritual head of Christendom dispense
+with the temporal: without the Roman Empire
+there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary consequence
+a Catholic and Apostolic Church<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a>. For, as will
+be shewn more fully hereafter, men could not separate in
+fact what was indissoluble in thought: Christianity must
+stand or fall along with the great Christian state: they
+were but two names for the same thing. Thus urged,
+the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors
+are said to have already contemplated<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a>, and towards
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>
+which the events of the last fifty years had pointed. The
+moment was opportune. The widowed empress Irene,
+equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and her crimes,
+had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a
+woman, an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne
+of the world. By what right, it might well be asked,
+did the factions of Byzantium impose a master on the
+original seat of empire? It was time to provide better
+for the most august of human offices: an election at
+Rome was as valid as at Constantinople&mdash;the possessor
+of the real power should also be clothed with the outward
+dignity. Nor could it be doubted where that possessor
+was to be found. The Frank had been always faithful
+to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
+auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and
+Lombard marauders, against the Saracen of Spain and
+the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him the title of Champion
+of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
+was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose
+subject nations, Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be
+called by his name and to imitate his customs<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a>. In
+Charles, the hero who united under one sceptre so
+many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
+pontiff might well see&mdash;as later ages saw&mdash;the new
+golden head of a second image<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a>,
+erected on the ruins
+of that whose mingled iron and clay seemed crumbling
+to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks of
+Constantinople.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Coronation
+of Charles
+at Rome,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800.</p>
+
+<p>At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The
+Pope's cause was heard; his innocence, already vindicated
+by a miracle, was pronounced by the Patrician in
+full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
+remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>,
+he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter.
+On the spot where now the gigantic dome of Bramante
+and Michael Angelo towers over the buildings of the
+modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as
+that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great
+had erected the oldest and stateliest temple of Christian
+Rome. Nothing could be less like than was this basilica
+to those northern cathedrals, shadowy, fantastic, irregular,
+crowded with pillars, fringed all round by clustering
+shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of
+mediæval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in
+the spacious sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek
+temple, the long rows of Corinthian columns, the vivid
+mosaics on its walls, in its brightness, its sternness, its
+simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman art,
+and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman
+character<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>. Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up
+to the high altar underneath and just beyond the great
+arch, the arch of triumph as it was called: behind in the
+semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising tier above tier
+around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest, and
+looking down past the altar over the multitude, was
+placed the bishop's throne<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a>,
+itself the curule chair of some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>
+forgotten magistrate<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a>. From that chair the Pope now
+rose, as the reading of the Gospel ended, advanced to
+where Charles&mdash;who had exchanged his simple Frankish
+dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman
+patrician<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a>
+&mdash;knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in
+the sight of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian
+chieftain the diadem of the Cæsars, then bent in obeisance
+before him, the church rang to the shout of the multitude,
+again free, again the lords and centre of the world,
+<span lang="la">'Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico
+imperatori vita et victoria<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a>.'</span> In that shout, echoed by
+the Franks without, was pronounced the union, so long
+in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of the
+Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization
+of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and
+from that moment modern history begins.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">EMPIRE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The coronation of Charles is not only the central
+event of the Middle Ages, it is also one of those very few
+events of which, taking them singly, it may be said that if
+they had not happened, the history of the world would
+have been different. In one sense indeed it has scarcely
+a parallel. The assassins of Julius Cæsar thought that
+they had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy
+came inevitable in the next generation. The conversion
+of Constantine changed the face of the world, but
+Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph
+was only a question of time. Had Columbus never
+spread his sails, the secret of the western sea would yet
+have been pierced by some later voyager: had Charles V
+broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice silenced at
+Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere.
+But if the Roman Empire had not been restored
+in the West in the person of Charles, it would never have
+been restored at all, and the inexhaustible train of consequences
+for good and for evil that followed could not
+have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining
+the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as
+through all the Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were
+striving for the mastery. The one was the instinct of
+separation, disorder, anarchy, caused by the ungoverned
+impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of
+mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>
+better minds for a formal unity of government, which had
+its historical basis in the memories of the old Roman
+Empire, and its most constant expression in the devotion
+to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency,
+as everything shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger,
+but the latter, used and stimulated by an extraordinary
+genius like Charles, achieved in the year 800 a victory
+whose results were never to be lost. When the hero was
+gone, the returning wave of anarchy and barbarism swept
+up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate the
+past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was,
+had struck its roots too deep to be overthrown by force,
+and when it perished at last, perished from inner decay.
+It was just because men felt that no one less than Charles
+could have won such a triumph over the evils of the time,
+by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government,
+that the excitement and hope and joy which the
+coronation evoked were so intense. Their best evidence
+is perhaps to be found not in the records of that time
+itself, but in the cries of lamentation that broke forth
+when the Empire began to dissolve towards the close of
+the ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached
+themselves to the name of Charles the Emperor,
+a hero of whom any exploit was credible<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a>,
+in the devout
+admiration wherewith his German successors looked back
+to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but superhuman
+prototype.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Import of
+the coronation.</p>
+
+<p>As the event of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800 made an unparalleled impression
+on those who lived at the time, so has it engaged the
+attention of men in succeeding ages, has been viewed in
+the most opposite lights, and become the theme of interminable
+controversies. It is better to look at it simply as
+it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in so
+many other cases, may be seen the errors into which
+jurists have been led by the want of historical feeling. In
+rude and unsettled states of society men respect forms and
+obey facts, while careless of rules and principles. In England,
+for example, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it
+signified very little whether an aspirant to the throne was
+next lawful heir, but it signified a great deal whether he
+had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong
+party. Regarding the matter thus, it is not hard to see
+why those who judged the actors of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800 as they
+would have judged their contemporaries should have misunderstood
+the nature of that which then came to pass.
+Baronius and Bellarmine, Spanheim and Conring, are
+advocates bound to prove a thesis, and therefore believing
+it; nor does either party find any lack of plausible arguments<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>.
+But civilian and canonist alike proceed upon
+strict legal principles, and no such principles can be found
+in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited
+by the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of
+priests to set up and pull down princes, nor those which
+shew the earlier Emperors controlling the bishops of
+Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted not as having
+alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of
+hereditary succession and the theory of popular election
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>
+would have equally excluded such a claim; he was the
+spokesman of the popular will, which, identifying itself
+with the sacerdotal power, hated the Greeks and was
+grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more.
+The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly
+his work, and without him would never have been brought
+about at all. It was natural that a confusion of his secular
+functions as leader, and his spiritual as consecrating priest,
+should lay the foundation of the right claimed afterwards
+of raising and deposing monarchs at the will of Christ's
+vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout; he did
+not, as in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was received
+by the Pope and the people as a friend and ally.
+Rome no doubt became his capital, but it had already
+obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that stood
+out to posterity from the whole transaction was that the
+crown was bestowed, was at least imposed, by the hands
+of the pontiff. He seemed the trustee and depositary of
+the imperial authority<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Contemporary
+accounts.</p>
+
+<p>The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives of
+those concerned in the transaction is to transcribe the
+narratives of three contemporary, or almost contemporary
+annalists, two of them German and one Italian. The
+Annals of Lauresheim say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'And because the name of Emperor had now ceased
+among the Greeks, and their Empire was possessed by a
+woman, it then seemed both to Leo the Pope himself, and
+to all the holy fathers who were present in the selfsame
+council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that
+they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the
+Franks, who held Rome herself, where the Cæsars had
+always been wont to sit, and all the other regions which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span>
+he ruled through Italy and Gaul and Germany; and inasmuch
+as God had given all these lands into his hand, it
+seemed right that with the help of God and at the prayer
+of the whole Christian people he should have the name
+of Emperor also. Whose petition king Charles willed
+not to refuse, but submitting himself with all humility to
+God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the whole
+Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord
+Jesus Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor,
+being consecrated by the lord Pope Leo<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>Very similar in substance is the account of the
+Chronicle of Moissac (ad ann. 801):&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Now when the king upon the most holy day of the
+Lord's birth was rising to the mass after praying before
+the confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, Leo the
+Pope, with the consent of all the bishops and priests and
+of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the Romans,
+set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also
+shouting aloud. And when the people had made an
+end of chanting the Laudes, he was adored by the Pope
+after the manner of the emperors of old. For this also
+was done by the will of God. For while the said Emperor
+abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him,
+who said that the name of Emperor had ceased among
+the Greeks, and that among them the Empire was held
+by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid hold on
+her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the
+Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book
+of the Kings; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly
+of the bishops and priests and abbots heard, and the
+senate of the Franks and all the elders of the Romans,
+they took counsel with the rest of the Christian people,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>
+that they should name Charles king of the Franks to be
+Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire
+where the Cæsars and Emperors were always used to sit;
+and that the heathen might not mock the Christians if
+the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
+Christians<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>These two accounts are both from a German source:
+that which follows is Roman, written probably within
+some fifty or sixty years of the event. It is taken from
+the Life of Leo III in the <i lang="la">Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum</i>,
+compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.</p>
+
+<p>'After these things came the day of the birth of our
+Lord Jesus Christ, and all men were again gathered together
+in the aforesaid basilica of the blessed Peter the
+Apostle: and then the gracious and venerable pontiff did
+with his own hands crown Charles with a very precious
+crown. Then all the faithful people of Rome, seeing the
+defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy
+Roman Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and
+of the blessed Peter, the keeper of the keys of the kingdom
+of heaven, cry with one accord with a loud voice, 'To
+Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the
+great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.'
+While he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter
+the Apostle, was invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed
+thrice, and he was chosen by all to be Emperor of the
+Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff anointed Charles
+with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to be
+king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus
+Christ; and when the mass was finished, then after the
+mass the most serene lord Emperor offered gifts<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Impression
+which they
+convey.</p>
+
+<p>In these three accounts there is no serious discrepancy
+as to the facts, although the Italian priest, as is natural,
+heightens the importance of the part played by the Pope,
+while the Germans are too anxious to rationalize the event,
+talking of a synod of the clergy, a consultation of the
+people, and a formal request to Charles, which the silence
+of Eginhard, as well as the other circumstances of the
+case, forbid us to accept as literally true. Similarly
+Anastasius passes over the adoration rendered by the
+Pope to the Emperor, upon which most of the Frankish
+records insist in a way which puts it beyond doubt. But
+the impression which the three narratives leave is essentially
+the same. They all shew how little the transaction
+can be made to wear a strictly legal character. The
+Frankish king does not of his own might seize the crown,
+but rather receives it as coming naturally to him, as the
+legitimate consequence of the authority he already enjoyed.
+The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any right
+of his own as head of the Church: he is merely the instrument
+of God's providence, which has unmistakeably
+pointed out Charles as the proper person to defend and
+lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman people
+do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause
+accept the chief who is presented to them. The act is
+conceived of as directly ordered by the Divine Providence
+which has brought about a state of things that admits
+of but one issue, an issue which king, priest, and
+people have only to recognise and obey; their personal
+ambitions, passions, intrigues, sinking and vanishing in
+reverential awe at what seems the immediate interposition
+of Heaven. And as the result is desired by all parties
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>
+alike, they do not think of inquiring into one another's
+rights, but take their momentary harmony to be natural
+and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and conflicts
+which were to arise out of what seemed then so
+simple. And it was just because everything was thus
+left undetermined, resting not on express stipulation but
+rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a sympathy of
+beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event
+admitted of being afterwards represented in so many different
+lights.
+<span class="sidenote">Later
+theories respecting
+the
+coronation.</span>
+Four centuries later, when Papacy and
+Empire had been forced into the mortal struggle by which
+the fate of both was decided, three distinct theories regarding
+the coronation of Charles will be found advocated
+by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them
+to some extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held
+the crown to have been won by their great predecessor as
+the prize of conquest, and drew the conclusion that the
+citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as against
+themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans,
+appealing to the early history of the Empire, declared
+that by nothing but the voice of their senate and people
+could an Emperor be lawfully created, he being only their
+chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of their authority.
+The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo imposed
+the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it
+was then his, and must always continue to be their right to
+give to whomsoever they would an office which was created
+to be the handmaid of their own. Of these three it was the
+last view that eventually prevailed, yet to an impartial eye
+it cannot claim, any more than do the two others, to contain
+the whole truth. Charles did not conquer, nor the
+Pope give, nor the people elect. As the act was unprecedented
+so was it illegal; it was a revolt of the ancient
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>
+Western capital against a daughter who had become a
+mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of insurrection,
+justified by the weakness and wickedness of the Byzantine
+princes, hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction
+of Christ's representative, but founded upon no law, nor
+competent to create any for the future.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Was the
+coronation
+a surprise?</p>
+
+<p>It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing question,
+how far the coronation scene, an act as imposing in its
+circumstances as it was momentous in its results, was
+prearranged among the parties. Eginhard tells us that
+Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not,
+even on so high a festival, have entered the church had
+he known of the Pope's intention. Even if the monarch
+had uttered, the secretary would hardly have recorded a
+falsehood long after the motive that might have prompted
+it had disappeared. Of the existence of that motive which
+has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent
+of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered,
+little or no proof can be brought from the
+records of the time, wherein the nation is represented as
+exulting in the new dignity of their chief as an accession
+of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that
+Charles's disavowal was meant to soothe the offended
+pride of the Byzantine princes, from whom he had nothing
+to fear, and who were none the more likely to recognise
+his dignity, if they should believe it to be not of his own
+seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a surprise;
+for it was the goal towards which the policy of the
+Frankish kings had for many years pointed, and Charles
+himself, in sending before him to Rome many of the
+spiritual and temporal magnates of his realm, in summoning
+thither his son Pipin from the war against the Lombards
+of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span>
+more than ordinary result from this journey to the imperial
+city. Alcuin moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister
+of Charles in matters religious and literary, appears from
+one of his extant letters to have sent as a Christmas gift to
+his royal pupil a carefully corrected and superbly adorned
+copy of the Scriptures, with the words <span lang="la">'ad splendorem imperialis
+potentiæ.'</span> This has commonly been taken for
+conclusive evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand,
+and such it would be were there not some reasons
+for giving the letter an earlier date, and looking upon the
+word <span lang="la">'imperialis'</span> as a mere magniloquent flourish<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a>. More
+weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments supplied
+by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his
+confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never
+have ventured on so momentous a step until previous conferences
+had assured him of the feelings of the king, nor
+could an act for which the assembly were evidently prepared
+have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the declaration
+of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down
+to mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the
+whole more reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied
+himself of the wishes of the Roman clergy and people
+as well as of the Frankish magnates, resolved to seize an
+occasion and place so eminently favourable to his long-cherished
+plan, while Charles, carried away by the enthusiasm
+of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet
+and instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which
+he might have wished to receive at some later time or in
+some other way. If, therefore, any positive conclusion be
+adopted, it would seem to be that Charles, although he had
+probably given a more or less vague consent to the project,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>
+was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden fulfilment
+which interrupted his own carefully studied designs.
+And although a deed which changed the history of the
+world was in any case no accident, it may well have worn
+to the Frankish and Roman spectators the air of a surprise.
+For there were no preparations apparent in the
+church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors in
+aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne: suddenly,
+at the very moment when he rose from the sacred
+hollow where he had knelt among the ever-burning lamps
+before the holiest of Christian relics&mdash;the body of the
+prince of the Apostles&mdash;the hands of that Apostle's representative
+placed upon his head the crown of glory and
+poured upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something
+in this to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine
+presence, and make them hail him whom that presence
+seemed almost visibly to consecrate, the 'pious and
+peace-giving Emperor, crowned of God.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Theories of
+the motives
+of Charles.</p>
+
+<p>The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial title
+is ascribed by Eginhard to a fear of the jealous hostility of
+the Greeks, who could not only deny his claim to it, but
+might disturb by their intrigues his dominions in Italy.
+Accepting this statement, the problem remains, how is
+this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his
+which clearly shew him aiming at the Roman crown? An
+ingenious and probable, if not certain solution, is suggested
+by a recent historian<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>,
+who argues from a minute
+examination of the previous policy of Charles, that while
+it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown of
+the world, he foresaw at the same time the opposition of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>
+the Eastern Court, and the want of legality from which his
+title would in consequence suffer. He was therefore bent
+on getting from the Byzantines, if possible, a transference
+of their crown; if not, at least a recognition of his own:
+and he appears to have hoped to win this by the negotiations
+which had been for some time kept on foot with the
+Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation
+by Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, irritating
+the Eastern Court, and forcing Charles into the
+position of a rival who could not with dignity adopt a
+soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he seems not
+even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a
+peaceful recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him,
+if we may credit Theophanes<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a>,
+from seeking her hand in
+marriage. And when the project of thus uniting the East
+and West in a single Empire, baffled for a time by the opposition
+of her minister Ætius, was rendered impossible by
+her subsequent dethronement and exile, he did not abandon
+the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in
+rather than admission of his dignity had been won from
+the Byzantine sovereigns Michael and Nicephorus<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Defect in
+the title of
+the Teutonic
+Emperors.</p>
+
+<p>Whether, supposing Leo to have been less precipitate, a
+cession of the crown, or an acknowledgment of the right
+of the Romans to confer it, could ever have been obtained
+by Charles is perhaps more than doubtful. But it is clear
+that he judged rightly in rating its importance high, for
+the want of it was the great blemish in his own and his
+successors' dignity. To shew how this was so, reference
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span>
+must be made to the events of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 476. Both the extinction
+of the Western Empire in that year and its revival
+in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800 have been very generally misunderstood in
+modern times, and although the mistake is not, in a certain
+sense, of practical importance, yet it tends to confuse
+history and to blind us to the ideas of the people who
+acted on both occasions. When Odoacer compelled the
+abdication of Romulus Augustulus, he did not abolish the
+Western Empire as a separate power, but caused it to be
+reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that from that
+time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a
+single undivided Roman Empire. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800 the very
+memory of the separate Western Empire, as it had stood
+from the death of Theodosius till Odoacer, had, so far as
+appears, been long since lost, and neither Leo nor Charles
+nor any one among their advisers dreamt of reviving it. They
+too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire to be
+one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the
+Frankish king not to proclaim a severance of the East
+and West, but to reverse the act of Constantine, and make
+Old Rome again the civil as well as the ecclesiastical
+capital of the Empire that bore her name. Their deed
+was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it every
+semblance of legality: they professed and partly believed
+that they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign,
+but legitimately filling up the place of the deposed Constantine
+the Sixth; the people of the imperial city exercising
+their ancient right of choice, their bishop his right
+of consecration.</p>
+
+<p>Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could
+create but they could not destroy: they set up an Emperor
+of their own, whose representatives thenceforward ruled
+the West, but Constantinople retained her sovereigns as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>
+of yore; and Christendom saw henceforth two imperial
+lines, not as in the time before <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 476, the conjoint
+heads of a single realm, but rivals and enemies, each
+denouncing the other as an impostor, each professing
+to be the only true and lawful head of the Christian
+Church and people. Although therefore we must in
+practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1453, when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan)
+of an Eastern and a Western Empire, the
+phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one which either
+court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always
+did repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding
+to facts, they sometimes condescended to employ it
+themselves. But their theory was always the same.
+Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not of
+Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius,
+and all the Eastern line; and hence it is that in all
+the annals of the time and of many succeeding centuries,
+the name of Constantine VI, the sixty-seventh in order
+from Augustus, is followed without a break by that of
+Charles, the sixty-eighth.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Government
+of Charles
+as Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The maintenance of an imperial line among the Greeks
+was a continuing protest against the validity of Charles's
+title. But from their enmity he had little to fear, and in
+the eyes of the world he seemed to step into their place,
+adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs to
+the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and
+Rome ceased for ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium;
+and while the Eastern princes paid a shameful
+tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor&mdash;as the
+recognised head of Christendom&mdash;received from the
+patriarch of Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre
+and the banner of Calvary; the gift of the Sepulchre
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span>
+itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of the Persians<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a>.
+Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great Khalif the
+romancers created a crusade. Within his own dominions
+his sway assumed a more sacred character.
+<span class="sidenote">His authority
+in matters
+ecclesiastical.</span>
+Already had his
+unwearied and comprehensive activity made him throughout
+his reign an ecclesiastical no less than a civil ruler,
+summoning and sitting in councils, examining and
+appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the smallest
+points of church discipline and polity. A synod held at
+Frankfort in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 794 condemned the decrees of the
+second council of Nicæa, which had been approved by
+Pope Hadrian, censured in violent terms the conduct of
+the Byzantine rulers in suggesting them, and without
+excluding images from churches, altogether forbade them
+to be worshipped or even venerated. Not only did
+Charles preside in and direct the deliberations of this
+synod, although legates from the Pope were present&mdash;he
+also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and urging
+its conclusions; he pressed Hadrian to declare Constantine
+VI a heretic for enouncing doctrines to which
+Hadrian had himself consented. There are letters of his
+extant in which he lectures Pope Leo in a tone of easy
+superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy canons, and
+bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts
+which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation
+of pagans and the establishment of sound doctrine
+throughout the Church. Nay, subsequent Popes themselves<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a>
+admitted and applauded the despotic superintendence
+of matters spiritual which he was wont to
+exercise, and which led some one to give him playfully a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>
+title that had once been applied to the Pope himself,
+<span lang="la">'Episcopus episcoporum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The imperial
+office
+in its ecclesiastical
+relations.</p>
+
+<p>Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be
+thought that Charles needed no further title to justify
+his power. The inference is in truth rather the converse
+of this. Upon what he had done already the imperial
+title must necessarily follow: the attitude of protection
+and control which he held towards the Church and the
+Holy See belonged, according to the ideas of the time,
+especially and only to an Emperor. Therefore his coronation
+was the fitting completion and legitimation of his
+authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it. We have,
+however, one remarkable witness to the importance that
+was attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement
+which he conceived his office to have received from it.
+In a great assembly held at Aachen, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 802, the lately-crowned
+<span class="sidenote">Capitulary
+of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 802.</span>
+Emperor revised the laws of all the races that
+obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them,
+and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>.
+All persons within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as
+civil, who have already sworn allegiance to him as king,
+are thereby commanded to swear to him afresh as Cæsar;
+and all who have never yet sworn, down to the age of
+twelve, shall now take the same oath. 'At the same
+time it shall be publicly explained to all what is the force
+and meaning of this oath, and how much more it includes
+than a mere promise of fidelity to the monarch's person.
+Firstly, it binds those who swear it to live, each and every
+one of them, according to his strength and knowledge, in
+the holy service of God; since the lord Emperor cannot
+extend over all his care and discipline. Secondly, it
+binds them neither by force nor fraud to seize or molest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>
+any of the goods or servants of his crown. Thirdly, to
+do no violence nor treason towards the holy Church, or
+to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that the lord
+Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord and his
+saints, the protector and defender of all such.' Then in
+similar fashion purity of life is prescribed to the monks;
+homicide, the neglect of hospitality, and other offences
+are denounced, the notions of sin and crime being intermingled
+and almost identified in a way to which no
+parallel can be found, unless it be in the Mosaic code.
+There God, the invisible object of worship, is also, though
+almost incidentally, the judge and political ruler of Israel;
+here the whole cycle of social and moral duty is deduced
+from the obligation of obedience to the visible autocratic
+head of the Christian state.</p>
+
+<p>In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly
+in the writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned
+the working of the same theocratic ideas. Among his
+intimate friends he chose to be called by the name of
+David, exercising in reality all the powers of the Jewish
+king; presiding over this kingdom of God upon earth
+rather as a second Constantine or Theodosius than in the
+spirit and traditions of the Julii or the Flavii. Among
+his measures there are two which in particular recall the
+first Christian Emperor. As Constantine founds so
+Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection of Church
+and State. Bishops and abbots are as essential a part of
+rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices
+are held under the same conditions of fealty and the
+service in war of their vassal tenants, not of the spiritual
+person himself: they have similar rights of jurisdiction,
+and are subject alike to the imperial <i lang="la">missi</i>. The monarch
+tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>
+duties; quells the insubordination of the monasteries;
+endeavours to bring the seculars into a monastic life by
+instituting and regulating chapters. But after granting
+wealth and power, the attempt was vain; his strong hand
+withdrawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by
+him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood
+had long been pleading, was made compulsory in
+Western Europe, and the support of the ministers of
+religion entrusted to the laws of the state.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence of
+the imperial
+title in
+Germany
+and Gaul.</p>
+
+<p>In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the imperial
+title, a new position. Later jurists labour to distinguish
+his power as Roman Emperor from that which he held
+already as king of the Franks and their subject allies:
+they insist that his coronation gave him the capital only,
+that it is absurd to talk of a Roman Empire in regions
+whither the eagles had never flown<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a>. In such expressions
+there seems to lurk either confusion or misconception.
+It was not the actual government of the city that Charles
+obtained in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800: that his father had already held as
+Patrician and he had constantly exercised in the same capacity:
+it was far more than the titular sovereignty of Rome
+which had hitherto been supposed to be vested in the
+Byzantine princes: it was nothing less than the headship
+of the world, believed to appertain of right to the lawful
+Roman Emperor, whether he reigned on the Bosphorus,
+the Tiber, or the Rhine. As that headship, although never
+denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several
+centuries, its bestowal on the king of so vast a realm was
+a change of the first moment, for it made the coronation
+not merely a transference of the seat of Empire, but a
+renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing back of it from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>
+faith to sight, from the world of belief and theory to the
+world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave
+were autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all
+minor claims and dignities: the rights of Charles the
+Frankish king were merged in those of Charles the
+successor of Augustus, the lord of the world. That his
+imperial authority was theoretically irrespective of place
+is clear from his own words and acts, and from all the
+monuments of that time. He would not, indeed, have
+dreamed of treating the free Franks as Justinian had
+treated his half-Oriental subjects, nor would the warriors
+who followed his standard have brooked such an attempt.
+Yet even to German eyes his position must have been
+altered by the halo of vague splendour which now surrounded
+him; for all, even the Saxon and the Slave, had heard of
+Rome's glories, and revered the name of Cæsar.
+<span class="sidenote">Action of
+Charles on
+Europe.</span>
+And in
+his effort to weld discordant elements into one body, to
+introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the
+Teutonic tendency to localization by his <i lang="la">missi</i>&mdash;officials
+commissioned to traverse each some part of his dominions,
+reporting on and redressing the evils they found&mdash;and by
+his own oft-repeated personal progresses, Charles was
+guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is
+the revival of order and culture, fusing the West into a
+compact whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to
+lose the marks of their connection and their half-Roman
+character, gathering up all that is left in Europe of spirit
+and wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with the new
+force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the
+masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East.
+Ruling the world by the gift of God, and the transmitted
+rights of the Romans and their Cæsar whom God had
+chosen to conquer it, he renews the original aggressive
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>
+movement of the Empire: the civilized world has subdued
+her invader<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a>,
+and now arms him against savagery and
+heathendom. Hence the wars, not more of the sword
+than of the cross, against Saxons, Avars, Slaves, Danes,
+Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses and
+baptism the badge of submission. The overthrow of the
+Irminsûl<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a>,
+in the first Saxon campaign<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>,
+sums up the
+changes of seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton
+destroys the monument of his country's freedom, for it is
+also the emblem of paganism and barbarism. The work
+of Arminius is undone by his successor.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">His position
+as Frankish
+king.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, is not the only side from which
+Charles's policy and character may be regarded. If the
+unity of the Church and the shadow of imperial prerogative
+was one pillar of his power, the other was the
+Frankish nation. The Empire was still military, though
+in a sense strangely different from that of Julius or
+Severus. The warlike Franks had permeated Western
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>
+Europe; their primacy was admitted by the kindred
+tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemannians,
+and Burgundians; the Slavic peoples on the borders
+trembled and paid tribute; Alfonso of Asturias found in
+the Emperor a protector against the infidel foe. His
+influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the ocean:
+the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a>
+:
+the restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of
+Egbert to Wessex, might furnish a better ground for
+the claim of suzerainty than many to which his successors
+had afterwards recourse. As it was by Frankish
+arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial
+title adorned and legalized had been won, so was
+the government of Charles Roman in semblance rather
+than in fact. It was not by restoring the effete mechanism
+of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action
+and that of his great officers, that he strove to administer
+and reform. With every effort for a strong central
+government, there is no despotism; each nation retains
+its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its free popular assemblies.
+The conditions granted to the Saxons after such cruel
+warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century
+their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew
+how little he desired to make the Franks a dominant caste.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">General results
+of his
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe a Teutonic
+spirit into Roman forms. The conception was
+magnificent; great results followed its partial execution.
+Two causes forbade success. The one was the ecclesiastical,
+especially the Papal power, apparently subject
+to the temporal, but with a strong and undefined prerogative
+which only waited the occasion to trample on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span>
+what it had helped to raise. The Pope might take away
+the crown he had bestowed, and turn against the Emperor
+the Church which now obeyed him. The other
+was to be found in the discordance of the component
+parts of the Empire. The nations were not ripe for
+settled life or extensive schemes of polity; the differences
+of race, language, manners, over vast and thinly-peopled
+lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection:
+and when once the spell of the great mind was withdrawn,
+the mutually repellent forces began to work, and
+the mass dissolved into that chaos out of which it had
+been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as
+they met, but having all of them undergone influences
+which continued to act when political connection had
+ceased. For the work of Charles&mdash;a genius pre-eminently
+creative&mdash;was not lost in the anarchy that followed:
+rather are we to regard his reign as the beginning of a
+new era, or as laying the foundations whereon men continued
+for many generations to build.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Personal
+habits and
+sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>No claim can be more groundless than that which the
+modern French, the sons of the Latinized Kelt, set up to
+the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he might assume the
+chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his Frankish
+host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country,
+and was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their
+own character and habits<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a>. Of strength and stature
+almost superhuman, in swimming and hunting unsurpassed,
+steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends
+gentle and condescending, he was a Roman, much less
+a Gaul, in nothing but his culture and his width of view,
+otherwise a Teuton. The centre of his realm was the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>
+Rhine; his capitals Aachen<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a>
+ and Engilenheim<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a>;
+his
+army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn in
+the gathering of the old hero-lays<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a>,
+the composition
+of a German grammar, the ordinance against confining
+prayer to the three languages,&mdash;Hebrew, Greek, and
+Latin,&mdash;were all for the race from which he sprang,
+and whose advance, represented by the victory of Austrasia,
+the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and
+Aquitaine, spread a second Germanic wave over the
+conquered countries.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">His Empire
+and
+character
+generally.</p>
+
+<p>There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two
+elements; those two from the union and mutual action
+and reaction of which modern civilization has arisen.
+These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to the
+Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were
+all the conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still
+governed almost exclusively by viceroys and officers of
+Frankish blood. But the conception of the Empire,
+that which made it a State and not a mere mass of
+subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which
+rise and perish in a lifetime, the realms of Sesostris, or
+Attila, or Timur, was inherited from an older and a
+grander system, was not Teutonic but Roman&mdash;Roman
+in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and precision, in its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>
+endeavour to subject the individual to the system&mdash;Roman
+in its effort to realize a certain limited and human perfection,
+whose very completeness shall exclude the hope
+of further progress. And the bond, too, by which the
+Empire was held together was Roman in its origin,
+although Roman in a sense which would have surprised
+Trajan or Severus, could it have been foretold them.
+The ecclesiastical body was already organized and centralized,
+and it was in his rule over the ecclesiastical
+body that the secret of Charles's power lay. Every
+Christian&mdash;Frank, Gaul, or Italian&mdash;owed loyalty to the
+head and defender of his religion: the unity of the
+Empire was a reflection of the unity of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Into a general view of the government and policy of
+Charles it is not possible here to enter. Yet his legislation,
+his assemblies, his administrative system, his magnificent
+works, recalling the projects of Alexander and
+Cæsar<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a>,
+the zeal for education and literature which he
+shewed in the collection of manuscripts, the founding of
+schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters
+around him, cannot be appreciated apart from his position
+as restorer of the Roman Empire. Like all the
+foremost men of our race, Charles was all great things
+in one, and was so great just because the workings of his
+genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian
+warrior any more than he was an astute diplomatist;
+there is none of all his qualities which would
+not be forced out of its place were we to characterize
+him chiefly by it. Comparisons between famous men
+of different ages are generally as worthless as they are
+easy: the circumstances among which Charles lived do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>
+not permit us to institute a minute parallel between his
+greatness and that of those two to whom it is the modern
+fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
+could have become as profound a politician as Cæsar, as
+skilful a commander as Napoleon<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a>. But neither to the
+Roman nor to the Corsican was he inferior in that one
+quality by which both he and they chiefly impress our
+imaginations&mdash;that intense, vivid, unresting energy which
+swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign,
+which sought a field for its workings in theology, science,
+literature, no less than in politics and war. As it was
+this wondrous activity that made him the conqueror of
+Europe, so was it by the variety of his culture that he
+became her civilizer. From him, in whose wide deep
+mind the whole mediæval theory of the world and human
+life mirrored itself, did mediæval society take the form
+and impress which it retained for centuries, and the traces
+whereof are among us and upon us to this day.</p>
+
+<p>The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that
+basilica which it had been the delight of his later years
+to erect and adorn with the treasures of ancient art.
+His tomb under the dome&mdash;where now we see an enormous
+slab, with the words <span lang="la">'Carolo Magno'</span>&mdash;was inscribed,
+'<i lang="la">Magnus atque Orthodoxus Imperator</i><a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a>.' Poets,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>
+fostered by his own zeal, sang of him who had given to
+the Franks the sway of Romulus<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>. The gorgeous drapery
+of romance gradually wreathed itself round his
+name, till by canonization as a saint he received the
+highest glory the world or the Church could confer. For
+the Roman Church claimed then, as she claims still, the
+privilege which humanity in one form or another seems
+scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost
+divine its great departed; and as in pagan times temples
+had risen to a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated
+to St. Charlemagne. Between Sanctus Carolus and
+Divus Julius how strange an analogy and how strange
+a contrast!</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPERORS.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Lewis the
+Pious.</p>
+
+<p>Lewis the Pious<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>,
+left by Charles's death sole heir, had
+been some years before associated with his father in the
+Empire, and had been crowned by his own hands in a
+way which, intentionally or not, appeared to deny the
+need of Papal sanction. But it was soon seen that the
+strength to grasp the sceptre had not passed with it.
+Too mild to restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown
+by over-conscientiousness into the hands of the clergy,
+he had reigned few years when dissensions broke out
+on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to continue
+one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor,
+but with its several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia,
+Bavaria, each a kingdom held by a scion of the reigning
+house. A scheme dangerous in itself, and rendered
+more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of
+succession, could with difficulty have been managed by
+a wise and firm monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy
+his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and Charles) by dividing and
+redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed, and forced
+by the bishops to do penance; again restored, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Partition
+of Verdun,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 843.</span>
+without power, a tool in the hands of contending factions.
+On his death the sons flew to arms, and the
+first of the dynastic quarrels of modern Europe was
+fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition
+treaty of Verdun which followed, the Teutonic principle
+of equal division among heirs triumphed over the Roman
+one of the transmission of an indivisible Empire: the
+practical sovereignty of all three brothers was admitted
+in their respective territories, a barren precedence only
+reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he, as
+the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result
+was the separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities.
+Their difference of feeling, shewn already
+in the support of Lewis the Pious by the Germans
+against the Gallo-Franks and the Church<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a>,
+took now a
+permanent shape: modern Germany proclaims the era
+of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 843 the beginning of her national existence, and
+celebrated its thousandth anniversary twenty-seven years
+ago. To Charles the Bald was given Francia Occidentalis,
+that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to Lothar,
+who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome
+and Aachen, a long and narrow kingdom stretching from
+the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and including the
+northern half of Italy: Lewis (surnamed, from his kingdom,
+the German) received all east of the Rhine, Franks,
+Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible supremacies
+over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout
+these regions German was spoken; through Charles's
+kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally removed from Latin
+and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span>
+having no national basis, was the weakest of the three,
+and soon dissolved into the separate sovereignties of
+Italy, Burgundy, and Lotharingia, or, as we call it,
+Lorraine.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">End of the
+Carolingian
+Empire of
+the West,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 888.</p>
+
+<p>On the tangled history of the period that follows it is
+not possible to do more than touch. After passing from
+one branch of the Carolingian line to another<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a>,
+the imperial
+sceptre was at last possessed and disgraced by Charles the
+Fat, who united all the dominions of his great-grandfather.
+This unworthy heir could not avail himself of recovered
+territory to strengthen or defend the expiring monarchy.
+He was driven out of Italy in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 887, and his death in 888
+has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the
+Carolingian Empire of the West. The Germans, still
+attached to the ancient line, chose Arnulf, an illegitimate
+Carolingian, for their king: he entered Italy and was
+crowned Emperor by his partizan Pope Formosus, in
+894. But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no
+condition to maintain her power over the southern lands:
+Arnulf retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty
+years of stormy independence.</p>
+
+<p>That time was indeed the nadir of order and civilization.
+From all sides the torrent of barbarism which
+Charles the Great had stemmed was rushing down upon
+his empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean
+coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman
+swept the Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced
+France and Germany by their rivers, burning, slaying,
+carrying off into captivity: pouring through the Straits
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>
+of Gibraltar, they fell upon Provence and Italy. By land,
+while Wends and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the
+German yoke and threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian
+bands, pressing in from the steppes of the Caspian,
+dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a new wave
+of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes
+to the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes
+the already loosened fabric swiftly dissolved. No one
+thought of common defence or wide organization: the
+strong built castles, the weak became their bondsmen,
+or took shelter under the cowl: the governor&mdash;count,
+abbot, or bishop&mdash;tightened his grasp, turned a delegated
+into an independent, a personal into a territorial authority,
+and hardly owned a distant and feeble suzerain.
+The grand vision of a universal Christian empire was
+utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism, the increasing
+localization of all powers: it might seem to
+have been but a passing gleam from an older and
+better world.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The German
+Kingdom.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry the
+Fowler.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last
+its cure. When the male line of the eastern branch of
+the Carolingians had ended in Lewis (surnamed the
+Child), son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and the people
+accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry
+the Saxon duke, both representing the female line of
+Charles. Henry laid the foundations of a firm monarchy,
+driving back the Magyars and Wends, recovering Lotharingia,
+founding towns to be centres of orderly life
+and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had
+meant to claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights
+which Conrad's weakness had at least asserted by the
+demand of tribute; but death overtook him, and the plan
+was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span></p>
+<p class="sidenote">Otto the
+Great.</p>
+
+<p>The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name in the
+sense which it commonly bore in later centuries, as denoting
+the sovereignty of Germany and Italy vested in
+a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great.
+Substantially, it is true, as well as technically, it was a
+prolongation of the Empire of Charles; and it rested (as
+will be shewn in the sequel) upon ideas essentially the
+same as those which brought about the coronation of
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800. But a revival is always more or less a revolution:
+the one hundred and fifty years that had passed
+since the death of Charles had brought with them changes
+which made Otto's position in Germany and Europe less
+commanding and less autocratic than his predecessor's.
+With narrower geographical limits, his Empire had a less
+plausible claim to be the heir of Rome's universal dominion;
+and there were also differences in its inner
+character and structure sufficient to justify us in considering
+Otto (as he is usually considered by his countrymen)
+not a mere successor after an interregnum, but
+rather a second founder of the imperial throne in the
+West.</p>
+
+<p>Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something
+must be said of the condition of that country, where circumstances
+had again made possible the plan of Theodoric,
+permitted it to become an independent kingdom,
+and attached the imperial title to its sovereign.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Italian
+Emperors.</p>
+
+<p>The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great was
+not really that 'translation of the Empire from the Greeks
+to the Franks,' which it was afterwards described as
+having been. It was not meant to settle the office in one
+nation or one dynasty: there was but an extension of
+that principle of the equality of all Romans which had
+made Trajan and Maximin Emperors. The '<i lang="la">arcanum
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span>
+imperii</i>,' whereof Tacitus speaks, '<i lang="la">posse principem alibi
+quam Romæ fieri</i><a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a>
+,' had long before become <i lang="la">alium quam
+Romanum</i>; and now, the names of Roman and Christian
+having grown co-extensive, a barbarian chieftain was,
+as a Roman citizen, eligible to the office of Roman
+Emperor. Treating him as such, the people and pontiff
+of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern throne
+asserted their ancient rights of election, and while attempting
+to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established
+the division of Valentinian. The dignity was
+therefore in strictness personal to Charles; in point of
+fact, and by consent, hereditarily transmissible, just as it
+had formerly become in the families of Constantine and
+Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by
+no means legally attached, though they might think it so;
+it had passed to their king only because he was the
+greatest European potentate, and might equally well pass
+to some stronger race, if any such appeared. Hence,
+when the line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles
+the Fat, the rights of Rome and Italy might be taken to
+revive, and there was nothing to prevent the citizens
+from choosing whom they would. At that memorable
+era (<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 888) the four kingdoms which this prince had
+united fell asunder; West France, where Odo or Eudes
+then began to reign, was never again united to Germany;
+East France (Germany) chose Arnulf; Burgundy<a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>
+ split
+up into two principalities, in one of which (Transjurane)
+Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other (Cisjurane
+with Provence) submitted to Boso<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a>;
+while Italy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span>
+was divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli
+and Guido of Spoleto. The former was chosen king by
+the estates of Lombardy; the latter, and on his speedy
+death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor by the
+Pope. Arnulf's descent chased them away and vindicated
+the claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the
+anti-German faction at Rome became again free. Berengar
+was made king of Italy, and afterwards Emperor.
+Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his fealty
+to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain
+title he retained through years of misery and exile, till
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 928<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>. None of these Emperors were strong enough
+to rule well even in Italy; beyond it they were not so
+much as recognized. The crown had become a bauble
+with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of
+princes whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed
+the credulity of their more honest supporters. The demoralization
+and confusion of Italy, the shameless profligacy
+of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were
+enough to prevent a true Italian kingdom from being
+built up on the basis of Roman choice and national unity.
+Italian indeed it can scarcely be called, for these Emperors
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span>
+were still in blood and manners Teutonic, and akin rather
+to their Transalpine enemies than their Romanic subjects.
+But Italian it might soon have become under a vigorous
+rule which should have organized it within and knit it
+together to resist attacks from without. And therefore
+the attempt to establish such a kingdom is remarkable,
+for it might have had great consequences; might, if it
+had prospered, have spared Italy much suffering and
+Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who
+from the summit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty
+plain the gleaming turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great
+arc from North to West, may well wonder that a land
+which nature has so severed from its neighbours should,
+since history begins, have been always the victim of their
+intrusive tyranny.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Adelheid
+Queen of
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom
+Emperors. After him Hugh of Burgundy, and Lothar
+his son, reigned as kings of Italy, if puppets in the hands
+of a riotous aristocracy can be so called. Rome was
+meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>,
+who
+had renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions,
+and in the degradation of the papacy was almost
+absolute in the city. Lothar dying, his widow Adelheid<a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+
+was sought in marriage by Adalbert son of Berengar
+II, the new Italian monarch. A gleam of romance
+is shed on the Empire's revival by her beauty and her
+adventures. Rejecting the odious alliance, she was seized
+by Berengar, escaped with difficulty from the loathsome
+prison where his barbarity had confined her, and appealed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Otto's first
+expedition
+into Italy,
+A.D. 951.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">Invitation
+sent by the
+Pope to
+Otto.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">Motives for
+reviving the
+Empire.</span>
+to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly
+virtue which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce
+brutality of the last age. He listened, descended into
+Lombardy by the Adige valley, espoused the injured
+queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as a
+vassal of the East Frankish crown. That prince was
+turbulent and faithless; new complaints reached ere long
+his liege lord, and envoys from the Pope offered Otto
+the imperial title if he would re-visit and pacify Italy.
+The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, as they
+had thought in the centuries before the Carolingians, that
+the Empire was suspended, not extinct; and the desire
+to see its effective power restored, the belief that without
+it the world could never be right, might seem better
+grounded than it had been before the coronation of
+Charles. Then the imperial name had recalled only the
+faint memories of Roman majesty and order; now it
+was also associated with the golden age of the first
+Frankish Emperor, when a single firm and just hand had
+guided the state, reformed the church, repressed the excesses
+of local power: when Christianity had advanced
+against heathendom, civilizing as she went, fearing neither
+Hun nor Paynim. One annalist tells us that Charles was
+elected 'lest the pagans should insult the Christians, if
+the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
+Christians<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a>.' The motive would be bitterly enforced
+by the calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of
+disintegration, confusion, strife, all the longings of every
+wiser and better soul for unity, for peace and law, for
+some bond to bring Christian men and Christian states
+together against the common enemy of the faith, were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>
+but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman
+Empire<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a>. These were the feelings that on the field of
+Merseburg broke forth in the shout of 'Henry the Emperor:'
+these the hopes of the Teutonic host when after
+the great deliverance of the Lechfeld they greeted Otto,
+conqueror of the Magyars, as 'Imperator Augustus,
+Pater Patriæ<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Condition
+of Italy.</p>
+
+<p>The anarchy which an Emperor was needed to heal
+was at its worst in Italy, desolated by the feuds of
+a crowd of petty princes. A succession of infamous
+Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the lovers
+and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the
+chair of the Apostle, and though Rome herself might
+be lost to decency, Western Christendom was roused to
+anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to satisfy
+their consciences by separating the person from the office.
+The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest
+confusion, and demands were raised for the renewal of
+that imperial authority which all admitted in theory<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a>
+,
+and which nothing but the resolute opposition of Alberic
+himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951. From
+the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once
+tempted to turn, nothing could be hoped; its dangers
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>
+from foreign enemies were aggravated by the plots of the
+court and the seditions of the capital; it was becoming
+more and more alienated from the West by the Photian
+schism and the question regarding the Procession of the
+Holy Ghost, which that quarrel had started. Germany
+was extending and consolidating herself, had escaped
+domestic perils, and might think of reviving ancient
+claims. No one could be more willing to revive them
+than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging
+a bold and successful struggle against the turbulent magnates
+of his German realm, had engaged him in wars
+with the surrounding nations, and was now captivated by
+the vision of a wider sway and a loftier world-embracing
+dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer
+opened up less welcome to his people. Aachen, their
+capital, was the ancestral home of the house of Pipin:
+their sovereign, although himself a Saxon by race, titled
+himself king of the Franks, in opposition to the Frankish
+rulers of the Western branch, whose Teutonic character
+was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul; they held
+themselves in every way the true representatives of the
+Carolingian power, and accounted the period since
+Arnulf's death nothing but an interregnum which had
+suspended but not impaired their rights over Rome.
+'For so long,' says a writer of the time, 'as there remain
+kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman
+Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its
+kings<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>.' The recovery of Italy was therefore to German
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>
+eyes a righteous as well as a glorious design: approved
+by the Teutonic Church which had lately been negotiating
+with Rome on the subject of missions to the heathen;
+embraced by the people, who saw in it an accession of
+strength to their young kingdom. Everything smiled
+on Otto's enterprise, and the connection which was destined
+to bring so much strife and woe to Germany and
+to Italy was welcomed by the wisest of both countries
+as the beginning of a better era.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Descent of
+Otto the
+Great into
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or not
+he felt that he was sacrificing, as modern writers have
+thought that he did sacrifice, the greatness of his German
+kingdom to the lust of universal dominion, he shewed
+no hesitation in his acts. Descending from the Alps
+with an overpowering force, he was acknowledged as
+king of Italy at Pavia<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a>;
+and, having first taken an
+oath to protect the Holy See and respect the liberties
+of the city, advanced to Rome.
+<span class="sidenote">His coronation
+at
+Rome, <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+962.</span>
+There, with Adelheid
+his queen, he was crowned by John XII, on the day
+of the Purification, the second of February, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 962.
+The details of his election and coronation are unfortunately
+still more scanty than in the case of his great
+predecessor. Most of our authorities represent the
+act as of the Pope's favour<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a>,
+yet it is plain that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>
+consent of the people was still thought an essential part
+of the ceremony, and that Otto rested after all on his
+host of conquering Saxons. Be this as it may, there
+was neither question raised nor opposition made in
+Rome; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged
+between Emperor and Pope, the latter owning himself a
+subject, and the citizens swore for the future to elect no
+pontiff without Otto's consent.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THEORY OF THE MEDIÆVAL EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Why the
+revival of
+the Empire
+was desired.</p>
+
+<p>These were the events and circumstances of the time:
+let us now look at the causes. The restoration of the
+Empire by Charles may seem to be sufficiently accounted
+for by the width of his conquests, by the peculiar connection
+which already subsisted between him and the
+Roman Church, by his commanding personal character,
+by the temporary vacancy of the Byzantine throne. The
+causes of its revival under Otto must be sought deeper.
+Making every allowance for the favouring incidents which
+have already been dwelt upon, there must have been
+some further influence at work to draw him and his
+successors, Saxon and Frankish kings, so far from home
+in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the Italians to accept
+the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
+the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age
+not what it seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an
+institution divine and necessary, having its foundations in
+the very nature and order of things. The empire of the
+elder Rome had been splendid in its life, yet its judgment
+was written in the misery to which it had brought the
+provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the
+attacks of the barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it
+had long been dead, and the course of events was adverse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>
+to its revival. Its actual representatives, the Roman
+people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a profligacy
+notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for
+all this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long
+ages to stem the irresistible time-current, fondly believing
+that they were breasting it even while it was sweeping
+them ever faster and faster away from the old order into a
+region of new thoughts, new feelings, new forms of life. Not
+till the days of the Reformation was the illusion dispelled.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Mediæval
+theories.</p>
+
+<p>The explanation is to be found in the state of the
+human mind during these centuries. The Middle Ages
+were essentially unpolitical. Ideas as familiar to the
+commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas of the
+common good as the object of the State, of the rights of
+the people, of the comparative merits of different forms
+of government, were to them, though sometimes carried
+out in fact, in their speculative form unknown, perhaps
+incomprehensible. Feudalism was the one great institution
+to which those times gave birth, and feudalism was
+a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence
+a political one. Yet the human mind, so far
+from being idle, was in certain directions never more
+active; nor was it possible for it to remain without
+general conceptions regarding the relation of men to each
+other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made
+an expression of the actual present condition of things
+nor drawn from an induction of the past; they were
+partly inherited from the system that had preceded,
+partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
+theology which was ripening into scholasticism<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a>. Now
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>
+the two great ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed
+to the ages that followed were those of a World-Monarchy
+and a World-Religion.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The World-Religion.</p>
+
+<p>Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge
+of each other, with no experience of wide political
+union<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a>,
+had held differences of race to be natural and
+irremovable barriers. Similarly, religion appeared to them
+a matter purely local and national; and as there were gods
+of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and of the
+sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
+the natives of another country who worshipped other gods
+as Gentiles, natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings,
+if keenest in the East, frequently shew themselves in the
+early records of Greece and Italy: in Homer the hero who
+wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in sacking the cities
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span>
+of the stranger<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>;
+the primitive Latins have the same word
+for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
+Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions
+of the belief which made Athenian philosophers look
+on a state of war between Greeks and barbarians as
+natural<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a>,
+and defend slavery on the same ground of the
+original diversity of the races that rule and the races that
+serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a
+common speech and law, smote this feeling on its political
+side; Christianity more effectually banished it from
+the soul by substituting for the variety of local pantheons
+the belief in one God, before whom all men are equal<a name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Coincides
+with the
+World-Empire.</p>
+
+<p>It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because
+divinity was divided, humanity had been divided likewise;
+the doctrine of the unity of God now enforced the unity
+of man, who had been created in His image<a name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a>. The first
+lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was to join in
+one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride
+of race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed
+by the new religion a community of the faithful, a Holy
+Empire, designed to gather all men into its bosom, and
+standing opposed to the manifold polytheisms of the older
+world, exactly as the universal sway of the Cæsars was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span>
+contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics
+that had gone before it. The analogy of the two made
+them appear parts of one great world-movement toward
+unity: the coincidence of their boundaries, which had
+begun before Constantine, lasted long enough after him
+to associate them indissolubly together, and make the
+names of Roman and Christian convertible<a name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a>. Œcumenical
+councils, where the whole spiritual body gathered itself
+from every part of the temporal realm under the presidency
+of the temporal head, presented the most visible and
+impressive examples of their connection<a name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a>. The language
+of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
+sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his
+generation consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly
+commonwealth Rome, by describing to them its successor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span>
+and representative, the 'city which hath foundations, whose
+builder and maker is God<a name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Preservation
+of the
+unity of the
+Church.</p>
+
+<p>Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and
+that of the religious society, meeting in the higher unity
+of all Christians, which may be indifferently called Catholicity
+or Romanism (since in that day those words would
+have had the same meaning), that only which had been entrusted
+to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
+the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the
+firmness with which she clung to it. Seeing one institution
+after another falling to pieces around her, seeing how
+countries and cities were being severed from each other
+by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing difficulty
+of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
+by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by
+drawing tighter every bond of outward union. Necessities
+of faith were still more powerful. Truth, it was said, is
+one, and as it must bind into one body all who hold it, so
+it is only by continuing in that body that they can preserve
+it.
+Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
+may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the
+council of Trent, there had arisen the idea of supplementing
+revelation by tradition as a source of doctrine, of
+exalting the universal conscience and belief above the
+individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
+through the universal consciousness, represented by the
+sacerdotal order: principles still maintained by one branch
+<span class="sidenote">Mediæval
+Theology
+requires
+One Visible
+Catholic
+Church.</span>
+of the Church, and for some at least of which far weightier
+reasons could be assigned then, in the paucity of written
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>
+records and the blind ignorance of the mass of the people,
+than any to which their modern advocates have recourse.
+There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and
+which it is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly
+a want of faith in the unseen, nor a shrinking fear
+which dared not look forth on the universe alone: it was
+rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind to realize
+the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
+see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a
+fact, the doctrine into its most literal application, the
+symbol into the essential ceremony; the tendency which
+intruded earthly Madonnas and saints between the worshipper
+and the spiritual Deity, and could satisfy its
+devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
+which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as
+the result of the direct action of angels and devils: which
+expressed the strivings of the soul after purity by the
+search for the Holy Grail: which in the Crusades sent
+myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the sepulchre
+of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
+approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was
+that the whole fabric of mediæval Christianity rested upon
+the idea of the Visible Church. Such a Church could be
+in nowise local or limited. To acquiesce in the establishment
+of National Churches would have appeared to those
+men, as it must always appear when scrutinized, contradictory
+to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the
+genius of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence
+at all, only as a temporary resource in the presence of insuperable
+difficulties. Had this plan, on which so many
+have dwelt with complacency in later times, been proposed
+either to the primitive Church in its adversity or to the
+dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span>
+rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no
+nations, the plan was one which did not and could not
+present itself. The Visible Church was therefore the
+Church Universal, the whole congregation of Christian
+men dispersed throughout the world.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Idea of
+political
+unity upheld
+by the
+clergy.</p>
+
+<p>Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was
+the priesthood; and it was by them, in whom dwelt
+whatever of learning and thought was left in Europe, that
+the second great idea whereof mention has been made&mdash;the
+belief in one universal temporal state&mdash;was preserved. As
+a matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West,
+and it might seem their interest to let its memory be lost.
+They, however, did not so calculate their interest. So far
+from feeling themselves opposed to the civil authority in
+the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came to do in
+the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
+that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare.
+They were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves
+living by the Roman law, using Latin as their proper
+tongue, and imbued with the idea of the historical connection
+of the two powers. And by them chiefly was that
+idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by
+none more earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser
+of Charles<a name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a>. The limits of those two powers had become
+confounded in practice: bishops were princes, the chief
+ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the leaders of
+their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
+ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence of
+the metaphysics
+of
+the time
+upon the
+theory of
+a World-State.</p>
+
+<p>But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a
+universal monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical
+basis, and may be traced up to those metaphysical
+ideas out of which the system we call Realism developed
+itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times were
+logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
+system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that
+which was most desirable in thought as in life. The
+search after causes became a search after principles of
+classification; since simplicity and truth were held to
+consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
+nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but
+rather in a sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of
+the relations of classes as containing or excluding each
+other. These classes, genera or species, were not themselves
+held to be conceptions formed by the mind from
+phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects
+grouped under and called by some common name; they
+were real things, existing independently of the individuals
+who composed them, recognized rather than created by
+the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
+quality present in all men, and making them what they
+are: as regards it they are therefore not many but one,
+the differences between individuals being no more than
+accidents. The whole truth of their being lies in the
+universal property, which alone has a permanent and
+independent existence. The common nature of the
+individuals thus gathered into one Being is typified in its
+two aspects, the spiritual and the secular, by two persons,
+the World-Priest and the World-Monarch, who present
+on earth a similitude of the Divine unity. For, as we
+have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
+expression that a thought could then be apprehended<a name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>
+Although it was to unity in religion that the clerical
+body was both by doctrine and by practice attached,
+they found this inseparable from the corresponding unity in
+politics. They saw that every act of man has a social and
+public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and concluded
+that the rules which directed and the powers which
+rewarded or punished must be parallel and similar, not
+so much two powers as different manifestations of one
+and the same. That the souls of all Christian men should
+be guided by one hierarchy, rising through successive
+grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they
+were answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected,
+mutually irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily
+opposed to the Divine order. As they could not
+imagine, nor value if they had imagined, a communion of
+the saints without its expression in a visible Church, so in
+matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood of spirit
+without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in
+the image of a universal State<a name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a>. In this, as in so much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span>
+else, the men of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the
+letter, unable, with all their aspirations, to rise out of the
+concrete, and prevented by the very grandeur and boldness
+of their conceptions from carrying them out in
+practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The ideal
+state supposed
+to be
+embodied in
+the Roman
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never
+have risen to maturity nor sensibly affected the progress
+of events, had it not gained in the pre-existence of the
+monarchy of Rome a definite shape and a definite purpose.
+It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that this
+came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian
+Church was framing her organization on the model of the
+state which protected her, the bishop of the metropolis
+perceived and improved the analogy between himself and
+the head of the civil government. The notion that the
+chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had
+dawned upon the Popes very early in their history, and
+grew stronger every century under the operation of causes
+already specified. Even before the Empire of the West
+had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that to Rome,
+exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to
+be a holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal
+city, there had been appointed a spiritual dominion wider
+than her earthly sway<a name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a>. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 476 Rome ceased to be
+the political capital of the Western countries, and the
+Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's power,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Constantine's
+Donation.</span>
+drew to herself the reverence which the name of the
+city still commanded, until by the middle of the eighth,
+or, at latest, of the ninth century she had perfected
+in theory a scheme which made her the exact counterpart
+of the departed despotism, the centre of the
+hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The
+character of that scheme is best set forth in the singular
+document, most stupendous of all the mediæval
+forgeries, which under the name of the Donation of
+Constantine commanded for seven centuries the unquestioning
+belief of mankind<a name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>. Itself a portentous
+falsehood, it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the
+thoughts and beliefs of the priesthood which framed it,
+some time between the middle of the eighth and the
+middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine the
+Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester,
+resolved, on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake
+the ancient seat for a new capital on the Bosphorus, lest
+the continuance of the secular government should cramp
+the freedom of the spiritual, and how he bestowed therewith
+upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
+over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not
+all, although this is what historians, in admiration of its
+splendid audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict
+proceeds to grant to the Roman pontiff and his clergy a
+series of dignities and privileges, all of them enjoyed by
+the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
+same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial
+office. The Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to
+wear the diadem, the collar, the purple cloak, to carry
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span>
+the sceptre, and to be attended by a body of chamberlains.
+Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
+receive the honours and immunities of the senate and
+patricians<a name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Interdependence
+of
+Papacy and
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of
+the religious society must be in every point conformed to
+his prototype the chief of the civil, is the key to all the
+thoughts and acts of the Roman clergy; not less plainly
+seen in the details of papal ceremonial than it is in the
+gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law
+was intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the
+imperial jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span>
+between its divisions and those of the <span lang="la">Corpus Juris Civilis</span>,
+and Gregory IX, who was the first to consolidate it into a
+code, sought the fame and received the title of the Justinian
+of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
+even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to
+imitate and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it
+the necessary complement of their own, and thought the
+Christian people equally imperilled by the fall of either.
+Hence the reluctance of Gregory II to break with the
+Byzantine princes<a name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a>,
+and the maintenance of their titular
+sovereignty till <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800: hence the part which the Holy
+See played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first
+sovereign of the West capable of fulfilling its duties;
+hence the grief with which its weakness under his successors
+was seen, the gladness when it descended to Otto
+as representative of the Frankish kingdom.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Roman
+Empire
+revived in a
+new character.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the era of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800 there had been at Constantinople
+a legitimate historical prolongation of the
+Roman Empire. Technically, as we have seen, the
+election of Charles, after the deposition of Constantine
+VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the
+old rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope,
+though he knew it not, did far more than effect a change
+of dynasty when he rejected Irene and crowned the
+barbarian chief. Restorations are always delusive. As
+well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
+orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement
+in human affairs which forbids an old institution, suddenly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span>
+transplanted into a new order of things, from filling
+its ancient place and serving its former ends. The dictatorship
+at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
+unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Cæsar, nor the
+States-general of Louis XIII to the assembly which his
+unhappy descendant convoked in 1789, than was the
+imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles the
+Frank; and the seal, ascribed to <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800, which bears
+the legend <span lang="la">'Renovatio Romani Imperii<a name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a>
+,'</span> expresses,
+more justly perhaps than was intended by its author, a
+second birth of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p>It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a
+proper view of this new creation can be formed. That
+period was one of transition, of fluctuation and uncertainty,
+in which the office, passing from one dynasty and
+country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
+character and claims, and was without the power that
+would have enabled it to support them. From the coronation
+of Otto the Great a new period begins, in which
+the ideas that have been described as floating in men's
+minds took clearer shape, and attached to the imperial
+title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
+this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to
+consider.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Position
+and functions
+of the
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when
+the only notion of civil or religious order was submission
+to authority, required the World-State to be a monarchy;
+tradition, as well as the continuance of certain institutions,
+gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor.
+A king could not be universal sovereign, for there were
+many kings: the Emperor must be, for there had never
+been but one Emperor; he had in older and brighter
+days been the actual lord of the civilized world; the seat
+of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
+of Christendom<a name="FNanchor_119" id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a>. His functions will be seen most
+clearly if we deduce them from the leading principle of
+mediæval mythology, the exact correspondence of earth
+and heaven. As God, in the midst of the celestial
+hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
+His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans,
+reigned over the souls of mortal men below. But as
+God is Lord of earth as well as of heaven, so must he
+(the <i>Imperator cœlestis</i><a name="FNanchor_120" id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a>) be represented by a second
+earthly viceroy, the Emperor (<i lang="la">Imperator terrenus</i><a href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a>
+), whose
+authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in
+this present world the soul cannot act save through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>
+body, while yet the body is no more than an instrument
+and means for the soul's manifestation, so must
+there be a rule and care of men's bodies as well as of
+their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being
+of that which is the purer and the more enduring. It
+is under the emblem of soul and body that the relation
+of the papal and imperial power is presented to us
+throughout the Middle Ages<a name="FNanchor_121" id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a>. The Pope, as God's
+vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life;
+the Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control
+them in their dealings with one another that they
+may be able to pursue undisturbed the spiritual life, and
+thereby attain the same supreme and common end of
+everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his
+chief duty is to maintain peace in the world, while
+towards the Church his position is that of Advocate, a
+title borrowed from the practice adopted by churches
+and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to
+protect their lands and lead their tenants in war<a name="FNanchor_122" id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a>. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Correspondence
+and
+harmony of
+the spiritual
+and temporal
+powers.</span>
+functions of Advocacy are twofold: at home to make
+the Christian people obedient to the priesthood, and to
+execute their decrees upon heretics and sinners; abroad
+to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
+to use carnal weapons<a name="FNanchor_123" id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a>. Thus does the Emperor answer
+in every point to his antitype the Pope, his power being
+yet of a lower rank, created on the analogy of the papal,
+as the papal itself had been modelled after the elder
+Empire. The parallel holds good even in its details;
+for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the
+crown and robes of the secular prince, so now did he
+array the Emperor in his own ecclesiastical vestments,
+the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a clerical as well
+as a sacred character, removed his office from all narrowing
+associations of birth or country, inaugurated him
+by rites every one of which was meant to symbolize
+and enjoin duties in their essence religious. Thus the
+Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire are
+one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
+the principle of the universal Christian society, is also
+Romanism; that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and
+type of its universality; manifesting itself in a mystic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>
+dualism which corresponds to the two natures of its
+Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
+to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal,
+the Emperor, commissioned to rule men's bodies
+and acts.</p>
+
+<p>In nature and compass the government of these two
+potentates is the same, differing only in the sphere of
+its working; and it matters not whether we call the Pope
+a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular Pope.
+Nor, though the one office is below the other as far
+as man's life on earth is less precious than his life
+hereafter, is therefore, on the older and truer theory,
+the imperial authority delegated by the papal. For, as
+has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
+not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits
+in heaven: as sovereign of earth, He issues His commission
+directly to the Emperor. Opposition between
+two servants of the same King is inconceivable, each
+being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation
+of both being needed in all that concerns the welfare
+of Christendom at large. This is the one perfect and
+self-consistent scheme of the union of Church and State;
+<span class="sidenote">Union of
+Church and
+State.</span>
+for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits to be
+self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint government,
+and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility,
+the duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy
+and schism no less than to punish treason and rebellion.
+It is also the scheme which, granting the possibility of
+their harmonious action, places the two powers in that
+relation which gives each of them its maximum of
+strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to
+find exceptions, in proportion as the State became more
+Christian, the Church, who to work out her purposes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>
+had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
+worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system
+which Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which
+culminated so triumphantly in the Empire Church of
+the Middle Ages, has in each succeeding generation
+been slowly losing ground, has seen its brightness dimmed
+and its completeness marred, and sees now those
+who are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions
+feebly defend or silently desert the principle upon
+which all must rest.</p>
+
+<p>The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers
+which this theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires,
+was attained only at a few points in their history<a name="FNanchor_124" id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a>.
+It was finally supplanted by another view of their relation,
+which, professing to be a development of a principle
+recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
+the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of
+fervent churchmen<a name="FNanchor_125" id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a>. Declaring the Pope sole representative
+on earth of the Deity, it concluded that from him,
+and not directly from God, must the Empire be held&mdash;held
+feudally, it was said by many&mdash;and it thereby thrust
+down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the
+sister of the spiritual<a name="FNanchor_126" id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a>. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>
+meridian, and under the guidance of her greatest minds,
+of Hildebrand, of Alexander, of Innocent, not seeking to
+abolish or absorb the civil government, required only its
+obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save herself<a name="FNanchor_127" id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a>.
+It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
+pretensions betrayed the decay that was already
+at work within, to show himself to the crowding pilgrims
+at the jubilee of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1300, seated on the throne of
+Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown, and sceptre,
+shouting aloud, 'I am Cæsar&mdash;I am Emperor<a name="FNanchor_128" id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Proofs
+from mediæval
+documents.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus
+sketched cannot be definitely assigned to any point of
+time; for it was growing and changing from the fifth
+century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise us that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>
+we do not find in any one author a statement of the
+grounds whereon it rested, since much of what seems
+strangest to us was then too obvious to be formally
+explained. No one, however, who examines mediæval
+writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct
+words, oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such
+ideas as these are present to the minds of the authors<a name="FNanchor_129" id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a>.
+That which it is easiest to prove is the connection of the
+Empire with religion. From every record, from chronicles
+and treatises, proclamations, laws, and sermons,
+passages may be adduced wherein the defence and
+spread of the faith, and the maintenance of concord
+among the Christian people, are represented as the function
+to which the Empire has been set apart. The belief
+expressed by Lewis II, <span lang="la">'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
+voce sed in gloriosæ pietatis culmine consistit<a name="FNanchor_130" id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a>
+,'</span> appears
+again in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to
+Conrad II<a name="FNanchor_131" id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a>,
+as Vicar of God; is reiterated by Frederick
+I<a name="FNanchor_132" id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a>,
+when he writes to the prelates of Germany, 'On
+earth God has placed no more than two powers, and as
+there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one
+Pope and one Emperor. Divine providence has specially
+appointed the Roman Empire to prevent the continuance
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>
+of schism in the Church<a name="FNanchor_133" id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a>
+;' is echoed by jurists and
+divines down to the days of Charles V<a name="FNanchor_134" id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a>. It was a
+doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the
+Holy See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make
+the transference (<i lang="la">translatio</i>) from the Greeks to the
+Germans appear entirely the Pope's work, and so establish
+his right of overseeing or cancelling his rival's
+election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head
+of the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief
+bishop of his realm<a name="FNanchor_135" id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a>. His headship was dwelt upon
+chiefly in the two duties already noticed. As the counterpart
+of the Mussulman Commander of the Faithful, he
+was leader of the Church militant against her infidel foes,
+was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and
+in later times recognized chief of the confederacies
+against the conquering Ottomans. As representative of
+the whole Christian people, it belonged to him to convoke
+General Councils, a right not without importance
+even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far
+more weighty when the object of the council was to settle
+a disputed election, or, as at Constance, to depose the
+reigning pontiff himself.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Coronation
+ceremonies.</p>
+
+<p>No better illustrations can be desired than those to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>
+be found in the office for the imperial coronation at
+Rome, too long to be transcribed here, but well worthy
+of an attentive study<a name="FNanchor_136" id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a>. The rites prescribed in it are
+rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
+besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power,
+receives a ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a
+subdeacon, assists the Pope in celebrating mass, partakes
+as a clerical person of the communion in both kinds, is
+admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John Lateran.
+The oath to be taken by an elector begins, <span lang="la">'Ego N. volo
+regem Romanorum in Cæsarem promovendum, temporale
+caput populo Christiano eligere.'</span> The Emperor swears
+to cherish and defend the Holy Roman Church and her
+bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
+<span lang="la">'Deus qui ad prædicandum æterni regni evangelium
+Imperium Romanum præparasti, prætende famulo tuo
+Imperatori nostro arma cœlestia.'</span> Among the Emperor's
+official titles there occur these: 'Head of Christendom,'
+'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,' 'Temporal
+Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and
+of the Catholic Faith<a name="FNanchor_137" id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The rights
+of the Empire
+proved
+from the
+Bible.</p>
+
+<p>Very singular are the reasonings used by which the
+necessity and divine right of the Empire are proved out
+of the Bible. The mediæval theory of the relation of the
+civil power to the priestly was profoundly influenced by
+the account in the Old Testament of the Jewish theocracy,
+in which the king, though the institution of his
+office was a derogation from the purity of the older
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span>
+system, appears divinely chosen and commissioned, and
+stood in a peculiarly intimate relation to the national
+religion. From the New Testament the authority and
+eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
+was seized on where submission to the powers that be
+is enjoined, every instance cited where obedience had
+actually been rendered to imperial officials, a special emphasis
+being laid on the sanction which Christ Himself
+had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the world
+through Augustus, by being born at the time of the
+taxing, by paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate,
+'Thou couldest have no power at all against Me except it
+were given thee from above.'</p>
+
+<p>More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct
+arguments were those drawn from prophecy, or based on
+the allegorical interpretation of Scripture. Very early
+in Christian history had the belief formed itself that the
+Roman Empire&mdash;as the fourth beast of Daniel's vision,
+as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's image&mdash;was
+to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From
+Origen and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned
+acceptance<a name="FNanchor_138" id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a>,
+and that not unnaturally. For no new
+power had arisen to extinguish the Roman, as the Persian
+monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
+realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering
+republic herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>
+Burgundian, had cherished her memory and
+preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even the
+name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong
+exceedingly, and diverse from all that were before it.'
+To these predictions, and to many others from the Apocalypse,
+were added those which in the Gospels and
+Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist<a name="FNanchor_139" id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a>. He was to
+succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more
+than once warned that by weakening the Empire they
+are hastening the coming of the enemy and the end of
+the world<a name="FNanchor_140" id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a>. It is not only when groping in the dark
+labyrinths of prophecy that mediæval authors are quick
+in detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them.
+Men were wont in those days to interpret Scripture in
+a singular fashion. Not only did it not occur to them to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span>
+ask what meaning words had to those to whom they were
+originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
+the sense they discovered was one which the language
+used would naturally and rationally bear to any reader at
+any time. No analogy was too faint, no allegory too
+fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple text; and, once
+propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument all
+the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of
+which Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual
+and temporal powers, and the grant of the spiritual to
+Peter involves the supremacy of the Papacy<a name="FNanchor_141" id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a>. Thus one
+writer proves the eternity of Rome from the seventy-second
+Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun
+and moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon
+being of course, since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire,
+as the sun, or greater light, is the Popedom. Another
+quoting, <span lang="la">'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur<a name="FNanchor_142" id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a>
+,'</span> with Augustine's
+explanation thereof<a name="FNanchor_143" id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a>,
+says, that when 'he who
+letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion,
+and the Empire to which God has committed the
+government of the human race will be dissolved. From
+the miseries of his own time (he wrote under Frederick
+III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
+symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the
+seven lamps burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>
+which illumine the Holy Empire<a name="FNanchor_144" id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a>.' Strange legends told
+how Romans and Germans were of one lineage; how
+Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
+the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to
+the Germans to reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold.
+So complete does the scriptural proof appear in the
+hands of mediæval churchmen, many holding it a mortal
+sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we forget
+they were all the while only adapting to an existing institution
+what they found written already; we begin to
+fancy that the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted
+for centuries, on the strength of words to which we
+attach in almost every case a wholly different meaning.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Illustrations
+from
+Mediæval
+Art.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass
+on from the theologians to the poets and artists of the
+Middle Ages, and endeavour to trace through their works
+the influence of the ideas which have been expounded
+above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
+present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance
+with those works themselves such as only
+minute and long-continued study could give. For even
+a slight knowledge enables any one to see how much
+still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature
+and in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are
+in glancing over a piece of work to miss those seemingly
+trifling indications of the artist's thought or belief which
+are all the more precious that they are indirect or unconscious.
+Therefore a history of mediæval art which
+shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it
+is to have any value at all, must be minute in description
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>
+as well as subtle in method. But lest this class of illustrations
+should appear to have been wholly forgotten,
+it may be well to mention here two paintings in which
+the theory of the mediæval empire is unmistakeably set
+forth. One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence;
+every traveller in Italy may examine both for himself.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Mosaic of
+the Lateran
+Palace at
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran
+triclinium, constructed by Pope Leo III about <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800,
+and an exact copy of which, made by the order of Sextus
+V, may still be seen over against the façade of St. John
+Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state banqueting-hall
+of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
+finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill
+across the green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves
+of Tivoli and the glistering crags and snow-capped
+summits of the Umbrian and Sabine Apennine. It represents
+in the centre Christ surrounded by the Apostles,
+whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one
+hand is extended to bless, the other holds a book with
+the words <span lang="la">'Pax Vobis.'</span> Below and to the right Christ
+is depicted again, and this time sitting: on his right hand
+kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the Emperor Constantine;
+to the one he gives the keys of heaven and
+hell, to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In
+the group on the opposite, that is, on the left side of the
+arch, we see the Apostle Peter seated, before whom in
+like manner kneel Pope Leo III and Charles the Emperor;
+the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
+Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium
+of an archbishop, to Charles the banner of the
+Christian army. The inscription is, <span lang="la">'Beatus Petrus dona
+vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo regi dona;'</span> while
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>
+round the arch is written, <span lang="la">'Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in
+terra pax omnibus bonæ voluntatis.'</span></p>
+
+<p>The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is
+sufficiently clear. First comes the revelation of the
+Gospel, and the divine commission to gather all men
+into its fold. Next, the institution, at the memorable era
+of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by which
+the Christian people is to be respectively taught and
+governed. Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar
+of God, the Apostle who keeps the keys of heaven and
+hell, re-establishing these same powers on a new and
+firmer basis<a name="FNanchor_145" id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a>. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy he
+gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth,
+the banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to
+maintain her cause against heretics and infidels.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Fresco in
+S. Maria
+Novella at
+Florence.</p>
+
+<p>The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a
+fresco in the chapter-house of the Dominican convent of
+Santa Maria Novella<a name="FNanchor_146" id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a>
+ at Florence, usually known as the
+<span lang="it">Capellone degli Spagnuoli</span>. It has been commonly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>
+ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of
+Siena, but an examination of the dates of his life seems
+to discredit this view<a name="FNanchor_147" id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a>. Most probably it was executed
+between <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1340 and 1350. It is a huge work, covering
+one whole wall of the chapter-house, and filled with
+figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
+authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons
+of the time&mdash;Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch,
+Laura, and others. In it is represented the whole
+scheme of man's life here and hereafter&mdash;the Church on
+earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
+side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right
+and left, in a descending row, minor spiritual and temporal
+officials; next to the Pope a cardinal, bishops, and
+doctors; next to the Emperor, the king of France and
+a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
+Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church,
+while at their feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked
+by ravening wolves (heretics and schismatics), whom a
+pack of spotted dogs (the Dominicans<a name="FNanchor_148" id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a>
+) combat and chase
+away. From this, the central foreground of the picture,
+a path winds round and up a height to a great gate where
+the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers: they
+passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead
+them on through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above
+all, at the top of the painting and just over the spot where
+his two lieutenants, Pope and Emperor, are placed below,
+is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and angels<a name="FNanchor_149" id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Anti-national
+character
+of
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church
+Militant is the perfect counterpart of the Church Triumphant:
+her chief danger is from those who would rend
+the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of her
+heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is
+the sum of her faith and the essence of her being, must
+on earth be rendered to those two lieutenants whom He
+has chosen to govern in His name.</p>
+
+<p>A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to
+explain and illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of
+place or person. The idea of one Christian people, all
+whose members are equal in the sight of God,&mdash;an idea
+so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood, where
+no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
+humblest curate,&mdash;and in the prevalence of one language
+for worship and government, made the post of Emperor
+independent of the race, or rank, or actual resources of
+its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to the obedience
+of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
+tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface,
+but as solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he
+excel in dignity the kings of the earth: his power was
+different in its nature; and, so far from supplanting or
+rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the source and
+needful condition of their authority in their several territories,
+the bond which joined them in one harmonious
+body. The vast dominions and vigorous personal action
+of Charles the Great had concealed this distinction while
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>
+he reigned; under his successors the imperial crown appeared
+disconnected from the direct government of the
+kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form
+of an undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without
+which men's minds could not rest. It was characteristic
+of the Middle Ages, that demanding the existence
+of an Emperor, they were careless who he was or how he
+was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that
+they were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded
+rights and actual helplessness. At no time in the world's
+history has theory, pretending all the while to control
+practice, been so utterly divorced from it. Ferocious and
+sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
+there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser
+profligacy of life.</p>
+
+<p>The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be
+called international; though this, as we shall see, became
+in later times its most important aspect; for in the tenth
+century national distinctions had scarcely begun to exist.
+But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
+territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or
+wide lands, but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its
+subjects.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GERMAN KINGDOM.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Union of
+the Roman
+Empire
+with the
+German
+kingdom.</p>
+
+<p>This was the office which Otto the Great assumed in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 962. But it was not his only office. He was already
+a German king; and the new dignity by no means superseded
+the old. This union in one person of two characters,
+a union at first personal, then official, and which
+became at last a fusion of the two into something different
+from either, is the key to the whole subsequent
+history of Germany and the Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Germany
+and its
+monarchy.</p>
+
+<p>Of the German kingdom little need be said, since it
+differs in no essential respect from the other kingdoms of
+Western Europe as they stood in the tenth century. The
+five or six great tribes or tribe-leagues which composed
+the German nation had been first brought together under
+the sceptre of the Carolingians; and, though still retaining
+marks of their independent origin, were prevented
+from separating by community of speech and a common
+pride in the great Frankish Empire. When the line of
+Charles the Great ended in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 911, by the death of
+Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf), Conrad, duke of the
+Franconians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of
+the Saxons, was chosen to fill the vacant throne. By his
+vigorous yet conciliatory action, his upright character, his
+courage and good fortune in repelling the Hungarians,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span>
+Henry laid deep the foundations of royal power: under
+his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's
+coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the
+realm did him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians,
+Suabians, Thuringians, and Lorrainers gathered round the
+Saxon monarch, is the inauguration of a true Teutonic
+realm, which, though it called itself not German but East
+Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of
+the Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency
+in many respects different.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Feudalism.</p>
+
+<p>There had been under those princes a singular mixture
+of the old German organization by tribes or districts
+(the so-called <span lang="de">Gauverfassung</span>), such as we find in the
+earliest records, with the method introduced by Charles of
+maintaining by means of officials, some fixed, others
+moving from place to place, the control of the central
+government. In the suspension of that government which
+followed his days, there grew up a system whose seeds
+had been sown as far back as the time of Clovis, a system
+whose essence was the combination of the tenure of land
+by military service with a peculiar personal relation between
+the landlord and his tenant, whereby the one was
+bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and
+obedience. This is not the place for tracing the origin of
+feudality on Roman soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort
+of contagion, it spread into Germany, how it struck firm
+root in the period of comparative quiet under Pipin and
+Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the impress
+which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness
+of his successors allowed it to triumph everywhere.
+Still less would it be possible here to examine its social
+and moral influence. Politically it might be defined as
+the system which made the owner of a piece of land,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span>
+whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt
+thereon: an annexation of personal to territorial authority
+more familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races
+of primitive Europe. On this principle were founded,
+and by it are explained, feudal law and justice, feudal
+finance, feudal legislation, each tenant holding towards his
+lord the position which his own tenants held towards himself.
+And it is just because the relation was so uniform,
+the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly
+bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay
+upon society that grasp which the struggles of more than
+twenty generations have scarcely shaken off.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The feudal
+king.</p>
+
+<p>Now by the middle of the tenth century, Germany, less
+fully committed than France to feudalism's worst feature,
+the hopeless bondage of the peasantry, was otherwise
+thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality of all the
+freeborn save the sacred line which we find in the Germany
+of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation
+of ranks and a concentration of power in the hands of a
+landholding caste, so had the monarch lost his ancient
+character as leader and judge of the people, to become
+the head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of
+the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in
+arms and money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at
+pleasure declare war or make peace. But all these rights
+he exercised far less as sovereign of the nation than as
+standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal tenants, a relation
+in its origin strictly personal, and whose prominence
+obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And
+great as these rights might become in the hands of an
+ambitious and politic ruler, they were in practice limited
+by the corresponding duties he owed to his vassals, and
+by the difficulty of enforcing them against a powerful
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">The nobility.</span>
+
+offender. The king was not permitted to retain in his
+own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he
+had held before coming to the throne; he could not interfere
+with the jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands,
+nor prevent them from waging war or forming leagues
+with each other like independent princes. Chief among
+the nobles stood the dukes, who, although their authority
+was now delegated, theoretically at least, instead of independent,
+territorial instead of personal, retained nevertheless
+much of that hold on the exclusive loyalty of their
+subjects which had belonged to them as hereditary leaders
+of the tribe under the ancient system. They were, with
+the three Rhenish archbishops, by far the greatest subjects,
+often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable to resist
+its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto
+made upon their privileges, especially through the institution
+of the Counts Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy,
+but not their importance. It was not till the thirteenth
+century that they disappeared with the rise of the second
+order of nobility. That order, at this period far less
+powerful, included the counts, margraves or marquises
+and landgraves, originally officers of the crown, now
+feudal tenants; holding their lands of the dukes, and
+maintaining against them the same contest which they in
+turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons
+and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen,
+the increasing one of serfs.
+<span class="sidenote">The Germanic
+feudal
+polity
+generally.</span>
+The institutions of primitive
+Germany were almost all gone; supplanted by a new
+system, partly the natural result of the formation of a
+settled from a half-nomad society, partly imitated from
+that which had arisen upon Roman soil, west of the Rhine
+and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the
+Heerban of the whole nation, which had been wont to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span>
+follow the king on foot in distant expeditions, but a
+cavalry militia of barons and their retainers, bound to
+service for a short period, and rendering it unwillingly
+where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent
+popular assemblies, whereof under the names of the
+Mallum, the Placitum, the Mayfield, we hear so much
+under Clovis and Charles, were now never summoned,
+and the laws that had been promulgated there were, if
+not abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council
+existed, save the Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and
+and clerical, met their sovereign, sometimes to decide on
+foreign war, oftener to concur in the grant of a fief or the
+proscription of a rebel. Every district had its own rude
+local customs administered by the court of the local lord:
+other law there was none, for imperial jurisprudence had
+in these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place
+left empty by the disuse of the barbarian codes.</p>
+
+<p>This condition of things was indeed better than that
+utter confusion which had gone before, for a principle of
+order had begun to group and bind the tossing atoms;
+and though the union into which it drove men was a hard
+and narrow one, it was something that they should have
+learnt to unite themselves at all. Yet nascent feudality
+was but one remove from anarchy; and the tendency to
+isolation and diversity continued, despite the efforts of the
+Church and the Carolingian princes, to be all-powerful in
+Western Europe. The German kingdom was already a
+bond between the German races, and appears strong
+and united when we compare it with the France of Hugh
+Capet, or the England of Ethelred II; yet its history to
+the twelfth century is little else than a record of disorders,
+revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless struggle on the part of
+the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a resistance by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">The Roman
+Empire
+and the
+German
+kingdom.</span>
+his vassals equally obstinate and more frequently successful.
+What the issue of the contest might have been if
+Germany had been left to take her own course is matter
+of speculation, though the example of every European
+state except England and Norway may incline the balance
+in favour of the crown. But the strife had scarcely begun
+when a new influence was interposed: the German king
+became Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more
+unlike than those whose headship became thus vested in
+one person: the one centralized, the other local; the one
+resting on a sublime theory, the other the rude offspring
+of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands of
+an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights and
+authorizing resistance to his commands; the one demanding
+the equality of all citizens as creatures equal before
+Heaven, the other bound up with an aristocracy the
+proudest, and in its gradations of rank the most exact,
+that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant
+could not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if
+they met must strive till one swallowed up the other. It
+was not so. In the fusion which began from the first,
+though it was for a time imperceptible, each of the two
+characters gave and each lost some of its attributes: the
+king became more than German, the Emperor less than
+Roman, till, at the end of six centuries, the monarch in
+whom two 'persons' had been united, appeared as a third
+different from either of the former, and might not inappropriately
+be entitled 'German Emperor<a name="FNanchor_150" id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a>.' The nature
+and progress of this change will appear in the after history
+of Germany, and cannot be described here without in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>
+some measure anticipating subsequent events. A word or
+two may indicate how the process of fusion began.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Results of
+this union
+in one person.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural that the great mass of Otto's subjects, to
+whom the imperial title, dimly associated with Rome and
+the Pope, sounded grander than the regal, without being
+known as otherwise different, should in thought and
+speech confound them. The sovereign and his ecclesiastical
+advisers, with far clearer views of the new office
+and of the mutual relation of the two, found it impossible
+to separate them in practice, and were glad to merge the
+lesser in the greater. For as lord of the world, Otto was
+Emperor north as well as south of the Alps. When he
+issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his Teutonic
+subjects in both capacities; when as Emperor he led the
+armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the
+standard of their feudal superior that his armed vassals
+followed; when he founded churches and appointed
+bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal lands, partly
+as protector of the faith, charged to guide the Church in
+matters temporal. Thus the assumption of the imperial
+crown brought to Otto as its first result an apparent increase
+of domestic authority; it made his position by its
+historical associations more dignified, by its religious more
+hallowed; it raised him higher above his vassals and above
+other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in ecclesiastical
+affairs, and by necessary consequence gave to ecclesiastics
+a more important place at court and in the
+administration of government than they had enjoyed
+before. Great as was the power of the bishops and
+abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it stood nowhere so
+high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double position,
+as head both of Church and State, required the two
+organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span>
+century a full half of the land and wealth of the country,
+and no small part of its military strength, was in the hands
+of Churchmen: their influence predominated in the Diet;
+the archchancellorship of the Empire, highest of all offices,
+belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz, as primate
+of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
+must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness
+of the clergy was thus advanced. He is commonly said
+to have wished to weaken the aristocracy by raising up
+rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have been so,
+and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the
+clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than
+those whom they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's
+judgment, historians have often forgotten in what position
+he stood to the Church, and how it behoved him, according
+to the doctrine received, to establish in her an order
+like in all things to that which he found already subsisting
+in the State.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Changes in
+title.</p>
+
+<p>The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire thus to
+merge the king in the Emperor<a name="FNanchor_151" id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a>. Charles had called
+himself <span lang="la">'Imperator Cæsar Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus;'</span>
+and again, <span lang="la">'Carolus serenissimus Augustus,
+Pius, Felix, Romanorum gubernans Imperium, qui et per
+misericordiam Dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.'</span>
+Otto and his first successors, who until their coronation at
+Rome had used the titles of <span lang="la">'Rex Francorum,'</span> or <span lang="la">'Rex
+Francorum Orientalium,'</span> or oftener still 'Rex' alone, discarded
+after it all titles save the highest of <span lang="la">'Imperator
+Augustus;'</span> seeming thereby, though they too had been
+crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>
+Cæsar through all their dominions. Tracing as we are
+the history of a title, it is needless to dwell on the significance
+of the change<a name="FNanchor_152" id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a>. Charles, son of the Ripuarian
+allies of Probus, had been a Frankish chieftain on the
+Rhine; Otto, the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan
+Arminius, would rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed
+from the Tiber.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Imperial
+power
+feudalized.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the imperial element did not in every
+respect predominate over the royal. The monarch might
+desire to make good against his turbulent barons the
+boundless prerogative which he acquired with his new
+crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and they, disputing
+neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right
+to wear it, refused with good reason to let their own
+freedom be infringed upon by any act of which they had
+not been the authors. So far was Otto from embarking
+on so vain an enterprise, that his rule was even more direct
+and more personal than that of Charles had been. There
+was no scheme of mechanical government, no claim of
+absolutism; there was only the resolve to make the
+energetic assertion of the king's feudal rights subserve the
+further aims of the Emperor. What Otto demanded he
+demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as
+king; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial
+office was itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas.
+Feudality needing, to make its theory complete, a lord
+paramount of the world, from whose grant all ownership
+in land must be supposed to have emanated, and finding
+such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>
+of all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch,
+himself, as it was expressed, 'holding' the world from God.
+There were not wanting Roman institutions to which
+these notions could attach themselves. Constantine, imitating
+the courts of the East, had made the dignitaries of
+his household great officials of the State: these were now
+reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal,
+the chamberlain of the Empire, so soon to become its
+electoral princes. The holding of land on condition of
+military service was Roman in its origin: the divided
+ownership of feudal law found its analogies in the
+Roman tenure of emphyteusis. Thus while Germany
+was Romanized the Empire was feudalized, and came
+to be considered not the antagonist but the perfection
+of an aristocratic system. And it was this adaptation
+to existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to
+assume an international character. Nevertheless, even
+while they seemed to blend, there remained between
+the genius of imperialism (if one may use a now perverted
+word) and that of feudalism a deep and lasting
+hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was
+in a measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge
+of what Roman government had been, but from the necessities
+of their position, raised as they were to an unapproachable
+height above their subjects, surrounded with a
+halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus were they
+driven to reduce local independence, and assimilate the
+various races through their vast territories. It was Otto
+who made the Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes,
+a single people, and welding them into a strong political
+body taught them to rise through its collective greatness
+to the consciousness of national life, never thenceforth
+to be extinguished.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Commons.</p>
+
+<p>One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy
+which Roman traditions as well as present needs might
+have suggested, it was scarcely possible for Otto to use.
+He could not invoke the friendship of the Third Estate,
+for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of freemen,
+which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the
+population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England
+all who did not become thanes were classed as ceorls,
+and from ceorls sank for the most part, after the
+Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the Alpine
+valleys and along the shores of the ocean that free
+democratic communities maintained themselves. Town-life
+there was none, till Henry the Fowler forced
+his forest-loving people to dwell in fortresses that might
+repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher class thus
+beginning to form was too small to be a power in the
+state. But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to
+the monarch such of its rights as could be saved from the
+grasp of the nobles; and the crown thus became what
+it has been wherever an aristocracy presses upon both,
+the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people.
+More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial
+name invite the sympathy of the commons. For
+in all, however ignorant of its history, however unable to
+comprehend its functions, there yet lived a feeling that it
+was in some mysterious way consecrated to Christian
+brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the
+restraint of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages
+is alternately amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities
+that meet him at every step. He finds writers
+proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent theories
+which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who
+are stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to
+a religion which, even when its doctrines were most obscured,
+never sullied the purity of its moral teaching.
+He is disposed to conclude that such people must have
+been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion
+would be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little
+a man's actions conform to the general maxims which
+he would lay down for himself, and how many things
+there are which he believes without realizing: believes
+sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
+governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual
+opposition of theory and practice was peculiarly
+abrupt. Men's impulses were more violent and their
+conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in modern
+society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
+spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly
+than they would now do to a complete and imposing
+theory. Therefore it was, that while everyone believed in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>
+the rights of the Empire as a part of divine truth, no one
+would yield to them where his own passions or interests
+interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and
+indeed was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one
+which nobody hesitated to commit. Hence, in order to
+give this unbounded imperial prerogative any practical
+efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
+limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the
+one spot in Otto's empire on which feudality had never
+fixed its grasp, and where therefore he was forced to rule
+merely as emperor, and not also as king, was that in
+which he and his successors were never safe from insult
+and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an
+account of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome
+is a not unfitting comment on the theory expounded
+above, as well as a curious episode in the history
+of the Apostolic Chair.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Otto the
+Great in
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy,
+where the partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert
+still maintained themselves in arms. Scarcely was he
+gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who found too
+late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
+renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar,
+and even scrupled not to send envoys pressing
+the heathen Magyars to invade Germany. The Emperor
+was soon informed of these plots, as well as of the
+flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the
+most profligate if not the most guilty of all who have
+worn the tiara. But he affected to despise them, saying,
+with a sort of unconscious irony, 'He is a boy, the example
+of good men may reform him.' When, however,
+Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates
+shut, and a party within furious against him. John the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>
+Twelfth was not only Pope, but as the heir of Alberic,
+the head of a strong faction among the nobles, and a
+sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
+they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled
+into the Campagna to join Adalbert, and Otto entering
+convoked a synod in St. Peter's. Himself presiding as
+temporal head of the Church, he began by inquiring into
+the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
+tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled
+clergy. Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness,
+gives us a long list of them:&mdash;'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose
+and witnessed that he had seen the Pope celebrate mass
+and not himself communicate. John, bishop of Narnia,
+and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen
+him ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper
+formalities. They said further that he had defiled by
+shameless acts of vice the pontifical palace; that he had
+openly diverted himself with hunting; had put out the
+eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
+houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a
+helmet and hauberk. All present, laymen as well as
+priests, cried out that he had drunk to the devil's health;
+that in throwing the dice he had invoked the help of
+Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
+matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified
+himself by making the sign of the cross. After these
+things the Emperor, who could not speak Latin, since
+the Romans could not understand his native, that is to
+say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona
+interpret for him, and adjured the council to declare
+whether the charges they had brought were true, or
+sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the clergy
+and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span>
+hath not committed all the crimes which Benedict the
+deacon hath read over, and even greater crimes than
+these, then may the chief of the Apostles, the blessed
+Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy
+and opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins,
+but may we be bound by the chain of anathema, and on
+the last day may we stand on the left hand along with
+those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart from us,
+for we will not know Thy ways."'</p>
+
+<p>The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied
+Otto and the council: a letter was despatched to John,
+couched in respectful terms, recounting the charges
+brought against him, and asking him to appear to clear
+himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number
+of compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.</p>
+
+<p>'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God,
+to all the bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to
+set up another Pope: if you do this, by Almighty God
+I excommunicate you, so that you may not have power
+to perform mass or to ordain no one<a name="FNanchor_153" id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of
+humorous expostulation, begging the Pope to reform
+both his morals and his Latin. But the messenger who
+bore it could not find John: he had repeated what seems
+to have been thought his most heinous sin, by going into
+the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search
+had been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>
+decisive step. Otto, who still led their deliberations,
+demanded the condemnation of the Pope; the assembly
+<span class="sidenote">Deposition
+of John
+XII.</span>
+deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his reprobate
+life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
+in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo,
+the chief secretary and a layman, to the chair of the
+Apostle.</p>
+
+<p>Otto might seem to have now reached a position
+loftier and firmer than that of any of his predecessors.
+Within little more than a year from his arrival in Rome,
+he had exercised powers greater than those of Charles
+himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
+installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend
+themselves to his will. The submission involved in his
+oath to protect the Holy See was more than compensated
+by the oath of allegiance to his crown which the Pope
+and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn engagement
+not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without
+the Emperor's consent<a name="FNanchor_154" id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a>. But he had yet to learn what
+this obedience and these oaths were worth. The Romans
+had eagerly joined in the expulsion of John; they soon
+began to regret him. They were mortified to see their
+streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual licence
+of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
+privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop,
+grasped by the strong hand of a master who used it
+for purposes in which they did not sympathize. In a
+fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly turned to
+rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Revolt of
+the Romans.</span>
+dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose
+in arms, blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously
+upon the Emperor and his creature the new Pope. Superior
+valour and constancy triumphed over numbers, and
+the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter; yet
+this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second
+time, after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John
+the Twelfth returned to the city, and when his pontifical
+career was speedily closed by the sword of an injured
+husband<a name="FNanchor_155" id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a>,
+the people chose a new Pope in defiance of the
+Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued and
+again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third
+time, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial
+supremacy meant. Thirteen leaders, among them the
+twelve tribunes, were executed, the consuls were banished,
+republican forms entirely suppressed, the government of
+the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
+not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up
+any claims to independence. Otto regarded the pontiff
+as no more than the first of his subjects, the creature of
+his own will, the depositary of an authority which must
+be exercised according to the discretion of his sovereign.
+The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
+papal elections in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 963. Otto obtained from his nominee,
+Leo VIII, a confirmation of this privilege, which
+it was afterwards supposed that Hadrian I had granted to
+Charles, in a decree which may yet be read in the collections
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>
+of the canon law<a name="FNanchor_156" id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a>. The vigorous exercise of such
+a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain
+the apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and
+in noble honesty, that the Teutonic sovereigns employed
+it. But the fortunes of Otto in the city are a type of
+those which his successors were destined to experience.
+Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
+enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not
+all the efforts of Emperor after Emperor could gain any
+firm hold on the capital they were so proud of. Visiting
+it only once or twice in their reigns, they must be
+supported among a fickle populace by a large army
+of strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity
+under the sun of Italy amid the deadly hollows of the
+Campagna<a name="FNanchor_157" id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a>. Rome soon resumed her turbulent independence.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Otto's rule
+in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes
+from gaining a firm footing throughout Italy. Since
+Charles the Bald had bartered away for the crown all
+that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
+substantial authority there. The <i lang="la">missi dominici</i> had
+ceased to traverse the country; the local governors had
+thrown off control, a crowd of petty potentates had
+established principalities by aggressions on their weaker
+neighbours. Only in the dominions of great nobles, like
+the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of
+the cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span>
+the way for a republican system, could traces of political
+order be found, or the arts of peace flourish. Otto, who,
+though he came as a conqueror, ruled legitimately as
+Italian king, found his feudal vassals less submissive than
+in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
+progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something
+to still the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed
+into that disorganization for which her natural features
+are not less answerable than the mixture of her races.
+Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was wildest,
+that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
+nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly
+on the use of a common language and the slow growth
+of peculiar customs and modes of thought. But though
+already jealous of the Tedescan, national feeling was still
+very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
+cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he
+bethink himself of crushing while it was weak a sentiment
+whose development threatened the existence of his empire.
+Holding Italy equally for his own with Germany,
+and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
+keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions
+nor sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks,
+to represent his government<a name="FNanchor_158" id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Otto's
+foreign
+policy.</p>
+
+<p>The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman
+crown urged him to resume the plans of foreign conquest
+which had lain neglected since the days of Charles: the
+growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now definitely
+separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
+era of the Marks&mdash;Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig),
+placed in his hands a force to execute those plans which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span>
+his predecessors had wanted. In this, as in his other
+enterprises, the great Emperor was active, wise, successful.
+Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and unwilling
+to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not
+ceased to annoy her German masters by intrigue, and
+might now, under the vigorous leadership of Nicephorus
+and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace them in arms.
+Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
+legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made
+<span class="sidenote">Towards
+Byzantium.</span>
+Otto, as Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir
+the hand of the princess Theophano. Liudprand's account
+of his embassy represents in an amusing manner
+the rival pretensions of the old and new Empires<a name="FNanchor_159" id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a>. The
+Greeks, who fancied that with the name they preserved
+the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as
+absurd as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their
+prerogative by reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused
+him that title altogether; and when the Pope
+had, in a letter addressed '<i lang="la">Imperatori Græcorum</i>,' asked
+Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the
+Romans, the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,'
+said he, 'but wretched Lombards: what means
+this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome migrated
+hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the
+Romans, while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay
+no claim to their name, and proceeded to vindicate the
+Francia and Saxonia of his master. '"Roman" is the
+most contemptuous name we can use&mdash;it conveys the
+reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice.
+But what can be expected from the descendants of the
+fratricide Romulus? to his asylum were gathered the
+offscourings of the nations: thence came these <span class="greek" title="kosmokratores">κοσμοκράτορες</span>.'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>
+Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province
+of Rome as the price of compliance<a name="FNanchor_160" id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a>;
+Tzimiskes
+was more moderate, and Theophano became the bride of
+Otto II.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Towards
+the West
+Franks.</p>
+
+<p>Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto
+might vindicate the suzerainty over the West Frankish
+kingdom which it had been meant that the imperial title
+should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it by making
+Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
+feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful.
+Otto pursued the same course, intriguing with the discontented
+nobles of Louis d'Outremer, and receiving their
+fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul. These pretensions,
+however, could have been made effective only by arms,
+and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
+instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles
+had been. The star of the Carolingian of Laon was
+paling before the rising greatness of the Parisian Capets: a
+Romano-Keltic nation had formed itself, distinct in tongue
+from the Franks, whom it was fast absorbing, and still less
+willing to submit to a Saxon stranger. Modern France<a name="FNanchor_161" id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a>
+
+dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 987, and
+the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards
+formally admitted.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Lorraine
+and Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span>
+Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as
+little as did England. The former of these kingdoms had
+adhered to the West Frankish king, Charles the Simple,
+against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as mostly
+German in blood and speech, threw itself into the
+arms of Otto, and was thenceforth an integral part of
+the Empire. Burgundy, a separate kingdom, had, by
+seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification of Boso's
+election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
+Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
+itself to be dependent on the German crown.
+Otto governed it for thirty years, nominally as the guardian
+of the young king Conrad (son of Rudolf II).</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Denmark
+and the
+Slaves.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">England.</p>
+
+<p>Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a
+worthy successor of the first Emperor. He penetrated
+far into Jutland, annexed Schleswig, made Harold the
+Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes were obliged
+to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
+free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The
+Hungarians he forced to forsake their nomad life, and
+delivered Europe from the fear of Asiatic invasions by
+strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over more distant
+lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
+the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of
+the Saxon name, may have wished to unite its branches
+on both sides the sea<a name="FNanchor_162" id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a>,
+and it was perhaps partly with this
+intent that he gained for Otto the hand of Edith, sister
+of the English Athelstan. But the claim of supremacy,
+if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when, exaggerating
+the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors,
+he called himself '<span lang="la">Basileus</span> and imperator of Britain<a name="FNanchor_163" id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a>
+,'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span>
+thereby seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the
+nations of the island similar to that which the Roman
+Emperor claimed over the states of Christendom.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Extent of
+Otto's Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Comparison
+between it
+and that of
+Charles.</p>
+
+<p>This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation
+of the Carolingian, was in many respects different.
+It was less wide, including, if we reckon strictly, only
+Germany proper and two-thirds of Italy; or counting in
+subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy, Bohemia, Moravia,
+Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character
+was less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual
+potentates of his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity
+among the heathen: he was master of the Pope and
+Defender of the Holy Roman Church. But religion held
+a less important place in his mind and his administration:
+he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and did
+not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops.
+It was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto
+associated with that name anything more than the right to
+universal dominion and a certain oversight of matters
+spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be treading
+in the steps of the Cæsars. He could not speak Latin, he
+had few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed
+the varied cultivation which had been so fruitful in
+the mind of Charles. Moreover, the conditions of his
+time were different, and did not permit similar attempts at
+wide organization. The local potentates would have submitted
+to no <i lang="la">missi dominici</i>; separate laws and jurisdictions
+would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span>
+<i lang="la">placita</i> at which those laws were framed or published would
+not have been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But
+what Otto could he did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly
+traversing his dominions, he introduced a peace
+and prosperity before unknown, and left everywhere the
+impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
+became not only a united nation, but were at once raised
+on a pinnacle among European peoples as the imperial
+race, the possessors of Rome and Rome's authority.
+While the political connection with Italy stirred their
+spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture hitherto
+unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object.
+Germany became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring
+tribes, who trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland
+and Bohemia received from her their arts and their
+learning with their religion. If the revived Romano-Germanic
+Empire was less splendid than the Empire of
+the West had been under Charles, it was, within narrower
+limits, firmer and more lasting, since based on a social
+force which the other had wanted. It perpetuated the
+name, the language, the literature, such as it then was, of
+Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to represent
+that concentration for which men cried, and became
+a power to unite and civilize Europe.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Otto II,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 973-983.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Otto III,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 983-1002.</p>
+
+<p>The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment,
+as the era of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding
+rulers may be more quickly dismissed. Yet
+Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad, full of
+bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
+princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert:
+through the one he felt himself connected with the old
+Empire, and had imbibed the absolutism of Byzantium;
+by the other he had been reared in the dream of a renovated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">His ideas.
+Fascination
+exercised
+over him by
+the name of
+Rome.</span>
+
+Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
+accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the
+vigorous blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the
+venerable rights of Constantinople? It was his design,
+now that the solemn millennial era of the founding of
+Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of the city
+and make her again the capital of a world-embracing
+Empire, victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's,
+holy as Constantine's. His young and visionary mind
+was too much dazzled by the gorgeous fancies it created
+to see the world as it was: Germany rude, Italy unquiet,
+Rome corrupt and faithless. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 994, at the age of
+sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
+government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and
+quell the turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the
+rebel Crescentius, in whom modern enthusiasm has seen a
+patriotic republican, who, reviving the institutions of Alberic,
+had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes entitling
+himself Emperor<a name="FNanchor_164" id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a>. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
+extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great,
+by nominating successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin
+(Gregory V), then Gerbert, whose name of Sylvester II
+<span class="sidenote">Pope
+Sylvester II,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1000.</span>
+recalled significantly the ally of Constantine: Gerbert, to
+his contemporaries a marvel of piety and learning, in later
+legend the magician who, at the price of his own soul,
+purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was
+at last carried off in the body. With the substitution of
+these men for the profligate priests of Italy, began that
+Teutonic reform of the Papacy which raised it from the
+abyss of the tenth century to the point where Hildebrand
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>
+found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their
+power by their most disinterested acts.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Schemes of
+Otto III:
+Changes of
+style and
+usage.</p>
+
+<p>With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct
+him, Otto laboured on his great project in a spirit almost
+mystic. He had an intense religious belief in the
+Emperor's duties to the world&mdash;in his proclamations he
+calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of Jesus
+Christ<a name="FNanchor_165" id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a>
+'&mdash;together with the ambitious antiquarianism of
+a fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory
+and power he represented. Even the wording of his laws
+witnesses to the strange mixture of notions that filled his
+eager brain. 'We have ordained this,' says an edict, 'in
+order that, the church of God being freely and firmly
+stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of
+our knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman
+people may be extended and the commonwealth be restored;
+so may we be found worthy after living righteously
+in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from the prison
+of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
+exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '<i lang="la">Romanorum
+Imperator</i>' instead of the simple '<i>Imperator</i>' of his
+predecessors. His seals bear a legend resembling that
+used by Charles, '<i lang="la">Renovatio Imperii Romanorum</i>;' even
+the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that name had produced
+under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be re-established.
+He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
+healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised
+a regular administrative system of government for his
+capital&mdash;naming a patrician, a prefect, and a body of
+judges, who were commanded to recognize no law but
+Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>
+preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge
+a copy of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome
+and the Leonine city and the whole world.' He introduced
+into the simple German court the ceremonious
+magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
+many of his followers<a name="FNanchor_166" id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a>. His father's wish to draw Italy
+and Germany more closely together, he followed up by
+giving the chancellorship of both countries to the same
+churchman, by maintaining a strong force of Germans in
+Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue with him through
+the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and far-reaching
+plans were capable of realization, had their
+author lived to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is
+reasonable to suppose that whatever power he might have
+gained in the South he would have lost in the North.
+Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a
+Greek than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with
+no such tight hand as his grandfather had been wont to
+do; he neglected the schemes of northern conquest; he
+released the Polish dukes from the obligation of tribute.
+But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more
+than conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,'
+as his own generation called him, died childless on the
+threshold of manhood; the victim, if we may trust a story
+of the time, of the revenge of Stephania, widow of Crescentius,
+who ensnared him by her beauty, and slew him
+by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps
+with laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the
+pages of monkish chroniclers, and buried him in the choir
+of the basilica at Aachen some fifty paces from the tomb
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>
+of Charles beneath the central dome. Two years had not
+passed since, setting out on his last journey to Rome, he
+had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor,
+sitting on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the
+Gospel-book open before him; and there, touching the
+dead hand, unclasping from the neck its golden cross, had
+taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire from his
+Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his
+acts, Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any
+who went before or came after him. None save he desired
+to make the seven-hilled city again the seat of dominion,
+reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece to
+their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so
+forgot the present to live in the light of the ancient order;
+no other soul was so possessed by that fervid mysticism
+and that reverence for the glories of the past, whereon
+rested the idea of the mediæval Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Italy independent.</p>
+
+<p>The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and
+though the Franks might elect and the Saxons accept
+Henry II<a name="FNanchor_167" id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a>,
+Italy was nowise affected by their acts.
+Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom could
+as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her
+princes placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant
+throne of Pavia, moved partly by the growing aversion
+to a Transalpine power, still more by the desire of impunity
+under a monarch feebler than any since Berengar.
+But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
+him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded
+by the Pope, invited Henry<a name="FNanchor_168" id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a>;
+his strong army made
+opposition hopeless, and at Rome he received the imperial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Henry II
+Emperor.</span>
+
+crown, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
+that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously
+to Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards
+should have so frequently attempted to recover their
+independence. For the former had often little or no
+hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
+home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land
+of treachery and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was
+irresistible, and the disunion of Italy promised an easy
+conquest. Surrounded by martial vassals, these Emperors
+were generally for the moment supreme: once their
+pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things
+reverted to their former condition, and Tuscany was little
+more dependent than France.
+<span class="sidenote">Southern
+Italy.</span>
+In Southern Italy the
+Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome was an outpost
+instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious evidence
+of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
+Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the
+confines of the Greek and Roman realms gave steady
+obedience to neither. They usually date by and recognize
+the princes of Constantinople<a name="FNanchor_169" id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a>,
+seldom mentioning
+the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him
+the Western becomes <i>Imperator</i>, the Greek, appearing
+more rarely, is <i lang="la">Imperator Constantinopolitanus</i>. Assailed
+by the Saracens, masters already of Sicily, these regions
+seemed on the eve of being lost to Christendom, and the
+Romans sometimes bethought themselves of returning
+under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the
+Greeks in the South favoured the rise of the Norman
+kingdom, so did the liberties of the northern cities shoot
+up in the absence of the Emperors and the feuds of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span>
+princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were only the foremost
+among many populous centres of industry, some of them
+self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the
+rural nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their
+aversion to the Germans.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Conrad II.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the
+great Franconian line, is remarkable for the accession
+to the Empire of Burgundy, or, as it is after this time
+more often called, the kingdom of Arles<a name="FNanchor_170" id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a>. Rudolf III,
+the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
+and the states were at length persuaded to consent to
+its reunion to the crown from which it had been
+separated, though to some extent dependent, since the
+death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On Rudolf's
+death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured
+to seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from
+which he was dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty.
+Unlike Italy, it became an integral member of the Germanic
+realm: its prelates and nobles sat in imperial
+diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
+Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government
+was, however, seldom effective in these outlying territories,
+exposed always to the intrigues, finally to the aggressions,
+of Capetian France.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry III.</p>
+
+<p>Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire
+attained the meridian of its power. At home Otto the
+Great's prerogative had not stood so high. The duchies,
+always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
+vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who
+himself retained, contrary to usual practice, those of
+Franconia and (for some years) Swabia. Abbeys and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">His reform
+of the Popedom.</span>
+
+sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine feuds were repressed
+by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
+the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had
+gained by conferring the title of King with the hand of
+his sister Gisela, was enforced by war, the country made
+almost a province, and compelled to pay tribute. In
+Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute.
+A disgraceful contest between three claimants of the
+papal chair had shocked even the reckless apathy of
+Italy. Henry deposed them all, and appointed their
+successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
+constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which
+were the badges of that office, seeming, one might think,
+to find in it some further authority than that which the
+imperial name conferred. The synod passed a decree
+granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
+pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited
+the respect of the world even more by habitual simony
+than by the flagrant corruption of their manners, were
+forced to receive German after German as their bishop,
+at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and
+so pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own
+nobles no less than the Italians, and the reaction, which
+might have been dangerous to himself, was fatal to his
+successor. A mere chance, as some might call it, determined
+the course of history. The great Emperor died
+<span class="sidenote">Henry IV,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1056-1106.</span>
+suddenly in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1056, and a child was left at the helm,
+while storms were gathering that might have demanded
+the wisest hand.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">STRUGGLE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY.</span></h2>
+
+<p>Reformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees,
+the Papacy had resumed in the middle of the
+eleventh century the schemes of polity shadowed forth by
+Nicholas I, and which the degradation of the last age had
+only suspended. Under the guidance of her greatest
+mind, Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Rome, she now
+advanced to their completion, and proclaimed that war
+of the ecclesiastical power against the civil power in the
+person of the Emperor, which became the centre of the
+subsequent history of both. While the nature of the
+struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their
+previous connection, the vastness of the subject warns
+one from the attempt to draw even its outlines, and restricts
+our view to those relations of Popedom and
+Empire which arise directly out of their respective
+positions as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal
+Christian state.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Growth of
+the Papal
+power.</p>
+
+<p>The eagerness of Christianity in the age immediately
+following her political establishment to purchase by submission
+the support of the civil power, has been already
+remarked. The change from independence to supremacy
+was gradual. The tale we smile at, how Constantine,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>
+healed of his leprosy, granted the West to bishop Sylvester,
+and retired to Byzantium that no secular prince
+might interfere with the jurisdiction or profane the neighbourhood
+of Peter's chair, worked great effects through
+the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay more,
+its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat
+of government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus that
+made the Pope the greatest personage in the city, and in
+the prostration after Alaric's invasion he was seen to be
+so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and effective,
+though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to
+the revived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as
+Augustus and Tiberius had been to the faint continuance
+of their earlier prototypes. Pope Leo the First asserted
+the universal jurisdiction of his see<a name="FNanchor_171" id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a>,
+and his persevering
+successors slowly enthralled Italy, Illyricum, Gaul, Spain,
+Africa, dexterously confounding their undoubted metropolitan
+and patriarchal rights with those of œcumenical
+bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his
+writings and the fame of his personal sanctity, by the
+conversion of England and the introduction of an impressive
+ritual, Gregory the Great did more than any
+other pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority.
+Yet his tone to Maurice of Constantinople was deferential,
+to Phocas adulatory; his successors were not consecrated
+till confirmed by the Emperor or the Exarch;
+one of them was dragged in chains to the Bosphorus, and
+banished thence to Scythia. When the iconoclastic controversy
+and the intervention of Pipin broke the allegiance
+of the Popes to the East, the Franks, as patricians
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>
+
+and Emperors, seemed to step into the position which
+Byzantium had lost<a name="FNanchor_172" id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a>. At Charles's coronation, says the
+Saxon poet,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="i4"><span lang="la">'Et summus eundem</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Præsul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Principibus fuit antiquis.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Their relations
+<span class="sidenote">Relations of
+ the Papacy
+ and the
+ Empire.</span>
+ were, however, no longer the same. If
+the Frank vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of
+free gift. What Christendom saw was that Charles was
+crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook as his
+principal duty the protection and advancement of the
+Holy Roman Church. The circumstances of Otto the
+Great's coronation gave an even more favourable opening
+to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who summoned
+him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath
+of fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the
+Emperor, the pontiff, and the people&mdash;represented by
+their senate and consuls, or by the demagogue of the
+hour&mdash;the most steady, prudent, and far-sighted was sure
+eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no minorities,
+as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its own
+army&mdash;the host of churchmen through Europe. Boniface's
+conversion of Germany under its direct sanction,
+gave it a hold on the rising hierarchy of the greatest
+European state; the extension of the rule of Charles and
+Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and pretensions.
+The first disputes turned on the right of the
+prince to confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards
+supposed to have been granted by Hadrian I to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span>
+Charles, in the decree quoted as '<i lang="la">Hadrianus Papa</i><a name="FNanchor_173" id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a>.'
+This '<i lang="la">ius eligendi et ordinandi summum pontificem</i>,' which
+Lewis I appears as yielding by the '<i lang="la">Ego Ludovicus</i><a name="FNanchor_174" id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a>
+,' was
+claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt themselves
+strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude
+in the troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally
+renewed to Otto the Great by his nominee Leo VIII.
+We have seen it used, and used in the purest spirit, by
+Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of all, and
+most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there
+had grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal
+chair to be itself the source of the imperial dignity. In
+submitting to a fresh coronation, Lewis the Pious admitted
+the invalidity of his former self-performed one:
+Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration
+of John VIII<a name="FNanchor_175" id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a>,
+that to him alone the Emperor owed his
+crown; and the council of Pavia<a name="FNanchor_176" id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a>,
+when it chose him
+king of Italy, repeated the assertion. Subsequent Popes
+knew better than to apply to the chiefs of Saxon and
+Franconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian
+had not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon
+was only hid behind the pontifical robe to be flashed
+out with effect when the moment should come. There
+were also two other great steps which papal power had
+taken. By the invention and adoption of the False
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Temporal
+power of
+the Popes.</span>
+Decretals it had provided itself with a legal system suited
+to any emergency, and which gave it unlimited authority
+through the Christian world in causes spiritual and over
+persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical ingenuity found it
+easy in one way or another to make this include all
+causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is always and
+wrong is often sin, nor can aught be anywhere done
+which may not affect the clergy. On the gift of Pipin
+and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
+Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the
+more venerable authority of the first Christian Emperor,
+it could found claims to the sovereignty of Rome, Tuscany,
+and all else that had belonged to the exarchate.
+Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant
+by the donors to convey full dominion over the districts&mdash;that
+belonged to the head of the Empire&mdash;but only as
+in the case of other church estates, a perpetual usufruct
+or <i>dominium utile</i>. They were, in fact, mere endowments.
+Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into possession:
+the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord,
+of the neighbouring barons. They were not, however,
+denied, and might be made a formidable engine of attack:
+appealing to them, the Pope could brand his opponents as
+unjust and impious; and could summon nobles and cities
+to defend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better
+original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors
+of Naples and Sicily.</p>
+
+<p>The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial
+power at Henry the Third's death was externally respectful.
+The right of a German king to the crown of the
+city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful subject.
+Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil
+magistrate. But the secret of the pontiff's strength lay
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>
+in this: he, and he alone, could confer the crown, and
+had therefore the right of imposing conditions on its recipient.
+Frequent interregna had weakened the claim of
+the Transalpine monarch and prevented his power from
+taking firm root; his title was never by law hereditary: the
+holy Church had before sought and might again seek a
+defender elsewhere. And since the need of such defence
+had originated this transference of the Empire from
+the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the
+Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope's duty as
+well as his right to see that the candidate was capable of
+fulfilling his task, to degrade him if he rejected or misperformed
+it.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Hildebrandine
+reforms.</p>
+
+<p>The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution
+of the Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the
+supreme pontiff. This Nicholas II did in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1059,
+feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV and his successors.
+Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses and depravity
+of the last century, advanced apace. It had two
+main objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on
+the secular clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable
+freedom, and the extinction of simony. In the former,
+the Emperors and a large part of the laity were not unwilling
+to join: the latter no one dared to defend in
+theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin
+for the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions
+from a layman, and so condemned the whole system of
+feudal investitures to the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow
+at all secular authority. Half of the land and wealth of
+Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots, who
+would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass
+under that of the Pope. In such a state of things government
+itself would be impossible.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry IV
+and Gregory
+VII.</p>
+
+<p>Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other:
+after this decree war was inevitable. The Pope cited his
+opponent to appear and be judged at Rome for his vices
+and misgovernment. The Emperor<a name="FNanchor_177" id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a>
+ replied by convoking
+a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory.
+At once the dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate,
+and fixed a day on which, if still unrepentant,
+he should cease to reign. Supported by his own princes,
+the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no
+external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the
+first place had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians,
+only waited the signal to burst into a new revolt,
+whilst through all Germany the Emperor's tyranny and
+irregularities of life had sown the seeds of disaffection.
+Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what
+seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's
+<span class="sidenote"><span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1077.</span>
+mightiest prince, titular lord of the world, a suppliant before
+the successor of the Apostle. Henry soon found
+that his humiliation had not served him; driven back into
+opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an anti-pope,
+overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had
+raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered
+life a power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless
+had all other humiliation been spared, that one
+scene in the yard of the Countess Matilda's castle, an
+imperial penitent standing barefoot and woollen-frocked
+on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who sat
+within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark
+a decisive change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on
+the crown so abased. Its wearer could no more, with the
+same lofty confidence, claim to be the highest power on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>
+earth, created by and answerable to God alone. Gregory
+had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of
+the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so
+sternly; proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all
+mankind are subject, and all rulers responsible: so that
+he, the giver of the crown, may also excommunicate and
+depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he says<a name="FNanchor_178" id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a>
+:
+'For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at
+different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed
+the sun and the moon, lights that outshine all
+others; so lest the creature whom His goodness hath
+formed after His own image in this world should be drawn
+astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic
+and royal dignities the means of ruling it through divers
+offices.... If I, therefore, am to answer for thee
+on the dreadful day of judgment before the just Judge
+who cannot lie, the creator of every creature, bethink thee
+whether I must not very diligently provide for thy salvation,
+and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not
+without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the
+land of the living.'</p>
+
+<p>Gregory was not the inventor nor the first propounder
+of these doctrines; they had been long before a part of mediæval
+Christianity, interwoven with its most vital doctrines.
+But he was the first who dared to apply them to the world
+as he found it. His was that rarest and grandest of gifts,
+an intellectual courage and power of imaginative belief
+which, when it has convinced itself of aught, accepts it
+fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from acting
+at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end
+of his own career proved, for men were found less ready
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span>
+than he had thought them to follow out with unswerving
+consistency like his the principles which all acknowledged.
+But it was the very suddenness and boldness of his policy
+that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing
+men's minds and making that seem realized which had
+been till then a vague theory. His premises once admitted,&mdash;and
+no one dreamt of denying them,&mdash;the reasonings
+by which he established the superiority of spiritual to
+temporal jurisdiction were unassailable. With his authority,
+in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell,
+whose word can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting
+misery, no other earthly authority can compete or
+interfere: if his power extends into the infinite, how much
+more must he be supreme over things finite? It was thus
+that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue: the
+wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were
+not obeyed more implicitly. In the second sentence of
+excommunication which Gregory passed upon Henry the
+Fourth are these words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed
+Fathers and Princes, Peter and Paul, that all the world
+may understand and know that if ye are able to bind and
+to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on earth, according
+to the merits of each man, to give and to take away
+empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies,
+countships, and the possessions of all men. For if ye
+judge spiritual things, what must we believe to be your
+power over worldly things? and if ye judge the angels
+who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to
+their slaves?'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Results of
+the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at all
+temporal governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces
+of later days slow to apply them so. On the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span>
+Empire, however, the blow fell first and heaviest. As
+when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken,
+Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution
+dishonoured and helpless; allegiance was no longer
+undivided, for who could presume to fix in each case the
+limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions? The
+potentates of Europe beheld in the Papacy a force which,
+if dangerous to themselves, could be made to repel the
+pretensions and baffle the designs of the strongest and
+haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the
+Teutonic conqueror by gaining the papal sanction for the
+leagues of her cities. The German princes, anxious to
+narrow the prerogative of their head, were the natural
+allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more terrible
+than their own lances, could enable them to depose an
+aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions
+they desired. Their altered tone is marked by the promise
+they required from Rudolf of Swabia, whom they set
+up as a rival to Henry, that he would not endeavour to
+make the throne hereditary.</p>
+
+<p>It is not possible here to dwell on the details of the
+great struggle of the Investitures, rich as it is in the interest
+of adventure and character, momentous as were its
+results for the future. A word or two must suffice to
+describe the conclusion, not indeed of the whole drama,
+which was to extend over centuries, but of what
+may be called its first act. Even that act lasted beyond
+the lives of the original performers. Gregory the Seventh
+passed away at Salerno in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1087, exclaiming with his
+last breath 'I have loved justice and hated iniquity, therefore
+I die in exile.' Nineteen years later, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1106,
+Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son whom the
+hatred of a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>
+
+him. But that son, the emperor Henry the Fifth, so far
+from conceding the points in dispute, proved an antagonist
+more ruthless and not less able than his father.
+He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics
+that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his
+coronation in Rome, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1112, Pope Paschal II refused
+to complete the rite until he should have yielded, Henry
+seized both Pope and cardinals and compelled them by a
+rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which he
+dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed
+his extorted concessions, and the struggle was
+protracted for ten years longer, until nearly half a century
+had elapsed from the first quarrel between Gregory VII
+and Henry IV.
+<span class="sidenote">Concordat
+of Worms,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1122.</span>
+The Concordat of Worms, concluded in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1122, was in form a compromise, designed to spare
+either party the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy
+remained master of the field. The Emperor retained
+but one-half of those rights of investiture which had
+formerly been his. He could never resume the position
+of Henry III; his wishes or intrigues might influence the
+proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open
+interference. He had entered the strife in the fulness of
+dignity; he came out of it with tarnished glory and
+shattered power. His wars had been hitherto carried on
+with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble;
+now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant,
+and had enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates
+of his realm. At any moment his sceptre might be
+shivered in his hand by the bolt of anathema, and a host
+of enemies spring up from every convent and cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>Two other results of this great conflict ought not
+to pass unnoticed. The Emperor was alienated from the
+Church at the most unfortunate of all moments, the era
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">The Crusades.</span>
+of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war
+against the enemies of the faith, to head the church
+militant in her carnal as the Popes were accustomed to
+do in her spiritual strife, this was the very purpose for
+which an Emperor had been called into being; and it
+was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first
+three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth
+which the theory of the mediæval Empire proclaimed,
+was once for all and never again realized by the combined
+action of the great nations of Europe. Had such an
+opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have
+used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that
+which had belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry
+IV's proscription excluded him from all share in an enterprise
+which he must otherwise have led&mdash;nay, more,
+committed it to the guidance of his foes. The religious
+feeling which the Crusades evoked&mdash;a feeling which
+became the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and
+somewhat later of the two great orders of mendicant
+friars&mdash;turned wholly against the opponent of ecclesiastical
+claims, and was made to work the will of the Holy
+See, which had blessed and organized the project. A
+century and a half later the Pope did not scruple to
+preach a crusade against the Emperor himself.</p>
+
+<p>Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of
+that fear and hatred wherewith the German people never
+thenceforth ceased to regard the encroaching Romish
+court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by the
+nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful
+burghers of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test
+of Teutonic patriotism to resist Italian priestcraft.</p>
+
+<p>The changes in the internal constitution of Germany
+which the long anarchy of Henry IV's reign had produced
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Limitations
+of imperial
+prerogative.</span>
+are seen when the nature of the prerogative as it
+stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first Franconian
+Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V's death.
+All fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be
+granted afresh only by consent of the States; the jurisdiction
+of the crown is less wide; the idea is beginning to
+make progress that the most essential part of the Empire
+is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes
+and barons. The greatest triumph of these feudal magnates
+is in the establishment of the elective principle,
+which when confirmed by the three free elections of
+Lothar II, Conrad III, and Frederick I, passes into an
+<span class="sidenote">Lothar II,
+1125-1138.</span>
+undoubted law. The Prince-Electors are mentioned in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1156 as a distinct and important body<a name="FNanchor_179" id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a>. The clergy,
+too, whom the policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had
+raised, are now not less dangerous than the dukes, whose
+power it was hoped they would balance; possibly more
+so, since protected by their sacred character and their
+allegiance to the Pope, while able at the same time to
+command the arms of their countless vassals. Nor were
+the two succeeding Emperors the men to retrieve those
+disasters. The Saxon Lothar the Second is the willing
+minion of the Pope; performs at his coronation a menial
+service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath
+to defend the Holy See, that he may purchase its support
+against the Swabian faction in his own dominions.
+<span class="sidenote">Conrad III,
+1138-1152.</span>
+Conrad the Third, the first Emperor of the great house
+of Hohenstaufen<a name="FNanchor_180" id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a>,
+represents the anti-papal party; but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span>
+domestic troubles and an unfortunate crusade prevented
+him from effecting anything in Italy. He never even
+entered Rome to receive the crown.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE EMPERORS IN ITALY: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Frederick
+of Hohenstaufen,
+1152-1189.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Frederick the First, better known under
+his Italian surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant in
+the annals of the Empire. Its territory had been wider
+under Charles, its strength perhaps greater under Henry
+the Third, but it never appeared in such pervading vivid
+activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under
+the prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of
+their national heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic
+type of Teutonic character, honoured by picture and
+statue, in song and in legend, through the breadth of the
+German lands. The reverential fondness of his annalists
+and the whole tenour of his life go far to justify this
+admiration, and dispose us to believe that nobler motives
+were joined with personal ambition in urging him to
+assert so haughtily and carry out so harshly those imperial
+rights in which he had such unbounded confidence.
+Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its
+greatest effort to subdue the two antagonists which then
+threatened and were fated in the end to destroy it&mdash;Italian
+nationality and the Papacy.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">His relations
+to the
+Popedom.</p>
+
+<p>Even before Gregory VII's time it might have been
+predicted that two such potentates as the Emperor and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span>
+the Pope, closely bound together, yet each with pretensions
+wide and undefined, must ere long come into
+collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing,
+the unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining,
+the supremacy of clerical authority, inspired their supporters
+with a zeal and courage which more than compensated
+the advantages of the Emperor in defending
+rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred
+was soon very bitter. But even had men's passions
+permitted a reconciliation, it would have been found
+difficult to bring into harmony adverse principles, each
+irresistible, mutually destructive. As the spiritual power,
+in itself purer, since exercised over the soul and directed
+to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was entitled
+to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy; so
+the spiritual person, to whom, according to the view then
+universally accepted, there had been imparted by ordination
+a mysterious sanctity, could not without sin be subject to
+the lay magistrate, be installed by him in office, be judged
+in his court, and render to him any compulsory service.
+Yet it was no less true that civil government was indispensable
+to the peace and advancement of society; and
+while it continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could
+not be suffered to interfere with its workings, nor one-half
+of the people be altogether removed from its control.
+Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced into hostility
+as champions of opposite systems, however fully
+each might admit the strength of his adversary's position,
+however bitterly he might bewail the violence of his own
+partisans. There had also arisen other causes of quarrel,
+less respectable but not less dangerous. The pontiff
+demanded and the monarch refused the lands which the
+Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>
+Holy See; Frederick claiming them as feudal suzerain,
+the Pope eager by their means to carry out those
+schemes of temporal dominion which Constantine's donation
+sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation of
+the sovereignty of Rome had done much to encourage.
+As feudal superior of the Norman kings of Naples and
+Sicily, as protector of the towns and barons of North
+Italy who feared the German yoke, the successor of
+Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Contest with
+Hadrian IV.</p>
+
+<p>No man was less likely than Frederick to submit to
+these encroachments. He was a sort of imperialist
+Hildebrand, strenuously proclaiming the immediate dependence
+of his office on God's gift, and holding it every
+whit as sacred as his rival's. On his first journey to Rome,
+he refused to hold the Pope's stirrup<a name="FNanchor_181" id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a>,
+as Lothar had done,
+till Pope Hadrian the Fourth's threat that he would withhold
+the crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising
+not long after on some other ground, the Pope exhorted
+Frederick by letter to shew himself worthy of the kindness
+of his mother the Roman Church, who had given him
+the imperial crown, and would confer on him, if dutiful,
+benefits still greater. This word benefits&mdash;<i lang="la">beneficia</i>&mdash;understood
+in its usual legal sense of 'fief,' and taken in
+connection with the picture which had been set up at Rome
+to commemorate Lothar's homage, provoked angry shouts
+from the nobles assembled in diet at Besançon; and when
+the legate answered, 'From whom, then, if not from our
+Lord the Pope, does your king hold the Empire?' his life
+was not safe from their fury. On this occasion Frederick's
+vigour and the remonstrances of the Transalpine prelates
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span>
+obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious word, and
+remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed
+by other causes, and came to centre itself round the Pope's
+demand that Rome should be left entirely to his government.
+Frederick, in reply, appeals to the civil law, and
+closes with the words, 'Since by the ordination of God I
+both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in
+nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control
+of the Roman city be wrested from my hands.' That
+such a claim should need assertion marks the change since
+Henry III; how much more that it could not be enforced.
+Hadrian's tone rises into defiance; he mingles the threat
+of excommunication with references to the time when the
+Germans had not yet the Empire. 'What were the Franks
+till Zacharias welcomed Pipin? What is the Teutonic
+king now till consecrated at Rome by holy hands? The
+chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its gifts.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">With Pope
+Alexander
+III.</p>
+
+<p>The schism that followed Hadrian's death produced a
+second and more momentous conflict. Frederick, as head
+of Christendom, proposed to summon the bishops of
+Europe to a general council, over which he should preside,
+like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite
+text of the two swords, 'On earth,' he continues, 'God
+has placed no more than two powers: above there is but
+one God, so here one Pope and one Emperor. The
+Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire as a remedy against continued schism<a name="FNanchor_182" id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a>.' The
+plan failed; and Frederick adopted the candidate whom
+his own faction had chosen, while the rival claimant,
+Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence which the
+issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen throughout
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>
+Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty
+years that followed, while apparently a dispute between
+rival Popes, was in substance an effort by the secular
+monarch to recover his command of the priesthood; not
+less truly so than that contemporaneous conflict of the
+English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with
+which it was constantly involved. Unsupported, not all
+Alexander's genius and resolution could have saved him:
+by the aid of the Lombard cities, whose league he had
+counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of Rome, by
+which the conquering German host was suddenly annihilated,
+he won a triumph the more signal, that it was over
+a prince so wise and so pious as Frederick. At Venice,
+who, inaccessible by her position, maintained a sedulous
+neutrality, claiming to be independent of the Empire, yet
+seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two
+powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced
+to meet by the mediation of the doge Sebastian Ziani.
+Three slabs of red marble in the porch of St. Mark's point
+out the spot where Frederick knelt in sudden awe, and
+the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the kiss
+of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting
+have given an undeserved currency<a name="FNanchor_183" id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a>,
+tells how the pontiff
+set his foot on the neck of the prostrate king, with the
+words, 'The lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under
+feet<a name="FNanchor_184" id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a>.' It needed not this exaggeration to enhance the
+significance of that scene, even more full of meaning for
+the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian
+crowd that thronged the church and the piazza. For it
+was the renunciation by the mightiest prince of his time of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>
+the project to which his life had been devoted: it was the
+abandonment by the secular power of a contest in which
+it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not
+renew under more favourable conditions.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Revival of
+the study of
+the civil law.</p>
+
+<p>Authority maintained so long against the successor of
+Peter would be far from indulgent to rebellious subjects.
+For it was in this light that the Lombard cities appeared
+to a monarch bent on reviving all the rights his predecessors
+had enjoyed: nay, all that the law of ancient Rome
+gave her absolute ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a
+re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never
+perished from Gaul and Italy, had been the groundwork
+of some codes, and the whole substance, modified only by
+the changes in society, of many others. The Church excepted,
+no agent did so much to keep alive the memory
+of Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld
+the study cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge
+and ardour, expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First
+in Italy and the schools of the South, then in Paris and
+Oxford, they were expounded, commented on, extolled as
+the perfection of human wisdom, the sole, true, and
+eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought
+expended from that time to this in the elucidation of the
+civil law, the most competent authorities declare that in
+acuteness, in subtlety, in all those branches of learning
+which can subsist without help from historical criticism,
+these so-called Glossatores have been seldom equalled
+and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers
+of the canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of
+the civilian, and were accustomed to recur to his books
+where their own were silent, spread through Europe the
+fame and influence of the Roman jurisprudence; while its
+own professors were led both by their feeling and their interest
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span>
+to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and the
+fullest application. Men just emerging from barbarism,
+with minds unaccustomed to create and blindly submissive
+to authority, viewed written texts with an awe to us
+incomprehensible. All that the most servile jurists of
+Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes was
+directly transferred to the Cæsarean majesty who inherited
+their name. He was 'Lord of the world,' absolute master
+of the lives and property of all his subjects, that is, of all
+men; the sole fountain of legislation, the embodiment of
+right and justice. These doctrines, which the great Bolognese
+jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and others
+who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied,
+as matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by
+the rest of the world not denied, were accepted in fervent
+faith by his German and Italian partisans. 'To the
+Emperor belongs the protection of the whole world,' says
+bishop Otto of Freysing. 'The Emperor is a living law
+upon earth<a name="FNanchor_185" id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a>.' To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop
+of Milan speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy:
+'Do and ordain whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is
+law; as it is written, <span lang="la">"Quicquid principi placuit legis habet
+vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne suum imperium
+et potestatem concesserit<a name="FNanchor_186" id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a>."</span> The Hohenstaufen himself
+was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of
+dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern
+according to law rather than override the law, was
+doubtless roused by them to a more vehement assertion of
+a prerogative so hallowed by age and by what seemed a
+divine ordinance.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Frederick in
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span>
+The Emperors might appear to consider it a conquered
+country without privileges to be respected, for they did
+not summon its princes to the German diets, and overawed
+its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the
+Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was
+theirs whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while
+the elections on the banks of the Rhine might be adorned
+but could not be influenced by the presence of barons
+from the southern kingdom<a name="FNanchor_187" id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a>. In practice, however, the
+imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for
+it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the
+personal vigour and present armed support of each invader.
+The theoretic sovereignty of the Emperor-king
+was nowise disputed: in the cities toll and tax were of
+right his: he could issue edicts at the Diet, and require
+the tenants in chief to appear with their vassals. But the
+revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV's time,
+was felt as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard
+cities, proud of riches and population equal to that of the
+duchies of Germany or the kingdoms of the North, and
+accustomed for more than a century to a turbulent independence.
+For republicanism and popular freedom
+Frederick had little sympathy.
+<span class="sidenote">Rome under
+Arnold of
+Brescia.</span>
+At Rome the fervent
+Arnold of Brescia had repeated, but with far different
+thoughts and hopes, the part of Crescentius<a name="FNanchor_188" id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a>. The city
+had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and a commonwealth
+under consuls and senate professed to emulate the
+spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic.
+Its leaders had written to Conrad III<a name="FNanchor_189" id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a>,
+asking him to help
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span>
+them to restore the Empire to its position under Constantine
+and Justinian; but the German, warned by St.
+Bernard, had preferred the friendship of the Pope. Filled
+with a vain conceit of their own importance, they repeated
+their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from
+Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in
+highflown language on the dignity of the Roman people,
+and their kindness in bestowing the sceptre on him, a
+Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner hardly
+consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the
+city. Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end:
+'Is this your Roman wisdom? Who are ye that usurp
+the name of Roman dignities? Your honours and your
+authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls, senate,
+soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and
+Otto that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard,
+and conquered by their own might the imperial crown.
+That Frankish might is still the same: wrench, if you can,
+the club from Hercules. It is not for the people to give
+laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate<a name="FNanchor_190" id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a>.' This was
+Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire<a name="FNanchor_191" id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Lombard
+Cities.</p>
+
+<p>He who had been so stern to his own capital was not
+likely to deal more gently with the rebels of Milan and
+Tortona. In the contest by which Frederick is chiefly
+known to history, he is commonly painted as the foreign
+tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor<a name="FNanchor_192" id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a>,
+crushing
+under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span>
+and industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and
+his cause. To the despot liberty is always licence; yet
+Frederick was the advocate of admitted claims; the aggressions
+of Milan threatened her neighbours; the refusal,
+where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his officers
+and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of
+oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than
+himself<a name="FNanchor_193" id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a>. Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the
+cities, in whose victory we recognize the triumph of freedom
+and civilization. Their resistance was at first probably
+a mere aversion to unused control, and to the enforcement
+of imposts less offensive in former days than now,
+and by long dereliction apparently obsolete<a name="FNanchor_194" id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a>. Republican
+principles were not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed
+to. But the progress of the conflict developed new motives
+and feelings, and gave them clearer notions of what they
+fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope was
+their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the
+barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The
+Church' ere long their watchword, and helped them to
+conclude that league of mutual support by means whereof
+the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed. Another cry,
+too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the
+last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government&mdash;freedom
+little understood and terribly abused, self-government
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span>
+which the cities who claimed it for themselves refused
+to their subject allies, yet both of them, through their
+divine power of stimulating effort and quickening sympathy,
+as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a
+feudal monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose
+above the slavish Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor
+was the fact that Italians were resisting a Transalpine invader
+without its effect; there was as yet no distinct national
+feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as rural nobles,
+fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of
+liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and
+increased that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which
+Italy has had such bitter justification.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Temporary
+success of
+Frederick.</p>
+
+<p>The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was
+taken, Milan razed to the ground, her name apparently
+lost: greater obstacles had been overcome, and a fuller
+authority was now exercised than in the days of the Ottos
+or the Henrys. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror
+were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared
+by his admirers to the hero whose canonization he
+had procured, and whom he strove in all things to imitate<a name="FNanchor_195" id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a>.
+'He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only to Charles in
+piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: <span lang="la">'Ut
+ad Caroli imitationem ius ecclesiarum statum reipublicæ
+et legum integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus<a name="FNanchor_196" id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a>.'</span>
+But the hold the name of Charles had on the
+minds of the people, and the way in which he had become,
+so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better witnesses
+than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings<a name="FNanchor_197" id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a>
+:&mdash;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Repræsentat Karolum dextera victrici.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over
+the re-establishment of order by the destruction of the
+dens of unruly burghers.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Victory of
+the Lombard
+league.</p>
+
+<p>This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless
+ashes uprose Milan; Cremona, scorning old jealousies,
+helped to rebuild what she had destroyed, and the confederates,
+committed to an all but hopeless strife, clung
+faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the Empire's
+banner went down before the carroccio<a name="FNanchor_198" id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a>
+ of the free city.
+Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled
+at the distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new
+nation had arisen, slowly reared through suffering into
+strength, now at last by heroic deeds conscious of itself.
+The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of
+nature and language that were too strong for his successor,
+and that grew henceforth ever firmer, till they
+made the Empire itself a delusive name. Frederick,
+though harsh in war, and now balked of his most cherished
+hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it
+was beyond his power to change: he signed cheerfully
+and kept dutifully the peace of Constance, which left him
+little but a titular supremacy over the Lombard towns.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Frederick
+as German
+king.</p>
+
+<p>At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so
+much respected and so generally prosperous. Uniting in
+his person the Saxon and Swabian families, he healed
+the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates were
+faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span>
+disturbed the public peace. Germany was proud of a
+hero who maintained her dignity so well abroad, and he
+crowned a glorious life with a happy death, leading the
+van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman. Frederick,
+the greatest of the Crusaders, is the noblest type
+of mediæval character in many of its shadows, in all its
+lights.</p>
+
+<p>Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost absolute,
+the government of Germany was, like that of other feudal
+kingdoms, restrained chiefly by the difficulty of coercing
+refractory vassals. All depended on the monarch's character,
+and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick
+could generally lead the majority with him and terrify
+the rest. A false impression of the real strength of his
+prerogative might be formed from the readiness with
+which he was obeyed. He repaired the finances of the
+kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more splendid
+ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power
+by multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards
+the 'college of princes,' and by trying to substitute the
+civil law and Lombard feudal code for the old Teutonic
+customs, different in every province. If not successful
+in this project, he fared better with another.
+<span class="sidenote">The German
+cities.</span>
+Since Henry
+the Fowler's day towns had been growing up through
+Southern and Western Germany, especially where rivers
+offered facilities for trade. Cologne, Treves, Mentz,
+Worms, Speyer, Nürnberg, Ulm, Regensburg, Augsburg,
+were already considerable cities, not afraid to beard their
+lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance
+the power of the territorial oligarchy. Policy
+or instinct led Frederick to attach them to the throne,
+enfranchising many, granting, with municipal institutions,
+an independent jurisdiction, conferring various exemptions
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span>
+and privileges; while receiving in turn their good-will
+and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should
+come. His immediate successors trode in his steps, and
+thus there arose in the state a third order, the firmest
+bulwark, had it been rightly used, of imperial authority;
+an order whose members, the Free Cities, were through
+many ages the centres of German intellect and freedom,
+the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest
+hope of future peace and union. In them national congresses
+to this day sometimes meet: from them aspiring
+spirits strive to diffuse those ideas of Germanic unity and
+self-government, which they alone have kept alive. Out
+of so many flourishing commonwealths, four<a name="FNanchor_199" id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a>
+ have been
+spared by foreign conquerors and faithless princes. To
+the primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing
+out of the towns, except in Swabia and Switzerland,
+Frederick further commended himself by allowing them
+to be admitted to knighthood, by restraining the licence
+of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice
+in every way more accessible and impartial. To the
+south-west of the green plain that girdles in the rock of
+Salzburg, the gigantic mass of the Untersberg frowns over
+the road which winds up a long defile to the glen and
+lake of Berchtesgaden. There, far up among its limestone
+crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the
+peasants of the valley point out to the traveller the black
+mouth of a cavern, and tell him that within Barbarossa lies
+amid his knights in an enchanted sleep<a name="FNanchor_200" id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a>,
+waiting the hour
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span>
+when the ravens shall cease to hover round the peak, and
+the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend with his
+Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age
+of peace and strength and unity. Often in the evil days
+that followed the fall of Frederick's house, often when
+tyranny seemed unendurable and anarchy endless, men
+thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day when the
+long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his
+shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst,
+a sign of help to the poor and the oppressed.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest
+point at which to turn aside from the narrative history
+of the Empire to speak shortly of the legal position which
+it professed to hold to the rest of Europe, as well as of
+certain duties and observances which throw a light upon
+the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of
+its greatest power: that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously
+the era when its ideal dignity stood highest:
+for that remained scarcely impaired till three centuries
+had passed away. But it was under the Hohenstaufen,
+owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of
+that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy
+of the Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical
+influence of the Empire most fully coincided.
+There can therefore be no better opportunity for noticing
+the titles and claims by which it announced itself the
+representative of Rome's universal dominion, and for
+collecting the various instances in which they were (either
+before or after Frederick's time) more or less admitted
+by the other states of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The territories over which Barbarossa would have declared
+his jurisdiction to extend may be classed under
+four heads:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone,
+the Emperor was, up till the death of Frederick the
+Second, effective sovereign.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire,
+where the Emperor was acknowledged as sole monarch,
+but in practice little regarded.</p>
+
+<p>Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to
+the Empire, but governed by kings of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while
+in most cases admitting the superior rank of the Emperor,
+were virtually independent of him.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Limits of
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy Empire
+were included only districts coming under the first and
+second of the above classes, i.e. Germany, the northern
+half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles&mdash;that
+is to say, Provence, Dauphiné, the Free County of
+Burgundy (Franche Comté), and Western Switzerland.
+Lorraine, Alsace, and a portion of Flanders were of
+course parts of Germany. To the north-east, Bohemia
+and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and Pomerania
+were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather
+dependent outliers. Beyond the march of Brandenburg,
+from the Oder to the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians
+or Prussians<a name="FNanchor_201" id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a>,
+free till the establishment among them of
+the Teutonic knights.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Hungary.</p>
+
+<p>Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days
+of Otto I. Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the
+Holy See; Frederick wished to reduce it completely to
+subjection, but could not overcome the reluctance of his
+nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered
+from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made
+for so many years that at last they became obsolete, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span>
+were confessed to be so by the Constitution of Augsburg,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1566<a name="FNanchor_202" id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Poland.</p>
+
+<p>Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the
+Great, and continued, with occasional revolts, to obey
+the Empire, till the beginning of the Great Interregnum
+(as it is called) in 1254. Its duke was present at the
+election of Richard, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1258. Thereafter Primislas
+called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the
+country became independent, though some of its provinces
+were long afterwards reunited to the German state.
+Silesia, originally Polish, was attached to Bohemia by
+Charles IV, and so became part of the Empire; Posen
+and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1772.
+Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of
+Poland remained a copy of that which had existed in the
+German kingdom in the twelfth century<a name="FNanchor_203" id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Denmark.</p>
+
+<p>Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the
+Danish king Harold, on his baptism at Mentz, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 826;
+Otto the Great's victories over Harold Blue Tooth made
+the country regularly subject, and added the march of
+Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but
+the boundary soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks
+might be seen the inscription,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p><span lang="la">'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>King Peter<a name="FNanchor_204" id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a>
+ attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>
+homage, and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his
+own crown. Since the Interregnum Denmark has been
+always free<a name="FNanchor_205" id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">France.</p>
+
+<p>Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty
+the French kings had admitted; nor were Henry VI and
+Otto IV successful in their attempts to enforce it. Boniface
+VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the Fair, offered the
+French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to Albert
+I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize.
+The precedence, however, which the Germans continued
+to assert, irritated Gallic pride, and led to more than one
+contest. Blondel denies the Empire any claim to the
+Roman name; and in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648 the French envoys at
+Münster refused for some time to admit what no other
+European state disputed. Till recent times the title of
+the Archbishop of Treves, <span lang="la">'Archicancellarius per Galliam
+atque regnum Arelatense,'</span> preserved the memory of an
+obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of
+France might seem to have reversed.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Sweden.</p>
+
+<p>No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us
+that Sweden was granted by Frederick I to Waldemar the
+Dane<a name="FNanchor_206" id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a>;
+the fact is improbable, and we do not hear that
+such pretensions were ever put forth before or after.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Nor does it appear that authority was ever exercised by
+any Emperor in Spain. Nevertheless the choice of
+Alfonso X by a section of the German electors, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1258, may be construed to imply that the Spanish kings
+were members of the Empire. And when, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1053,
+Ferdinand the Great of Castile had, in the pride of his
+victories over the Moors, assumed the title of <span lang="la">'Hispaniæ
+Imperator,'</span> the remonstrance of Henry III declared the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>
+rights of Rome over the Western provinces indelible, and
+the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was
+forced to resign the usurped dignity<a name="FNanchor_207" id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">England.</p>
+
+<p>No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been done
+by any of the Emperors in England, though as heirs of
+Rome they might be thought to have better rights over it
+than over Poland or Denmark<a name="FNanchor_208" id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a>. There was, however, a
+vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms, must
+depend on the Empire: a notion which appears in Conrad
+III's letter to John of Constantinople<a name="FNanchor_209" id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a>;
+and which
+was countenanced by the submissive tone in which Frederick
+I was addressed by the Plantagenet Henry II<a name="FNanchor_210" id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a>.
+English independence was still more compromised in the
+next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden,
+<span lang="la">'Consilio matris suæ deposuit se de regno Angliæ et
+tradidit illud imperatori (Henrico VI<sup>to</sup>) sicut universorum
+domino.'</span> But as Richard was at the same time invested
+with the kingdom of Arles by Henry VI, his homage
+may have been for that fief only; and it was probably
+in that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span>
+at the election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel
+in the claims of England over the Scottish king, doubtful,
+to say the least, as regards the domestic realm of the
+latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he had long
+held from the Southern crown<a name="FNanchor_211" id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a>. But Germany had no
+Edward I. Henry VI is said at his death to have
+released Richard from his submission (this too may be
+compared with Richard's release to the Scottish William
+the Lion), and Edward II declared, <span lang="la">'regnum Angliæ ab
+omni subiectione imperiali esse liberrimum<a name="FNanchor_212" id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a>.'</span> Yet the
+idea survived: the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when
+he named Edward III his vicar in the great French war,
+demanded, though in vain, that the English monarch
+should kiss his feet<a name="FNanchor_213" id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a>. Sigismund<a name="FNanchor_214" id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a>,
+visiting Henry V
+at London, before the meeting of the council of Constance,
+was met by the Duke of Gloucester, who, riding
+into the water to the ship where the Emperor sat, required
+him, at the sword's point, to declare that he did
+not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in
+the realm of England<a name="FNanchor_215" id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a>. One curious pretension of the
+imperial crown called forth many protests. It was declared
+by civilians and canonists that no public notary
+could have any standing, or attach any legality to the
+documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma
+from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span>
+doctrine so injurious was issued by the parliament of
+Scotland under James III<a name="FNanchor_216" id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Naples.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although of course
+claimed as a part of the Empire, was under the Norman
+dynasty (<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1060-1189) not merely independent, but
+the most dangerous enemy of the German power in
+Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa,
+obtained possession of it by marrying Constantia the
+last heiress of the Norman kings. But both he and
+Frederick II treated it as a separate patrimonial state,
+instead of incorporating it with their more northerly dominions.
+After the death of Conradin, the last of the
+Hohenstaufen, it passed away to an Angevin, then to an
+Aragonese dynasty, continuing under both to maintain
+itself independent of the Empire, nor ever again, except
+under Charles V, united to the Germanic crown.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Venice.</p>
+
+<p>One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity
+of situation enabled her through long centuries of obscurity
+and weakness, slowly ripening into strength, to
+maintain her freedom unstained by any submission to the
+Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in
+deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from
+Aquileia in the days of Attila: it is at least probable that
+her population never received an intermixture of Teutonic
+settlers, and continued during the ages of Lombard and
+Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine sovereigns
+as the representatives of their ancient masters. In the
+tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they
+had said, 'We wish to be the servants of the Emperors of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span>
+the Romans' (the Constantinopolitan), and though they
+overthrew this very Eastern throne in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1204, the
+pretext had served its turn, and had aided them in
+defying or evading the demands of obedience made by
+the Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics,
+Venice never, down to her extinction by France and
+Austria in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1796, recognized within her walls any
+secular authority save her own.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The East.</p>
+
+<p>The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI
+to confess themselves his vassals and ask his help. Over
+remote Eastern lands, where Frankish foot had never
+trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the indestructible
+rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to
+Saladin, amusing from its absolute identification of his
+own Empire with that which had sent Crassus to perish
+in Parthia, and had blushed to see Mark Antony <span lang="la">'consulum
+nostrum'</span><a name="FNanchor_217" id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a>
+ at the feet of Cleopatra, is preserved by
+Hoveden: it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the
+dominions of Rome, else will she, with her new Teutonic
+defenders, of whom a pompous list follows, drive him
+from them with all her ancient might.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The
+Byzantine
+Emperors.</p>
+
+<p>Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western
+Europe to admit the territorial supremacy of the Emperor,
+the proudest among them never refused, until the
+end of the Middle Ages, to recognize his precedence and
+address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very
+different was the attitude of the Byzantine princes, who
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>
+denied his claim to be an Emperor at all. The separate
+existence of the Eastern Church and Empire was not only,
+as has been said above, a blemish in the title of the Teutonic
+sovereigns; it was a continuing and successful
+protest against the whole system of an Empire Church
+of Christendom, centering in Rome, ruled by the successor
+of Peter and the successor of Augustus. Instead
+of the one Pope and one Emperor whom mediæval
+theory presented as the sole earthly representatives of the
+invisible head of the Church, the world saw itself distracted
+by the interminable feud of rivals, each of whom
+had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy for the
+Latins to call the Easterns schismatics and their Emperor
+an usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone
+him or reduce them to obedience: while even in controversy
+no one could treat the pretensions of communities
+who had been the first to embrace Christianity and retained
+so many of its most ancient forms, with the contempt
+which would have been felt for any Western sectaries.
+Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the
+Greeks seems to us to affect the claims of the Teutonic
+Empire, calling in question its legitimacy and marring its
+pretended universality, those who lived at the time seem
+to have troubled themselves little about it, finding themselves
+in practice seldom confronted by the difficulties it
+raised. The great mass of the people knew of the Greeks
+not even by name; of those who did, the most thought
+of them only as perverse rebels, Samaritans who refused
+to worship at Jerusalem, and were little better than infidels.
+The few ecclesiastics of superior knowledge and
+insight had their minds preoccupied by the established
+theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to suffer
+anything else to come into collision with it: they do not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Rivalry
+of the two
+Empires.</span>
+seem to have even apprehended all that was involved in
+this one defect. Nor, what is still stranger, in all the
+attacks made upon the claims of the Teutonic Empire,
+whether by its Papal or its French antagonists, do we find
+the rival title of the Greek sovereigns adduced in argument
+against it. Nevertheless, the Eastern Church was then, as
+she is to this day, a thorn in the side of the Papacy; and
+the Eastern Emperors, so far from uniting for the good of
+Christendom with their Western brethren, felt towards
+them a bitter though not unnatural jealousy, lost no opportunity
+of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to
+deny their right to the imperial name. The coronation
+of Charles was in their eyes an act of unholy rebellion;
+his successors were barbarian intruders, ignorant of the
+laws and usages of the ancient state, and with no claim
+to the Roman name except that which the favour of an
+insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves
+long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were
+indeed become more than half Orientals in character and
+manners. But they still continued to call themselves
+Romans, and preserved most of the titles and ceremonies
+which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian.
+They were weak, although by no means so weak as
+modern historians have been till lately wont to paint
+them, and the weaker they grew the higher rose their
+conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon
+the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial
+splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its
+wearer. It gratified their spite to pervert insultingly the
+titles of the Frankish princes. Basil the Macedonian reproached
+Lewis II with presuming to use the name of
+'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good
+an emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, <i>Basileus</i>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>
+was only the Greek for <i>rex</i>, and need not mean 'Emperor'
+at all. Nicephorus would not call Otto I anything
+but 'King of the Lombards<a name="FNanchor_218" id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a>
+,' Conrad III was addressed
+by Calo-Johannes as <span lang="la">'amice imperii mei Rex<a name="FNanchor_219" id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a>
+;'</span> Isaac
+Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief
+prince of Alemannia<a name="FNanchor_220" id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a>.' The great Emperor, half-resentful,
+half-contemptuous, told the envoys that he was
+<span lang="la">'Romanorum imperator,'</span> and bade their master call himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span>
+<span lang="la">'Romaniorum'</span> from his Thracian province. Though
+these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their
+weakness, the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the
+recovery of their former capital, and seemed not unlikely
+to succeed under the leadership of the conquering Manuel
+Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the heat
+of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of
+his rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his
+synod courteously declined<a name="FNanchor_221" id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a>. The Greeks were, however,
+too unstable and too much alienated from Latin
+feeling to have held Rome, could they even have seduced
+her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves
+the victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Dignities
+and titles.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The four
+crowns.</p>
+
+<p>Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped
+all titles save their highest (the tedious lists of imperial
+dignities were happily not yet in being), they did not
+therefore endeavour to unite their several kingdoms, but
+continued to go through four distinct coronations at the
+four capitals of their Empire<a name="FNanchor_222" id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a>. These are concisely given
+in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of Frederick's
+household<a name="FNanchor_223" id="FNanchor_223" href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a>
+:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post hæc Arelati,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Inde Modoetiæ regali sede locari</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Post solet Italiæ summa corona dari:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Cæsar Romano cum vult diademate fungi</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>By the crowning at Aachen, the old Frankish capital, the
+monarch became 'king;' formerly 'king of the Franks,'
+or, 'king of the Eastern Franks;' now, since Henry II's
+time, 'king of the Romans, always Augustus.' At Monza,
+(or, more rarely, at Milan) in later times, at Pavia in earlier
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span>
+times, he became king of Italy, or of the Lombards<a name="FNanchor_224" id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a>;
+at
+Rome he received the double crown of the Roman Empire,
+'double,' says Godfrey, as <span lang="la">'urbis et orbis:'</span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p><span lang="la">'Hoc quicunque tenet, summus in orbe sedet;'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown,
+it typifies spiritual as well as secular authority. The crown
+of Burgundy<a name="FNanchor_225" id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a>
+ or the kingdom of Arles, first gained by
+Conrad II, was a much less splendid matter, and carried
+with it little effective power. Most Emperors never
+assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life, when an
+interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These
+four crowns<a name="FNanchor_226" id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a>
+ furnish matter of endless discussion to the
+old writers; they tell us that the Roman was golden, the
+German silver, the Italian iron, the metal corresponding
+to the dignity of each realm<a name="FNanchor_227" id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a>. Others say that that of
+Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and give elaborate
+reasons why it should be so<a name="FNanchor_228" id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a>. There seems to be no
+doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all
+three crowns were of gold, though in that of Italy there
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>
+was and is inserted a piece of iron, a nail, it was believed,
+of the true Cross.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Meaning
+of the four
+coronations.</p>
+
+<p>Why, it may well be asked, seeing that the Roman
+crown made the Emperor ruler of the whole habitable
+globe, was it thought necessary for him to add to it minor
+dignities which might be supposed to have been already
+included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial
+office was conceived of as something different in kind from
+the regal, and as carrying with it not the immediate government
+of any particular kingdom, but a general
+suzerainty over and right of controlling all. Of this a
+pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of
+Frederick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the
+famous jurists who surrounded him whether it was really
+true that he was 'lord of the world,' one of them simply
+assented, another, Bulgarus, answered, 'Not as respects
+ownership.' In this dictum, which is evidently conformable
+to the philosophical theory of the Empire, we have a
+pointed distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty,
+which supposes the prince original owner of the soil of
+his whole kingdom, and imperial sovereignty, which is
+irrespective of place, and exercised not over things but
+over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor,
+as has been said already, was also the East Frankish king,
+uniting in himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct
+'persons,' and hence he might acquire more direct
+and practically useful rights over a portion of his dominions
+by being crowned king of that portion, just as a
+feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships
+whereof he was already feudal superior; or, to take a
+better illustration, just as a bishop may hold livings in his
+own diocese. That the Emperors, while continuing to be
+crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call themselves
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>
+kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably
+merely because these titles seemed insignificant compared
+to that of Roman Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">'Emperor'
+not assumed
+till the
+Roman
+coronation.</p>
+
+<p>In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours
+were blent and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the
+German king to assume it till actually crowned at Rome
+by the Pope<a name="FNanchor_229" id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a>. Matters of phrase and title are never unimportant,
+least of all in an age ignorant and superstitiously
+antiquarian: and this restriction had the most
+important consequences. The first barbarian kings had
+been tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion
+which was universal, yet in a sense territorial, they could
+not separate their title from the spot which it was their
+boast to possess, and by virtue of whose name they ruled.
+'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing that
+she both is and is called the head of the world and the
+mistress of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial
+power, and since she cherishes in her bosom the body of
+the Prince of the Apostles, she ought of right to appoint
+the Prince of the whole earth<a name="FNanchor_230" id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a>.' The crown was therefore
+too sacred to be conferred by any one but the supreme
+Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital.
+<span class="sidenote">Origin and
+results of
+this practice.</span>
+Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for
+instance, or Otto's, this feeling might have worn off;
+as it was, each successive transfer, to Guido, to Otto,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>
+to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic, strengthened it. The
+force of custom, tradition, precedent, is incalculable when
+checked neither by written rules nor free discussion.
+What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of
+a forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments
+are needed to discredit the alleged decree of Pope
+Benedict VIII<a name="FNanchor_231" id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a>,
+which prohibited the German prince
+from taking the name or office of Emperor till approved
+and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so favourable
+to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy;
+Hadrian IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and
+through the efforts of the clergy and the spell of reverence
+in the Teutonic princes, it passed into an unquestioned
+belief. That none ventured to use the title till the
+Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to
+depend on his will, enabled him to exact conditions from
+every candidate, and gave a colour to his pretended
+suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every honour and
+estate is held from some superior, and since the divine
+commission has been without doubt issued directly to
+the Pope, must not the whole earth be his fief, and he
+the lord paramount, to whom even the Emperor is a
+vassal? This argument, which derived considerable
+plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and
+other monarchs, as compared with the universal and
+undisputed<a name="FNanchor_232" id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a>
+ authority of the Pope, was a favourite with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>
+the high sacerdotal party: first distinctly advanced by
+Hadrian IV, when he set up the picture<a name="FNanchor_233" id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a>
+ representing
+Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the followers
+of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in
+Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia,
+with the line,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p><span lang="la">'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that
+this dependence of the imperial name on a coronation
+in the city injured the German sovereign<a name="FNanchor_234" id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a>. With strange
+inconsistency it was not pretended that the Emperor's
+rights were any narrower before he received the rite: he
+could summon synods, confirm papal elections, exercise
+jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown
+itself could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and
+the Innocents, be positively denied. For no one thought
+of contesting the right of the German nation to the
+Empire, or the authority of the electoral princes, strangers
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>
+though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master.
+The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might
+murmur, but they could not dispute the truth of the
+proud lines in which the poet who sang the glories of
+Barbarossa<a name="FNanchor_235" id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a>,
+describes the result of the conquest of
+Charles the Great:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Præficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was
+wasted in the pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his
+reign each Emperor undertook a long and dangerous
+expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and ever to
+be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved
+conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at
+home.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The title
+'Holy
+Empire.'</p>
+
+<p>At this epoch appears another title, of which more
+must be said. To the accustomed 'Roman Empire'
+Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of 'Holy.' Of
+its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Salic), which
+some have supposed<a name="FNanchor_236" id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a>,
+there is no documentary trace,
+though there is also no proof to the contrary<a name="FNanchor_237" id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a>. So far
+as is known it occurs first in the famous Privilege of
+Austria, granted by Frederick in the fourth year of his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>
+reign, the second of his empire, <span lang="la">'terram Austriæ quæ
+clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur<a name="FNanchor_238" id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a>
+:'</span> then afterwards,
+in other manifestos of his reign; for example,
+in a letter to Isaac Angelus of Byzantium<a name="FNanchor_239" id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a>,
+and in the
+summons to the princes to help him against Milan:
+<span lang="la">'Quia ... urbis et orbis gubernacula tenemus ...
+sacro imperio et divæ reipublicæ consulere debemus<a name="FNanchor_240" id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a>
+;'</span>
+where the second phrase is a synonym explanatory of
+the first. Used occasionally by Henry VI and Frederick
+II, it is more frequent under their successors, William,
+Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV's time it becomes
+habitual, for the last few centuries indispensable. Regarding
+the origin of so singular a title many theories
+have been advanced. Some declared it a perpetuation
+of the court style of Rome and Byzantium, which attached
+sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus David Blondel,
+contending for the honour of France, calls it a mere
+epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his
+government<a name="FNanchor_241" id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a>. Others saw in it a religious meaning,
+referring to Daniel's prophecy, or to the fact that the
+Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or to Christ's
+birth under it<a name="FNanchor_242" id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a>. Strong churchmen derived it from the
+dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There
+were not wanting persons to maintain that it meant
+nothing more than great or splendid. We need not,
+however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning
+and purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span>
+the palace, the letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so
+common in the later ages of Rome, had been partly retained
+in the German court. Liudprand calls Otto
+<span lang="la">'imperator sanctissimus<a name="FNanchor_243" id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a>.'</span> Still this sanctity, which the
+Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is
+something personal, is nothing more than the divinity
+that always hedges a king. Far more intimate and peculiar
+was the relation of the revived Roman Empire to the
+church and religion. As has been said already, it was
+neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its
+secular side, the Christian society organized as a state
+under a form divinely appointed, and therefore the name
+'Holy Roman Empire' was the needful and rightful
+counterpart to that of 'Holy Catholic Church.' Such
+had long been the belief, and so the title might have had
+its origin as far back as the tenth or ninth century, might
+even have emanated from Charles himself. Alcuin in
+one of his letters uses the phrase <span lang="la">'imperium Christianum.'</span>
+But there was a further reason for its introduction at this
+particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had claimed
+for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme jurisdiction,
+the papal party had not ceased to speak of the
+civil power as being, compared with that of their own
+chief, merely secular, earthly, profane. It may be conjectured
+that to meet this reproach, no less injurious than
+insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use in public
+documents the expression 'Holy Empire;' thereby wishing
+to assert the divine institution and religious duties
+of the office he held. Previous Emperors had called
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>
+themselves <span lang="la">'Catholici,'</span> <span lang="la">'Christiani,'</span> <span lang="la">'ecclesiæ defensores<a name="FNanchor_244" id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a>
+;'</span>
+now their State itself is consecrated an earthly
+theocracy. <span lang="la">'Deus Romanum imperium adversus schisma
+ecclesiæ præparavit<a name="FNanchor_245" id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a>
+,'</span> writes Frederick to the English
+Henry II. The theory was one which the best and
+greatest Emperors, Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III,
+had most striven to carry out; it continued to be zealously
+upheld when it had long ceased to be practicable.
+In the proclamations of mediæval kings there is a constant
+dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an
+age of violence sought to justify while it enforced its
+commands, to make brute force less brutal by appeals
+to a higher sanction. This is seen nowhere more than
+in the style of the German sovereigns: they delight in
+the phrases <span lang="la">'maiestas sacrosancta<a name="FNanchor_246" id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a>
+,'</span> <span lang="la">'imperator divina
+ordinante providentia,'</span> <span lang="la">'divina pietate,'</span> <span lang="la">'per misericordiam
+Dei;'</span> many of which were preserved till, like those
+used now by other European kings, like our own 'Defender
+of the Faith,' they had become at last more
+grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the
+end of the eighteenth century, was 'Advocate of the
+Christian Church,' 'Vicar of Christ,' 'Imperial head of
+the faithful,' 'Leader of the Christian army,' 'Protector
+of Palestine, of general councils, of the Catholic faith<a name="FNanchor_247" id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>The title, if it added little to the power, yet certainly
+seems to have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by
+consequence the jealousy of other states, of France especially.
+This did not, however, go so far as to prevent its
+recognition by the Pope and the French king<a name="FNanchor_248" id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a>,
+and after
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>
+the sixteenth century it would have been a breach of
+diplomatic courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been
+wanting<a name="FNanchor_249" id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a>:
+witness such titles as 'Most Christian king,'
+'Catholic king,' 'Defender of the Faith<a name="FNanchor_250" id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a>.'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.</span></h2>
+
+<p>In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has
+been described in what is not only the most brilliant but
+the most momentous period of its history; the period of
+its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief place in Christendom.
+For it was mainly through their relations with
+the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at
+first, no less than by their subsequent hostility, that the
+Teutonic Emperors influenced the development of European
+politics. The reform of the Roman Church which
+went on during the reigns of Otto I and his successors
+down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the
+efforts of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the
+grand period of the Middle Ages, the first of that long
+series of movements, changes, and creations in the ecclesiastical
+system of Europe which was, so to speak, the
+master current of history, secular as well as religious,
+during the centuries which followed. The first result of
+Henry III's purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's
+attempt to subject all jurisdiction to that of his
+own chair, and in the long struggle of the Investitures,
+which brought out into clear light the opposing pretensions
+of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although
+destined in the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate
+effect of this struggle was to evoke in all classes an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>
+intense religious feeling; and, in opening up new fields
+of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate wonderfully
+their power of political organization. It was this impulse
+that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled
+the Popes, stepping forth as the rightful leaders of a
+religious war, to bend it to serve their own ends: it was
+thus too that they struck the alliance&mdash;strange as such an
+alliance seems now&mdash;with the rebellious cities of Lombardy,
+and proclaimed themselves the protectors of
+municipal freedom. But the third and crowning triumph
+of the Holy See was reserved for the thirteenth century.
+In the foundation of the two great orders of ecclesiastical
+knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans
+and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages
+culminated: in the overthrow of the only power which
+could pretend to vie with her in antiquity, in sanctity, in
+universality, the Papacy saw herself exalted to rule alone
+over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow, following
+with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and
+glory which we have just been witnessing, this chapter
+has now to speak.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry VI,
+1190-1197.</p>
+
+<p>It happened strangely enough that just while their
+ruin was preparing, the house of Swabia gained over
+their ecclesiastical foes what seemed likely to prove an
+advantage of the first moment. The son and successor
+of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited
+all his father's harshness with none of his father's generosity.
+By his marriage with Constance, the heiress of
+the Norman kings, he had become master of Naples and
+Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of what had been
+hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest
+enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as
+well as north, Henry conceived a scheme which might
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span>
+have wonderfully changed the history of Germany and
+Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to
+lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired
+countries to the Empire, to turn their feudal lands into
+allodial, and to make no further demands for money on
+the clergy, on condition that they should pronounce the
+crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest importance
+would have followed this change, which Henry
+advocated by setting forth the perils of interregna, and
+which he doubtless meant to be but part of an entirely
+new system of polity. Already so strong in Germany,
+and with an absolute command of their new kingdom,
+the Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced
+feudal services, and built up a firm centralized
+system, like that which was already beginning to develope
+itself in France. First, however, the Saxon princes, then
+some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed
+the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry
+had to content himself with getting his infant son
+Frederick the Second chosen king of the Romans. On
+Henry's untimely death the election was set aside, and
+the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick
+and Philip of Hohenstaufen,
+<span class="sidenote">Philip,
+1198-1208.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">Innocent
+III and
+Otto IV.</span>
+brother of Henry the Sixth,
+gave the Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent
+the Third, an opportunity of extending its sway at the
+expense of its antagonist. The Pope moved heaven and
+earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had been the constant
+rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself
+willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's
+personal merits and the vast possessions of his house
+gave him while he lived the ascendancy in Germany.
+His death by the hand of an assassin, while it seemed to
+vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party without
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Otto IV,
+1208 (1198)-1212.</span>
+a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized
+over the whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive
+as he felt his throne more secure. If he was a
+Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he had gone
+to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline,
+anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn.
+The Roman Church at last deposed and excommunicated
+her ungrateful son, and Innocent rejoiced in a second
+successful assertion of pontifical supremacy, when Otto
+was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the Second,
+whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the
+champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter
+his life and extinguish his house.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Frederick
+the Second,
+1212-1250.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which
+Emperor and Pope girded themselves up for the last
+time, the narrative of Frederick the Second's career, with
+its romantic adventures, its sad picture of marvellous
+powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a
+curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were
+it even possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did
+indeed determine the fortunes of the German kingdom
+no less than of the republics of Italy, but it was upon
+Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to Italian
+history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself.
+Out of the long array of the Germanic successors
+of Charles, he is, with Otto III, the only one who comes
+before us with a genius and a frame of character that are
+not those of a Northern or a Teuton<a name="FNanchor_251" id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a>. There dwelt in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>
+him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of his
+father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along
+with these, and changing their direction, were other gifts,
+inherited perhaps from his Italian mother and fostered
+by his education among the orange-groves of Palermo&mdash;a
+love of luxury and beauty, an intellect refined, subtle,
+philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable
+it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned,
+and the outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than
+appease the curiosity with which we regard one of the
+most extraordinary personages in history. A sensualist,
+yet also a warrior and a politician; a profound lawgiver
+and an impassioned poet; in his youth fired by crusading
+fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while himself
+accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners
+and ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain
+of more than one cruel deed upon his name, he was the
+marvel of his own generation, and succeeding ages
+looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon the
+inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved
+all the terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban,
+the last who had ruled from the sands of the ocean to the
+shores of the Sicilian sea. But while they pitied they condemned.
+The undying hatred of the Papacy threw
+round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all
+the imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire,
+must perforce deliver to the flames of hell<a name="FNanchor_252" id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Struggle of
+Frederick
+with the
+Papacy.</p>
+
+<p>Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible
+for its head not to be involved in war with the constantly
+aggressive Popedom&mdash;aggressive in her claims of territorial
+dominion in Italy as well as of ecclesiastical jurisdiction
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>
+throughout the world. But it was Frederick's
+peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over
+him which they well knew how to use. In a moment
+of youthful enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the
+hands of an eloquent monk, and his delay to fulfil the
+vow was branded as impious neglect. Excommunicated
+by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and
+was excommunicated for going: having concluded an
+advantageous peace, he sailed for Italy, and was a third
+time excommunicated for returning. To Pope Gregory he
+was at last after a fashion reconciled, but with the accession
+of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon
+the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth
+while to descant: the real causes were always the same,
+and could only be removed by the submission of one or
+other combatant. Chief among them was Frederick's
+possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which
+Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained
+for Henry his son the hand of the Norman heiress.
+Naples and Sicily had been for some two hundred years
+recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the Pope, who
+felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of
+his rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full
+and make it the means of extinguishing imperial authority
+throughout Italy. But although the struggle was far more
+of a territorial and political one than that of the previous
+century had been, it reopened every former source of
+strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the
+spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and
+Hildebrand, of Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again
+the unquenchable hatred of Italian factions: the pontiff
+asserted the transference of the Empire as a fief, and
+declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>
+keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor
+appealed to law, to the indelible rights of Cæsar; and
+denounced his foe as the antichrist of the New Testament,
+since it was God's second vicar whom he was
+resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the
+avarice of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars,
+with a severity not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly
+deposed a rebellious and heretical prince, offered the
+imperial crown to Robert of France, to the heir of Denmark,
+to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in
+raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of
+Holland. Yet throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor
+who is attacked than the Sicilian king, the unbeliever and
+friend of Mohammedans, the hereditary enemy of the
+Church, the assailant of Lombard independence, whose
+success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it
+was from the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose,
+so was the possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source
+rather of weakness than of strength, for it distracted
+Frederick's forces and put him in the false position of
+a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as the
+Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and
+bring no profit with them. The Norman kings were
+more terrible in their death than in their life: they had
+sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor; their heritage
+destroyed him.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Conrad IV,
+1250-1254.</p>
+
+<p>With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that
+overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged, living
+indeed, and destined to a long life, but so shattered,
+crippled, and degraded, that it could never more be to
+Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the
+last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had
+now blighted its strength and the rival who was destined
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>
+to insult its weakness and at last blot out its name. The
+murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin&mdash;a hero whose
+youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity
+of any other foe&mdash;was approved, if not suggested, by Pope
+Clement; it was done by the minions of Charles of
+France.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Italy lost to
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's
+armies and the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their
+strong walls and swarming population made defeats in
+the open field hardly felt; and now that South Italy too
+had passed away from a German line&mdash;first to an Angevin,
+afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty&mdash;it was plain that
+the peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors.
+Why, however, should they not still be strong beyond
+the Alps? was their position worse than that of
+England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer
+obeyed a Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them
+to rule so widely would be all the greater in a narrower
+sphere.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Decline of
+imperial
+power in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>So indeed it might once have been, but now it was
+too late. The German kingdom broke down beneath
+the weight of the Roman Empire. To be universal
+sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political existence.
+The necessity which their projects in Italy and
+disputes with the Pope laid the Emperors under of
+purchasing by concessions the support of their own
+princes, the ease with which in their absence the magnates
+could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch
+returning found in resuming the privileges of his crown,
+the temptation to revolt and set up pretenders to the
+throne which the Holy See held out, these were the
+causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that
+territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">The Great
+Interregnum</span>
+at the era of the Great Interregnum<a name="FNanchor_253" id="FNanchor_253" href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a>. Frederick II had
+by two Pragmatic Sanctions, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1220 and 1232, granted,
+or rather confirmed, rights already customary, such as
+to give the bishops and nobles legal sovereignty in their
+own towns and territories, except when the Emperor
+should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became
+restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately
+dependent on the crown. With so much less
+to do, an Emperor became altogether a less necessary
+personage; and hence the seven magnates of the realm,
+now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste
+to fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters
+of his father Frederick had acknowledged. William of
+Holland was in the field, but rejected by the Swabian
+party: on his death a new election was called for, and
+at last set on foot.
+<span class="sidenote">Double
+election, of
+Richard of
+England
+and Alfonso
+of Castile.</span>
+The archbishop of Cologne advised
+his brethren to choose some one rich enough to support
+the dignity, not strong enough to be feared by the
+electors: both requisites met in the Plantagenet Richard,
+earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry III.
+He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany,
+and was crowned at Aachen. But three of the
+electors, finding that his bribe to them was lower than
+to the others, seceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X
+of Castile<a name="FNanchor_254" id="FNanchor_254" href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a>,
+who, shrewder than his competitor, continued
+to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours
+of his title while troubling himself about it no further
+than to issue now and then a proclamation. Meantime
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">State of
+Germany
+during the
+Interregnum.</span>
+the condition of Germany was frightful. The new Didius
+Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than the prætorians
+whom they copied, had neither the character nor the
+outward power and resources to make himself respected.
+Every floodgate of anarchy was opened: prelates and
+barons extended their domains by war: robber-knights
+infested the highways and the rivers: the misery of the
+weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such
+as had not been seen for centuries. Things were even
+worse than under the Saxon and Franconian Emperors;
+for the petty nobles who had then been in some measure
+controlled by their dukes were now, after the extinction
+of the great houses, left without any feudal superior.
+Only in the cities was shelter or peace to be found.
+Those of the Rhine had already leagued themselves for
+mutual defence, and maintained a struggle in the interests
+of commerce and order against universal brigandage.
+At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was
+felt that such things could not go on for ever: with no
+public law, and no courts of justice, an Emperor, the
+embodiment of legal government, was the only resource.
+The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved the
+weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of
+Germany beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened
+that if the electors did not appoint an Emperor,
+he would. Thus urged, they chose, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1272, Rudolf,
+count of Hapsburg,
+<span class="sidenote">Rudolf of
+Hapsburg,
+1272-1292.</span>
+founder of the house of
+Austria<a name="FNanchor_255" id="FNanchor_255" href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Change in
+the position
+of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>From this point there begins a new era. We have
+seen the Roman Empire revived in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800, by a prince
+whose vast dominions gave ground to his claim of
+universal monarchy; again erected, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 962, on the
+narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We
+have seen Otto the Great and his successors during the
+three following centuries, a line of monarchs of unrivalled
+vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to make good the
+pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy and
+the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed
+signally and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had
+entered the strife with resources scantier than his predecessors,
+each had been more decisively vanquished by
+the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The Roman
+Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was concerned,
+ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor
+could it have ended more gloriously than with the last
+of the Hohenstaufen. That it did not so expire, but
+lived on six hundred years more, till it became a piece
+of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than ridiculous&mdash;till,
+as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it was
+that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire&mdash;was
+owing partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that
+it was a necessary part of the world's order, yet chiefly
+to its connection, which was by this time indissoluble,
+with the German kingdom. The Germans had confounded
+the two characters of their sovereign so long,
+and had grown so fond of the style and pretensions of
+a dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them above
+the other peoples of Europe, that it was now too late
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>
+for them to separate the local from the universal monarch.
+If a German king was to be maintained at all, he must
+be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must
+still be. Deeply, nay, mortally wounded as the event
+proved his power to have been by the disasters of the
+Empire to which it had been linked, the time was by
+no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state
+of society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates,
+no force save feudalism was able to hold society
+together; and its efficacy for that purpose depended, as
+the anarchy of the recent interregnum shewed, upon the
+presence of the recognized feudal head.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Decline of
+the regal
+power in
+Germany as
+compared
+with France
+and England.</p>
+
+<p>That head, however, was no longer what he had been.
+The relative position of Germany and France was now
+exactly the reverse of that which they had occupied two
+centuries earlier. Rudolf was as conspicuously a weaker
+sovereign than Philip III of France, as the Franconian
+Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian
+Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency
+of events had been to centralize the administration and
+increase the power of the monarch, even in England not
+to diminish it: in Germany alone had political union
+become weaker, and the independence of the princes
+more confirmed. The causes of this change are not far
+to seek. They all resolve themselves into this one, that
+the German king attempted too much at once. The
+rulers of France, where manners were less rude than
+in the other Transalpine lands, and where the Third
+Estate rose into power more quickly, had reduced one
+by one the great feudataries by whom the first Capetians
+had been scarcely recognized. The English kings had
+annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had
+obtained a prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span>
+exercised no doubtful sway through every corner of their
+country. Both had won their successes by the concentration
+on that single object of their whole personal
+activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby
+their feudal rights, personal, judicial, and legislative, could
+be applied to fetter the vassal. Meantime the German
+monarch, whose utmost efforts it would have needed to
+tame his fierce barons and maintain order through wide
+territories occupied by races unlike in dialect and customs,
+had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the
+Normans of South Italy, and had been for full two
+centuries the object of the unrelenting enmity of the
+Roman pontiff. And in this latter contest, by which
+more than by any other the fate of the Empire was
+decided, he fought under disadvantages far greater than
+his brethren in England and France. William the
+Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus had
+resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry the Fourth
+and Barbarossa had to cope with prelates who were
+Hildebrand and Anselm in one; the spiritual heads of
+Christendom as well as the primates of their special realm,
+the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of Germany
+were a body more formidable from their possessions
+than those of any other European country, and enjoying
+far larger privileges, the Emperor could not, or could
+with far less effect, win them over by invoking against
+the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of
+Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of
+France.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Relations of
+the Papacy
+and the
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>After repeated defeats, each more crushing than the
+last, the imperial power, so far from being able to look
+down on the papal, could not even maintain itself on an
+equal footing. Against no pontiff since Gregory VII
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span>
+had the monarch's right to name or confirm a pope,
+undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III,
+been made good. It was the turn of the Emperor to
+repel a similar claim of the Holy See to the function of
+reviewing his own election, examining into his merits,
+and rejecting him if unsound, that is to say, impatient
+of priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was
+the first to make this demand in terms, was inserted by
+Gregory IX in his digest of the Canon Law, the inexhaustible
+armoury of the churchman, and continued to
+be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the
+sixteenth century<a name="FNanchor_256" id="FNanchor_256" href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a>. It was not difficult to find grounds
+on which to base such a doctrine. Gregory VII deduced
+it with characteristic boldness from the power of the
+keys, and the superiority over all other dignities which
+must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal
+weal or woe. Others took their stand on the analogy
+of clerical ordination, and urged that since the Pope in
+consecrating the Emperor gave him a title to the obedience
+of all Christian men, he must have himself the right of
+approving or rejecting the candidate according to his
+merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament,
+shewed how Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David
+in his room, and argued that the Pope now must have
+powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew prophets. But
+the ascendancy of the doctrine dates from the time of
+Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an
+historical basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared,
+that the Empire was taken away from the Greeks
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span>
+and given to the Germans in the person of Charles<a name="FNanchor_257" id="FNanchor_257" href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a>
+,
+and the authority which Leo then exercised as God's
+representative must abide thenceforth and for ever in his
+successors, who can therefore at any time recall the gift,
+and bestow it on a person or a nation more worthy than
+its present holders. This is the famous theory of the
+Translation of the Empire, which plays so large a part
+in controversy down till the seventeenth century<a name="FNanchor_258" id="FNanchor_258" href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a>,
+a theory
+with plausibility enough to make it generally successful,
+yet one which to an impartial eye appears far removed
+from the truth of the facts<a name="FNanchor_259" id="FNanchor_259" href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a>. Leo III did not suppose,
+any more than did Charles himself, that it was by his sole
+pontifical authority that the crown was given to the
+Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by any
+of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory
+VII in particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his
+prerogative, appeals to the substitution by papal interference
+of Pipin for the last Merovingian king, and even
+goes back to cite the case of Theodosius humbling himself
+before St. Ambrose, but says never a word about this
+<span lang="la">'translatio,'</span> excellently as it would have served his
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Sound or unsound, however, these arguments did their
+work, for they were urged skilfully and boldly, and none
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>
+denied that it was by the Pope alone that the crown could
+be lawfully imposed<a name="FNanchor_260" id="FNanchor_260" href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a>. In some instances the rights
+claimed were actually made good. Thus Innocent III
+withstood Philip and overthrew Otto IV; thus another
+haughty priest commanded the electors to choose the
+Landgrave of Thuringia (<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1246), and was by some
+of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled the recognition
+of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes
+to the vicariate of the Empire during interregna the
+Germans never admitted<a name="FNanchor_261" id="FNanchor_261" href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a>. Still their place was now
+generally felt to be higher than that of the monarch, and
+their control over the three spiritual electors and the
+whole body of the clergy was far more effective than his.
+A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the
+exactions and shameless subservience to France of the
+papal court at Avignon<a name="FNanchor_262" id="FNanchor_262" href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a>;
+and the infant democracy of
+industry and intelligence represented by the cities and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span>
+by the English Franciscan Occam, supported Lewis IV
+in his conflict with John XXII, till even the princes who
+had risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose
+him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of Constance,
+but the imperial power which might have floated
+onwards and higher on the turning tide of popular opinion
+lacked men equal to the occasion: the Hapsburg
+Frederick the Third, timid and superstitious, abased himself
+before the Romish court, and his house has generally
+adhered to the alliance then struck.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN
+ELECTORS.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Territorial
+Sovereignty
+of the
+Princes.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Adolf,
+1292-1298.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Albert I,
+1298-1308.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry VII,
+1308-1314.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Lewis IV,
+1314-1347.</p>
+
+<p>The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to
+the domestic power of the German king than to the
+European supremacy of the Emperor. His two Pragmatic
+Sanctions had conferred rights that made the
+feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long
+anarchy of the Interregnum had enabled them not only
+to use but to extend and fortify their power. Rudolf of
+Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to coerce their
+insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
+Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and
+troubled reign of Albert himself, the absence of Henry
+the Seventh in Italy, the civil war of Lewis of Bavaria
+and Frederick duke of Austria, rival claimants of the
+imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
+successful competitor, found himself involved with the
+Pope&mdash;all these circumstances tended more and more
+to narrow the influence of the crown and complete the
+emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now became
+virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
+jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
+privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and
+taxes: some were without even a feudal bond to remind
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>
+them of their allegiance. The numbers of the immediate
+nobility&mdash;those who held directly of the crown&mdash;had
+increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms
+of Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the
+lord of a single tower was usually a sovereign prince.
+The petty tyrants whose boast it was that they owed fealty
+only to God and the Emperor, shewed themselves in
+practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
+were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and
+Luxemburg, this last having acquired Bohemia, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1309;
+next came the electors, already considered collectively
+more important than the Emperor, and forming for
+themselves the first considerable principalities. Brandenburg
+and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent
+states before the end of this period: Bohemia
+and the three archbishoprics almost from its beginning.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Policy
+of the
+Emperors.</p>
+
+<p>The chief object of the magnates was to keep the
+monarch in his present state of helplessness. Till the
+expenses which the crown entailed were found ruinous
+to its wearer, their practice was to confer it on some petty
+prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of Nassau and
+Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to
+keep it from settling in one family. They bound the
+newly-elected to respect all their present immunities,
+including those which they had just extorted as the price
+of their votes; they checked all his attempts to recover
+lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
+anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the
+Emperor sought only to make the most of his short
+tenure, using his position to aggrandize his family and
+raise money by the sale of crown estates and privileges.
+His individual action and personal relation to the subject
+was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span>
+represented order and legitimate ownership, and so far
+was still necessary to the political system. But progresses
+through the country were abandoned: unlike his
+predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when
+they assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own
+states, often without the Empire's bounds. Frederick III
+never entered it for twenty-seven years.</p>
+
+<p>How thoroughly the national character of the office
+was gone is shewn by the repeated attempts to bestow it
+on foreign potentates, who could not fill the place of a
+German king of the good old vigorous type. Not to
+speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was
+proposed against Henry VII, Edward III of England
+actually elected against Charles IV (his parliament forbade
+him to accept), George Podiebrad, king of Bohemia,
+against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a Hungarian
+king. The Emperor's only hope would have been
+in the support of the cities.
+<span class="sidenote">Power of
+the cities.</span>
+During the thirteenth and
+fourteenth centuries they had increased wonderfully in
+population, wealth, and boldness: the Hanseatic confederacy
+was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed
+the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the
+Rhine formed great commercial leagues, maintained
+regular wars against the counter-associations of the
+nobility, and seemed at one time, by an alliance with
+the Swiss, on the point of turning West Germany into a
+federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however,
+was still too strong; the cavalry of the nobles was
+irresistible in the field, and the thoughtless Wenzel let
+slip a golden opportunity of repairing the losses of two
+centuries.
+<span class="sidenote">Financial
+distress.</span>
+After all, the Empire was perhaps past
+redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts.
+The Empire was poor. The crown lands, which had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span>
+suffered heavily under Frederick II, were further usurped
+during the confusion that followed; till at last, through
+the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who sought only
+their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and
+fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon
+and Franconian Emperors had drawn the chief part of
+their revenue. Regalian rights, the second fiscal resource,
+had fared no better&mdash;tolls, customs, mines, rights of
+coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were either
+seized or granted away: even the advowsons of churches
+had been sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury
+depended mainly on an inglorious traffic in honours and
+exemptions. Things were so bad under Rudolf that the
+electors refused to make his son Albert king of the
+Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public
+revenue which with difficulty supported one monarch,
+could much less maintain two at the same time<a name="FNanchor_263" id="FNanchor_263" href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a>. Sigismund
+told his Diet, <span lang="la">'Nihil esse imperio spoliatius, nihil
+egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniæ principibus successurus
+esset, qui præter patrimonium nihil aliud
+habuerit, apud eum non imperium sed potius servitium
+sit futurum<a name="FNanchor_264" id="FNanchor_264" href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a>.'</span> Patritius, the secretary of Frederick III,
+declared that the revenues of the Empire scarcely covered
+the expenses of its ambassadors<a name="FNanchor_265" id="FNanchor_265" href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a>. Poverty such as
+these expressions point to, a poverty which became
+greater after each election, not only involved the failure
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span>
+of the attempts which were sometimes made to recover
+usurped rights<a name="FNanchor_266" id="FNanchor_266" href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a>,
+but put every project of reform within or
+war without at the mercy of a jealous Diet. The three
+orders of which that Diet consisted, electors, princes, and
+cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence selfish;
+their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire
+from dying of inanition.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Charles IV
+(<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1347-1378),
+and
+his electoral
+constitution.</p>
+
+<p>The changes thus briefly described were in progress
+when Charles the Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that
+blind king John of Bohemia who fell at Cressy, and
+grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
+ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy
+aimed at settling what he perhaps despaired of reforming,
+and the famous instrument which, under the name of the
+Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of the Germanic
+constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of
+the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The
+most conspicuous defect of the existing system was the
+uncertainty of the elections, followed as they usually were
+by a civil war. It was this which Charles set himself to
+redress.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">German
+kingdom not
+originally
+elective.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman
+Empire by the Teutonic invaders presented in their
+original form a rude combination of the elective with the
+hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had, as
+the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule,
+but from among the members of such a family the warriors
+were free to choose the bravest or the most popular
+as king<a name="FNanchor_267" id="FNanchor_267" href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a>. That the German crown came to be purely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>
+elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England, and
+most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary
+succession established itself, was due to the failure
+of heirs male in three successive dynasties; to the restless
+ambition of the nobles, who, since they were not, like
+the French, strong enough to disregard the royal power,
+did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the churchmen,
+zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by
+their own law and observed in capitular elections; to the
+wish of the Popes to gain an opening for their own
+influence and make effective the veto which they claimed;
+above all, to the conception of the imperial office as one
+too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal, transmissible
+by blood. Had the German, like other feudal
+kingdoms, remained merely local, feudal, and national,
+it would without doubt have ended by becoming a hereditary
+monarchy. Transformed as it was by the Roman
+Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human
+race being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of
+all mankind, could not be confined to any family, nor
+pass like a private estate by the ordinary rules of descent.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Electoral
+body in
+primitive
+times.</p>
+
+<p>The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the
+earliest ages, to the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage,
+which must have been very irregularly exercised,
+became by degrees vested in their leaders, but the assent
+of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed
+to complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the
+Fowler, and St. Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke
+were chosen<a name="FNanchor_268" id="FNanchor_268" href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a>. Though even tradition might have commemorated
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span>
+what extant records place beyond a doubt,
+it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth
+century, that the elective constitution had been established,
+and the privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by
+a decree of Gregory V and Otto III, which a famous
+jurist describes as <span lang="la">'lex a pontifice de imperatorum comitiis
+lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in posterum
+esset<a name="FNanchor_269" id="FNanchor_269" href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a>.'</span> St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from
+the times of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when
+Pope Gregory V established that of the seven princes,
+which will last as long as the holy Roman Church, who
+ranks above all other powers, shall have judged expedient
+for Christ's faithful people<a name="FNanchor_270" id="FNanchor_270" href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a>.' Since it tended to exalt
+the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt
+honestly accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And
+indeed, like so many other fictions, it had a sort of
+foundation in fact. The death of Otto III, the fourth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>
+of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
+succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift
+of the nation, and was no doubt one of the chief causes
+why it did not in the end become hereditary<a name="FNanchor_271" id="FNanchor_271" href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the
+throne was theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs
+and their followers being required, though little more
+likely to be refused than it was to an English or a French
+king; practically hereditary, since both of these dynasties
+succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the father
+procuring the son's election during his own lifetime.
+And so it might well have continued, had the right of
+choice been retained by the whole body of the aristocracy.
+But at the election of Lothar II, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1125, we find a
+certain small number of magnates exercising the so-called
+right of prætaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
+<span class="sidenote">Encroachments
+of the
+great nobles.</span>
+future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for
+their approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed,
+had both the will and the power to retain the crown in
+their own gift, and still further exclude their inferiors
+from participation. So before the end of the Hohenstaufen
+dynasty, two great changes had passed upon
+the ancient constitution. It had become a fundamental
+doctrine that the Germanic throne, unlike the thrones
+of other countries, was purely elective<a name="FNanchor_272" id="FNanchor_272" href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a>:
+nor could the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span>
+influence and the liberal offers of Henry VI prevail on the
+princes to abandon what they rightly judged the keystone
+of their powers. And at the same time the right of
+prætaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of
+election, vested in a small body<a name="FNanchor_273" id="FNanchor_273" href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a>:
+the assent of the rest
+of the nobility being at first assumed, finally altogether
+dispensed with. On the double choice of Richard and
+Alfonso, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1264, the only question was as to the
+majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then
+nor afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other
+princes, counts and barons, important as their voices had
+been two centuries earlier.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Seven
+Electors.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate
+and obscure. It is mentioned <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1152, and in
+somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a distinct body; but
+without anything to shew who composed it. First in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by
+immemorial custom the right of choosing the Roman
+king belonged to seven persons, the seven who had just
+divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and Alfonso
+of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of
+Mentz, Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine
+sees, represented the German church: the other
+four ought, according to the ancient constitution, to have
+been the dukes of the four nations, Franks, Swabians,
+Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the four
+great offices of the imperial household. But of these
+dukedoms the two first named were now extinct, and
+their place and power in the state, as well as the household
+offices they had held, had descended upon two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>
+principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
+Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
+The Saxon duke, though with greatly narrowed
+dominions, retained his vote and office of arch-marshal,
+and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would have been
+equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he
+and the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the
+great house of Wittelsbach. That one family should hold
+two votes out of seven seemed so dangerous to the state
+that it was made a ground of objection to the Bavarian
+duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the
+king of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic
+prince<a name="FNanchor_274" id="FNanchor_274" href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a>,
+might on the score of rank and power assert
+himself the equal of any one of the electors. The dispute
+between these rival claimants, as well as all the rules and
+requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
+Fourth in the Golden Bull,
+<span class="sidenote">Golden
+Bull of
+Charles IV,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1356.</span>
+thenceforward a fundamental
+law of the Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of
+which he was then king; fixed Frankfort as the place of
+election; named the archbishop of Mentz convener of the
+electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to the Count
+Palatine the second place among the secular electors.
+A majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As
+to each electorate there was attached a great office, it
+was supposed that this was the title by which the vote
+was possessed; though it was in truth rather an effect
+than a cause. The three prelates were archchancellors of
+Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
+Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony
+marshal, and Brandenburg chamberlain<a name="FNanchor_275" id="FNanchor_275" href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span></p>
+
+<p>These arrangements, under which disputed elections
+became far less frequent, remained undisturbed till <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1618, when on the breaking out of the Thirty Years' War
+the Emperor Ferdinand II by an unwarranted stretch of
+prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick (king of
+Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of
+James I of England) of his electoral vote, and transferred
+it to his own partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the
+peace of Westphalia the Palsgrave was reinstated as an
+eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her place.
+<span class="sidenote">Eighth
+Electorate.</span>
+
+The sacred
+number having been once broken through, less scruple
+was felt in making further changes. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1692, the
+Emperor Leopold I conferred a ninth electorate
+<span class="sidenote">Ninth
+Electorate.</span>
+on the
+house of Brunswick Lüneburg, which was then in possession
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span>
+of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to the
+throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1708, the
+assent of the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this
+way that English kings came to vote at the election of a
+Roman Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still
+continues to entitle himself Elector<a name="FNanchor_276" id="FNanchor_276" href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a>
+ should be one who
+never did (and of course never can now) join in electing
+an Emperor, having been under the arrangements of the
+old Empire a simple Landgrave. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1803, Napoleon,
+among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
+procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne
+and Treves, annexing their territories to France, and gave
+the title of Elector, as the highest after that of king, to the
+duke of Würtemburg, the Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave
+of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop of Salzburg.
+Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
+title became meaningless.</p>
+
+<p>As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example
+of a monarchy not hereditary that the world has
+ever seen, it may not be amiss to consider for a moment
+what light its history throws upon the character of elective
+monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>
+and will probably always continue to have, seductions for
+a certain class of political theorists.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Objects of
+an elective
+monarchy:
+how far
+attained in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Choice of
+the fittest.</p>
+
+<p>First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult,
+one might almost say impossible, it was found to maintain
+in practice the elective principle. In point of law, the
+imperial throne was from the tenth century to the nineteenth
+absolutely open to any orthodox Christian candidate.
+But as a matter of fact, the competition was
+confined to a few very powerful families, and there was
+always a strong tendency for the crown to become
+hereditary in some one of these. Thus the Franconian
+Emperors held it from <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1024 till 1125, the Hohenstaufen,
+themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
+century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of
+Bohemia) enjoyed it through three successive reigns, and
+when in the fifteenth century it fell into the tenacious
+grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain it thenceforth
+(with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished out
+of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which
+the scheme of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that
+of putting the fittest man in the highest place, was but
+seldom attained, and attained even then rather by good
+fortune than design.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Restraint
+of the
+sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>No such objection can be brought against the second
+ground on which an elective system has sometimes been
+advocated, its operation in moderating the power of the
+crown, for this was attained in the fullest and most ruinous
+measure. We are reminded of the man in the fable,
+who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his
+house swept away by the furious torrent. The power of
+the crown was not moderated but destroyed. Each successful
+candidate was forced to purchase his title by the
+sacrifice of rights which had belonged to his predecessors,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>
+and must repeat the same shameful policy later in his
+reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the
+same time that his family could not make sure of keeping
+the throne, he treated it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his
+estate, seeking only to make out of it the largest present
+profit. And the electors, aware of the strength of their
+position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert an independence
+such as the nobles of other countries could
+never have aspired to.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Recognition
+of the popular
+will.</p>
+
+<p>Modern political speculation supposes the method of
+appointing a ruler by the votes of his subjects, as opposed
+to the system of hereditary succession, to be an assertion
+by the people of their own will as the ultimate fountain of
+authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that he is no
+more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of
+the Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This
+will best appear when the aspect of the system of election
+at different epochs in its history is compared with the
+corresponding changes in the composition of the electoral
+body which have been described as in progress from the
+ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the
+tribe chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to
+the most noble family, no more than the first among his
+peers, with a power circumscribed by the will of his subjects.
+Several ages later, in the tenth and eleventh centuries,
+the right of choice had passed into the hands of the
+magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
+the same measure had the relation of prince and subject
+taken a new aspect. We must not expect to find, in such
+rude times, any very clear apprehension of the technical
+quality of the process, and the throne had indeed become
+for a season so nearly hereditary that the election was
+often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>
+regarded, not as a delegation of authority by the nobles
+and people, with a power of resumption implied, but
+rather as their subjection of themselves to the monarch
+who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and ill-defined prerogative.
+In yet later times, when, as has been shewn above,
+the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout
+of the host had been superseded by the secret conclave of
+the seven electoral princes, the strict legal view of election
+became fully established, and no one was supposed to
+have any title to the crown except what a majority of
+votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
+conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
+penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign
+did not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right,
+but by the choice of certain persons, was supposed to be
+an enhancement and consecration of his dignity. The
+<span class="sidenote">Conception
+of the
+electoral
+function.</span>
+electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is nevertheless
+a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
+They only named the person who was to receive what it
+was not theirs to give. God, say the mediæval writers,
+not deigning to interfere visibly in the affairs of this world,
+has willed that these seven princes of Germany should
+discharge the function which once belonged to the senate
+and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
+in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself
+that the authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have
+no relation towards him except that of obedience. It was
+in this period, therefore, when the Emperor was in practice
+the mere nominee of the electors, that the belief in
+this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
+of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of
+any notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign
+people.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">General
+results of
+Charles
+IV's policy.</p>
+
+<p>Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the
+institutions of Charles IV, which removed one fruitful
+cause of civil war. But these seven electoral princes
+acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked and
+dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to
+enjoy full regalian rights in their territories<a name="FNanchor_277" id="FNanchor_277" href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a>;
+causes were
+not to be evoked from their courts, save when justice
+should have been denied: their consent was necessary to
+all public acts of consequence. Their persons were held
+to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the Holy
+Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse,
+soon gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular
+reverence, as well as that actual power which he lacked.
+To Charles, who viewed the German Empire much as
+Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
+unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving
+personal ends, and to them, while appearing to exalt by
+elaborate ceremonies its ideal dignity, he deliberately
+sacrificed what real strength was left. The object which
+he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
+Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own
+house. In the Golden Bull, whose seal bears the legend,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p><span lang="la">'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi<a name="FNanchor_278" id="FNanchor_278" href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a>,'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany
+he was indirectly a benefactor, by the foundation of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>
+University of Prague, the mother of all her schools:
+otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy, and called it
+a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
+ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election
+of his son Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense
+of Germany, had been amassed by keeping a
+market in which honours and exemptions, with what
+lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid
+for. In Italy the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage,
+their chief hasten to Rome with a scanty retinue, and
+return from it as swiftly, at the mandate of an Avignonese
+Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the last
+rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a
+power he could now despise.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had
+become practically powerless by the loss of his feudal
+privileges, and saw the authority that had once been his
+parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and tyrannical
+nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which
+he claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Theory of
+the Roman
+Empire in
+the fourteenth
+and
+fifteenth
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>That the Roman Empire survived the seemingly
+mortal wound it had received at the era of the Great
+Interregnum, and continued to put forth pretensions
+which no one was likely to make good where the
+Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its
+identification with the German kingdom, in which some
+life was still left. But this was far from being the only
+cause which saved it from extinction. It had not ceased
+to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by
+the same singular theory which had in the ninth and
+tenth been strong enough to re-establish it in the West.
+The character of that theory was indeed somewhat
+changed, for if not positively less religious, it was less
+exclusively so. In the days of Charles and Otto, the
+Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition
+from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that
+with the visible Church there must be coextensive a single
+Christian state under one head and governor. But now
+that the Emperor's headship had been repudiated by the
+Pope, and his interference in matters of religion denounced
+as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that
+the memory of mutual injuries had kindled an unquenchable
+hatred between the champions of the ecclesiastical
+and those of the civil power, it was natural that the latter,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>
+while they urged, fervently as ever, the divine sanction
+given to the imperial office, should at the same time be
+led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its
+claims. What that basis was, and how they were guided
+to it, will best appear when a word or two has been said
+on the nature of the change that had passed on Europe in
+the course of the three preceding centuries, and the progress
+of the human mind during the same period.</p>
+
+<p>Such has been the accumulated wealth of literature,
+and so rapid the advances of science among us since the
+close of the Middle Ages, that it is not now possible by
+any effort fully to enter into the feelings with which the
+relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in
+them their only possession. It is indeed true that modern
+art and literature and philosophy have been produced by
+the working of new minds upon old materials: that in
+thought, as in nature, we see no new creation. But with
+us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the new
+till its origin is forgotten: to them ancient books were
+the only standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the
+only stimulus to reflection. Hence it was that the most
+learned man was in those days esteemed the greatest:
+hence the creative energy of an age was exactly proportioned
+to its knowledge of and its reverence for the
+written monuments of those that had gone before. For
+until they can look forward, men must look back: till
+they should have reached the level of the old civilization,
+the nations of mediæval Europe must continue to live
+upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common
+dream of all mankind had power; but to them, as to
+the ancient world, that golden age which seems now to
+glimmer on the horizon of the future was shrouded in
+the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and sixteenth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Revival of
+learning
+and literature,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1100-1400.</span>
+centuries that we are accustomed to assign that new birth
+of the human spirit&mdash;if it ought not rather to be called
+a renewal of its strength and quickening of its sluggish
+life&mdash;with which the modern time begins. And the date
+is well chosen, for it was then first that the transcendently
+powerful influence of Greek literature began to work upon
+the world. But it must not be forgotten that for a long
+time previous there had been in progress a great revival
+of learning, and still more of zeal for learning, which
+being caused by and directed towards the literature and
+institutions of Rome, might fitly be called the Roman
+Renaissance. The twelfth century saw this revival begin
+with that passionate study of the legislation of Justinian,
+whose influence on the doctrines of imperial prerogative
+has been noticed already. The thirteenth witnessed the
+rapid spread of the scholastic philosophy, a body of
+systems most alien, both in subject and manner, to anything
+that had arisen among the ancients, yet one to
+whose development Greek metaphysics and the theology
+of the Latin fathers had largely contributed, and the spirit
+of whose reasonings was far more free than the presumed
+orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the
+fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great
+masters of painting and song; and the literature of the
+new languages, springing into the fulness of life in the
+Divina Commedia, adorned not long after by the names
+of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place as
+a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Growing
+freedom of
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused by,
+partly causing it, there had been also a wonderful stirring
+and uprising in the mind of Europe. The yoke of
+church authority still pressed heavily on the souls of men;
+yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>
+murmured in secret. The tendency was one which
+shewed itself in various and sometimes apparently opposite
+directions. The revolt of the Albigenses, the spread
+of the Cathari and other so-called heretics, the excitement
+created by the writings of Wickliffe and Huss, witnessed
+to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the dominant
+theology. It was present, however skilfully disguised,
+among those scholastic doctors who busied themselves
+with proving by natural reason the dogmas of the Church:
+for the power which can forge fetters can also break
+them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more
+direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated
+from Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and
+corruptions of the clergy, and above all of the papal
+court. For the agitation was not merely speculative.
+There was beginning to be a direct and rational interest
+in life, a power of applying thought to practical ends,
+which had not been seen before.
+<span class="sidenote">Influence
+of thought
+upon the
+arrangements
+of
+society.</span>
+Man's life among his
+fellows was no longer a mere wild beast struggle; man's
+soul no more, as it had been, the victim of ungoverned
+passion, whether it was awed by supernatural terrors or
+captivated by examples of surpassing holiness. Manners
+were still rude, and governments unsettled; but society
+was learning to organize itself upon fixed principles; to
+recognize, however faintly, the value of order, industry,
+equality; to adapt means to ends, and conceive of the
+common good as the proper end of its own existence.
+In a word, Politics had begun to exist, and with them
+there had appeared the first of a class of persons whom
+friends and enemies may both, though with different
+meanings, call ideal politicians; men who, however
+various have been the doctrines they have held, however
+impracticable many of the plans they have advanced, have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>
+been nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest
+interests of humanity, and have frequently been derided
+as theorists in their own age to be honoured as the prophets
+and teachers of the next.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Separation
+of the peoples
+of Europe
+into
+hostile
+kingdoms:
+consequent
+need of an
+international
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes
+and sympathies of these political speculators as well as of
+the jurists and poets of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
+were constantly directed. The cause may be gathered
+from the circumstances of the time. The most remarkable
+event in the history of the last three hundred years
+had been the formation of nationalities, each distinguished
+by a peculiar language and character, and by steadily
+increasing differences of habits and institutions. And as
+upon this national basis there had been in most cases
+established strong monarchies, Europe was broken up
+into disconnected bodies, and the cherished scheme of
+a united Christian state appeared less likely than ever to
+be realized. Nor was this all. Sometimes through race-hatred,
+more often by the jealousy and ambition of their
+sovereigns, these countries were constantly involved in
+war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with
+more destructive results than in time past the peace of
+the religious community; while each of them was at the
+same time torn within by frequent insurrections, and
+desolated by long and bloody civil wars. The new
+nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that
+by their extinction a remedy might be applied to these
+evils. They had grown up in spite of the Empire and
+the Church, and were not likely to yield in their strength
+what they had won in their weakness. But it still appeared
+possible to soften, if not to overcome, their antagonism.
+What might not be looked for from the erection of a presiding
+power common to all Europe, a power which, while
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>
+it should oversee the internal concerns of each country,
+not dethroning the king, but treating him as an hereditary
+viceroy, should be more especially charged to prevent
+strife between kingdoms, and to maintain the public order
+of Europe by being not only the fountain of international
+law, but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer of
+its sentences?</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Popes
+as international
+Judges.</p>
+
+<p>To such a position had the Popes aspired. They were
+indeed excellently fitted for it by the respect which the
+sacredness of their office commanded; by their control of
+the tremendous weapons of excommunication and interdict;
+above all, by their exemption from those narrowing influences
+of place, or blood, or personal interest, which it
+would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there
+had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were
+worthy of their exalted office, and whose interference was
+gratefully remembered by those who found no other
+helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by its conduct
+as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even
+when its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most
+pure, one motive had always biassed its decisions&mdash;a
+partiality to the most submissive. During the greater
+part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon the
+willing tool of France: in the pursuit of a temporal principality
+it had mingled in and been contaminated by the
+unhallowed politics of Italy; its supreme council, the
+college of cardinals, was distracted by the intrigues of two
+bitterly hostile factions. And while the power of the
+Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the
+days of Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great
+prelates and the vices of the inferior clergy had provoked
+throughout Western Christendom a reaction against the
+pretensions of all sacerdotal authority. As there is no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span>
+theory at first sight more attractive than that which
+entrusts all government to a supreme spiritual power,
+which, knowing what is best for man, shall lead him to
+his true good by appealing to the highest principles of his
+nature, so there is no disappointment more bitter than
+that of those who find that the holiest office may be
+polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder; that craft
+and hypocrisy lead while fanaticism follows; that here
+too, as in so much else, the corruption of the best is worst.
+Some such disappointment there was in Europe now,
+and with it a certain disposition to look with favour on
+the secular power: a wish to escape from the unhealthy
+atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of positive
+law, harsher, it might be, yet surely less corrupting.
+Espousing the cause of the Roman Empire as the chief
+opponent of priestly claims, this tendency found it, with
+shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in some
+respects for the office of an international judge and
+mediator than it had been as a great national power.
+For though far less widely active, it was losing that local
+character which was fast gathering round the Papacy.
+With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and removed, except
+in his patrimonial lands, from direct contact with the
+subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously
+a German and a feudal king, and occupied an ideal
+position far less marred by the incongruous accidents of
+birth and training, of national and dynastic interests.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Duties attributed
+to
+the Empire
+by the
+developed
+theory.</p>
+
+<p>To that position three cardinal duties were attached.
+He who held it must typify spiritual unity, must preserve
+peace, must be a fountain of that by which alone among
+imperfect men peace is preserved and restored, law and
+justice. The first of these three objects was sought not
+only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span>
+a wider brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever
+since the barrier between Jew and Gentile, Greek and
+barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations of the higher
+minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed
+in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes
+into one body, reminding them of their common faith,
+their common blood, their common interest in each other's
+welfare. And he was therefore above all things, professing
+indeed to be upon earth the representative of the
+Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and to
+redress the injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon
+each other; to punish offenders against the public order
+of Christendom; to maintain through the world, looking
+down as from a serene height upon the schemes and
+quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without
+which neither arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of
+life, can rise and flourish. The mediæval Empire was in
+its essence what the modern despotisms that mimic it
+profess themselves: the Empire was peace<a name="FNanchor_279" id="FNanchor_279" href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a>:
+the oldest
+and noblest title of its head was <span lang="la">'Imperator pacificus<a name="FNanchor_280" id="FNanchor_280" href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a>.'</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Divine
+right of the
+Emperor.</span>
+And that he might be the peacemaker, he must be the
+expounder of justice and the author of its concrete
+embodiment, positive law; chief legislator and supreme
+judge of appeal, like his predecessor the compiler of the
+<span lang="la">Corpus Iuris</span>, the one and only source of all legitimate
+authority. In this sense, as governor and administrator,
+not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, Lord of
+the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same
+sense in which the soil of France or England belongs to
+their respective kings: he is the steward of Him who has
+received the heathen for his possession and the uttermost
+parts of the earth for his inheritance. It is, therefore, by
+him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired not by force
+but by legitimate devolution from those whom God himself
+had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an
+external and positive basis for that idea is a problem
+which it has at all times been more easy to evade than to
+solve, and one peculiarly distressing to those who could
+neither explain the phenomena of society by reducing it to
+its original principles, nor inquire historically how its existing
+arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt
+to represent human government as an emanation from
+divine: a view from which all the similar but far less
+logically consistent doctrines of divine right which have
+prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been said
+already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor
+reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of
+the people, for such a theory would have seemed to the
+men of the middle ages an absurd and wicked perversion
+of the true order. Nor do his powers come to him from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span>
+those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral
+princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having
+such an origin, his rights exist irrespective of their actual
+exercise, and no voluntary abandonment, not even an
+express grant, can impair them. Boniface the Eighth<a name="FNanchor_281" id="FNanchor_281" href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a>
+
+reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till
+the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like
+other princes, is of right and must ever remain subject to
+the Roman Emperor. And the sovereigns of Europe long
+continued to address the Emperor in language, and yield
+to him a precedence, which admitted the inferiority of
+their own position<a name="FNanchor_282" id="FNanchor_282" href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>There was in this theory nothing that was absurd,
+though much that was impracticable. The ideas on which
+it rested are still unapproached in grandeur and simplicity,
+still as far in advance of the average thought of Europe,
+and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply them,
+as when they were promulgated five hundred years ago.
+The practical evil which the establishment of such a
+universal monarchy was intended to meet, that of wars
+and hardly less ruinous preparations for war between the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span>
+states of Europe, remains what it was then. The remedy
+which mediæval theory proposed has been in some
+measure applied by the construction and reception of
+international law; the greater difficulty of erecting a
+tribunal to arbitrate and decide, with the power of enforcing
+its decisions, is as far from a solution as ever.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Roman
+Empire
+why an international
+power.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to see how it was to the Roman Emperor,
+and to him only, that the duties and privileges above
+mentioned could be attributed. Being Roman, he was
+of no nation, and therefore fittest to judge between contending
+states, and appease the animosities of race. His
+was the imperial tongue of Rome, not only the vehicle of
+religion and law, but also, since no other was understood
+everywhere in Europe, the necessary medium of diplomatic
+intercourse. As there was no Church but the Holy
+Roman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him
+that the communion of the saints in its outward form, its
+secular side, was represented, and to his keeping that the
+sanctity of peace must be entrusted. As direct heir of
+those who from Julius to Justinian had shaped the existing
+law of Europe<a name="FNanchor_283" id="FNanchor_283" href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a>,
+he was, so to speak, legality personified<a name="FNanchor_284" id="FNanchor_284" href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a>
+;
+the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of
+power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer
+upon others rights equally valid. And as he claimed
+to perpetuate the greatest political system the world had
+known, a system which still moves the wonder of those
+who see before their eyes empires as much wider than the
+Roman as they are less symmetrical, and whose vast and
+complex machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span>
+century possessed or could hope to establish, it was not
+strange that he and his government (assuming them to
+be what they were entitled to be) should be taken as the
+ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Illustrations.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Right of
+creating
+Kings.</p>
+
+<p>Of the many applications and illustrations of these doctrines
+which mediæval documents furnish, it will suffice to
+adduce two or three. No imperial privilege was prized
+more highly than the power of creating kings, for there
+was none which raised the Emperor so much above them.
+In this, as in other international concerns, the Pope soon
+began to claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then
+separate and independent. But the older and more
+reasonable view assigned it, as flowing from the possession
+of supreme secular authority, to the Emperor; and
+it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia,
+Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the
+regal title<a name="FNanchor_285" id="FNanchor_285" href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a>. The prerogative was his in the same manner
+in which that of conferring titles is still held to belong to
+the sovereign in every modern kingdom. And so when
+Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy, proposed
+to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was
+from Frederick III that he sought permission to do so.
+The Emperor, however, was greedy and suspicious, the
+Duke uncompliant; and when Frederick found that terms
+could not be arranged between them, he stole away suddenly,
+and left Charles to carry back, with ill-concealed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>
+mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had brought
+ready-made to the place of interview.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Chivalry.</p>
+
+<p>In the same manner, as representing what was common
+to and valid throughout all Europe, nobility, and more
+particularly knighthood, centred in the Empire. The
+great Orders of Chivalry were international institutions,
+whose members, having consecrated themselves a military
+priesthood, had no longer any country of their own,
+and could therefore be subject to no one save the
+Emperor and the Pope. For knighthood was constructed
+on the analogy of priesthood, and knights were conceived
+of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly what
+priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to
+it in its religious aspect: to the one body was given the
+sword of the flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit;
+each was universal, each had its autocratic head<a name="FNanchor_286" id="FNanchor_286" href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a>. Singularly,
+too, were these notions brought into harmony
+with the feudal polity. Cæsar was lord paramount of the
+world: its countries great fiefs whose kings were his
+tenants in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him
+homage, fealty, and military service against the infidel.</p>
+
+<p>One illustration more of the way in which the empire
+was held to be something of and for all mankind, cannot
+be omitted. Although from the practical union of the
+imperial with the German throne none but Germans were
+chosen to fill it<a name="FNanchor_287" id="FNanchor_287" href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a>,
+it remained in point of law absolutely
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Persons
+eligible as
+Emperors.</span>
+free from all restrictions of country or birth. In an age
+of the most intense aristocratic exclusiveness, the highest
+office in the world was the only secular one open to all
+Christians. The old writers, after debating at length the
+qualifications that are or may be desirable in an Emperor,
+and relating how in pagan times Gauls and Spaniards,
+Moors and Pannonians, were thought worthy of the purple,
+decide that two things, and no more, are required of the
+candidate for Empire: he must be free-born, and he must
+be orthodox<a name="FNanchor_288" id="FNanchor_288" href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Empire
+and
+the new
+learning.</p>
+
+<p>It is not without a certain surprise that we see those
+who were engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt
+indirectly their stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of
+the Roman Empire. Still more difficult is it to estimate
+the respective influence exerted by each of the three
+revivals which it has been attempted to distinguish. The
+spirit of the ancient world by which the men who led
+these movements fancied themselves animated, was in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span>
+truth a pagan, or at least a strongly secular spirit, in
+many respects inconsistent with the associations which
+had now gathered round the imperial office. And this
+hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning
+of the sixteenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance,
+a direct and for the time irresistible sway was exercised
+by the art and literature of Greece, when the mythology
+of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that which had fired
+the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of
+St. Francis; when men forsook the image of the saint in
+the cathedral for the statue of the nymph in the garden;
+when the uncouth jargon of scholastic theology was
+equally distasteful to the scholars who formed their style
+upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their inspiration
+from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity
+did ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire,
+was due partly indeed to the false notions that were
+entertained regarding the early Cæsars, yet still more to
+the common hostility of both sects to the Papacy. It
+was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her
+traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide
+a dominion; yet no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his
+republicans arise, claiming liberty in the name of the
+ancient constitution of the republic, than they found in
+the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned for help to the
+secular monarch against the clergy. With similar aversion
+did the Romish court view the revived study of the
+ancient jurisprudence, so soon as it became, in the hands
+of the school of Bologna and afterwards of the jurists of
+France, a power able to assert its independence and resist
+ecclesiastical pretensions. In the ninth century, Pope
+Nicholas the First had himself judged in the famous case
+of Teutberga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law:
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span>
+in the thirteenth, his successors<a name="FNanchor_289" id="FNanchor_289" href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a>
+ forbade its study, and
+the canonists strove to expel it from Europe<a name="FNanchor_290" id="FNanchor_290" href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a>. And as
+the current of educated opinion among the laity was
+beginning, however imperceptibly at first, to set against
+sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Empire would find
+sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost
+position. Thus the Emperors became, or might have
+become had they seen the greatness of the opportunity
+and been strong enough to improve it, the exponents and
+guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part at
+least, of the Reformation. But the revival came too late
+to arrest, if not to adorn, the decline of their office. The
+growth of a national sentiment in the several countries of
+Europe, which had already gone too far to be arrested,
+and was urged on by forces far stronger than the theories
+of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the
+resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts
+of political freedom, that form of narrowly local patriotism
+which they still retain.
+<span class="sidenote">The doctrine
+of
+the Empire's
+rights
+and functions
+never
+carried out
+in fact.</span>
+It can hardly be said that upon
+any occasion, except the gathering of the council of
+Constance by Sigismund, did the Emperor appear filling
+a truly international place. For the most part he exerted
+in the politics of Europe no influence greater than that of
+other princes. In actual resources he stood below the
+kings of France and England, far below his vassals the
+Visconti of Milan<a name="FNanchor_291" id="FNanchor_291" href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a>. Yet this helplessness, such was
+men's faith or their timidity, and such their unwillingness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span>
+to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent his
+dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language
+by writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo
+of traditional glory which surrounded it.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Attitude
+of the men
+of letters.</p>
+
+<p>We are thus brought back to ask, What was the connection
+between imperialism and the literary revival?</p>
+
+<p>To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the
+heathen persecuting power, it is strange to find it depicted
+as the model of a Christian commonwealth. It is stranger
+still that the study of antiquity should have made men
+advocates of arbitrary power. Democratic Athens, oligarchic
+Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus: the
+moderns who have striven to catch their spirit have been
+men like Algernon Sidney, and Vergniaud, and Shelley.
+The explanation is the same in both cases<a name="FNanchor_292" id="FNanchor_292" href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a>. The ancient
+world was known to the earlier middle ages by tradition,
+freshest for what was latest, and by the authors of the
+Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty
+despotism and a civilization brilliant far beyond their own.
+Writings of the fourth and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us,
+were to them authorities as high as Tacitus or Livy; yet
+Virgil and Horace too had sung the praises of the first
+and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of poetry
+and law, Rome meant universal monarchy<a name="FNanchor_293" id="FNanchor_293" href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a>;
+to those of
+religion, her name called up the undimmed radiance of
+the Church under Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch,
+<span class="sidenote">Petrarch.</span>
+the apostle of the dawning Renaissance, is excited by the
+least attempt to revive even the shadow of imperial greatness:
+as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV
+into Italy, and execrates his departure. The following
+passage is taken from his letter to the Roman people
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>
+asking them to receive back Rienzi:&mdash;'When was there
+ever such peace, such tranquillity, such justice, such honour
+paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the good and
+punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely
+guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one
+head, and that head Rome; the very time wherein God
+deigned to be born of a virgin and dwell upon earth. To
+every single body there has been given a head; the whole
+world therefore also, which is called by the poet a great
+body, ought to be content with one temporal head. For
+every two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more
+horrible and hideous a portent must be a creature with
+a thousand different heads, biting and fighting against one
+another! If, however, it is necessary that there be more
+heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought
+to be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the
+peace of the whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly
+both in heaven and in earth the sovereignty of one has
+always been best.'</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Dante.</p>
+
+<p>His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and
+the ordered peace to which it brought the world, is the
+centre of Dante's political hopes: he is no more an exiled
+Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid imagination sees
+a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its rightful lord.
+Italy, the spoil of so many Teutonic conquerors, is the
+garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome
+the mourning widow, whom Albert is denounced for
+neglecting<a name="FNanchor_294" id="FNanchor_294" href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a>. Passing through purgatory, the poet sees
+Rudolf of Hapsburg seated gloomily apart, mourning
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span>
+his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy<a name="FNanchor_295" id="FNanchor_295" href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a>. In
+the deepest pit of hell's ninth circle lies Lucifer, huge,
+three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches
+between his teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to
+Christ, in the others the two traitors to the first Emperor
+of Rome, Brutus and Cassius<a name="FNanchor_296" id="FNanchor_296" href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a>. To multiply illustrations
+from other parts of the poem would be an endless task;
+for the idea is ever present in Dante's mind, and displays
+itself in a hundred unexpected forms. Virgil himself is
+selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and
+purgatory, not so much as being the great poet of antiquity,
+as because he 'was born under Julius and lived
+beneath the good Augustus;' because he was divinely
+charged to sing of the Empire's earliest and brightest
+glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be
+the glory of another. For Virgil's melancholy panegyrics
+upon the destroyer of the republic are no more like
+Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of Italy than is
+Cæsar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Attitude of
+the Jurists.</p>
+
+<p>The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded
+by the more sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror,
+theologian, and jurist, Justinian is a hero greater than
+either Julius or Constantine, for his enduring work bears
+him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's creed<a name="FNanchor_297" id="FNanchor_297" href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a>:
+the
+phrases <span lang="la">'legibus solutus,'</span> <span lang="la">'lex regia,'</span> whatever else tended
+in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative
+of him whose official style of Augustus, as well as
+the vernacular name of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>
+successor of the compiler of the <span lang="la">Corpus Juris</span>. Since it
+was upon that legitimacy that his claim to be the fountain
+of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and observe
+every custom and precedent by which old Rome
+seemed to be connected with her representative.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Imitations of
+old Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Of the many instances that might be collected, it would
+be tedious to enumerate more than a few. The offices
+of the imperial household, instituted by Constantine the
+Great, were attached to the noblest families of Germany.
+The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation at
+Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of
+Augustus and Livia<a name="FNanchor_298" id="FNanchor_298" href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a>;
+a bare sword was borne before
+them by the prætorian prefect; their processions were
+adorned by the standards, eagles, wolves and dragons,
+which had figured in the train of Hadrian or Theodosius<a name="FNanchor_299" id="FNanchor_299" href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a>.
+The constant title of the Emperor himself, according to
+the style introduced by Probus, was <span lang="la">'semper Augustus,'</span>
+or <span lang="la">'perpetuus Augustus,'</span> which erring etymology translated
+'at all times increaser of the Empire<a name="FNanchor_300" id="FNanchor_300" href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a>.' Edicts issued by
+a Franconian or Swabian sovereign were inserted as
+Novels<a name="FNanchor_301" id="FNanchor_301" href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a>
+ in the <span lang="la">Corpus Juris</span>, in the latest editions of
+which custom still allows them a place. The <i lang="la">pontificatus
+maximus</i> of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be
+preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon
+of St. Peter's at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen<a name="FNanchor_302" id="FNanchor_302" href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a>. Sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span>
+we even find him talking of his consulship<a name="FNanchor_303" id="FNanchor_303" href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a>.
+Annalists invariably number the place of each sovereign
+from Augustus downwards<a name="FNanchor_304" id="FNanchor_304" href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a>. The notion of an uninterrupted
+succession, which moves the stranger's wondering
+smile as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden
+Hall of Augsburg the portraits of the Cæsars, laurelled,
+helmeted, and periwigged, from Julius the conqueror of
+Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was to those
+generations not an article of faith only because its denial
+was inconceivable.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Reverence
+for ancient
+forms and
+phrases in
+the Middle
+Ages.</p>
+
+<p>And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call
+it, which gathers round the Empire, is but one instance,
+though the most striking, of that eager wish to cling to
+the old forms, use the old phrases, and preserve the old
+institutions to which the annals of mediæval Europe bear
+witness. It appears even in trivial expressions, as when
+a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, <i lang="la">Tribu
+moti sunt</i>, or talks of the 'senate and people of the
+Franks,' when he means a council of chiefs surrounded
+by a crowd of half-naked warriors. So throughout Europe
+charters and edicts were drawn up on Roman precedents;
+the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a different source,
+represented the old <i lang="la">collegia</i>; villenage was the offspring
+of the system of <i lang="la">coloni</i> under the later Empire. Even in
+remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns,
+and stamped their coins with Roman devices; called
+themselves <span lang="la">'Basileis'</span> and <span lang="la">'Augusti<a name="FNanchor_305" id="FNanchor_305" href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a>.'</span> Especially did the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span>
+cities perpetuate Rome through her most lasting boon
+to the conquered, municipal self-government; those of
+later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style
+others who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zürich and Augsburg,
+could trace back their institutions to the <i lang="la">coloniæ</i> and
+<i lang="la">municipia</i> of the first centuries. On the walls and gates
+of hoary Nürnberg<a name="FNanchor_306" id="FNanchor_306" href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a>
+ the traveller still sees emblazoned the
+imperial eagle, with the words <span lang="la">'Senatus populusque
+Norimbergensis,'</span> and is borne in thought from the quiet
+provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the
+middle ages: thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her
+greater prototype. For, in truth, through all that period
+which we call the Dark and Middle Ages, men's minds
+were possessed by the belief that all things continued as
+they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be
+recrossed lay between them and that ancient world to
+which they had not ceased to look back. We who are
+centuries removed can see that there had passed a great
+and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature,
+and politics, and society itself: a change whose best
+illustration is to be found in the process whereby there
+arose out of the primitive basilica the Romanesque
+cathedral, and from it in turn the endless varieties of
+Gothic.
+<span class="sidenote">Absence of
+the idea of
+change or
+progress.</span>
+But so gradual was the change that each generation
+felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that
+perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed
+from year to year; while the few who had learning
+enough to study antiquity through its contemporary
+records, were prevented by the utter want of criticism
+and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>
+how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and
+those whom they admired. There is nothing more
+modern than the critical spirit which dwells upon the
+difference between the minds of men in one age and in
+another; which endeavours to make each age its own
+interpreter, and judge what it did or produced by a relative
+standard. Such a spirit was, before the last century
+or two, wholly foreign to art as well as to metaphysics.
+The converse and the parallel of the fashion of calling
+mediæval offices by Roman names, and supposing them
+therefore the same, is to be found in those old German
+pictures of the siege of Carthage or the battle between
+Porus and Alexander, where in the foreground two armies
+of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging each other
+like Crusaders, lance, in rest, while behind, through the
+smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers
+of the beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember
+that the notion of progress and development, and of
+change as the necessary condition thereof, was unwelcome
+or unknown in mediæval times, we may better understand,
+though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting
+that the political system of antiquity had descended
+to them, modified indeed, yet in substance the same,
+should have believed that the Frank, the Saxon, and the
+Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which seems to us
+not less fantastic than that fabled charter whereby Alexander
+the Great<a name="FNanchor_307" id="FNanchor_307" href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a>
+ bequeathed his empire to the Slavic race
+for the love of Roxolana.</p>
+
+<p>It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which the
+history of the Middle Ages is full, that this belief had
+hardly any influence on practical politics. The more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>
+abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so much the
+more sonorous is the language in which the dignity of
+his crown is described. His power, we are told, is
+eternal, the provinces having resumed their allegiance
+after the barbarian irruptions<a name="FNanchor_308" id="FNanchor_308" href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a>;
+it is incapable of diminution
+or injury: exemptions and grants by him, so far as
+they tend to limit his own prerogative, are invalid<a name="FNanchor_309" id="FNanchor_309" href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a>:
+all
+Christendom is still of right subject to him, though it may
+contumaciously refuse obedience<a name="FNanchor_310" id="FNanchor_310" href="#Footnote_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a>. The sovereigns of
+Europe are solemnly warned that they are resisting the
+power ordained of God<a name="FNanchor_311" id="FNanchor_311" href="#Footnote_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a>. No laws can bind the Emperor,
+though he may choose to live according to them:
+no court can judge him, though he may condescend to
+be sued in his own: none may presume to arraign the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span>
+conduct or question the motives of him who is answerable
+only to God<a name="FNanchor_312" id="FNanchor_312" href="#Footnote_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a>. So writes Æneas Sylvius, while Frederick
+the Third, chased from his capital by the Hungarians, is
+wandering from convent to convent, an imperial beggar;
+while the princes, whom his subserviency to the Pope has
+driven into rebellion, are offering the imperial crown to
+Podiebrad the Bohemian king.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Henry VII,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1308-1313.</p>
+
+<p>But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is the
+most remarkable illustration of the Emperor's position:
+and imperialist doctrines are set forth most strikingly in
+the treatise which the greatest spirit of the age wrote to
+herald the advent of that hero, the <i>De Monarchia</i> of
+Dante<a name="FNanchor_313" id="FNanchor_313" href="#Footnote_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a>. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg,
+none of them crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the
+Italian Ghibelines who battled away in the name of their
+throne. Concerned only to restore order and aggrandize
+his house, and thinking apparently that nothing more was
+to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content
+never to receive it, and purchased the Pope's goodwill
+by surrendering his jurisdiction in the capital, and his
+claims over the bequest of the Countess Matilda. Henry
+the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course; urged
+perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps
+in despair at effecting anything with his slender resources
+against the princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian
+dominions with a scanty following of knights,
+and descending from the Cenis upon Turin, he found
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>
+his prerogative higher in men's belief after sixty years of
+neglect than it had stood under the last Hohenstaufen.
+The cities of Lombardy opened their gates; Milan decreed
+a vast subsidy; Guelf and Ghibeline exiles alike
+were restored, and imperial vicars appointed everywhere:
+supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the
+restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV,
+Henry had the interdict of the Church as well as the ban
+of the Empire at his command. But the illusion of success
+vanished as soon as men, recovering from their first
+impression, began to be again governed by their ordinary
+passions and interests, and not by an imaginative reverence
+for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts
+broke out in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples
+held St. Peter's, and the coronation must take place in
+St. John Lateran, on the southern bank of the Tiber.
+The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the Florentines,
+Guelfs even against the Pope, obliged Henry to
+depart from his impartial and republican policy, and to
+purchase the aid of the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them
+the government of cities. With few troops, and encompassed
+by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained an
+unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1313, he
+sank beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan summer.
+<span class="sidenote">Death of
+Henry VII.</span>
+His German followers believed, nor has history wholly
+rejected the tale, that poison was given him by a Dominican
+monk, in sacramental wine.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Later Emperors
+in
+Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Others after him descended from the Alps, but they
+came, like Lewis the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, at the
+behest of a faction, which found them useful tools for a
+time, then flung them away in scorn; or like Charles the
+Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions
+of a French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>
+ends the history of the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book
+is an epitaph instead of a prophecy. A sketch of its
+argument will convey a notion of the feelings with which
+the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the spirit in
+which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such
+subjects.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Dante's
+feelings and
+theories.</p>
+
+<p>Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, of the
+factions within every city against each other, seeing municipal
+freedom, the only mitigation of turbulence, vanish
+with the rise of domestic tyrants, Dante raises a passionate
+cry for some power to still the tempest, not to quench
+liberty or supersede local self-government, but to correct
+and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless
+Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic: he
+is alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic
+metaphysician: the poet of the Divina Commedia is
+betrayed only by the compressed energy of diction, by
+his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a glowing
+metaphor.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">
+The 'De Monarchia.'</p>
+
+<p>Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful
+form of government. Men's objects are best attained
+during universal peace: this is possible only under a
+monarch. And as he is the image of the Divine unity,
+so man is through him made one, and brought most near
+to God. There must, in every system of forces, be a
+<span lang="la">'primum mobile;'</span> to be perfect, every organization must
+have a centre, into which all is gathered, by which all is
+controlled<a name="FNanchor_314" id="FNanchor_314" href="#Footnote_314" class="fnanchor">[314]</a>. Justice is best secured by a supreme arbiter
+of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since his
+dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best
+and happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>
+for one's own sake. To this grandest end does the
+monarch and he alone guide us; other forms of government
+are perverted<a name="FNanchor_315" id="FNanchor_315" href="#Footnote_315" class="fnanchor">[315]</a>,
+and exist for the benefit of some
+class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that very
+end appointed<a name="FNanchor_316" id="FNanchor_316" href="#Footnote_316" class="fnanchor">[316]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history.
+Since the world began there has been but one period of
+perfect peace, and but one of perfect monarchy, that,
+namely, which existed at our Lord's birth, under the sceptre
+of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and the
+kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves
+against their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince<a name="FNanchor_317" id="FNanchor_317" href="#Footnote_317" class="fnanchor">[317]</a>.
+The universal dominion, the need for which has been thus
+established, is then proved to belong to the Romans.
+Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt Rome shewn
+through her whole history<a name="FNanchor_318" id="FNanchor_318" href="#Footnote_318" class="fnanchor">[318]</a>. Her virtues deserved honour:
+Virgil is quoted to prove those of Æneas, who by descent
+and marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia
+through Assaracus and Creusa; of Africa by Electra
+(mother of Dardanus and daughter of Atlas) and Dido;
+of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was
+approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous
+deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the
+hailstorm after Cannæ. Justice is also the advantage of
+the state: that advantage was the constant object of the
+virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes of the republic.
+They conquered the world for its own good, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>
+therefore justly, as Cicero attests<a name="FNanchor_319" id="FNanchor_319" href="#Footnote_319" class="fnanchor">[319]</a>;
+so that their sway was
+not so much <span lang="la">'imperium'</span> as <span lang="la">'patrocinium orbis terrarum.'</span>
+Nature herself, the fountain of all right, had, by their
+geographical position and by the gift of a genius so
+vigorous, marked them out for universal dominion:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Orabunt causas melius, cœlique meatus</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Hæ tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and
+death under Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian
+doctrine requires that the procurator should have been a
+lawful judge<a name="FNanchor_320" id="FNanchor_320" href="#Footnote_320" class="fnanchor">[320]</a>,
+which he was not unless Tiberius was a
+lawful Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>The relations of the imperial and papal power are then
+examined, and the passages of Scripture (tradition being
+rejected), to which the advocates of the Papacy appeal,
+are elaborately explained away. The argument from the
+sun and moon<a name="FNanchor_321" id="FNanchor_321" href="#Footnote_321" class="fnanchor">[321]</a>
+ does not hold, since both lights existed
+before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless,
+he needed no controlling powers. Else <i lang="la">accidentia</i> would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>
+have preceded <i lang="la">propria</i> in creation. The moon, too, does
+not receive her being nor all her light from the sun, but
+so much only as makes her more effective. So there is
+no reason why the temporal should not be aided in a corresponding
+measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult
+text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and
+Judah, Samuel and Saul, the incense and gold offered by
+the Magi<a name="FNanchor_322" id="FNanchor_322" href="#Footnote_322" class="fnanchor">[322]</a>;
+the two swords, the power of binding and
+loosing given to Peter. Constantine's donation was
+illegal: no single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the everlasting
+foundations of their respective thrones: the one
+had no right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a
+gift. Leo the Third gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully:
+'<i lang="la">usurpatio iuris non facit ius</i>.' It is alleged that all
+things of one kind are reducible to one individual, and so
+all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in
+kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to
+God, on whom the Empire immediately depends; for it
+existed before Peter's see, and was recognized by Paul
+when he appealed to Cæsar. The temporal power of the
+Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor
+divine ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against
+its own Form and Essence, the life of Christ, who said,
+'My kingdom is not of this world.'</p>
+
+<p>Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incorruptible:
+he has therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the
+enjoyment of the sight of God hereafter; the one to
+be attained by practice conformed to the precepts of
+philosophy, the other by the theological virtues. Hence
+two guides are needed, the pontiff and the Emperor, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>
+latter of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in
+accordance with the teachings of philosophy to temporal
+blessedness, must preserve universal peace in the world.
+Thus are the two powers equally ordained of God, and
+the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the
+secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiff,
+since earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. 'Let
+Cæsar, therefore, shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith
+a firstborn son honours his father, that, being illumined
+by the light of his paternal favour, he may the
+more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the
+rule of which he has been appointed by Him alone who
+is of all things, both spiritual and temporal, the King and
+Governor.' So ends the treatise.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The 'De
+Monarchia:'
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions.
+No suspicion is breathed against Constantine's donation;
+no proof is adduced, for no doubt is felt, that the Empire
+of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate continuation of
+that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian.
+Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian
+foes, the elected of those who had neither part nor share
+in Italy and her capital.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.</span></h2>
+
+<p>'It is related,' says Sozomen in the ninth book of his
+Ecclesiastical History, 'that when Alaric was hastening
+against Rome, a holy monk of Italy admonished him to
+spare the city, and not to make himself the cause of such
+fearful ills. But Alaric answered, "It is not of my own
+will that I do this; there is One who forces me on, and
+will not let me rest, bidding me spoil Rome<a name="FNanchor_323" id="FNanchor_323" href="#Footnote_323" class="fnanchor">[323]</a>."'</p>
+
+<p>Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohemian
+Woitech, famous in after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook
+his bishopric of Prague to journey into Italy, and settled
+himself in the Roman monastery of Sant' Alessio. After
+some few years passed there in religious solitude, he was
+summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and
+laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen.
+Soon, however, the old longing came over him: he resought
+his cell upon the brow of the Aventine, and there,
+wandering among the ancient shrines, and taking on himself
+the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily
+for a space. At length the reproaches of his metropolitan,
+the archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>
+Pope Gregory the Fifth, drove him back over the Alps,
+and he set off in the train of Otto the Third, lamenting,
+says his biographer, that he should no more enjoy his
+beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the
+Apostles, golden Rome. A few months later he died a
+martyr among the pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic<a name="FNanchor_324" id="FNanchor_324" href="#Footnote_324" class="fnanchor">[324]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after
+the time of Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his
+friend John Colonna:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which
+there has never been any like nor ever shall be; which
+even an enemy called a city of kings; of whose people
+it hath been written, "Great is the valour of the Roman
+people, great and terrible their name;" concerning whose
+unexampled glory and incomparable empire, which was,
+and is, and is to be, divine prophets have sung; where
+are the tombs of the apostles and martyrs and the bodies
+of so many thousands of the saints of Christ<a name="FNanchor_325" id="FNanchor_325" href="#Footnote_325" class="fnanchor">[325]</a>
+?'</p>
+
+<p>It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the
+warrior, the monk, and the scholar towards the mystical
+city which was to mediæval Europe more than Delphi had
+been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the Jerusalem
+of Christianity, the city which had once ruled the earth,
+and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits<a name="FNanchor_326" id="FNanchor_326" href="#Footnote_326" class="fnanchor">[326]</a>. For
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>
+there was then, as there is now, something in Rome to
+attract men of every class. The devout pilgrim came to
+pray at the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles, too
+happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the
+forests of Saxony or by the bleak Atlantic shore the bone
+of some holy martyr; the lover of learning and poetry
+dreamed of Virgil and Cicero among the shattered
+columns of the Forum; the Germanic kings, in spite of
+pestilence, treachery and seditions, came with their hosts
+to seek in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of
+temporal dominion. Nor has the spell yet wholly lost its
+power. To half the Christian nations Rome is the
+metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of art. In her
+streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world,
+may every form of human speech be heard: she is more
+glorious in her decay and desolation than the stateliest
+seats of modern power.</p>
+
+<p>But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome
+herself?</p>
+
+<p>The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome,
+when he has looked out upon the Campagna from the
+summit of St. Peter's, paced the chilly corridors of the
+Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of the Pantheon,
+when he has passed in review the monuments of
+regal and republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for
+some relics of the twelve hundred years that lie between
+Constantine and Pope Julius the Second. 'Where,' he
+asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of
+Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span>
+dug the graves of so many Teutonic hosts; whither the
+pilgrims flocked; whence came the commands at which
+kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the brightest
+age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne
+and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the
+cathedrals of Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of
+Venice?'</p>
+
+<p>To this question there is no answer. Rome, the
+mother of the arts, has scarcely a building to commemorate
+those times, for to her they were times of turmoil
+and misery, times in which the shame of the present was
+embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless
+a minute scrutiny may still discover, hidden in dark
+corners or disguised under an unbecoming modern
+dress, much that carries us back to the mediæval town,
+and helps us to realize its social and political condition.
+Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the
+Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments
+which the visitor may still examine for himself, may not
+be without its use, and is at any rate no unfitting pendant
+to an account of the institution which drew from the city
+its name and its magnificent pretensions. Moreover, as
+will appear more fully in the sequel, the history of the
+Roman people is an instructive illustration of the influence
+of those ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as
+well in their weakness as in their strength<a name="FNanchor_327" id="FNanchor_327" href="#Footnote_327" class="fnanchor">[327]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from the
+more destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Causes of
+the rapid
+decay of
+the city.</span>
+material and social ruin of Rome must be dated, but
+rather from the repeated sieges which she sustained in the
+war of Belisarius with the Ostrogoths. This struggle
+however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have
+proved so fatal had the previous condition of the city
+been sound and healthy. Her wealth and population in
+the middle of the fifth century were probably little inferior
+to what they had been in the most prosperous days of
+the imperial government. But this wealth was entirely
+gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate aristocracy.
+The crowd that filled her streets was composed
+partly of poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms
+and debarred from political rights; partly of a far more
+numerous herd of slaves, gathered from all parts of the
+world, and morally even lower than their masters. There
+was no middle class, and no system of municipal institutions,
+for although the senate and consuls with many of
+the lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for
+centuries enjoyed no effective power, and were nowise
+fitted to lead and rule the people. Hence it was that
+when the Gothic war and the subsequent inroads of the
+Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the
+framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced.
+In a state rotten to the core there was no vital force left
+for reconstruction. The old forms of political activity
+had been too long dead to be recalled to life: the people
+wanted the moral force to produce new ones, and all the
+authority that could be said to exist in the midst of
+anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new
+religious society.</p>
+
+<p>So far Rome's condition was like that of the other
+great towns of Italy and Gaul. But in two points her
+case differed from theirs, and to these the difference of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Peculiarities
+in the
+position
+of Rome.</span>
+her after fortunes may be traced. Her bishop had no
+temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check his
+ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away
+at Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal
+election or punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition.
+Her population received an all but imperceptible
+infusion of that Teutonic blood and those Teutonic
+customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of
+northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere
+the old institutions had perished of decay: in Rome alone
+there was nothing except the ecclesiastical system out of
+which new ones could arise. Her condition was therefore
+the most pitiable in which a community can find
+itself, one of struggle without purpose or progress. The
+citizens were divided into three orders: the military class,
+including what was left of the ancient aristocracy; the
+clergy, a host of priests, monks and nuns, attached to the
+countless churches and convents; and the people or
+<i>plebs</i>, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble without
+trade, without industry, without any municipal organization
+to bind them together. Of these two latter classes
+the Pope was the natural leader, the first was divided into
+factions headed by some three or four of the great families,
+whose quarrels kept the town in incessant bloodshed.
+The internal history of Rome from the sixth to the twelfth
+century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest
+of these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as
+a whole with the slowly growing power of the Church.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Her condition
+in the
+ninth and
+tenth centuries.</p>
+
+<p>The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Emperors
+of the East, followed as it was by the reception of
+the Franks as patricians and emperors, is an event of
+the highest importance in the history of Italy and of the
+popedom. In the domestic constitution of Rome it made
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span>
+little change. With the instinct of a profound genius,
+Charles the Great saw that Rome, though it might be
+ostensibly the capital, could not be the real centre of his
+dominions. He continued to reside in Germany, and did
+not even build a palace at Rome. For a time the awe of
+his power, the presence of his <i lang="la">missus</i> or lieutenant, and
+the occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II
+to the city, repressed her internal disorders. But after
+the death of the prince last named, and still more after
+the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire itself, Rome
+relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism to which,
+even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism
+which had inherited all the vices of civilization without
+any of its virtues. The papal office in particular seems
+to have lost its religious character, as it had certainly lost
+all claim to moral purity. For more than a century the
+chief priest of Christendom was no more than a tool of
+some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal
+means had raised him to the throne; violence, sometimes
+going the length of mutilation or murder, deprived him of
+it. The marvel is, a marvel in which papal historians
+have not unnaturally discovered a miracle, that after
+sinking so low, the Papacy should ever have risen again.
+Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was
+accomplished not by the Romans but by the efforts of
+the Transalpine Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon
+and Franconian Emperors. Yet even the religious reform
+did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was not till the
+twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in politics,
+which ennobled if it could not heal the sufferings of the
+Roman people.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had revolted
+against the haughty behaviour of the Teutonic emperors.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Growth of
+a republican
+feeling:
+hostility to
+the Popes.</span>
+From still earlier times they had been jealous of sacerdotal
+authority, and now watched with alarm the rapid
+extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth
+century gave these feelings a definite direction. It was
+the time of the struggle of the Investitures, in which
+Hildebrand and his disciples had been striving to draw
+all the things of this world as well as of the next into
+their grasp. It was the era of the revived study of
+Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions
+of the decretalists could be resisted. The Lombard and
+Tuscan towns had become flourishing municipalities, independent
+of their bishops, and at open war with their
+Emperor. While all these things were stirring the minds
+<span class="sidenote">Arnold of
+Brescia.</span>
+of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform,
+denouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps,
+like some others of the so-called schismatics of his time,
+denying the need of a sacerdotal order, but at any rate
+urging its restriction to purely spiritual duties. On the
+minds of the Romans such teaching fell like the spark
+upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope<a name="FNanchor_328" id="FNanchor_328" href="#Footnote_328" class="fnanchor">[328]</a>
+,
+drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate
+and the equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their
+own coins, and professed to treat the German Emperors
+as their nominees and dependants. To have successfully
+imitated the republican constitution of the cities of
+northern Italy would have been much, but with this they
+were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way
+that there had been a Roman republic before there was
+a Roman empire, they fed their vanity with visions of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span>
+renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw in fancy their
+senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills and
+ruling over the kings of the earth. Stepping, as it were,
+into the arena where Pope and Emperor were contending
+for the headship of the world, they rejected the one as a
+priest, and declaring the other to be only their creature,
+they claimed as theirs the true and lawful inheritance
+of the world-dominion which their ancestors had won.
+Antiquity was in one sense on their side, and to us now
+it seems less strange that the Roman people should aspire
+to rule the earth than that a German barbarian should
+rule it in their name. But practically the scheme was
+absurd, and could not maintain itself against any serious
+opposition. As a modern historian aptly expresses it,
+'they were setting up ruins:' they might as well have
+raised the broken columns that strewed their Forum and
+hoped to rear out of them a strong and stately temple.
+The reverence which the men of the Middle Ages felt for
+Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place,
+nowise to the people.
+<span class="sidenote">Short-sighted
+policy of the
+Emperors.</span>
+As for power, they had none:
+so far from holding Italy in subjection, they could scarcely
+maintain themselves against the hostility of Tusculum.
+But it would have been well worth the while of the Teutonic
+Emperors to have made the Romans their allies,
+and bridled by their help the temporal ambition of the
+Popes. The offer was actually made to them, first to
+Conrad the Third, who seems to have taken no notice of
+it; and afterwards, as has been already stated, to Frederick
+the First, who repelled in the most contumelious
+fashion the envoys of the senate. Hating and fearing
+the Pope, he always respected him: towards the Romans
+he felt all the contempt of a feudal king for burghers, and
+of a German warrior for Italians. At the demand of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span>
+Pope Hadrian, whose foresight thought no heresy so
+dangerous as one which threatened the authority of the
+clergy, Arnold of Brescia was seized by the imperial
+prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast into the Tiber,
+lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But
+the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes
+of his followers. The republican constitution continued
+to exist, and rose from time to time, during the weakness
+or the absence of the Popes, into a brief and fitful
+activity<a name="FNanchor_329" id="FNanchor_329" href="#Footnote_329" class="fnanchor">[329]</a>. Once awakened, the idea, seductive at once
+to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of the
+Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries
+after Arnold's time it found a more brilliant if less
+disinterested exponent in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Character
+and career
+of the
+tribune
+Rienzi.</p>
+
+<p>The career of this singular personage is misunderstood
+by those who suppose him to have been possessed of
+profound political insight, a republican on modern principles.
+He was indeed, despite his overweening conceit,
+and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a patriot and
+a man of genius, in temperament a poet, filled with soaring
+ideas. But those ideas, although dressed out in
+gaudier colours by his lively fancy, were after all only the
+old ones, memories of the long-faded glories of the
+heathen republic, and a series of scornful contrasts levelled
+at her present oppressors, both of them shewing no vista
+of future peace except through the revival of those ancient
+names to which there were no things to correspond. It
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>
+was by declaiming on old texts and displaying old monuments
+that the tribune enlisted the support of the Roman
+populace, not by any appeal to democratic principles;
+and the whole of his acts and plans, though they astonished
+men by their boldness, do not seem to have been regarded
+as novel or impracticable<a name="FNanchor_330" id="FNanchor_330" href="#Footnote_330" class="fnanchor">[330]</a>. In the breasts of men
+like Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they
+hated her people, the enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic
+echo: others scorned and denounced him as an
+upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends and
+enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as
+natural his feelings and designs, which were altogether
+those of his age. Being, however, a mere matter of
+imagination, not of reason, having no anchor, so to speak,
+in realities, no true relation to the world as it then stood,
+these schemes of republican revival were as transient and
+unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour.
+As the authority of the Popes became consolidated, and
+free municipalities disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy,
+the dream of a renovated Rome at length withered up
+and fell and died. Its last struggle was made in the conspiracy
+of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas
+the Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question
+of the supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Causes of
+the failure
+of the
+struggle
+for independence.</p>
+
+<p>It is never without a certain regret that we watch the
+disappearance of a belief, however illusive, around which
+the love and reverence for mankind once clung. But this
+illusion need be the less regretted that it had only the
+feeblest influence for good on the state of mediæval Rome.
+During the three centuries that lie between Arnold of
+Brescia and Porcaro, the disorders of Rome were hardly
+less violent than they had been in the Dark Ages, and to
+all appearance worse than those of any other European
+city. There was a want not only of fixed authority, but
+of those elements of social stability which the other cities
+of Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lombardy
+and Tuscany the bulk of the population were artizans,
+hard working orderly people; while above them stood
+a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in commerce,
+and having in their system of trade-guilds an organization
+both firm and flexible. It was by foreign
+trade that Genoa, Venice, and Pisa became great, as
+it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing industry
+that enabled Milan and Florence to overcome and
+incorporate the territorial aristocracies which surrounded
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Internal
+condition
+of the city.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The people.</p>
+
+<p>Rome possessed neither source of riches. She was
+ill-placed for trade; having no market she produced no
+goods to be disposed of, and the unhealthiness which
+long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made its
+fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands
+now, lonely and isolated, a desert at her very gates. As
+there was no industry, so there was nothing that deserved
+to be called a citizen class. The people were a mere
+rabble, prompt to follow the demagogue who flattered
+their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of
+danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span>
+pride, but they lived too near sacred things to feel much
+reverence for them: they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced
+the pilgrims who crowded to their shrines: they were
+probably the only community in Europe who sent no
+recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and
+all the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court
+formed a large part of the population; while of the rest
+many were supported in a state of half mendicancy by
+the countless religious foundations, themselves enriched
+by the gifts or the plunder of Latin Christendom. The
+<span class="sidenote">The nobility.</span>
+noble families were numerous, powerful, ferocious; they
+were surrounded by bands of unruly retainers, and waged
+a constant war against each other from their castles in the
+adjoining country or in the streets of the city itself. Had
+things been left to take their natural course, one of these
+families, the Colonna, for instance, or the Orsini, would
+probably have ended by overcoming its rivals, and have
+established, as was the case in the republics of Romagna
+and Tuscany, a 'signoria' or local tyranny, like those
+which had once prevailed in the cities of Greece. But
+the presence of the sacerdotal power, as it had hindered
+<span class="sidenote">The bishop.</span>
+the growth of feudalism, so also it stood in the way of such
+a development as this, and in so far aggravated the confusion
+of the city. Although the Pope was not as yet
+recognized as legitimate sovereign, he was not only the
+most considerable person in Rome, but the only one
+whose authority had anything of an official character.
+But the reign of each pontiff was short; he had no military
+force, he was frequently absent from his see. He
+was, moreover, very often a member of one of the great
+families, and, as such, no better than a faction leader at
+home, while venerated by the rest of Europe as the
+universal priest.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>It remains only to speak of the person who should
+have been to Rome what the national king was to the
+cities of France, or England, or Germany, that is to say,
+of the Emperor. As has been said already, his power was
+a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext
+to the Colonna and other Ghibeline chieftains for their
+opposition to the papal party. Even his abstract rights
+were matter of controversy. The Popes, whose predecessors
+had been content to govern as the lieutenants of
+Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a spiritual
+city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction,
+and that she was therefore no part of the Roman Empire,
+though at the same time its capital. Not only, it was
+urged, had Constantine yielded up Rome to Sylvester and
+his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his coronation
+formally renounced his sovereignty by doing homage to
+the pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The
+Popes felt then as they feel now, that their dignity and
+influence would suffer if they should even appear to admit
+in their place of residence the jurisdiction of a civil
+potentate, and although they could not secure their own
+authority, they were at least able to exclude any other.
+Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an
+Emperor came to them to be crowned, that they raised up
+difficulties in his path, and endeavoured to be rid of him
+as soon as possible.
+<span class="sidenote">Visits of the
+Emperors
+to Rome.</span>
+And here something must be said of
+the programme, as one may call it, of these imperial visits
+to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the
+Germans left behind them, remembering always that after
+the time of Frederick the Second it was rather the exception
+than the rule for an Emperor to be crowned in his
+capital at all.</p>
+
+<p>The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>
+most commonly does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in
+by the railway before he is aware, is huddled into a vehicle
+at the terminus, and set down at his hotel in the middle of
+the modern town before he has seen anything at all. If
+he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road
+that passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he
+has indeed from the slopes of the Ciminian range a
+splendid prospect of the sea-like Campagna, girdled in by
+glittering hills, but of the city he sees no sign, save the
+pinnacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls. Far
+otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers of
+<span class="sidenote">Their approach.</span>
+every grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new-made
+archbishop who came in the pomp of a lengthy train to
+receive from the Pope the pallium of his office, approached
+from the north or north-east side; following a track along
+the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until
+they halted on the brow of Monte Mario<a name="FNanchor_331" id="FNanchor_331" href="#Footnote_331" class="fnanchor">[331]</a>
+&mdash;the Mount of
+Joy&mdash;and saw the city of their solemnities lie spread
+before them, from the great pile of the Lateran far away
+upon the Cœlian hill, to the basilica of St. Peter's at their
+feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy cupolas,
+but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick
+towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin,
+then larger far than now; while over all rose those two
+monuments of the best of the heathen Emperors, monuments
+that still look down, serenely changeless, on the
+armies of new nations and the festivals of a new religion&mdash;the
+columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Their entrance.</p>
+
+<p>From Monte Mario the Teutonic host descended, when
+they had paid their orisons, into the Neronian field, the
+piece of flat land that lies outside the gate of St. Angelo.
+Here it was the custom for the elders of the Romans to
+meet the elected Emperor, present their charters for confirmation,
+and receive his oath to preserve their good
+customs<a name="FNanchor_332" id="FNanchor_332" href="#Footnote_332" class="fnanchor">[332]</a>. Then a procession was formed: the priests
+and monks, who had come out with hymns to greet the
+Emperor, led the way; the knights and soldiers of Rome,
+such as they were, came next; then the monarch, followed
+by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into
+the city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope,
+surrounded by his clergy, stood on the great staircase of
+the basilica to welcome and bless the Roman king. On
+the next day came the coronation, with ceremonies too
+elaborate for description<a name="FNanchor_333" id="FNanchor_333" href="#Footnote_333" class="fnanchor">[333]</a>,
+ceremonies which, we may well
+believe, were seldom duly completed. Far more usual
+were other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no
+mention, unless they are to be counted among the 'good
+customs of the Romans;' the clang of war bells, the battle
+<span class="sidenote">Hostility of
+Pope and
+people to the
+Germans.</span>
+cry of German and Italian combatants. The Pope, when
+he could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, required
+him to leave the bulk of his host without the walls,
+and if foiled in this, sought his safety in raising up plots
+and seditions against his too powerful friend. The Roman
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>
+people, on the other hand, violent as they often were
+against the Pope, felt nevertheless a sort of national pride
+in him. Very different were their feelings towards the
+Teutonic chieftain, who came from a far land to receive
+in their city, yet without thanking them for it, the ensign
+of a power which the prowess of their forefathers had won.
+Despoiled of their ancient right to choose the universal
+bishop, they clung all the more desperately to the belief
+that it was they who chose the universal prince; and were
+mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously
+scouted their claims, and paraded before
+their eyes his rude barbarian cavalry. Thus it was that a
+Roman sedition was the all but invariable accompaniment
+of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto the
+Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the
+Third, in spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was
+met by the same faithlessness and hatred, and departed at
+last in despair at the failure of his attempts at conciliation<a name="FNanchor_334" id="FNanchor_334" href="#Footnote_334" class="fnanchor">[334]</a>.
+A century afterwards Henry the Fifth's coronation produced
+violent tumults, which ended in his seizing the Pope
+and cardinals in St. Peter's, and keeping them prisoners
+till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this, Pope
+Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of
+Frederick Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>
+rapidity of their movements disconcerted his plans and
+anticipated the resistance of the Roman populace. Having
+established himself in the Leonine city<a name="FNanchor_335" id="FNanchor_335" href="#Footnote_335" class="fnanchor">[335]</a>,
+Frederick barricaded
+the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned
+in St. Peter's. But the rite was scarcely finished when
+the Romans, who had assembled in arms on the Capitol,
+dashed over the bridge, fell upon the Germans, and were
+with difficulty repulsed by the personal efforts of Frederick.
+Into the city he did not venture to pursue them, nor was
+he at any period of his reign able to make himself master
+of the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled,
+his successors at last accepted their position, and were
+content to take the crown on the Pope's conditions and
+depart without further question.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Memorials
+of the Germanic
+Emperors
+in
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Coming so seldom and remaining for so short a time, it
+is not wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors should, in the
+seven centuries from Charles the Great to Charles the
+Fifth, have left fewer marks of their presence in Rome
+than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer and less
+considerable even than those which tradition attributes to
+those whom it calls Servius Tullius and the elder Tarquin.
+Those monuments which do exist are just sufficient to
+make the absence of all others more conspicuous. The
+most important dates from the time of Otto the Third,
+<span class="sidenote">Of Otto
+the Third.</span>
+the only Emperor who attempted to make Rome his permanent
+residence. Of the palace, probably nothing more
+than a tower, which he built on the Aventine, no trace has
+been discovered; but the church, founded by him to receive
+the ashes of his friend the martyred St. Adalbert,
+may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber. Having
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>
+received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of
+Bartholomew the Apostle<a name="FNanchor_336" id="FNanchor_336" href="#Footnote_336" class="fnanchor">[336]</a>,
+it became dedicated to that
+saint, and is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola,
+whose quaintly picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now
+grey with extreme age, looks out from among the orange
+trees of a convent garden over the swift-eddying yellow
+waters of the Tiber.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Of Otto
+the Second.</p>
+
+<p>Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, died at Rome,
+and lies buried in the crypt of St. Peter's, the only Emperor
+who has found a resting-place among the graves of
+the Popes<a name="FNanchor_337" id="FNanchor_337" href="#Footnote_337" class="fnanchor">[337]</a>. His tomb is not far from that of his nephew
+Pope Gregory the Fifth: it is a plain one of roughly
+chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus
+in which he lay for a time now serves as the
+great font of St. Peter's, and may be seen in the baptismal
+chapel, on the left of the entrance of the church, not
+far from the tombs of the Stuarts. Last of all must be
+mentioned a curious relic of the Emperor Frederick the
+<span class="sidenote">Of Frederick
+the
+Second.</span>
+Second, the prince whom of all others one would least
+expect to see honoured in the city of his foes. It is an
+inscription in the palace of the Conservators upon the
+Capitoline hill, built into the wall of the great staircase,
+and relates the victory of Frederick's army over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>
+Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio<a name="FNanchor_338" id="FNanchor_338" href="#Footnote_338" class="fnanchor">[338]</a>
+ of the rebel
+city, which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans.
+These are all or nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords
+that Rome has preserved till now. Pictures indeed there
+are in abundance, from the mosaic of the Scala Santa at
+the Lateran<a name="FNanchor_339" id="FNanchor_339" href="#Footnote_339" class="fnanchor">[339]</a>
+ and the curious frescoes in the church of
+Santi Quattro Incoronati<a name="FNanchor_340" id="FNanchor_340" href="#Footnote_340" class="fnanchor">[340]</a>,
+down to the paintings of the
+Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the
+Vatican, where the triumphs of the Popedom over all its
+foes are set forth with matchless art and equally matchless
+unveracity. But these are mostly long subsequent to the
+events they describe, and these all the world knows.</p>
+
+<p>Associations of the highest interest would have attached
+to the churches in which the imperial coronation was performed&mdash;a
+ceremony which, whether we regard the dignity
+of the performers or the splendour of the adjuncts,
+was probably the most imposing that modern Europe has
+known. But old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of
+the fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman
+coronation, that of Frederick the Third, while the basilica
+of St. John Lateran, in which Lothar the Saxon and
+Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so wofully
+modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as
+the same building<a name="FNanchor_341" id="FNanchor_341" href="#Footnote_341" class="fnanchor">[341]</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Causes of
+the want of
+mediæval
+monuments
+in Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Rome
+during the middle ages, it becomes easier to understand the
+architectural barrenness which at first excites the visitor's
+surprise. Rome had no temporal sovereign, and there
+were therefore only two classes who could build at all,
+the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former had seldom
+the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled
+them to construct palaces graceful as the Venetian or
+massively grand as the Florentine and Genoese.
+<span class="sidenote">Barbarism
+of the aristocracy.</span>
+Moreover,
+the constant practice of domestic war made defence
+the first object of a house, beauty and convenience the
+second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted ancient
+edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials
+those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still
+frown over the narrow streets in the older parts of
+Rome. We may judge of their number from the statement
+that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one hundred
+and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one
+exception, that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these
+towers are the only domestic buildings in the city older
+than the middle of the fifteenth century. The vast palaces
+to which strangers now flock for the sake of the picture
+galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in
+the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, some even later.
+Among the earliest is that Palazzo Cenci<a name="FNanchor_342" id="FNanchor_342" href="#Footnote_342" class="fnanchor">[342]</a>,
+whose gloomy
+low-browed arch so powerfully affected the imagination of
+Shelley.</p>
+
+<p>It was no want of wealth that hampered the architectural
+efforts of the clergy, for vast revenues flowed in
+upon them from every corner of Christendom. A good
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Ambition,
+weakness,
+and corruption
+of
+the clergy.</span>
+deal was actually spent upon the erection or repairs of
+churches and convents, although with a less liberal hand
+than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of
+Lincoln or Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always
+needed money for their projects of ambition, and in times
+when disorder or corruption were at their height the
+work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that
+after the time of the Carolingians scarcely a church was
+erected until the beginning of the twelfth century, when
+the reforms of Hildebrand had breathed new zeal into the
+priesthood. The Babylonish captivity of Avignon, as it
+was called, with the great schism of the West that followed
+upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission,
+which lasted nearly a century and a half.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Tendency of
+the Roman
+builders to
+adhere to
+the ancient
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>At every time, however, even when his work went on
+most briskly, the labours of the Roman architect took the
+direction of restoring and readorning old churches rather
+than of erecting new ones. While the Transalpine countries,
+except in a few favoured spots, such as Provence
+and part of the Rhineland, remained during several ages
+with few and rudely built stone churches, Rome possessed,
+as the inheritance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion
+of houses of worship, some of them still unsurpassed
+in splendour, and far more than adequate to the
+needs of her diminished population. In repairing these
+from time to time, their original form and style of work
+were usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing
+new ones, the abundance of models beautiful in
+themselves and hallowed as well by antiquity as by religious
+feeling, enthralled the invention of the workman,
+bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and
+forbade him to deviate at pleasure from the old established
+manner. Thus it befel that while his brethren throughout
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span>
+the rest of Europe were passing by successive steps from
+the old Roman and Byzantine styles to Romanesque, and
+from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect scarcely
+departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive
+basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little
+<span class="sidenote">Absence of
+Gothic in
+Rome.</span>
+of Gothic work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque
+like that of Pisa. What there is appears chiefly in the
+pointed window, more rarely in the arch, seldom or never
+in spire or tower or column. Only one of the existing
+churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the
+Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built
+by foreign monks. In some of the other churches, and
+especially in the cloisters of the convents, instances may
+be observed of the same style: in others slight traces, by
+accident or design almost obliterated<a name="FNanchor_343" id="FNanchor_343" href="#Footnote_343" class="fnanchor">[343]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Destruction
+and alteration
+of the
+old buildings:</p>
+
+<p>The mention of obliteration suggests a third cause of
+the comparative want of mediæval buildings in the city&mdash;the
+constant depredations and changes of which she has
+been the subject. Ever since the time of Constantine
+Rome has been a city of destruction, and Christians have
+vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">By invaders.</span>
+fatal work. Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard<a name="FNanchor_344" id="FNanchor_344" href="#Footnote_344" class="fnanchor">[344]</a>,
+the ally of Hildebrand against Henry the Fourth, was far
+more ruinous than the attacks of the Goths or Vandals:
+and itself yields in atrocity to the sack of Rome in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1526 by the soldiers of the Catholic king and most
+pious Emperor Charles the Fifth<a name="FNanchor_345" id="FNanchor_345" href="#Footnote_345" class="fnanchor">[345]</a>. Since the days of the
+first barbarian invasions the Romans have gone on building
+<span class="sidenote">By the
+Romans of
+the Middle
+Ages.</span>
+with materials taken from the ancient temples, theatres,
+law-courts, baths and villas, stripping them of their gorgeous
+casings of marble, pulling down their walls for the
+sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels
+on the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus
+it has been with the memorials of paganism: a somewhat
+different cause has contributed to the disappearance of the
+mediæval churches. What pillage, or fanaticism, or the
+wanton lust of destruction did in the one case, the ostentatious
+zeal of modern times has done in the other.
+<span class="sidenote">By modern
+restorers of
+churches.</span>
+The
+era of the final establishment of the Popes as temporal
+sovereigns of the city, is also that of the supremacy of
+the Renaissance style in architecture. After the time of
+Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff against whom, it will be
+remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom made its last
+struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built in
+Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique produced
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span>
+a corresponding dislike to everything mediæval, a
+dislike conspicuous in men like Julius the Second and
+Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur of modern Rome
+may be said to begin. Not long after their time the great
+religious movement of the sixteenth century, while triumphing
+in the north of Europe, was in the south met
+and overcome by a counter-reformation in the bosom of
+the old church herself, and the construction or restoration
+of ecclesiastical buildings became again the passion of
+the devout<a name="FNanchor_346" id="FNanchor_346" href="#Footnote_346" class="fnanchor">[346]</a>. No employment, whether it be called an
+amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to
+the court and aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent;
+wealthy, and fond of displaying their wealth; full of good
+taste, and anxious, especially when advancing years had
+chased away youth's pleasures, to be full of good works also.
+Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great families
+vied with one another in building new churches and restoring
+or enlarging those they found till little of the old
+was left; raising over them huge cupolas, substituting
+massive pilasters for the single-shafted columns, adorning
+the interior with a profusion of rare marbles, of carving
+and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the best
+masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None
+but a bigoted mediævalist can refuse to acknowledge the
+warmth of tone, the repose, the stateliness, of the churches
+of modern Rome; but even in the midst of admiration
+the sated eye turns away from the wealth of ponderous
+ornament, and we long for the clear pure colour, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span>
+simple yet grand proportions that give a charm to the
+buildings of an earlier age.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Existing
+relics of the
+Dark and
+Middle
+Ages.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Mosaics.</p>
+
+<p>Few of the ancient churches have escaped untouched;
+many have been altogether rebuilt. There are also some,
+however, in which the modernizers of the sixteenth and
+subsequent centuries have spared two features of the old
+structure, its round apse or tribune and its bell-tower.
+The apse has its interior usually covered with mosaics,
+exceedingly interesting, both from the ideas they express
+and as the only monuments of pictorial art that remain
+to us from the Dark Ages. To speak of them, however,
+as they deserve to be spoken of, would involve a digression
+for which there is no space here.
+<span class="sidenote">The Bell-towers.</span>
+The campanile or
+bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of no great
+height, usually standing detached from the church, and
+having in its topmost, sometimes also in its other upper
+stories, several arcade windows, divided by tiny marble
+pillars<a name="FNanchor_347" id="FNanchor_347" href="#Footnote_347" class="fnanchor">[347]</a>. What with these campaniles, then far more
+numerous than they are now, and with the huge brick
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span>
+fortresses of the nobles, towers must have held in the
+landscape of the mediæval city very much the part which
+domes do now. Although less imposing, they were probably
+more picturesque, the rather as in the earlier part
+of the Middle Ages the houses and churches, which are
+now mostly crowded together on the flat of the Campus
+Martius, were scattered over the heights and slopes of
+the Cœlian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills<a name="FNanchor_348" id="FNanchor_348" href="#Footnote_348" class="fnanchor">[348]</a>. Modern
+Rome lies chiefly on the opposite or north-eastern side
+of the Capitol, and the change from the old to the new
+site of the city, which can hardly be said to have distinctly
+begun before the destruction of the south-western part of
+the town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until
+the sixteenth century. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1536 the Capitol was
+rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in anticipation of the entry
+of Charles the Fifth, upon foundations that had been
+laid by the first Tarquin; and the palace of the Senator,
+the greatest municipal edifice of Rome, which had hitherto
+looked towards the Forum and the Coliseum, was made
+to front in the direction of St. Peter's and the modern
+town.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Changed
+aspect of
+the city of
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of Rienzi
+than she is to the city of Trajan; just as the Roman
+church of the nineteenth century differs profoundly, however
+she may strive to disguise it, from the church of Hildebrand.
+But among all their changes, both church and
+city have kept themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion
+of foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Analogy
+between her
+architecture
+and her
+civil and
+ecclesiastical
+constitution.</span>
+faithfully preserved at all times something of an old
+Roman character. Latin Christianity inherited from the
+imperial system of old that firmly knit yet flexible organization,
+which was one of the grand secrets of its power:
+the great men whom mediæval Rome gave to or trained
+up for the Papacy were, like their progenitors, administrators,
+legislators, statesmen; seldom enthusiasts themselves,
+but perfectly understanding how to use and guide
+the enthusiasm of others&mdash;of the French and German
+crusaders, of men like Francis of Assisi and Dominic
+and Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism
+in Germany or England there was always, as
+there is still, a very perceptible difference. So also, if
+the analogy be not too fanciful, was it with Rome the
+city. Socially she seemed always drifting towards feudalism;
+<span class="sidenote">Preservation
+of an
+antique
+character
+in both.</span>
+yet she never fell into its grasp. Materially, her
+architecture was at one time considerably influenced by
+Gothic forms, yet Gothic never became, as in the rest of
+Europe, the dominant style. It approached Rome late,
+and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice
+its presence, and seem to pass almost without a break
+from the old Romanesque<a name="FNanchor_349" id="FNanchor_349" href="#Footnote_349" class="fnanchor">[349]</a>
+ to the Græco-Roman of the
+Renaissance. Thus regarded, the history of the city, both
+in her political state and in her buildings, is seen to be
+intimately connected with that of the Holy Empire itself.
+The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed the
+idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient
+world; Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully
+preserved their traditions: the names of her magistracies,
+the character of her buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and
+gave it a strange and shadowy life in the midst of new
+races and new forms of faith.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Relation of
+the City
+and the
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the
+unity of mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman
+dominion by which the old nationalities had been destroyed,
+with the addition of the Christian element which
+had created a new nationality that was also universal. By
+the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects heathen
+Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively,
+even the local dwelling-place of the civilized races of man.
+By the theology of the time Christian Rome had been
+made the mystical type of humanity, the one flock of the
+faithful scattered over the whole earth, the holy city whither,
+as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should
+come up to worship. She was not merely an image of
+the mighty world, she was the mighty world itself in
+miniature. The pastor of her local church is also the
+universal bishop; the seven suffragans who consecrate
+him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium,
+and the like, towns lying close round Rome: the
+cardinal priests and deacons who join these seven in
+electing him derive their title to be princes of the Church,
+the supreme spiritual council of the Christian world,
+from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts
+of the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is
+ruler of mankind; he is chosen by the acclamations of her
+people<a name="FNanchor_350" id="FNanchor_350" href="#Footnote_350" class="fnanchor">[350]</a>:
+he can be lawfully crowned nowhere but in one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span>
+of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem of old, the mother
+of us all.</p>
+
+<p>There is yet another way in which the record of the
+domestic contests of Rome throws light upon the history
+of the Empire. From the eleventh century to the fifteenth
+her citizens ceased not to demand in the name of the old
+republic their freedom from the tyranny of the nobles and
+the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large.
+These efforts&mdash;selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet
+men like Petrarch did not disdain to them their sympathy&mdash;issued
+from the same theories and were directed to the
+same ends as those which inspired Otto the Third and
+Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness
+to the same incapacity to form any ideal for the future
+except a revival of the past; the same belief that one
+universal state is both desirable and possible, but possible
+only through the means of Rome: the same refusal to
+admit that a right which has once existed can ever be
+extinguished.
+<span class="sidenote">Extinction
+of the
+Florentine
+republic,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1530.</span>
+In the days of the Renaissance these
+notions were passing silently away: the succeeding
+century brought with it misfortunes that broke the spirit
+of the nation. Italy was the battle-field of Europe: her
+wealth became the prey of a rapacious soldiery: the last
+and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an unfeeling
+Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a
+selfish Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence
+had been lost, the people turned away from politics to live
+for art and literature, and found, before many generations
+had passed, how little such exclusive devotion could compensate
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>
+for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit,
+and the activity of civic life. A century after the golden
+days of Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become
+frigid and affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Feelings of
+the modern
+Italians
+towards
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters
+were troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless
+contentment under the paternal sway of the Popes, received
+new ideas from the advent of the revolutionary
+armies of France, and have found the Papal system, since
+its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic
+despotism, far less tolerable than it was of yore.
+Our own days have seen the name of Rome become
+again a rallying-cry for the patriots of Italy, but in a sense
+most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of Arnold
+and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to universal
+domination: their descendants, more wisely, yet not more
+from patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek
+only to be the capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed
+for a monarchy of the world, a reign of peace and Christian
+brotherhood: those who invoke his name as the
+earliest prophet of their creed strive after an idea that
+never crossed his mind&mdash;the national union of Italy<a name="FNanchor_351" id="FNanchor_351" href="#Footnote_351" class="fnanchor">[351]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do
+not understand this passion for Rome as a capital, and
+think it their duty to lecture the Italians on their flightiness.
+The latter do not themselves pretend that the
+shores of the Tiber are a suitable site for a capital: Rome
+is lonely, unhealthy, and in a bad strategical position; she
+has no particular facilities for trade: her people, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>
+some fine qualities, are less orderly and industrious than
+the Tuscans or the Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy
+cries with one voice for Rome, firmly believing that
+national life can never thrill with a strong and steady
+pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation's
+heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome&mdash;Rome pagan
+as well as Christian&mdash;that they once played so grand a
+part in the drama of European history, and that they have
+now been able to attain that fervid sentiment of unity
+which has brought them at last together under one government.
+Whether they are right, whether if right they are
+likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it
+deserves to be noted that this enthusiasm for a famous
+name&mdash;for it is nothing more&mdash;is substantially the same
+feeling as that which created and hallowed the Holy
+Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the last few
+years on both sides of the Atlantic have proved that men
+are not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly
+governed by calculations of material profit and loss.
+Sentiments, fancies, theories, have not lost their power;
+the spirit of poetry has not wholly passed away from
+politics. And strange as seems to us the worship paid to
+the name of mediæval Rome by those who saw the sins
+and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an
+intenser feeling than is the imaginative reverence wherewith
+the Italians of to-day look on the city whence, as
+from a fountain, all the streams of their national life have
+sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they are all again
+to mingle.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER
+OF THE EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Wenzel,
+1378-1400.</p>
+<p class="sidenote">Rupert,
+1400-1410.</p>
+<p class="sidenote">Sigismund,
+1410-1438.</p>
+<p class="sidenote">Council of
+Constance.</p>
+
+<p>In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its
+lowest point. It had shot forth a fitful gleam under
+Sigismund, who in convoking and presiding over the
+council of Constance had revived one of the highest
+functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the
+first great œcumenical councils, and especially of the
+council of Nicæa, had established the principle that it
+belonged to the Emperor, even more properly than to the
+Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from the whole
+Christian world<a name="FNanchor_352" id="FNanchor_352" href="#Footnote_352" class="fnanchor">[352]</a>. The tenet commended itself to the
+reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the
+chancellor of Paris, whose aim it was, while making no
+changes in matters of faith, to correct the abuses which
+had grown up in discipline and government, and limit the
+power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general
+councils, to whom there was now attributed an immunity
+from error superior even to that which resided in the
+successor of Peter. And although it was only the sacerdotal
+body, not the whole Christian people, who were
+thus made the exponents of the universal religious consciousness,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span>
+the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing
+of that fuller freedom which was soon to follow. The
+existence of the Holy Empire and the existence of
+general councils were, as has been already remarked,
+necessary parts of one and the same theory<a name="FNanchor_353" id="FNanchor_353" href="#Footnote_353" class="fnanchor">[353]</a>,
+and it was
+therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion
+on which the whole of Latin Christendom met to
+deliberate and act as a single commonwealth<a name="FNanchor_354" id="FNanchor_354" href="#Footnote_354" class="fnanchor">[354]</a>
+ was also
+the last on which that commonwealth's lawful temporal
+head appeared in the exercise of his international functions.
+Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything
+more than a German monarch.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Weakness
+of Germany
+as compared
+with the
+other states
+of Europe.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Albert II.
+1438-1440.
+Frederick
+III. 1440-1493.</p>
+
+<p>It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain
+a monarch at all. When in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1493 the calamitous
+reign of Frederick the Third ended, it was impossible for
+the princes to see with unconcern the condition into which
+their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire.
+The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had
+been protected rather by the weakness of their enemies
+than by their own strength. From France there had been
+little to fear while the English menaced her on one side
+and the Burgundian dukes on the other: from England
+still less while she was torn by the strife of York and
+Lancaster. But now throughout Western Europe the
+power of the feudal oligarchies was broken; and its chief
+countries were being, by the establishment of fixed rules
+of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span>
+larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and
+aggressive military monarchies. Thus Spain became a
+great state by the union of Castile and Aragon, and the
+conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in England
+there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus
+France, enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the
+Eleventh and his successors, began to acquire that predominant
+influence on the politics of Europe which her
+commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of
+her people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition
+of her rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding
+century. Meantime there had appeared in the far
+East a foe still more terrible. The capture of Constantinople
+gave Turks a firm hold on Europe, and inspired
+them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century
+what Abderrahman and his Saracens had so nearly
+effected in the eighth&mdash;of establishing the faith of Islam
+through all the provinces that obeyed the Western as well
+as the Eastern Cæsars. The navies of the Ottoman
+Sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well-appointed
+armies pierced Hungary and threatened Vienna.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Loss of imperial
+territories.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen
+without: the frontiers of Germany herself were exposed
+by the loss of those adjoining territories which had formerly
+owned allegiance to the Emperors. Poland, once
+tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the interregnum, and
+had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the Teutonic
+knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck
+deeper roots, remained a member of the Empire; but
+the privileges she had obtained from Charles the Fourth,
+and the subsequent acquisition of Silesia and Moravia,
+made her virtually independent. The restless Hungarians
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>
+avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent
+inroads on her eastern border.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Italy.</p>
+
+<p>Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Henry
+the Seventh. Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it
+was as the hireling of Florence; Frederick the Third
+received the Lombard crown, but it no longer conveyed
+the slightest power. In the beginning of the fourteenth
+century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country
+from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty
+years later Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not
+and cannot reign to any purpose south of the Alps<a name="FNanchor_355" id="FNanchor_355" href="#Footnote_355" class="fnanchor">[355]</a>.
+Nevertheless the phantom of imperial authority lingers on
+for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline tyrants of
+the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic neighbours:
+even resolute republicans like the Florentines do
+not yet venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling
+to permit its exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth
+century, the names of Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to
+have any sense or meaning; the Pope was no longer the
+protector nor the Emperor the assailant of municipal
+freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared.
+But the old war-cries of the Church and the
+Empire were still repeated as they had been three centuries
+before, and the rival principles that had once enlisted the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>
+noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side had now sunk
+into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere
+unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long
+before in Greece was seen to be true here; the spirit of
+faction outlived the cause of faction, and became itself the
+new and prolific source of a useless, endless strife.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p>After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in
+Rome, and almost the only trace of that connection between
+Germany and Italy to maintain which so much had
+been risked and lost, was to be found in the obstinate
+belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims,
+though often purely dynastic and personal, could be
+enforced by an appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors.
+Because Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy
+with a Transalpine host they fancied themselves entitled
+to demand duchies for themselves and their relatives, and
+to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but
+their own was involved.</p>
+
+<p>The kingdom of Arles, if it had never added much
+strength to the Empire, had been useful as an outwork
+against France. And thus its loss&mdash;Dauphiné passing
+over, partly in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1350, finally in 1457, Provence in
+1486&mdash;proved a serious calamity, for it brought the
+French nearer to Switzerland, and opened to them a
+tempting passage into Italy. The Emperors did not for
+a time expressly renounce their feudal suzerainty over
+these lands, but if it was hard to enforce a feudal claim over
+a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how much harder to
+control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>On the north-west frontier, the fall in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1477 of the
+great principality which the dukes of French Burgundy
+were building up, was seen with pleasure by the Rhinelanders
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span>
+whom Charles the last duke had incessantly
+alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave
+France and Germany directly confronting each other, and
+it was soon seen that the balance of strength lay on the
+side of the less numerous but better organized and more
+active nation.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>Switzerland, too, could no longer be considered a part
+of the Germanic realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons,
+in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1313, was against the oppressions practised in the
+name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather than against
+the legitimate authority of Albert the Emperor. But
+although several subsequent sovereigns, and among them
+conspicuously Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured
+the Swiss liberties, yet while the antipathy between the
+Confederates and the territorial nobility gave a peculiar
+direction to their policy, the accession of new cantons to
+their body, and their brilliant success against Charles the
+Bold in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1477, made them proud of a separate
+national existence, and not unwilling to cast themselves
+loose from the stranded hulk of the Empire. Maximilian
+tried to reconquer them, but after a furious struggle, in
+which the valleys of Western Tyrol were repeatedly laid
+waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to
+give way, and in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1500 recognized them by treaty as
+practically independent. Not, however, till the peace of
+Westphalia, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, was the Swiss Confederation in
+the eye of public law a sovereign state, and even after
+that date some of the towns continued to stamp their
+coins with the double eagle of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Internal
+weakness.</p>
+
+<p>If those losses of territory were serious, far more
+serious was the plight in which Germany herself lay.
+The country had now become not so much an empire as
+an aggregate of very many small states, governed by sovereigns
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>
+who would neither remain at peace with each
+other nor combine against a foreign enemy, under the
+nominal presidency of an Emperor who had little lawful
+authority, and could not exert what he had<a name="FNanchor_356" id="FNanchor_356" href="#Footnote_356" class="fnanchor">[356]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence of
+the theory
+of the Empire
+as an
+international
+power upon
+the Germanic
+constitution.</p>
+
+<p>There was another cause, besides those palpable and
+obvious ones already enumerated, to which this state of
+things must be ascribed. That cause is to be found in
+the theory which regarded the Empire as an international
+power, supreme among Christian states. From the day
+when Otto the Great was crowned at Rome, the characters
+of German king and Roman Emperor were united in one
+person, and it has been shewn how that union tended
+more and more to become a fusion. If the two offices,
+in their nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by
+different persons, the Roman Empire would most probably
+have soon disappeared, while the German kingdom grew
+into a robust national monarchy. Their connection gave
+a longer life to the one and a feebler life to the other,
+while at the same time it transformed both. So long as
+Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed
+beneath their sceptre it was possible for the Emperors,
+though we need not suppose they troubled themselves
+with speculations on the matter, to distinguish their imperial
+authority, as international and more than half religious,
+from their royal, which was, or was meant to be,
+exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed
+bounds of Germany these international functions
+had ceased to have any meaning, when the rulers of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span>
+England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hungary, Poland,
+Italy, Burgundy, had in succession repudiated their control,
+and the Lord of the World found himself obeyed by
+none but his own people, he would not sink from being
+lord of the world into a simple Teutonic king, but continued
+to play in the more contracted theatre the part
+which had belonged to him in the wider. Thus did
+Germany instead of Europe become the sphere of his
+international jurisdiction; and her electors and princes,
+originally mere vassals, no greater than a Count of Champagne
+in France, or an Earl of Chester in England,
+stepped into the place which it had been meant that the
+several monarchs of Christendom should fill. If the power
+of their head had been what it was in the eleventh century,
+the additional dignity so assigned to them might
+have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and
+justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation
+to the sovereign had a great though at the time
+scarcely perceptible influence in changing the German
+Empire, as we may now begin to call it, from a state into
+a sort of confederation or body of states, united indeed
+for some of the purposes of government, but separate and
+independent for others more important. Thus, and that
+in its ecclesiastical as well as its civil organization, Germany
+became a miniature of Christendom<a name="FNanchor_357" id="FNanchor_357" href="#Footnote_357" class="fnanchor">[357]</a>. The Pope,
+though he retained the wider sway which his rival had
+lost, was in an especial manner the head of the German
+clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity: the three Rhenish
+prelates sat in the supreme college beside the four temporal
+electors: the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>
+was as essential a part of the constitution and as influential
+in the deliberations of the Diet as were the dukes, counts,
+and margraves of the Empire. The world-embracing
+Christian state was to have been governed by a hierarchy
+of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority
+should exactly correspond with those of the temporal
+magistracy, who were to be like them endowed with
+worldly wealth and power, and to enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate
+although distinct. This system, which it was in
+vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh
+and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which
+prevailed in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth
+<span class="sidenote">Position of
+the Emperor
+in Germany,
+compared
+with that
+of his predecessors
+in
+Europe.</span>
+century onwards. And conformably to the analogy which
+may be traced between the position of the archdukes of
+Austria in Germany and the place which the four Saxon
+and the two first Franconian Emperors had held in
+Europe, both being recognized as leaders and presidents
+in all that concerned the common interest, in the one case
+of the Christian, in the other of the whole German people,
+while neither of them had any power of direct government
+in the territories of local kings and lords; so the plan by
+which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to
+strengthen their national monarchy was in substance that
+which the Popes had followed when they conferred the
+crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The pontiffs
+then, like the electors now, finding that they could not
+give with the title the power which its functions demanded,
+were driven to the expedient of selecting for the office
+persons whose private resources enabled them to sustain
+it with dignity. The first Frankish and the first Saxon
+Emperors were chosen because they were already the
+mightiest potentates in Europe; Maximilian because he
+was the strongest of the German princes. The parallel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span>
+may be carried one step further. Just as under Otto and
+his successors the Roman Empire was Teutonized, so
+now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the
+sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the Teutonic
+Empire tends more and more to lose itself in an Austrian
+monarchy.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Beginning
+of the Hapsburg
+influence
+in
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Of that monarchy and of the power of the house of
+Hapsburg, Maximilian was, even more than Rudolph his
+ancestor, the founder<a name="FNanchor_358" id="FNanchor_358" href="#Footnote_358" class="fnanchor">[358]</a>. Uniting in his person those wide
+domains through Germany which had been dispersed
+among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming
+by his marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories
+of Charles the Bold, he was a prince greater than
+any who had sat on the Teutonic throne since the death
+of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke of
+Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Carinthia,
+feudal superior of lands, in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland,
+that he was great, not as Roman Emperor. For
+just as from him the Austrian monarchy begins, so with
+him the Holy Empire in its old meaning ends. That
+strange system of doctrines, half religious half political,
+which had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete,
+and the theory which had wrought such changes
+on Germany and Europe, passed ere long so completely
+from remembrance that we can now do no more than call
+up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have
+been.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Character
+of the epoch
+of Maximilian.</p>
+
+<p>For it is not only in imperial history that the accession
+of Maximilian is a landmark. That time&mdash;a time of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span>
+change and movement in every part of human life, a time
+when printing had become common, and books were no
+longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were
+replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder
+was changing the face of war&mdash;was especially marked by
+one event, to which the history of the world offers no
+parallel before or since, the discovery of America. The
+<span class="sidenote">The discovery
+of
+America.</span>
+cloud which from the beginning of things had hung thick
+and dark round the borders of civilization was suddenly
+lifted: the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had
+regarded the firm plain of earth and her encircling ocean
+ever since the days of Homer, vanished when astronomers
+and geographers taught them that she was an insignificant
+globe, which, so far from being the centre of the universe,
+was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least
+of its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto
+prevailed regarding the life of man and his relations to
+nature and the supernatural, were rudely shaken by the
+knowledge that was soon gained of tribes in every stage
+of culture and living under every variety of condition, who
+had developed apart from all the influences of the Eastern
+hemisphere. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1453 the capture of Constantinople
+and extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal
+blow to the prestige of tradition and an immemorial name:
+in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1492 there was disclosed a world whither the
+eagles of all-conquering Rome had never winged their
+flight. No one could now have repeated the arguments
+of the <i>De Monarchia</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Renaissance.</p>
+
+<p>Another movement, too, widely different, but even more
+momentous, was beginning to spread from Italy beyond
+the Alps. Since the barbarian tribes settled in the Roman
+provinces, no change had come to pass in Europe at all
+comparable to that which followed the diffusion of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>
+new learning in the latter half of the fifteenth century.
+Enchanted by the beauty of the ancient models of art
+and poetry, more particularly those of the Greeks, men
+came to regard with aversion and contempt all that had
+been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those
+of Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the
+writers who lived after Tacitus was debased: the architecture
+of the Middle Ages was barbarous: the scholastic
+philosophy was an odious and unmeaning jargon: Aristotle
+himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had
+been for three centuries more than a prophet or an
+apostle, was hurled from his throne, because his name
+was associated with the dismal quarrels of Scotists and
+Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical or
+sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular, for it is more or
+less all of these&mdash;the spirit which was the exact antithesis
+of mediæval mysticism, had swept in and carried men
+away, with all the force of a pent-up torrent. People were
+content to gratify their tastes and their senses, caring little
+for worship, and still less for doctrine: their hopes and
+ideas were no longer such as had made their forefathers
+crusaders or ascetics: their imagination was possessed
+by associations far different from those which had inspired
+Dante: they did not revolt against the church,
+but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had
+enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and graceful and
+intelligible. From all that was old and solemn, or that
+seemed to savour of feudalism or monkery, they turned
+away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so, in the
+midst of the Renaissance, so, under the consciousness
+that former things were passing from the earth, and a
+new order opening, so, with the other beliefs and memories
+of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights of the Roman
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span>
+Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here
+and there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy
+its universal supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless
+hearers on its duty to protect the Holy See; but to
+Germany it had become an ancient device for holding
+together the discordant members of her body, to its
+possessors an engine for extending the power of the
+house of Hapsburg.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Empire
+henceforth
+German.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth, therefore, we must look upon the Holy
+Roman Empire as lost in the German; and after a
+few faint attempts to resuscitate old-fashioned claims,
+nothing remains to indicate its origin save a sounding
+title and a precedence among the states of Europe.
+It was not that the Renaissance exerted any direct
+political influence either against the Empire or for it;
+men were too busy upon statues and coins and manuscripts
+to care what befel Popes or Emperors. It acted
+rather by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines
+upon which the Empire had rested, and thus leaving it,
+since it had previously no support but that of opinion,
+without any support at all.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Attempts
+to reform
+the Germanic
+Constitution.</p>
+
+<p>During Maximilian's eventful reign several efforts were
+made to construct a new constitution, but it is to German,
+rather than to imperial history that they properly belong.
+Here, indeed, the history of the Holy Empire might
+close, did not the title unchanged beckon us on, and
+were it not that the events of these later centuries may
+in their causes be traced back to times when the name
+of Roman was not wholly a mockery. It may be enough
+to remark that while the preservation of peace and the
+better administration of justice were in some measure
+attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber,
+established in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1495, schemes still more important
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>
+failed through the bad constitution of the Diet, and the
+unconquerable jealousy of the Emperor and the Estates.
+Maximilian refused to have his prerogative, indefinite
+though weak, restricted by the appointment of an
+administrative council<a name="FNanchor_359" id="FNanchor_359" href="#Footnote_359" class="fnanchor">[359]</a>,
+and when the Estates extorted it
+from him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet,
+which consisted of three colleges, electors, princes, and
+cities, the lower nobility and knights of the Empire were
+unrepresented, and resented every decree that affected
+their position, refusing to pay taxes in voting which they
+had no voice. The interests of the princes and the
+cities were often irreconcilable, while the strength of
+the crown would not have been sufficient to make its
+adhesion to the latter of any effect. The policy of
+conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried,
+succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content
+to gain their point by raising factions among the territorial
+magnates, and so to stave off the unwelcome
+demand for reform. After many earnest attempts to
+establish a representative system, such as might resist
+the tendency to local independence and cure the evils
+of separate administration, the hope so often baffled died
+<span class="sidenote">Causes of
+the failure
+of the projects
+of reform.</span>
+away. Forces were too nearly balanced: the sovereign
+could not extend his personal control, nor could the
+reforming party limit him by a strong council of government,
+for such a measure would have equally trenched on
+the independence of the states. So ended the first great
+effort for German unity, interesting from its bearing on
+the events and aspirations of our own day; interesting,
+too, as giving the most convincing proof of the decline of
+the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not
+propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>
+the authority his predecessors had once enjoyed, but by
+setting up a body which would resemble far more nearly
+the senate of a federal state than the administrative council
+which surrounds a monarch. The existing system
+developed itself further: relieved from external pressure,
+the princes became more despotic in their own territories:
+distinct codes were framed, and new systems of
+administration introduced: the insurgent peasantry were
+crushed down with more confident harshness. Already
+had leagues of princes and cities been formed<a name="FNanchor_360" id="FNanchor_360" href="#Footnote_360" class="fnanchor">[360]</a>
+ (that
+of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in Germany,
+and often the monarch's firmest support); now alliances
+begin to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a
+direction of formidable import from the rivalry which the
+pretensions on Naples and Milan of Charles the Eighth
+and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled between their
+house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have
+friends in the heart of the enemy's country, such as
+French intrigue found in the Elector Palatine and the
+count of Würtemberg.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Germanic
+nationality.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless this was also the era of the first conscious
+feeling of German nationality, as distinct from imperial.
+Driven in on all hands, with Italy and the Slavic lands
+and Burgundy hopelessly lost, Teutschland learnt to
+separate itself from Welschland<a name="FNanchor_361" id="FNanchor_361" href="#Footnote_361" class="fnanchor">[361]</a>. The Empire became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Change of
+Titles.</span>
+the representative of a narrower but more practicable
+national union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this
+date there appear several notable changes of style.
+<span lang="la">'Nationis Teutonicæ'</span> (Teutscher Nation) is added to the
+simple <span lang="la">'sacrum imperium Romanum.'</span> The title of
+<span lang="la">'Imperator electus,'</span> which Maximilian obtains leave from
+Pope Julius the Second to assume, when the Venetians
+prevent him from reaching his capital, marks the severance
+of Germany from Rome. No subsequent Emperor
+received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the
+Fifth was indeed crowned by the Pope's hands, but the
+ceremony took place at Bologna, and was therefore of
+at least questionable validity); each assumed after his
+German coronation<a name="FNanchor_362" id="FNanchor_362" href="#Footnote_362" class="fnanchor">[362]</a>
+<span class="sidenote">The title
+<span lang="la">'Imperator
+Electus.'</span></span>
+the title of Emperor Elect<a name="FNanchor_363" id="FNanchor_363" href="#Footnote_363" class="fnanchor">[363]</a>,
+and
+employed this in all documents issued in his name. But
+the word 'elect' being omitted when he was addressed
+by others, partly from motives of courtesy, partly because
+the old rules regarding the Roman coronation were forgotten,
+or remembered only by antiquaries, he was never
+called, even when formality was required, anything but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>
+Emperor. The substantial import of another title now
+first introduced is the same. Before Otto the First, the
+Teutonic king had called himself either 'rex' alone, or
+<span lang="la">'Francorum orientalium rex,'</span> or <span lang="la">'Francorum atque Saxonum
+rex:'</span> after <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 962, all lesser dignities had been
+merged in the <span lang="la">'Romanorum Imperator<a name="FNanchor_364" id="FNanchor_364" href="#Footnote_364" class="fnanchor">[364]</a>.</span>' To this
+Maximilian appended <span lang="la">'Germaniæ rex,'</span> or, adding Frederick
+the Second's bequest<a name="FNanchor_365" id="FNanchor_365" href="#Footnote_365" class="fnanchor">[365]</a>,
+<span lang="de">'König in Germanien und
+Jerusalem.'</span> It has been thought that from a mixture of
+the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor, has been
+formed the phrase 'German Emperor,' or less correctly,
+'Emperor of Germany<a name="FNanchor_366" id="FNanchor_366" href="#Footnote_366" class="fnanchor">[366]</a>.' But more probably the terms
+'German Emperor' and 'Emperor of Germany' are nothing
+but convenient corruptions of the technical description
+of the Germanic sovereign<a name="FNanchor_367" id="FNanchor_367" href="#Footnote_367" class="fnanchor">[367]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>That the Empire was thus sinking into a merely
+German power cannot be doubted. But it was only
+natural that those who lived at the time should not discern
+the tendency of events. Again and again did the
+restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery
+of Burgundy and Italy,&mdash;his last scheme was to adjust
+the relations of Papacy and Empire by becoming Pope
+himself: nor were successive Diets less zealous to check
+private war, still the scandal of Germany, to set right
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span>
+the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial
+officials permanent, and their administration uniform
+throughout the country. But while they talked the
+heavens darkened, and the flood came and destroyed
+them all.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON
+THE EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of course
+not as a religious movement, but as the cause of political
+changes, which still further rent the Empire, and struck
+at the root of the theory by which it had been created
+and upheld. Luther completed the work of Hildebrand.
+Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the
+German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic;
+the very Diet of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg
+proclaimed to an astonished church and Emperor that
+the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had framed and
+presented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central
+council of government. The great religious schism put
+an end to all such hopes, for it became a source of political
+disunion far more serious and permanent than any
+that had existed before, and it taught the two factions
+into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard
+each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile
+nations.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Accession
+of Charles
+V (1519-1558).</p>
+
+<p>The breach came at the most unfortunate time possible.
+After an election, more memorable than any preceding,
+an election in which Francis the First of France and
+Henry the Eighth of England had been his competitors,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span>
+a prince had just ascended the imperial throne who united
+dominions vaster than any Europe had seen since the
+days of his great namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders,
+and other parts of the Burgundian lands, as well as large
+regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed Charles: he drew
+inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the
+Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute
+and profound than that of Maximilian his grandfather,
+might have well been able, despite the stringency of his
+coronation engagements<a name="FNanchor_368" id="FNanchor_368" href="#Footnote_368" class="fnanchor">[368]</a>,
+and the watchfulness of the
+electors<a name="FNanchor_369" id="FNanchor_369" href="#Footnote_369" class="fnanchor">[369]</a>,
+to override their usurped privileges, and make
+himself practically as well as officially the head of the
+nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of
+his manner<a name="FNanchor_370" id="FNanchor_370" href="#Footnote_370" class="fnanchor">[370]</a>
+ and his Flemish speech never a favourite
+among the Germans, was in point of fact far stronger
+than Maximilian or any other Emperor who had reigned
+for three centuries. In Italy he succeeded, after long
+struggles with the Pope and the French, in rendering
+himself supreme: England he knew how to lead, by
+flattering Henry and cajoling Wolsey: from no state but
+France had he serious opposition to fear. To this
+strength his imperial dignity was indeed a mere accident:
+its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of
+Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once
+achieved, might could lose itself in right; and as an
+earlier Charles had veiled the terror of the Frankish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>
+sword under the mask of Roman election, so might his
+successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name
+of Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion
+as wide and more enduring.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Attitude of
+Charles towards
+the
+religious
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>One is tempted to speculate as to what might have
+happened had Charles espoused the reforming cause.
+His reverence for the Pope's person is sufficiently seen
+in the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement; the
+traditions of his office might have led him to tread in the
+steps of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even
+the timid Lewis the Fourth and the unstable Sigismund
+had sometimes ventured; the awakening zeal of the
+German people, exasperated by the exactions of the
+Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and
+enabled him, while moderating the excesses of change, to
+fix his throne on the deep foundations of national love.
+It may well be doubted&mdash;Englishmen at least have reason
+for the doubt&mdash;whether the Reformation would not have
+lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled
+in the meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside
+Charles's personal leaning to the old faith, and forgetting
+that he was king of the most bigoted race of Europe, his
+position as Emperor made him almost perforce the
+Pope's ally. The Empire had been called into being
+by Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic
+See as its highest earthly privilege, had latterly been
+wont, especially in Hapsburg hands, to lean on the
+papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on prescription
+and the traditions of immemorial reverence, how
+could it abandon the cause which the longest prescription
+and the most solemn authority had combined to consecrate?
+With the German clergy, despite occasional
+quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the lay
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>
+aristocracy; their heads had been the chief ministers of
+the crown; the advocacies of their abbeys were the last
+source of imperial revenue to disappear. To turn against
+them now, when furiously assailed by heretics; to abrogate
+claims hallowed by antiquity and a hundred laws,
+would be to pronounce its own sentence, and the fall of
+the eternal city's spiritual dominion must involve the fall
+of what still professed to be her temporal. Charles would
+have been glad to see some abuses corrected; but a
+broad line of policy was called for, and he cast in his lot
+with the Catholics<a name="FNanchor_371" id="FNanchor_371" href="#Footnote_371" class="fnanchor">[371]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Ultimate
+failure of
+the repressive
+policy
+of Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed
+here. The reconstruction of the old imperial system,
+upon the basis of Hapsburg power, proved in the end
+impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed actually
+accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league had been
+dissolved and its leaders captured, the whole country lay
+prostrate before Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg
+by the Spanish soldiery: he forced formularies of
+doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set up and
+pulled down whom he would throughout Germany, amid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>
+the muttered discontent of his own partisans. Then, as
+in the beginning of the year 1552, he lay at Innsbruck,
+fondly dreaming that his work was done, waiting the
+spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic
+fathers had again met to settle the world's faith for it,
+news was suddenly brought that North Germany was in
+arms, and that the revolted Maurice of Saxony had seized
+Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the Bavarian
+Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled
+southwards over the snows of the Brenner, then eastwards,
+under the blood-red cliffs of dolomite that wall in the
+Pusterthal, far away into the valleys of Carinthia: the
+council of Trent broke up in consternation: Europe saw
+and the Emperor acknowledged that in his fancied triumph
+over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than
+block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When
+this last effort to produce religious uniformity by violence
+had failed as hopelessly as the previous devices of holding
+discussions of doctrine and calling a general council,
+a sort of armistice was agreed to in 1554, which lasted
+in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years.
+Four years after this disappointment of the hopes and
+projects which had occupied his busy life, Charles, weighed
+down by cares and with the shadow of coming death
+already upon him, resigned the sovereignty of Spain and
+the Indies, of Flanders and Naples, into the hands of his
+son Philip the Second; while the imperial sceptre passed
+to his brother Ferdinand, who had been some time before
+chosen King of the Romans. Ferdinand was content to
+<span class="sidenote">Ferdinand
+I,
+1558-1564.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">Maximilian
+II,
+1564-1576.</span>
+leave things much as he found them, and the amiable
+Maximilian II, who succeeded him, though personally
+well inclined to the Protestants, found himself fettered by
+his position and his allies, and could do little or nothing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Destruction
+of the
+Germanic
+state-system.</span>
+to quench the flame of religious and political hatred.
+Germany remained divided into two omnipresent factions,
+and so further than ever from harmonious action, or
+a tightening of the long-loosened bond of feudal allegiance.
+The states of either creed being gathered into
+a league, there could no longer be a recognized centre of
+authority for judicial or administrative purposes. Least
+of all could a centre be sought in the Emperor, the leader
+of the papal party, the suspected foe of every Protestant.
+Too closely watched to do anything of his own authority,
+too much committed to one party to be accepted as
+a mediator by the other, he was driven to attain his own
+objects by falling in with the schemes and furthering the
+selfish ends of his adherents, by becoming the accomplice
+or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes addressed
+themselves to reduce a power of which they had
+still an over-sensitive dread, and found when they exacted
+from each successive sovereign engagements more stringent
+than his predecessor's, that in this, and this alone,
+their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to join them.
+Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient
+privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little
+influence on the government except that which his intrigues
+might exercise. Nay, it became almost impossible
+to maintain a government at all. For when the Reformers
+found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they
+declared that in matters of religion a majority ought not
+to bind a minority. As the measures were few which
+did not admit of being reduced to this category, for whatever
+benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic prince
+injured the Protestants, nothing could be done save by
+the assent of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce
+anything was done; and even the courts of justice were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>
+stopped by the disputes that attended the appointment of
+every judge or assessor.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Alliance
+of the Protestants
+with
+France.</p>
+
+<p>In the foreign politics of Germany another result
+followed. Inferior in military force and organization,
+the Protestant princes at first provided for their safety
+by forming leagues among themselves. The device
+was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch
+himself before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous
+forms of the imperial system. Soon they began to look
+beyond the Vosges, and found that France, burning heretics
+at home, was only too happy to smile on free opinions
+elsewhere. The alliance was easily struck; Henry the
+Second assumed in 1552 the title of 'Protector of the
+Germanic liberties,' and a pretext for interference was
+never wanting in future.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Reformation
+spirit, and
+its influence
+upon the
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>These were some of the visible political consequences
+of the great religious schism of the sixteenth century.
+But beyond and above them there was a change far more
+momentous than any of its immediate results. There is
+perhaps no event in history which has been represented
+in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has
+been called a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of
+the Teutonic races against the Italians, or of the kingdoms
+of Europe against the universal monarchy of the
+Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of long-repressed
+anger at the luxury of the prelates and the
+manifold abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a
+renewal of the youth of the church by a return to primitive
+forms of doctrine. All these indeed to some extent
+it was; but it was also something more profound, and
+fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It
+was in its essence the assertion of the principle of individuality&mdash;that
+is to say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span>
+the personal consciousness had been a faint and broken
+reflection of the universal; obedience had been held the
+first of religious duties; truth had been conceived as a
+something external and positive, which the priesthood who
+were its stewards were to communicate to the passive
+layman, and whose saving virtue lay not in its being felt
+and known by him to be truth, but in a purely formal and
+unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which
+mediæval Christianity still cherished were obscured by the
+limited, rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been
+forced on them in times of ignorance and barbarism.
+That which was in its nature abstract, had been able to
+survive only by taking a concrete expression. The universal
+consciousness became the Visible Church: the Visible
+Church hardened into a government and degenerated into
+a hierarchy. Holiness of heart and life was sought by outward
+works, by penances and pilgrimages, by gifts to the
+poor and to the clergy, wherein there dwelt often little
+enough of a charitable mind. The presence of divine truth
+among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence
+on earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope;
+under another, by the reception of the present Deity in the
+sacrifice of the mass; in a third, by the doctrine that the
+priest's power to remit sins and administer the sacraments
+depended upon a transmission of miraculous gifts which
+can hardly be called other than physical. All this system
+of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the
+church as a worldly and therefore obstructive power, have
+expanded, renewed, and purified itself during the four
+centuries that had elapsed since its completion<a name="FNanchor_372" id="FNanchor_372" href="#Footnote_372" class="fnanchor">[372]</a>,
+and
+thus remained in harmony with the growing intelligence
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span>
+of mankind, was suddenly rent in pieces by the convulsion
+of the Reformation, and flung away by the more
+religious and more progressive peoples of Europe. That
+which was external and concrete, was in all things to be
+superseded by that which was inward and spiritual. It
+was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it continued
+to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless
+an independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force,
+and was to be in all things active rather than passive.
+Truth was no longer to be truth to the soul until it should
+have been by the soul recognized, and in some measure
+even created; but when so recognized and felt, it is able
+under the form of faith to transcend outward works and
+to transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes
+the living principle within each man's breast, infinite
+itself, and expressing itself infinitely through his thoughts
+and acts. He who as a spiritual being was delivered
+from the priest, and brought into direct relation with the
+Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, to be enrolled a
+member of a visible congregation of his fellows, that he
+might live a pure and useful life among them. Thus by
+the Reformation the Visible Church as well as the priesthood
+<span class="sidenote">Effect of
+the Reformation
+on
+the doctrines
+regarding
+the Visible
+Church.</span>
+lost that paramount importance which had hitherto
+belonged to it, and sank from being the depositary of all
+religious tradition, the source and centre of religious life,
+the arbiter of eternal happiness or misery, into a mere
+association of Christian men, for the expression of mutual
+sympathy and the better attainment of certain common
+ends. Like those other doctrines which were now assailed
+by the Reformation, this mediæval view of the nature of
+the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be
+said, necessarily developed between the third and the twelfth
+century, and must therefore have represented the thoughts
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>
+and satisfied the wants of those times. By the Visible
+Church the flickering lamp of knowledge and literary
+culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended
+through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the
+whole theological fabric of which it formed a part, it was
+now hard and unfruitful, identified with its own worst
+abuses, capable apparently of no further development,
+and unable to satisfy minds which in growing stronger
+had grown more conscious of their strength. Before the
+awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and
+lifeless system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked
+the free activity of thought, whose bestowal of worldly
+power and wealth on spiritual pastors drew them away
+from their proper duties, and which by maintaining alongside
+of the civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival government,
+maintained also that separation of the spiritual element
+in man from the secular, which had been so complete
+and so pernicious during the Middle Ages, which
+debases life, and severs religion from morality.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Consequent
+effect upon
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement:
+and it is the Empire, not the Church, that we have
+here to consider. The distinction is only apparent. The
+Holy Empire is but another name for the Visible Church.
+It has been shewn already how mediæval theory constructed
+the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman
+Empire was the shadow of the Popedom&mdash;designed to rule
+men's bodies as the pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike
+claimed obedience on the ground that Truth is One, and
+that where there is One faith there must be One government<a name="FNanchor_373" id="FNanchor_373" href="#Footnote_373" class="fnanchor">[373]</a>.
+And, therefore, since it was this very principle of
+Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span>
+a revolt against despotism of every kind; it erected the
+standard of civil as well as of religious liberty, since both
+of them are needed, though needed in a different measure,
+for the worthy development of the individual spirit. The
+Empire had never been conspicuously the antagonist of
+popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth,
+far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty
+princes of Germany. But submission, and submission on
+the ground of indefeasible transmitted right, upon the
+ground of Catholic traditions and the duty of the Christian
+magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as the
+parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant
+claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius
+Cæsar it had passed through many phases, but in none of
+them had it ever been a constitutional monarchy, pledged
+to the recognition of popular rights. And hence the
+indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the province
+of government and exalt the privileges of the subject
+was as plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant
+claim of the right of private judgment was to the pretensions
+of the Papacy and the priesthood.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Immediate
+influence of
+the Reformation
+on political
+and religious
+liberty.</p>
+
+<p>The remark must not be omitted in passing, how much
+less than might have been expected the religious movement
+did at first actually effect in the way of promoting
+either political progress or freedom of conscience. The
+habits of centuries were not to be unlearnt in a few years,
+and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence
+and activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a
+time. By a few inflammable minds liberty was carried
+into antinomianism, and produced the wildest excesses of
+life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects arose, refusing
+to conform to the ordinary rules without which human
+society could not subsist. But these commotions neither
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Conduct of
+the Protestant
+States.</span>
+spread widely nor lasted long. Far more pervading and
+more remarkable was the other error, if that can be called
+an error which was the almost unavoidable result of the
+circumstances of the time. The principles which had led
+the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman
+Church, should have taught them to bear with the
+opinions of others, and warned them from the attempt to
+connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with
+the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought
+they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties;
+for faith, upon their own shewing, had no value save when
+it was freely given. A church which does not claim to be
+infallible is bound to allow that some part of the truth
+may possibly be with its adversaries: a church which
+permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to
+revelation has no right first to argue with people and then
+to punish them if they are not convinced. But whether
+it was that men only half saw what they had done, or that
+finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they
+welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the
+result was that religion, or rather religious creeds, began
+to be involved with politics more closely than had ever
+been the case before. Through the greater part of Christendom
+wars of religion raged for a century or more, and
+down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy
+continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe.
+In almost every country the form of doctrine which
+triumphed associated itself with the state, and maintained
+the despotic system of the Middle Ages, while it forsook
+the grounds on which that system had been based. It
+was thus that there arose National Churches, which were
+to be to the several countries of Europe that which the
+Church Catholic had been to the world at large; churches,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>
+that is to say, each of which was to be co-extensive with
+its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive
+political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive
+powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to
+find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches
+might be made to rest, for they could not, like the old
+church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines;
+they could not claim to have in any one man or
+body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could
+not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument,
+whatever it may be worth, '<i lang="la">Securus iudicat orbis terrarum</i>.'
+But in practice these difficulties were soon got over, for the
+dominant party in each state, if it was not infallible, was
+at any rate quite sure that it was right, and could attribute
+the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity.
+The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of
+the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland,
+imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship,
+and kept up the practices of mediæval intolerance without
+their justification. Persecution, which might be at least
+excused in an infallible Catholic and Apostolic Church,
+was peculiarly odious when practised by those who were
+not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their
+neighbours, and who had just revolted from the most
+ancient and venerable authority in the name of rights
+which they now denied to others. If union with the
+visible church by participation in a material sacrament be
+necessary to eternal life, persecution may be held a duty,
+a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
+heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving
+faith be possible out of one visible body and under a
+diversity of external forms, persecution becomes at once
+a crime and a folly. Therefore the intolerance of Protestants,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>
+if the forms it took were less cruel than those practised
+by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible;
+for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf
+than motives of political expediency, or, more often, the
+mere headstrong passion of a ruler or a faction to silence
+the expressions of any opinions but their own. To enlarge
+upon this theme, did space permit it, would not be to
+digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the
+Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far
+less an institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is
+not too much to say, that the ideas which have but recently
+ceased to prevail regarding the duty of the magistrate to
+compel uniformity in doctrine and worship by the civil
+arm, may all be traced to the relation which that doctrine
+established between the Roman Church and the Roman
+Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church
+itself.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence
+of the Reformation
+on the name
+and associations
+of
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the
+Empire have been now described: its immediate political
+results, and its far more profound doctrinal importance,
+as implanting new ideas regarding the nature of freedom
+and the province of government. A third, though apparently
+almost superficial, cannot be omitted. Its name
+and its traditions, little as they retained of their former
+magic power, were still such as to excite the antipathy of
+the German reformers. The form which the doctrine of
+the supreme importance of one faith and one body of the
+faithful had taken was the dominion of the ancient
+capital of the world through her spiritual head, the
+Roman bishop, and her temporal head, the Emperor.
+As the names of Roman and Christian had been once
+convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and
+Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>
+what had hitherto been one conception, attacked Romanism
+but not Catholicity, and formed religious communities
+which, while continuing to call themselves Christian, repudiated
+the form with which Christianity had been so
+long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded
+upon the assumption that the limits of Church and State
+are exactly co-extensive, a change which withdrew half
+of its subjects from the one body while they remained
+members of the other, transformed it utterly, destroyed
+the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and forced
+the Emperor into a strange and incongruous position.
+To his Protestant subjects he was merely the head of the
+administration, to the Catholics he was also the Defender
+and Advocate of their church. Thus from being chief of
+the whole state he became the chief of a party within it,
+the <span lang="la">Corpus Catholicorum</span>, as opposed to the <span lang="la">Corpus
+Evangelicorum</span>; he lost what had been hitherto his most
+holy claim to the obedience of the subject; the awakened
+feeling of German nationality was driven into hostility to
+an institution whose title and history bound it to the
+centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting for seven centuries
+in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic nations
+cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors
+had resisted Julius Cæsar and Germanicus. Two mutually
+repugnant systems could not exist side by side without
+striving to destroy one another. The instincts of theological
+sympathy overcame the duties of political allegiance,
+and men who were subjects both of the Empire
+and of their local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who
+espoused their doctrines and protected their worship.
+For in North Germany, princes as well as people were
+mostly Lutheran: in the southern and especially the
+south-eastern lands, where the magnates held to the old
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>
+faith, Protestants were scarcely to be found except in the
+free cities. The same causes which injured the Emperor's
+position in Germany swept away the last semblance of
+his authority through other countries. In the great
+struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and
+France, of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as
+the ally of Spain, of the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he
+of whom it had been believed a century before that by
+nothing but his existence was the coming of Antichrist on
+earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines
+either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion.
+The earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany
+was felt through Europe; its states and peoples marshalled
+themselves under two hostile banners, and with the Empire's
+expiring power vanished that united Christendom
+it had been created to lead<a name="FNanchor_374" id="FNanchor_374" href="#Footnote_374" class="fnanchor">[374]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Troubles of
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Rudolf II,
+1576-1612.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew
+themselves as early as that famous Diet of Worms, from
+Luther's appearance at which, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1521, we may
+date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as
+the end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be
+placed earlier than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France
+than the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685,
+so it was not till after more than a century of doubtful
+strife that the new order of things was fully and finally
+established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg,
+like most treaties on the basis of <i lang="la">uti possidetis</i>, were no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Matthias,
+1612-1619.</span>
+better than a hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously
+made to be broken. The church lands which
+Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors urged the
+Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing
+ground of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of
+its antagonists sufficiently to abstain from insulting or
+persecuting their modes of worship, and the smouldering
+hate of half a century was kindled by the troubles
+of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Thirty
+Years'
+War,
+1618-1648.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Ferdinand
+II, <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1619-37.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Plans of
+Ferdinand
+II.</p>
+
+<p>The imperial sceptre had now passed from the indolent
+and vacillating Rudolf II (1576-1612), the corrupt
+and reckless policy of whose ministers had done much to
+exasperate the already suspicious minds of the Protestants,
+into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second<a name="FNanchor_375" id="FNanchor_375" href="#Footnote_375" class="fnanchor">[375]</a>. Jealous,
+bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing
+his plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in
+action, the house of Hapsburg could have had no abler
+and no more unpopular leader in their second attempt to
+turn the German Empire into an Austrian military
+monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the
+accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had
+been. Leagued with Spain, backed by the Catholics of
+Germany, served by such a leader as Wallenstein, Ferdinand
+proposed nothing less than the extension of the
+Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his crown's
+full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland
+were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be
+reconquered with the help of Spain: Maximilian of
+Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded with principalities
+in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general was
+all but master of Northern Germany when the successful
+resistance of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Gustavus
+Adolphus.</span>
+the war. Soon after (<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1630), Gustavus Adolphus
+crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an impending
+reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings
+had already alarmed even the Catholic princes.
+Of his own authority he had put the Elector Palatine
+and other magnates to the ban of the Empire: he had
+transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated
+the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war,
+to be portioned out at his pleasure; had unsettled all
+possession by requiring the restitution of church property
+occupied since <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1555. The Protestants were
+helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of the
+flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose
+it: the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish
+king. In four campaigns he destroyed the armies and
+the prestige of the Emperor; devastated his lands, emptied
+his treasury, and left him at last so enfeebled that no
+subsequent successes could make him again formidable.
+Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the
+Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the
+Lutheran and the Calvinist party&mdash;some, like the Saxon
+elector, most inglorious of his inglorious house, bribed by
+the cunning Austrian; others afraid to stir lest a reverse
+<span class="sidenote">Ferdinand
+III,
+1637-1658.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">The peace of
+Westphalia.</span>
+should expose them unprotected to his vengeance&mdash;that
+the issue of the long protracted contest would have
+gone against them but for the interference of France.
+It was the leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress
+the house of Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited:
+hence he fostered Protestantism abroad while trampling
+it down at home. The triumph he did not live to see was
+sealed in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the
+combatants, and the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück
+were thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN
+THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p>The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the
+exception perhaps of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815,
+the most important of those attempts to reconstruct by
+diplomacy the European states-system which have played
+so large a part in modern history. It is important,
+however, not as marking the introduction of new principles,
+but as winding up the struggle which had convulsed
+Germany since the revolt of Luther, sealing its results,
+and closing definitively the period of the Reformation.
+Although the causes of disunion which the religious
+movement called into being had now been at work for
+more than a hundred years, their effects were not fully
+seen till it became necessary to establish a system which
+should represent the altered relations of the German
+states. It may thus be said of this famous peace, as of
+the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
+Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition
+of things already in existence, but which by being legalized
+acquired new importance. To all parties alike the result
+of the Thirty Years' War was thoroughly unsatisfactory:
+to the Protestants, who had lost Bohemia, and still were
+obliged to hold an inferior place in the electoral college
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>
+and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced to
+permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the
+church lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers: to the
+princes, who could not throw off the burden of imperial
+supremacy: to the Emperor, who could turn that supremacy
+to no practical account. No other conclusion
+was possible to a contest in which every one had been
+vanquished and no one victorious; which had ceased
+because while the reasons for war continued the means of
+war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial advantage
+remained with the German princes, for they gained the
+formal recognition of that territorial independence whose
+origin may be placed as far back as the days of Frederick
+the Second, and the maturity of which had been hastened
+by the events of the last preceding century. It was,
+indeed, not only recognized but justified as rightful and
+necessary. For while the political situation, to use a
+current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred
+years, the eyes with which men regarded it had changed
+still more. Never by their fiercest enemies in earlier
+times, not once by the Popes or Lombard republicans in
+the heat of their strife with the Franconian and Swabian
+Cæsars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere
+German kings, or their claim to be the lawful heirs of
+Rome denied. The Protestant jurists of the sixteenth or
+rather of the seventeenth century were the first persons who
+ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the world,
+and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a
+German monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious
+reverence need prevent its subjects from making the best
+terms they could for themselves, and controlling a sovereign
+whose religious predilections made him the friend of
+their enemies.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The treatise
+of Hippolytus
+a
+Lapide.</p>
+
+<p>It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or
+Peter de Andlo to a book published shortly before <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1648, under the name of Hippolytus a Lapide<a name="FNanchor_376" id="FNanchor_376" href="#Footnote_376" class="fnanchor">[376]</a>,
+and
+notice the matter-of-fact way, the almost contemptuous
+spirit in which, disregarding the traditional glories of the
+Empire, he comments on its actual condition and prospects.
+Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist
+Chemnitz assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous,
+that the Germanic constitution must be treated
+entirely as a native growth: that the <span lang="la">'lex regia'</span> (so much
+discussed and so often misunderstood) and the whole
+system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperor
+had used so dexterously, were in their applications to
+Germany not merely incongruous but positively absurd.
+With eminent learning, Chemnitz examines the early
+history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing contests
+of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral
+that the power of the former has been always dangerous,
+and is now more dangerous than ever, and then launches
+out into a long invective against the policy of the Hapsburgs,
+an invective which the ambition and harshness of
+the late Emperor made only too plausible. The one real
+remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states concisely&mdash;<span lang="la">'domus
+Austriacæ extirpatio:'</span> but, failing this,
+he would have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in
+every way, and provide means for resisting or dethroning
+him. It was by these views, which seem to have made a
+profound impression in Germany, that the states, or
+rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were
+guided in the negotiations of Osnabrück and Münster.
+By extorting a full recognition of the sovereignty of all
+the princes, Catholics and Protestants alike, in their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Rights of
+the Emperor
+and
+the Diet, as
+settled in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648.</span>
+respective territories, they bound the Emperor from any
+direct interference with the administration, either in particular
+districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of
+public importance, including the rights of making war or
+peace, of levying contributions, raising troops, building
+fortresses, passing or interpreting laws, were henceforth
+to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The Aulic
+Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial
+oppression, and always of imperial intrigue, was so
+restricted as to be harmless for the future. The <span lang="la">'reservata'</span>
+of the Emperor were confined to the rights of granting
+titles and confirming tolls. In matters of religion, an
+exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality was established
+between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and
+the right of <span lang="la">'Itio in partes,'</span> that is to say, of deciding
+questions in which religion was involved by amicable
+negotiations between the Protestant and Catholic states,
+instead of by a majority of votes in the Diet, was definitely
+conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
+declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any
+Catholic prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany
+to Rome was snapped, the last of the principles by
+virtue of which the Empire had existed was abandoned.
+For the Empire now contained and recognized as its
+members persons who formed a visible body at open war
+with the Holy Roman Church; and its constitution admitted
+schismatics to a full share in all those civil rights
+which, according to the doctrines of the early Middle
+Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the
+communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of
+Westphalia was therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty
+of Rome, and of the theory of Church and State
+with which the name of Rome was associated. And in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span>
+this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth,
+who commanded his legate to protest against it, and
+subsequently declared it void by the bull <span lang="la">'Zelo domus
+Dei<a name="FNanchor_377" id="FNanchor_377" href="#Footnote_377" class="fnanchor">[377]</a>.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Loss of
+imperial
+territories.</p>
+
+<p>The transference of power within the Empire, from its
+head to its members, was a small matter compared with
+the losses which the Empire suffered as a whole. The
+real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia were those who
+had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the
+Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac,
+the Austrian part of Alsace, and the lands of the three
+bishoprics in Lorraine&mdash;Metz, Toul, and Verdun, which
+her armies had seized in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1552: to Sweden, northern
+Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however,
+this difference between the position of the two, that
+whereas Sweden became a member of the German Diet
+for what she received (as the king of Holland was, until
+1866-7, a member for Dutch Luxemburg, and as the
+kings of Denmark, up till the accession of the present sovereign,
+were for Holstein), the acquisitions of France were
+delivered over to her in full sovereignty, and for ever
+severed from the Germanic body. And as it was by their
+aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been won,
+these two states obtained at the same time what was more
+valuable than territorial accessions&mdash;the right of interfering
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>
+at imperial elections, and generally whenever the
+provisions of the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster,
+which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to be
+endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further
+narrowed by the final separation of two countries, once
+integral parts of Germany, and up to this time legally
+members of her body. Holland and Switzerland were, in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, declared independent.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Germany
+after the
+Peace.</p>
+
+<p>The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history
+not less clearly marked than the coronation of Otto the
+Great, or the death of Frederick the Second. As from
+the days of Maximilian it had borne a mixed or transitional
+character, well expressed by the name Romano-Germanic,
+so henceforth it is in everything but title purely
+and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no
+longer an Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of
+the loosest sort. For it had no common treasury, no
+efficient common tribunals<a name="FNanchor_378" id="FNanchor_378" href="#Footnote_378" class="fnanchor">[378]</a>,
+no means of coercing a refractory
+member<a name="FNanchor_379" id="FNanchor_379" href="#Footnote_379" class="fnanchor">[379]</a>;
+its states were of different religions,
+were governed according to different forms, were administered
+judicially and financially without any regard to
+each other. The traveller in Central Germany now is
+amused to find, every hour or two, by the change in the
+soldiers' uniforms, and the colour of the stripes on the
+railway fences, that he has passed out of one and into
+another of its miniature kingdoms. Much more surprised
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Number of
+petty independent
+states: effects
+of such
+a system on
+Germany.</span>
+and embarrassed would he have been a century ago, when,
+instead of the present thirty-two there were three hundred
+petty principalities between the Alps and the Baltic, each
+with its own laws, its own courts (in which the ceremonious
+pomp of Versailles was faintly reproduced), its little
+armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and custom-houses
+on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
+officials, presided over by a prime minister who was
+generally the unworthy favourite of his prince and the
+pensioner of some foreign court. This vicious system,
+which paralyzed the trade, the literature, and the political
+thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some
+time, but did not become fully established until the Peace
+of Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial
+control, had made them despots in their own territories.
+The impoverishment of the inferior nobility and the decline
+of the commercial cities caused by a war that had lasted
+a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to the
+power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism
+supreme just where absolutism wants all its justification,
+in states too small to have any public opinion, states in
+which everything depends on the monarch, and the
+monarch depends on his favourites. After <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648 the
+provincial estates or parliaments became obsolete in most
+of these principalities, and powerless in the rest. Germany
+was forced to drink to its very dregs the cup of feudalism,
+feudalism from which all the feelings that once ennobled it
+had departed.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Feudalism
+in France,
+England,
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>It is instructive to compare the results of the system of
+feudality in the three chief countries of modern Europe.
+In France, the feudal head absorbed all the powers
+of the state, and left to the aristocracy only a few privileges,
+odious indeed, but politically worthless. In England,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span>
+the mediæval system expanded into a constitutional
+monarchy, where the oligarchy was still strong, but the
+commons had won the full recognition of equal civil
+rights. In Germany, everything was taken from the
+sovereign, and nothing given to the people; the representatives
+of those who had been fief-holders of the first
+and second rank before the Great Interregnum were now
+independent potentates; and what had been once a
+monarchy was now an aristocratic federation. The Diet,
+originally an assembly of magnates meeting from time to
+time like our early English Parliaments, became in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1654
+a permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities
+were represented by their envoys. In other words, it was
+now not a national council, but an international congress
+of diplomatists.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Causes of
+the continuance
+of
+the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal, rights
+to state rights was so complete, we may wonder that the
+farce of an Empire should have been retained at all. A
+mere German Empire would probably have perished; but
+the Teutonic people could not bring itself to abandon the
+venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans were
+of all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suffering;
+and as, if the Empire had fallen, something
+must have been erected in its place, they preferred to
+work on with the clumsy machine so long as it would
+work at all. Properly speaking, it has no history after
+this; and the history of the particular states of Germany
+which takes its place is one of the dreariest chapters in the
+annals of mankind. It would be hard to find, from the
+Peace of Westphalia to the French Revolution, a single
+grand character or a single noble enterprise; a single
+sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance
+in which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>
+passions of their princes. The military history of those
+times will always be read with interest; but free and progressive
+countries have a history of peace not less rich
+and varied than that of war; and when we ask for an
+account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth
+century, we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing
+courts, and the wrangling of diplomatists at never-ending
+congresses.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Empire
+and the
+Balance of
+power.</p>
+
+<p>Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it was
+not without its importance to the neighbouring countries,
+with whose fortunes it had been linked by the Peace of
+Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the political
+system of Europe was to revolve: the scales, so to speak,
+which marked the equipoise of power that had become
+the grand object of the policy of all states. This modern
+caricature of the plan by which the theorists of the fourteenth
+century had proposed to keep the world at peace,
+used means less noble and attained its end no better than
+theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is
+desirable to prevent a universal monarchy in Europe.
+But it may be asked whether a system can be considered
+successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia to seize
+Silesia, which did not check the aggressions of Russia
+and France upon their neighbours, which was for ever
+bartering and exchanging lands in every part of Europe
+without thought of the inhabitants, which permitted and
+has never been able to redress that greatest of public misfortunes,
+the partitionment of Poland. And if it be said
+that bad as things have been under this system, they
+would have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain
+from asking whether any evils could have been greater
+than those which the people of Europe have suffered
+through constant wars with each other, and through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>
+withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of
+their population from useful labour to be wasted in maintaining
+a standing army.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Position of
+the Empire
+in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>The result of the extended relations in which Germany
+now found herself to Europe, with two foreign kings
+never wanting an occasion, one of them never the wish,
+to interfere, was that a spark from her set the Continent
+ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to spread
+hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or
+created so many thrones abroad. The Duke of Holstein
+acquired Denmark, the Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector
+of Saxony Poland, the Elector of Hanover England, the
+Archduke of Austria Hungary and Bohemia, while the
+Elector (originally Margrave) of Brandenburg obtained,
+on the strength of non-imperial territories to the north-eastward
+which had come into his hands, the style and
+title of King of Prussia. Thus the Empire seemed again
+about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far different
+from that which those words would have expressed under
+Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half
+is a dismal list of losses and disgraces. The chief external
+danger was from French influence, for a time
+supreme, always menacing. For though Lewis the Fourteenth,
+on whom, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1658, half the electoral college
+wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end
+of his life an object of intense hatred, officially entitled
+'Hereditary enemy of the Holy Empire<a name="FNanchor_380" id="FNanchor_380" href="#Footnote_380" class="fnanchor">[380]</a>
+,' France had
+nevertheless a strong party among the princes always at
+her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian electors were her
+favourite tools. The '<span lang="fr"><i>réunions</i></span>' begun in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1680,
+a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added
+Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span>
+Franche Comté to the monarchy of Lewis, and brought
+him nearer the heart of the Empire; his ambition and
+cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by the
+devastation of the Rhine countries; the ultimate though
+short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when
+Marshal Belleisle dictated the election of Charles VII in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1742. In the Turkish wars, when the princes left
+<span class="sidenote">Weakness
+and stagnation
+of
+Germany.</span>
+Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski, the Empire's
+weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There
+was, indeed, a complete loss of hope and interest in the
+old system. The princes had been so long accustomed
+to consider themselves the natural foes of a central government,
+that a request made by it was sure to be disregarded;
+they aped in their petty courts the pomp and
+etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should
+be required to garrison the great frontier fortresses which
+alone protected them from an encroaching neighbour.
+The Free Cities had never recovered the famines and
+sieges of the Thirty Years' War: Hanseatic greatness
+had waned, and the southern towns had sunk into languid
+oligarchies. All the vigour of the people in a somewhat
+stagnant age either found its sphere in rising states like
+the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or turned away from
+politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had
+become contemptible from the slowness with which it
+moved, and its tedious squabbles on matters the most
+frivolous. Many sittings were consumed in the discussion
+of a question regarding the time of keeping Easter, more
+ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western
+churches in the seventh century, the Protestants refusing
+to reckon by the reformed calendar because it was the
+work of a Pope. Collective action through the old organs
+was confessed impossible, when the common object of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>
+defence against France was sought by forming a league
+under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European
+congresses the Empire was not represented at all<a name="FNanchor_381" id="FNanchor_381" href="#Footnote_381" class="fnanchor">[381]</a>. No
+change could come from the Emperor, whom the capitulation
+of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1658 deposed <i>ipso facto</i> if he violated its
+provisions. As Dohm<a name="FNanchor_382" id="FNanchor_382" href="#Footnote_382" class="fnanchor">[382]</a>
+ said, to keep him from doing
+harm, he was kept from doing anything.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Leopold I,
+1658-1705.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Joseph I,
+1705-1711.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Charles VI,
+1711-1742.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The Hapsburg
+Emperors
+and
+their policy.</p>
+
+<p>Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have
+been hoped from his action? From the election of
+Albert the Second, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1437, to the death of Charles the
+Sixth, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1742, the sceptre had remained in the hands
+of one family. So far from being fit subjects for undistinguishing
+invective, the Hapsburg Emperors may be
+contrasted favourably with the contemporary dynasties of
+France, Spain, or England. Their policy, viewed as
+a whole from the days of Rudolf downwards, had been
+neither conspicuously tyrannical, nor faltering, nor dishonest.
+But it had been always selfish. Entrusted with
+an office which might, if there be any power in those
+memories of the past to which the champions of hereditary
+monarchy so constantly appeal, have stirred their sluggish
+souls with some enthusiasm for the heroes on whose
+throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and the
+happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought
+nothing, used the Empire as an instrument for nothing
+but the attainment of their own personal or dynastic ends.
+Placed on the eastern verge of Germany, the Hapsburgs
+had added to their ancient lands in Austria proper and
+Tyrol, non-German territories far more extensive, and
+had thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent
+state. They endeavoured to reconcile its interests with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>
+the interests of the Empire, so long as it seemed possible
+to recover part of the old imperial prerogative. But when
+such hopes were dashed by the defeats of the Thirty
+Years' War, they hesitated no longer between an elective
+crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported
+themselves thenceforth in European politics not as
+the representatives of Germany, but as heads of the great
+Austrian monarchy. There would have been nothing
+culpable in this had they not at the same time continued
+to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no
+concern: to waste her strength in tedious combats with
+the Turks, or plunge her into a new struggle with France,
+not to defend her frontiers or recover the lands she had
+lost, but that some scion of the house of Hapsburg might
+reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of
+their foreign policy, marking how in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1736 they had
+bartered away Lorraine for Tuscany, a German for a non-German
+territory, and seeing how at home they opposed
+every scheme of reform which could in the least degree
+trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to
+obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should interfere with
+their own Aulic council, men were driven to separate the
+body of the Empire from the imperial office and its possessors<a name="FNanchor_383" id="FNanchor_383" href="#Footnote_383" class="fnanchor">[383]</a>,
+and when plans for reinvigorating the one
+failed, to leave the others to their fate. Still the old line
+<span class="sidenote">Causes of
+the long
+retention of
+the throne
+by Austria.</span>
+clung to the crown with that Hapsburg gripe which has
+almost passed into a proverb. Odious as Austria was,
+no one could despise her, or fancy it easy to shake her
+commanding position in Europe. Her alliances were
+fortunate: her designs were steadily pursued: her dismembered
+territories always returned to her. Though
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span>
+the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible
+not to be influenced by long prescription. Projects were
+repeatedly formed to set the Hapsburgs aside by electing
+a prince of some other line<a name="FNanchor_384" id="FNanchor_384" href="#Footnote_384" class="fnanchor">[384]</a>,
+or by passing a law that
+there should never be more than two, or four, successive
+Emperors of the same house. France<a name="FNanchor_385" id="FNanchor_385" href="#Footnote_385" class="fnanchor">[385]</a>
+ ever and anon
+renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom
+was passing from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary
+in one haughty family. But it was felt that a
+change would be difficult and disagreeable, and that the
+heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required
+to be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most
+German princes possessed. The heads of states like
+Prussia and Hanover, states whose size and wealth would
+have made them suitable candidates, were Protestants,
+and so excluded both by the connexion of the imperial
+office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman
+Catholics in the electoral college<a name="FNanchor_386" id="FNanchor_386" href="#Footnote_386" class="fnanchor">[386]</a>,
+who, however jealous
+they might be of Austria, were led both by habit and
+sympathy to rally round her in moments of peril. The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span>
+one occasion on which these considerations were disregarded
+shewed their force. On the extinction of the
+male line of Hapsburg in the person of Charles the
+Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy, Marshal Belleisle,
+procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
+<span class="sidenote">Charles
+VII, 1742-1745.</span>
+who stood first among the Catholic princes. His reign
+was a succession of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven
+from Munich by the Austrians, the head of the Holy
+Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of France,
+cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought
+the miseries of a protracted war<a name="FNanchor_387" id="FNanchor_387" href="#Footnote_387" class="fnanchor">[387]</a>. The choice in 1745
+<span class="sidenote">Francis I,
+1745-1765.</span>
+of Duke Francis of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess
+of Austria and queen of Hungary, Maria Theresa, was
+meant to restore the crown to the only power capable
+of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her
+son, it again rested on the brow of a Hapsburg<a name="FNanchor_388" id="FNanchor_388" href="#Footnote_388" class="fnanchor">[388]</a>. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span>
+the war of the Austrian succession, which followed
+on the death of Charles the Sixth, the Empire as a
+body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole
+<span class="sidenote">Seven
+Years' War.</span>
+might broke in vain against one resolute member.
+Under Frederick the Great Prussia approved herself at
+least a match for France and Austria leagued against her,
+and the semblance of unity which the predominance of a
+single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced
+by the avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The
+Emperor Joseph the Second, a sort of philosopher-king,
+<span class="sidenote">Joseph II,
+1765-1790.</span>
+than whom few have more narrowly missed greatness,
+made a desperate effort to set things right, striving to
+restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the
+Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant
+policy of his ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope<a name="FNanchor_389" id="FNanchor_389" href="#Footnote_389" class="fnanchor">[389]</a>,
+and
+presumed to visit Rome, whose streets heard once more
+the shout that had been silent for three centuries,
+<span lang="it">'Evviva il nostro imperatore! Siete a casa vostra: siete
+il padrone<a name="FNanchor_390" id="FNanchor_390" href="#Footnote_390" class="fnanchor">[390]</a>.'</span> But his indiscreet haste was met by a
+sullen resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for
+which the time was not yet ripe, leaving no result save the
+league of princes which Frederick the Great had formed
+to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His successor, Leopold
+<span class="sidenote">Leopold II,
+1790-1792.
+Last phase
+of the Empire.</span>
+the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a calm,
+the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon
+Germany. The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten
+by its subjects: there was nothing to remind them
+of it but a feudal investiture now and then at Vienna (real
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>
+feudal rights were obsolete<a name="FNanchor_391" id="FNanchor_391" href="#Footnote_391" class="fnanchor">[391]</a>); a concourse of solemn old
+lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable suits<a name="FNanchor_392" id="FNanchor_392" href="#Footnote_392" class="fnanchor">[392]</a>;
+and
+some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg<a name="FNanchor_393" id="FNanchor_393" href="#Footnote_393" class="fnanchor">[393]</a>,
+the relics of that
+<span class="sidenote">The Diet.</span>
+Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a
+Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad
+barons, had issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean
+to the Baltic<a name="FNanchor_394" id="FNanchor_394" href="#Footnote_394" class="fnanchor">[394]</a>. The solemn triflings of this so-called
+'Diet of Deputation' have probably never been
+equalled elsewhere<a name="FNanchor_395" id="FNanchor_395" href="#Footnote_395" class="fnanchor">[395]</a>. Questions of precedence and title,
+questions whether the envoys of princes should have
+chairs of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of
+the less honourable green, whether they should be served
+on gold or on silver, how many hawthorn boughs should
+be hung up before the door of each on May-day; these,
+and such as these, it was their chief employment not to
+settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old
+Germany passed that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now
+crushed under a mountain of rubbish whatever meaning
+or force its old institutions had contained. It is the
+penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its substance:
+that gilding and trappings should remain when
+that which they were meant to deck and clothe has departed.
+So our sloth or our timidity, not seeing that
+whatever is false must be also bad, maintains in being
+what once was good long after it has become helpless and
+hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span>
+strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the
+Empire which Charles had founded, and Frederick
+adorned, and Dante sung.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Feelings
+of the
+German
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The German mind, just beginning to put forth the
+blossoms of its wondrous literature, turned away in disgust
+from the spectacle of ceremonious imbecility more than
+Byzantine. National feeling seemed gone from princes
+and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one
+else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love
+of country I have no conception: it appears to me at best
+a heroic weakness which I am right glad to be without<a name="FNanchor_396" id="FNanchor_396" href="#Footnote_396" class="fnanchor">[396]</a>.'
+The Emperor Joseph II writes to his brother of France:
+'You must know that the annihilation of German nationality
+is a necessary leading principle of my policy<a name="FNanchor_397" id="FNanchor_397" href="#Footnote_397" class="fnanchor">[397]</a>.'
+There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal such
+a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul.
+Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of
+Prussia to preserve the existing condition of things,
+Johannes von Müller writes<a name="FNanchor_398" id="FNanchor_398" href="#Footnote_398" class="fnanchor">[398]</a>:
+'If the German Union
+serves for nothing better than to maintain the <i>status quo</i>,
+it is against the eternal order of God, by which neither the
+physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in
+the <i>status quo</i>, but all is life and motion and progress. To
+exist without law or justice, without security from arbitrary
+imposts, doubtful whether we can preserve from day
+to day our honours, our liberties, our rights, our lives,
+helpless before superior force, without a beneficial connexion
+between our states, without a national spirit at all,
+this is the <i>status quo</i> of our nation. And it was this that
+the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span>
+nothing more, then bethink you how when Israel saw that
+Rehoboam would not hearken, the people gave answer to
+the king and spake, "What portion have we in David, or
+what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O
+Israel: David, see to thine own house." See then to your
+own houses, ye princes.'</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse
+brought forth from some Egyptian sepulchre, ready to
+crumble at a touch, there seemed no reason why it should
+not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind, and slew
+it in the light.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">FALL OF THE EMPIRE.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Francis II,
+1792-1806.</p>
+
+<p>Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in
+the days of his childhood, the burghers of his native
+Frankfort saw the walls of the Roman Hall covered with
+the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till space was left
+for few, at last for one<a name="FNanchor_399" id="FNanchor_399" href="#Footnote_399" class="fnanchor">[399]</a>. In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1792 Francis the Second
+mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was
+filled. Three years before there had arisen on the western
+horizon a little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and
+now the heaven was black with storms of ruin. There
+was a prophecy<a name="FNanchor_400" id="FNanchor_400" href="#Footnote_400" class="fnanchor">[400]</a>,
+dating from the first days of the Empire's
+decline, that when all things were falling to ruin, and
+wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles
+should rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back
+peace and purify religion. If this was not exactly the
+mission of the new ruler of the West Franks, he was at
+least anxious to tread in the steps and revive the glories
+of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited.
+It were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is
+that minute historical parallel of which every Parisian was
+full in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1804, the parallel between the heir of a long
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Napoleon,
+Emperor of
+the West.</span>
+line of fierce Teutonic chieftains, whose vigorous genius
+had seized what it could of the monkish learning of the
+eighth century, and the son of the Corsican lawyer, with all
+the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute profundity
+of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
+ideas of the Encyclopædists, swept up into the seat of
+absolute power by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin
+and Talleyrand are not more unlike than are their masters.
+But though in the characters and temper of the men there
+is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in this
+only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
+conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical
+similarity between their positions. Both were the leaders
+of fiery and warlike nations, the one still untamed as the
+creatures of their native woods, the other drunk with revolutionary
+fury. Both aspired to found, and seemed for a
+time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
+Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination,
+which if it sometimes overbore their judgment, was
+yet one of the truest and highest elements of their greatness.
+As the one looked back to the kings under the
+Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
+so the other thought to model himself after Cæsar and
+Charlemagne. For, useful as was the fancied precedent
+of the title and career of the great Carolingian to a chief
+determined to be king, yet unable to be king after the
+fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a connexion
+to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it
+was no studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon
+<span class="sidenote">Belief of
+Napoleon
+that he was
+the successor
+of Charlemagne.</span>
+to remind his subjects so frequently of the hero he
+claimed to represent. No one who reads the records of
+his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as he believed
+anything, that the same destiny which had made France
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span>
+the centre of the modern world had also appointed him
+to sit on the throne and carry out the projects of Charles
+the Frank, to rule all Europe from Paris, as the Cæsars
+had ruled it from Rome<a name="FNanchor_401" id="FNanchor_401" href="#Footnote_401" class="fnanchor">[401]</a>. It was in this belief that he
+went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
+receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title:
+that he talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon,
+because they had formed a part of the Carolingian realm,
+though they had never obeyed the descendants of Hugh
+Capet: that he undertook a journey to Nimeguen, where
+he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and inscribed
+on its walls his name below that of Charles: that
+he summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as
+Stephen had come ten centuries before to instal Pipin in
+the throne of the last Merovingian<a name="FNanchor_402" id="FNanchor_402" href="#Footnote_402" class="fnanchor">[402]</a>. The same desire
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>
+to be regarded as lawful Emperor of the West shewed
+itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at Milan;
+in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to
+the Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors,
+the French Emperors, have made<a name="FNanchor_403" id="FNanchor_403" href="#Footnote_403" class="fnanchor">[403]</a>
+;' in the title
+'King of Rome,' which he bestowed on his ill-fated son,
+in imitation of the German 'King of the Romans<a name="FNanchor_404" id="FNanchor_404" href="#Footnote_404" class="fnanchor">[404]</a>.' We
+are even told that it was at one time his intention to eject
+the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their
+stead. Had this been done, the analogy would have been
+complete between the position which the French ruler
+held to Austria now, and that in which Charles and Otto
+had stood to the feeble Cæsars of Byzantium. It was
+<span class="sidenote">Attitude of
+the Papacy
+towards
+Napoleon.</span>
+curious to see the head of the Roman church turning
+away from his ancient ally to the reviving power of France&mdash;France,
+where the Goddess of Reason had been worshipped
+eight years before&mdash;just as he had sought the help
+of the first Carolingians against his Lombard enemies<a name="FNanchor_405" id="FNanchor_405" href="#Footnote_405" class="fnanchor">[405]</a>.
+The difference was indeed great between the feelings
+wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear
+son in Christ,' and those that had pervaded the intercourse
+of Pope Hadrian the First with the son of Pipin;
+just as the contrast is strange between the principles that
+shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
+that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span>
+comparison is much to the advantage of the modern; but
+Pius might be pardoned for catching at any help in his
+distress, and Napoleon found that the protectorship of the
+church strengthened his position in France, and gave him
+dignity in the eyes of Christendom<a name="FNanchor_406" id="FNanchor_406" href="#Footnote_406" class="fnanchor">[406]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">The French
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing
+still preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior
+as sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was the
+existence of the old Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon
+had not long assumed his new title when he began to
+mark a distinction between <span lang="fr">'la France'</span> and <span lang="fr">'l'Empire
+Française.'</span> France had, since <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1792, advanced to
+the Rhine, and, by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped
+the Alps; the French Empire included, besides
+the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent states, Naples,
+Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
+the allies of France in the same sense in which the <span lang="la">'socii
+populi Romani'</span> were allies of Rome<a name="FNanchor_407" id="FNanchor_407" href="#Footnote_407" class="fnanchor">[407]</a>. When the last of
+Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and
+Austria had made her submission by the peace of Presburg,
+the conqueror felt that his hour was come. He had
+now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and
+Russia, claiming to represent the old and the new Rome
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span>
+respectively, and had in eighteen months created more
+kings than the occupants of the Germanic throne in as
+many centuries. It was time, he thought, to sweep away
+obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of that
+Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of
+his court presented a grotesque imitation<a name="FNanchor_408" id="FNanchor_408" href="#Footnote_408" class="fnanchor">[408]</a>. The task was
+an easy one after what had been already accomplished.
+Previous wars and treaties had so redistributed the territories
+and changed the constitution of the Germanic Empire
+<span class="sidenote">Napoleon in
+Germany.</span>
+that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but name.
+In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of
+peace, the rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order:
+the author of a code and an administrative system which
+the Bourbons who dethroned him were glad to preserve.
+Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution, and conquered
+only to destroy. It was his mission&mdash;a mission
+more beneficent in its result than in its means<a name="FNanchor_409" id="FNanchor_409" href="#Footnote_409" class="fnanchor">[409]</a>
+&mdash;to break
+up in Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty
+states, to reawaken the spirit of the people, to sweep
+away the relics of an effete feudalism, and leave the ground
+clear for the growth of newer and better forms of political
+life. Since <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1797, when Austria at Campo Formio
+perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the
+work of destruction had gone on apace. All the German
+sovereigns west of the Rhine had been dispossessed, and
+their territories incorporated with France, while the rest
+of the country had been revolutionized by the arrangements
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span>
+of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,'
+dictated by the French to the Diet in February 1803.
+New kingdoms were erected, electorates created and
+extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized, the free cities
+occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
+potentate. More than any other change, the secularization
+of the dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots
+proclaimed the fall of the old constitution, whose principles
+had required the existence of a spiritual alongside
+of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
+partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly
+in order to meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial
+name by depriving that name of its peculiar meaning,
+began in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1805 to style himself 'Hereditary Emperor
+of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his former
+title<a name="FNanchor_410" id="FNanchor_410" href="#Footnote_410" class="fnanchor">[410]</a>. The next act of the drama was one in which we
+may more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror
+than the traitorous selfishness of the German
+princes, who broke every tie of ancient friendship and
+duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the Confederation<a name="FNanchor_411" id="FNanchor_411" href="#Footnote_411" class="fnanchor">[411]</a>
+<span class="sidenote">The Confederation
+of
+the Rhine.</span>
+of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
+Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and several other states,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span>
+sixteen in all, withdrew from the body and repudiated the
+laws of the Empire, while on August 1st the French
+envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that his
+master, who had consented to become Protector of the
+Confederate princes, no longer recognized the existence
+of the Empire. Francis the Second resolved at once
+<span class="sidenote">Abdication
+of the
+Emperor
+Francis II.</span>
+to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a declaration,
+dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
+His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered
+state of things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his
+capitulation, he considers as dissolved the bonds which
+attached him to the Germanic body, releases from their
+allegiance the states who formed it, and retires to the
+government of his hereditary dominions under the title of
+'Emperor of Austria<a name="FNanchor_412" id="FNanchor_412" href="#Footnote_412" class="fnanchor">[412]</a>.' Throughout, the term 'German
+Empire' (<span lang="de"><i>Deutsches Reich</i></span>) is employed. But it was the
+crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian,
+that Francis of Hapsburg laid down, and a new
+era in the world's history was marked by the fall of its
+most venerable institution. One thousand and six years
+<span class="sidenote">End of the
+Empire.</span>
+after Leo the Pope had crowned the Frankish king,
+eighteen hundred and fifty-eight years after Cæsar had
+conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman Empire came
+to its end.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time when this event would have been
+thought a sign that the last days of the world were at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span>
+hand. But in the whirl of change that had bewildered
+men since <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1789, it passed almost unnoticed. No
+one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort
+of a new order would at last shape itself out of chaos.
+When Napoleon's universal monarchy had dissolved, and
+old landmarks shewed themselves again above the receding
+waters, it was commonly supposed that the Empire
+would be re-established on its former footing<a name="FNanchor_413" id="FNanchor_413" href="#Footnote_413" class="fnanchor">[413]</a>. Such
+was indeed the wish of many states, and among them of
+Hanover, representing Great Britain<a name="FNanchor_414" id="FNanchor_414" href="#Footnote_414" class="fnanchor">[414]</a>. Though a simple
+revival of the old Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly
+out of the question, it still appeared to them that Germany
+would be best off under the presidency of a single head,
+entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining peace
+among the members of the confederation. But the new
+kingdoms, Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a
+superior; Prussia, elated at the glory she had won in
+the war of independence, would have disputed the crown
+with Austria; Austria herself cared little to resume an
+office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
+and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use
+was therefore made of an expression in the Peace of
+Paris which spoke of uniting Germany by a federative
+bond<a name="FNanchor_415" id="FNanchor_415" href="#Footnote_415" class="fnanchor">[415]</a>,
+<span class="sidenote">Congress of
+Vienna.</span>
+and the Congress of Vienna was decided by the
+wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span>
+was brought about the present German federal constitution,
+which is itself confessed, by the attempts so often
+made to reform it, to be a mere temporary expedient,
+oppressive in the hands of the strong, and useless for
+the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school
+of liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by
+the princes after the enthusiastic uprising of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1814,
+has aspired to the restoration of the Empire, either as an
+hereditary kingdom in the Prussian or some other family,
+or in a more republican fashion under a head elected by
+the people<a name="FNanchor_416" id="FNanchor_416" href="#Footnote_416" class="fnanchor">[416]</a>. The obstacles in the way of such plans
+are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more
+clear than it is, this would not be the place from which
+to scan it<a name="FNanchor_417" id="FNanchor_417" href="#Footnote_417" class="fnanchor">[417]</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">366</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.<br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08">CONCLUSION.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="sidenote">General
+summary.</p>
+
+<p>After the attempts already made to examine separately
+each of the phases of the Empire, little need be said,
+in conclusion, upon its nature and results in general.
+A general character can hardly help being either vague
+or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
+as many and as various as the ages and conditions of
+society during which it continued to exist. Among the
+exhausted peoples around the Mediterranean, whose national
+feeling had died out, whose faith was extinct or
+turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
+imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism,
+first of a city, then of an administrative system, which
+presses with equal weight on all its subjects, and becomes
+to them a religion as well as a government. Just when
+the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes of the North
+come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
+found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a
+weltering confusion follows, till the strong hand of the
+first Frankish Emperor raises the fallen image and bids
+the nations bow down to it once more. Under him it
+is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
+successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of
+European chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">367</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Perpetuation
+of the
+name of
+Rome.</span>
+and after promising for a time to become an
+hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks at last into the
+presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an international
+league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under
+conditions so diverse of the same name and the same
+pretensions, appears at first sight absurd, a phantom too
+vain to impress the most superstitious mind. Closer
+examination will correct such a notion. No power was
+ever based on foundations so sure and deep as those
+which Rome laid during three centuries of conquest and
+four of undisturbed dominion. If her empire had been
+an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen with
+the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe,
+the destruction of the city to which it was attached.
+But it was not so limited. It was imperishable because
+it was universal; and when its power had ceased, it was
+remembered with awe and love by the races whose separate
+existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
+weak while it smote down the strong; because it had
+granted equal rights to all, and closed against none of
+its subjects the path of honourable ambition. When the
+military power of the conquering city had departed, her
+sway over the world of thought began: by her the theories
+of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the
+new religion had been embraced and organized; her
+language, her theology, her laws, her architecture made
+their way where the eagles of war had never flown, and
+with the spread of civilization have found new homes
+on the Ganges and the Mississippi.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Parallel
+instances.</p>
+
+<p>Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under
+changed conditions by any means a singular phenomenon.
+Titles sum up the political history of nations, and are as
+often causes as effects: if not insignificant now, how
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">368</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Claims to
+represent
+the Roman
+Empire.</span>
+<span class="sidenote">Austria.</span>
+much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason. It
+would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to
+examine the many pretensions that are still put forward
+to represent the Empire of Rome, all of them baseless,
+none of them effectless. Austria clings to a name which
+seems to give her a sort of precedence in Europe, and
+was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
+there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen.
+With no more legal right than the prince of Reuss or the
+landgrave of Homburg might pretend to, she has assumed
+the arms and devices of the old Empire, and being almost
+the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as the
+<span class="sidenote">France.</span>
+oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as
+the self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a
+time the sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the
+balance of European politics, and be recognized as the
+leader and patron of the so-called Latin races on both
+sides of the Atlantic<a name="FNanchor_418" id="FNanchor_418" href="#Footnote_418" class="fnanchor">[418]</a>. Professing the creed of Byzantium,
+<span class="sidenote">Russia.</span>
+Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Cæsars,
+and trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised
+for a thousand years will not be long withheld. The
+doctrine of Panslavism, under an imperial head of the
+whole Eastern church, has become a formidable engine
+of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
+Another testimony to the enduring influence of
+old political combinations is supplied by the eagerness
+with which modern Hellas has embraced the notion of
+<span class="sidenote">Greece.</span>
+gathering all the Greek races into a revived Empire of
+the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
+intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in
+blood, has more than once declared himself the representative
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">369</a></span>
+of the Eastern Cæsars, whose dominion he
+<span class="sidenote">The Turks.</span>
+extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent assumed the
+name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth:
+his successors were long preceded through the streets of
+Constantinople by twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a
+faint semblance of the consular fasces that had escorted
+a Quinctius or a Fabius through the Roman forum. Yet
+in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
+legality of title which the shouts of the people and the
+benediction of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto<a name="FNanchor_419" id="FNanchor_419" href="#Footnote_419" class="fnanchor">[419]</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Parallel of
+the Papacy.</p>
+
+<p>These examples, however, are minor parallels: the
+complement and illustration of the history of the Empire
+is to be found in that of the Holy See. The Papacy,
+whose spiritual power was itself the offspring of Rome's
+temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her parent,
+used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
+once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard
+the knell of her own approaching doom<a name="FNanchor_420" id="FNanchor_420" href="#Footnote_420" class="fnanchor">[420]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the
+human spirit was utterly prostrated before authority and
+tradition, when the exercise of private judgment was
+impossible to most and sinful to all. Those who believed
+the miracles recorded in the <i lang="la">Acta Sanctorum</i>, and did not
+question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as
+ordained of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded,
+as it seemed to be, on so many texts of Scripture, and
+confirmed by five centuries of undisputed possession.</p>
+
+<p>Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">370</a></span>
+Ages for unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous
+evils of that time: hence all the aspirations of
+the good were for something which, breaking the force
+of passion and increasing the force of sympathy, should
+teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in the
+view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover,
+unable to rise above the sensuous, not seeing the true
+connexion or the true difference of the spiritual and the
+secular, the idea of the Visible Church was full of awful
+meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and strove to
+lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
+itself that which was universal. The schism that severed
+a man from the congregation of the faithful on earth was
+hardly less dreadful than the heresy which excluded him
+from the company of the blessed in heaven. He who
+kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
+militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the
+church triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases,
+the continued use of traditional language seems to have
+prevented us from seeing how great is the difference
+between our own times and those in which the phrases
+we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity.
+Whether the world is better or worse for the change
+which has passed upon its feelings in these matters is
+another question: all that it is necessary to note here
+is that the change is a profound and pervading one.
+Obedience, almost the first of mediæval virtues, is now
+often spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools.
+Instead of praising, men are wont to condemn the submission
+of the individual will, the surrender of the
+individual belief, to the will or the belief of the community.
+Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
+a positive good. The great mass have certainly no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">371</a></span>
+longing for an abstract unity of faith. They have no
+horror of schism. They do not, cannot, understand the
+intense fascination which the idea of one all-pervading
+church exercised upon their mediæval forefathers. A life
+in the church, for the church, through the church; a life
+which she blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful
+rest by the vesper hymn; a life which she supported
+by the constantly recurring stimulus of the sacraments,
+relieving it by confession, purifying it by penance, admonishing
+it by the presentation of visible objects for contemplation
+and worship,&mdash;this was the life which they of
+the Middle Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man;
+it was the actual life of many, the ideal of all. The unseen
+world was so unceasingly pointed to, and its dependence
+on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
+between the two seemed to disappear. The church was
+not merely the portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated;
+it was already self-gathered and complete. In
+one sentence from a famous mediæval document may be
+found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
+feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to
+God than heaven. For the church does not exist for the
+sake of heaven, but conversely, heaven for the sake of the
+church<a name="FNanchor_421" id="FNanchor_421" href="#Footnote_421" class="fnanchor">[421]</a>.'</p>
+
+<p>Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion
+rather than on physical force, and when the struggle of
+the eleventh century came, the Empire fell, because its
+rival's hold over the souls of men was firmer, more direct,
+enforced by penalties more terrible than the death of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">372</a></span>
+body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and Innocent
+was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly
+devoted to a single aim than the knights and nobles who
+followed the banner of the Swabian Cæsars. Its allegiance
+was undivided; it comprehended the principles for which
+it fought: they trembled at even while they resisted the
+spiritual power.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Papacy
+and Empire
+compared
+as
+perpetuations
+of a
+name.</p>
+
+<p>Both sprang from what might be called the accident of
+name. The power of the great Latin patriarchate was a
+Form: the ghost, it has been said, of the older Empire,
+favoured in its growth by circumstances, but really vital
+because capable of wonderful adaptation to the character
+and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
+was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal
+rule of Rome; it met the needs of successive
+centuries by civilizing barbarous peoples, by maintaining
+unity in confusion and disorganization, by controlling
+brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power,
+by being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by
+assuming in its old age the presidency of a European
+confederation. And the history of both, as it shews the
+power of ancient names and forms, shews also within
+what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
+sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while
+it loses the substance. This perpetuation itself, what is
+it but the expression of the belief of mankind, a belief
+incessantly corrected yet never weakened, that their old
+institutions do and may continue to subsist unchanged,
+that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
+them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and
+abide in it for ever? Of all political instincts this is
+perhaps the strongest; often useful, often grossly abused,
+but never so natural and so fitting as when it leads men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">373</a></span>
+who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors, to save
+what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
+their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire
+were maintained by the generations who had no type of
+greatness and wisdom save that which they associated
+with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that no
+examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such
+attempts to preserve in life a system which arose out
+of ideas and under conditions that have passed away.
+Though it never could have existed save as a prolongation,
+though it was and remained through the Middle
+Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century
+had little in common with the Empire of the second.
+Much more was the Papacy, though it too hankered after
+the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a new creation.
+And in the same proportion as it was new, and represented
+the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it
+a power stronger and more enduring than the Empire.
+More enduring, because younger, and so in fuller harmony
+with the feelings of its contemporaries: stronger,
+because at the head of the great ecclesiastical body, in
+and through which, rather than through secular life, all
+the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
+sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the
+Seventh is that which best describes the Empire and the
+Popedom. They were indeed the 'two lights in the
+firmament of the militant church,' the lights which illumined
+and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages.
+And as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to
+the Papacy. The rays of the one were borrowed, feeble,
+often interrupted: the other shone with an unquenchable
+brilliance that was all her own.</p>
+
+<p>The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">374</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">In what
+sense was
+the Empire
+Roman?</span>
+mediæval. Was it then Roman in anything but name?
+and was that name anything better than a piece of fantastic
+antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a comparison
+between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
+nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the
+second century every one knows. In the tenth it was
+a feudal monarchy, resting on a strong territorial oligarchy.
+Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of those
+who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes
+unable even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers
+were limited. It could scarcely be said to have a regular
+organization at all, whether judicial or administrative. It
+was consecrated to the defence, nay, it existed by virtue
+of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had persecuted.
+Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
+strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance.
+The thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization
+survived, and drew with it that of a certain equality among
+all free subjects. It has been remarked already, that the
+world's highest dignity was for many centuries the only
+civil office to which any free-born Christian was legally
+eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
+that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan
+or Severus seek their true successors among the woods
+of Germany rather than in the palaces of Byzantium,
+where every office and name and custom had floated
+down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
+legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's
+coronation would have been strange indeed to Caius
+Julius Cæsar Octavianus Augustus; but how much nobler,
+how much more Roman in force and truth than the
+childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palæologus
+was installed! It was not in purple buskins that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">375</a></span>
+dignity of the Luxemburger lay<a name="FNanchor_422" id="FNanchor_422" href="#Footnote_422" class="fnanchor">[422]</a>. To such a boast the
+Germanic Empire had long ere its death lost right: it had
+lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it had
+become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of
+the Ottomans is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over
+which the imaginative might muse, but which the mass of
+men would push aside with impatient contempt. But
+institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">'Imperialism:'
+Roman,
+French, and
+mediæval.</p>
+
+<p>The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its
+Germanic representative raises a question which has been
+a good deal canvassed of late years. That wonderful
+system which Julius Cæsar and his subtle nephew erected
+upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
+has been made the type of a certain form of government
+and of a certain set of social as well as political arrangements,
+to which, or rather to the theory whereof they are
+a part, there has been given the name of Imperialism.
+The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the concentration
+of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
+the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative
+system, the maintenance of order by a large military force,
+the substitution of the influence of public opinion for the
+control of representative assemblies, are commonly taken,
+whether rightly or wrongly, to characterize that theory.
+Its enemies cannot deny that it has before now given
+and may again give to nations a sudden and violent
+access of aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the
+glory (whatever that may be) of war and conquest; that
+it has a better title to respect in the ease with which it
+may be made, as it was by the Flavian and Antonine
+Cæsars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
+Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">376</a></span>
+reforms in law and government. The parallel between
+the Roman world under the Cæsars and the French
+people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
+upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was
+a good to a medley of tribes, the force of whose national
+life had spent itself and left them languid, yet restless,
+with all the evils of isolation and none of its advantages,
+is not necessarily a good to a country already the strongest
+and most united in Europe, a country where the administration
+is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
+uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or
+an evil, no one can doubt that France represents, and
+has always represented, the imperialist spirit of Rome far
+more truly than those whom the Middle Ages recognized
+as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
+the political character of the French people, whether it be
+the result of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or
+rather due to the original instincts of the Gallic race, is to
+be found their claim, a claim better founded than any
+which Napoleon put forward, to be the Romans<a name="FNanchor_423" id="FNanchor_423" href="#Footnote_423" class="fnanchor">[423]</a>
+of the
+<span class="sidenote">Political
+ character
+ of the Teutonic
+ and
+ Gallic
+ races.</span>
+modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
+to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual
+repulsion, if the phrase may be permitted, of the social
+atoms, as contrasted with Keltic and so-called Romanic
+peoples, among which the unit is more completely absorbed
+in the mass, who live possessed by a common idea
+which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic
+states have been little more successful than their neighbours
+in the establishment of free constitutions. Their
+assemblies meet, and vote, and are dissolved, and nothing
+comes of it: their citizens endure without greatly resenting
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">377</a></span>
+outrages that would raise the more excitable French
+or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the
+form of government, the body of the people have in
+Germany always enjoyed a freedom of thought which has
+made them comparatively careless of politics; and the
+absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like that of
+the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution
+at Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing
+either of the good or the evil of the imperialism which
+Tacitus painted, or of that which the panegyrists of the
+present system in France paint in colours somewhat different
+from his.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Essential
+principles
+of the
+mediæval
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediæval
+imperialism, a theory of the nature of the state and the
+best form of government, which has been described once
+already, and need not be described again. It is enough
+to say, that from three leading principles all its properties
+may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
+existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was
+the exact coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect
+harmony of its workings with the limits and the workings
+of the church. The third was its universality. These
+three were vital. Forms of political organization, the
+presence or absence of constitutional checks, the degree
+of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to
+local authorities, all these were matters of secondary
+importance. But although there brooded over all the
+shadow of a despotism, it was a despotism not of the
+sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and blighting,
+but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour
+on municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for
+learning, for religion, for intelligence; a despotism not
+hereditary, but one which constantly maintained in theory
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">378</a></span>
+the principle that he should rule who was found the
+fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
+power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not,
+because an unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of
+turbulence, advocate it now; nor need we, with Sismondi,
+blame the Frankish conqueror because he granted no
+'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
+him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political
+ideas of a time, and not of all time: like the Papacy,
+it decayed when those ideas changed; when men became
+more capable of rational liberty; when thought grew
+stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
+from the bonds of sense.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence
+of the Holy
+Empire on
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject
+too wide to be more than glanced at here. There is
+much to make it appear altogether unfortunate. For
+many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry crossed
+the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
+deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the
+wrongs she suffered. Those who destroyed the national
+existence of another people forfeited their own: the German
+kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of the Roman
+Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
+compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in
+Europe: the race whom their neighbours had feared and
+obeyed till the fourteenth century saw themselves, down
+even to our own day, the prey of intestine feuds and their
+country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled and insulted
+by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
+the arts of success, they came to regard France as the
+persecuted Slave regards them. The want of national
+union and political liberty from which Germany has suffered,
+and to some extent suffers still, cannot be attributed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">379</a></span>
+to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous as that
+difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
+greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths,
+Burgundians, and Northmen were mingled with primitive
+Kelts and Basques; not so great as in Spain, or Italy, or
+Britain. Rather is it due to the decline of the central
+government, which was induced by its strife with the
+Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
+universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the
+neighbouring countries. The absence or the weakness
+of the monarch enabled his feudal vassals to establish
+petty despotisms, debarring the nation from united political
+action, and greatly retarding the emancipation of
+the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly
+selfish, justifying their resistance to the throne
+as the defence of their own liberty&mdash;liberty to oppress
+the subject&mdash;and ready on the least occasion to throw
+themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
+people were deprived of all political training, and have
+found the lack of such experience impede their efforts
+to this day.</p>
+
+<p>For these misfortunes, however, there has not been
+wanting some compensation. The inheritance of the
+Roman Empire made the Germans the ruling race of
+Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
+never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people
+now, peaceful in sentiment even now when they have
+become a great military power, submissive to paternal
+government, and given to the quiet enjoyments of art,
+music, and meditation, they delight themselves with
+memories of the time when their conquering chivalry
+was the terror of the Gaul and the Slave, the Lombard
+and the Saracen. The national life received a keen
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">380</a></span>
+stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
+and from the intercourse with countries where the old
+civilization had not wholly perished. It was this connexion
+with Italy that raised the German lands out of
+barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman conquest
+had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From
+the Empire flowed all the richness of their mediæval life
+and literature: it first awoke in them a consciousness of
+national existence; its history has inspired and served as
+material to their poetry; to many ardent politicians the
+splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
+future<a name="FNanchor_424" id="FNanchor_424" href="#Footnote_424" class="fnanchor">[424]</a>. There is a bright side even to their political
+disunion. When they complain that they are not a nation,
+and sigh for the harmony of feeling and singleness
+of aim which their great rival displays, the example of the
+Greeks may comfort them. To the variety which so
+many small governments have produced may be partly
+attributed the breadth of development in German thought
+and literature, by virtue of which it transcends the French
+hardly less than the Greek surpassed the Roman. Paris
+no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as gain
+by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need
+not mourn that she alone among modern states has not
+and never has had a capital.</p>
+
+<p>The merits of the old Empire were not long since the
+subject of a brisk controversy among several German
+professors of history<a name="FNanchor_425" id="FNanchor_425" href="#Footnote_425" class="fnanchor">[425]</a>. The spokesmen of the Austrian
+or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten years ago
+was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">381</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Austria
+as heir of
+the Holy
+Empire.</span>
+States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg
+monarchy the honour of being the legitimate representative
+of the mediæval Empire, and declared that only by again
+accepting Hapsburg leadership could Germany win back
+the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
+North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison.
+'Yes,' they replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as
+it calls itself, is the true daughter of the old despotism:
+not less tyrannical, not less aggressive, not less retrograde;
+like its progenitor, the friend of priests, the enemy of free
+thought, the trampler upon the national feeling of the
+peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and anti-national
+policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as
+Otto and Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes
+of foreign conquest. The dream of Empire has been our
+bane from first to last.' It is possible, one may hope, to
+escape the alternative of admiring the Austrian Empire or
+denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
+some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of
+the Saxon and Swabian Cæsars. Like her, they oppressed
+and insulted the Italian people: but it was in the defence
+of rights which the Italians themselves admitted. Like
+her, they lusted after a dominion over the races on their
+borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
+spreading civilization and religion in savage countries,
+not of pampering upon their revenues a hated court and
+aristocracy. Like her, they strove to maintain a strong
+government at home, but they did it when a strong
+government was the first of political blessings. Like her,
+they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those
+armies were composed of knights and barons who lived
+for war alone, not of peasants torn away from useful
+labour and condemned to the cruel task of perpetuating
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">382</a></span>
+their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of another
+nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they
+sinned in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not
+in the noonday blaze of modern civilization. The enthusiasm
+for mediæval faith and simplicity which was so
+fervid some years ago has run its course, and is not likely
+soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
+Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them,
+were in some respects little better than savages. But
+when he approaches more recent times, and sees how,
+during the last three hundred years, kings have dealt with
+their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
+ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness,
+the treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it
+sometimes wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the
+annals of the military monarchies of Europe. With regard,
+however, to the pretensions of modern Austria, the
+truth is that this dispute about the worth of the old system
+has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
+greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg
+reached the throne; while during what may be
+called the Austrian period, from Maximilian to Francis II,
+the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog and incumbrance,
+which the unhappy nation bore because she
+knew not how to rid herself of it. The Germans are
+welcome to appeal to the old Empire to prove that they
+were once a united people. Nor is there any harm in
+their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with
+those of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one
+to the other seems to betray a want of historical judgment.
+But the one thing which is wholly absurd is to make
+Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of Frederick of
+Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">383</a></span>
+of modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of
+mediæval chivalry, the noblest creation of mediæval
+thought.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Bearing
+of the
+Empire
+upon the
+progress of
+European
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend
+or state rightly its bearing on European progress.
+The mountain lies behind us, but miles must be traversed
+before we can take in at a glance its peaks and slopes and
+buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its height.
+Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of
+the arts and literature of Rome it was both an effect and
+a cause, a cause only less powerful than the church. It
+would be endless to shew in how many ways it affected
+the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and through
+them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes
+of modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance,
+belonged originally and properly to the Emperor, and
+were borrowed from him by other monarchs. The once
+famous doctrine of divine right had the same origin. To
+the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
+prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical
+importance in our own days. For while in Southern
+<span class="sidenote">Influence
+upon
+modern
+jurisprudence.</span>
+France and Central Italy, where the subject population
+greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old system
+would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted
+that in Germany, as in England, a body of customary
+Teutonic law would have grown up, had it not been for
+the notion that since the German monarch was the legitimate
+successor of Justinian, the <span lang="la">Corpus Juris</span> must be
+binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received
+with a faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy,
+who naturally disliked a system which the Emperors
+and the cities favoured, could not but admit its validity,
+and before the end of the Middle Ages Roman law prevailed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">384</a></span>
+through all Germany<a name="FNanchor_426" id="FNanchor_426" href="#Footnote_426" class="fnanchor">[426]</a>. When it is considered how
+great are the services which German writers have rendered
+and continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence,
+this result will appear far from insignificant.
+But another of still wider import followed. When by the
+Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty principalities were
+recognized as practically independent states, the need of
+a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing.
+That code Grotius and his successors formed out of
+what was then the private law of Germany, which thus
+became the foundation whereon the system of international
+jurisprudence has been built up during the last
+two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
+creation, and could have arisen in no country where the
+law of Rome had not been the fountain of legal ideas and
+the groundwork of positive codes. In Germany, too, was
+it first carried out in practice, and that with a success
+which is the best, some might say the only, title of the
+later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
+Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free
+cities lived unmolested beside states like Saxony and
+Bavaria; each member of the Germanic body feeling
+that the rights of the weakest of his brethren were also
+his own.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Influence of
+the Empire
+upon the
+history of
+the Church.</p>
+
+<p>The most important chapter in the history of the
+Empire is that which describes its relation to the Church
+and the Papacy. Of the ecclesiastical power it was
+alternately the champion and the enemy. In the ninth
+and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion
+of Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it
+from an abyss of guilt and shame to be the instrument of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">385</a></span>
+their own downfall. The struggle which Gregory the
+Seventh began, although it was political rather than
+religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
+the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle
+ended, with the death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the
+victory of the priesthood, a victory whose abuse by the
+insolent and greedy pontiffs of the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat. The anger
+which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
+nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a
+violence which alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended,
+and made the Emperors once more the allies of
+the Popedom, and the partners of its declining fortunes.
+But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
+<span class="sidenote">Nature
+of the
+question
+at issue
+between the
+Emperors
+and the
+Popes.</span>
+had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a
+natural, but not the less a serious error to suppose, as
+modern writers often seem to do, that the pretensions of
+the Empire and the Popedom were mutually exclusive;
+that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular,
+of a universal monarch. So far was this from being the
+case, that we find mediæval writers and statesmen, even
+Emperors and Popes themselves, expressly recognizing a
+divinely appointed duality of government&mdash;two potentates,
+each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
+things eternal, Cæsar in things temporal. The relative
+position of the two does indeed in course of time undergo
+a signal alteration. In the days of Charles, the barbarous
+age of modern Europe, when men were and could not but
+be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
+practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four
+centuries later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third,
+when the power of ideas had grown stronger in the world,
+and was able to resist or to bend to its service the arms
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">386</a></span>
+and the wealth of men, we see the balance inclined the
+other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
+of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and
+guide the civil administration. But it is not proposed to
+supplant that administration nor to degrade its head: the
+great struggle of the eleventh and two following centuries
+does not aim at the annihilation of one or other power,
+but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
+Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom,
+requires the obedience of the Emperor on the ground of
+his own personal responsibility for the souls of their
+common subjects: he demands, not that the functions of
+temporal government shall be directly committed to himself,
+but that they shall be exercised in conformity with
+the will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist
+party had no means of meeting this argument,
+for they could not deny the spiritual supremacy of the
+Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal salvation.
+They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
+also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and
+remind the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world.
+There was in truth no way out of the difficulty, for it was
+caused by the attempt to sever things that admit of no
+severance, life in the soul and life in the world, life for
+the future and life in the present. What it is most
+pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his
+theory to extremities, since he felt that his adversary's
+title rested on the same foundations as his own. The
+strife was keenest at the time when the whole world
+believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
+when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards
+the other; from the Reformation onwards Empire and
+Popedom fought no longer for supremacy, but for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">387</a></span>
+existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes with
+every blast.</p>
+
+<p class="sidenote">Ennobling
+influence
+of the conception
+of
+the World
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the
+Empire less momentous in its influence upon the minds
+of men than were its outward dealings with the Roman
+church upon her greatness and decline. In the Middle
+Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as
+the formal unity of an organized body of worshippers,
+and found the concrete realization of that conception in
+their universal religious state, which was in one aspect,
+the Church; in another, the Empire. Into the meaning
+and worth of the conception, into the nature of the connexion
+which subsists or ought to subsist between the
+Church and the State, this is not the place to inquire.
+That the form which it took in the Middle Ages was
+always imperfect and became eventually rigid and unprogressive
+was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
+it the European peoples were saved from the isolation,
+and narrowness, and jealous exclusiveness which had
+checked the growth of the earlier civilizations of the
+world, and which we see now lying like a weight upon
+the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into
+that mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the
+condition if it be not the source of all true culture and
+progress. For as by the Roman Empire of old the
+nations were first forced to own a common sway, so by
+the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling
+of a brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the
+whole world, whose sublime unity transcended every minor
+distinction.</p>
+
+<p>As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their
+realm, the Teutonic Emperors strove from the first against
+three principles, over all of which their forerunners of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">388</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Principles
+adverse to
+the Empire.</span>
+the elder Rome had triumphed,&mdash;those of Nationality,
+Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
+were against the first of these, and ended with its victory
+in the emancipation, one after another, of England, France,
+Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The
+second, in the form of feudalism, menaced even when seeming
+to embrace and obey them, and succeeded, after the
+Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength
+in Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the
+numerous independent principalities thus formed out of
+the greater fiefs, into a few military monarchies, resting
+neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal kingdoms, nor on
+religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
+physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms.
+That the hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental
+rather than necessary is seen by this, that the
+very same monarchs who strove to crush the Lombard
+and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free towns
+of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in
+the sphere of religion, the Reformation weakened the
+Empire by denying the necessity of external unity in
+matters spiritual: the extension of the same principle to
+the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld from
+the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
+absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier
+foe in the actual tyranny of the princes. It is more
+than a coincidence, that as the proclamation of the liberty
+of thought had shaken it, so that of the liberty of action
+made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
+the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end
+we see not yet, should have indirectly become the cause
+which overthrew the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">389</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Change
+marked by
+its fall.</span>
+the face of Europe marks an era in history, an era whose
+character the events of every year are further unfolding:
+an era of the destruction of old forms and systems and
+the building up of new. The last instance is the most
+memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric
+and Lewis the Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second
+Frederick essayed in vain, has been achieved by the
+steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest province
+of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled
+so long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian
+count, whom Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy,
+and who wants only the possession of the capital to be
+able to call himself 'king of the Romans' more truly
+than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since Constantine
+forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer
+the prey of the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and
+sympathize, as she has now indeed, since the fortunate
+alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize, with the efforts
+after national unity of her ancient enemy&mdash;efforts confronted
+by so many obstacles that a few years ago they
+seemed all but hopeless. On the new shapes that may
+emerge in this general reconstruction it would be idle
+to speculate. Yet one prediction may be ventured. No
+universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent intercourse,
+and the progress of thought, have done much
+to change the character of national distinctions, substituting
+for ignorant prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy
+and the sense of a common interest. They have
+not lessened their force. No one who reads the history
+of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
+studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe
+it possible for any state, however great her energy and
+material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the part
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">390</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Relations of
+the Empire
+to the nationalities
+of Europe.</span>
+of ancient Rome: to gather into one vast political body
+races whose national individuality has grown more and
+more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it
+is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman
+Empire of the Middle Ages that the bonds of national
+union are on the whole both stronger and nobler than
+they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome,
+after summing up the results to the world of his hero's
+career, closes his treatise with these words: 'There was
+in the world as Cæsar found it the rich and noble heritage
+of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendour
+and glory, but little soul, still less taste, and, least of all,
+joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
+and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it
+young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the
+night has fully descended. Yet with him there came
+to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
+tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long
+historical night, the new day broke once more upon the
+peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement
+began their course towards new and higher aims, many
+were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar
+had sprung up, many who owed him, and who owe him
+still, their national individuality<a name="FNanchor_427" id="FNanchor_427" href="#Footnote_427" class="fnanchor">[427]</a>.' If this be the glory
+of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire, so is it
+also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of
+more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
+work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and
+it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that
+were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous
+races of the North, and forced them within the pale of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">391</a></span>
+civilization. It preserved the arts and literature of antiquity.
+In times of violence and oppression, it set before
+its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority
+whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive,
+when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a
+great European Commonwealth. And by doing all this,
+it was in effect abolishing the need for a centralizing
+and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
+of using national independence aright: it was teaching
+them to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity,
+and a freedom which is above law but not against it,
+to which national independence itself, if it is to be a
+blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark
+what has been the tendency of events since <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1789,
+and who remember how many of the crimes and calamities
+of the past are still but half redressed, need not
+be surprised to see the so-called principle of nationalities
+advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing
+advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape.
+If all other history did not bid us beware the habit of
+taking the problems and the conditions of our own age
+for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives
+might alone be warning enough. From the days of
+Augustus down to those of Charles the Fifth the whole
+civilized world believed in its existence as a part of the
+eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were
+not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
+perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire
+is gone, and the world remains, and hardly notes the
+change.</p>
+
+<p>This is but a small part of what might be said upon an
+almost inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">392</a></span>
+<span class="sidenote">Difficulties
+arising
+from the
+nature of
+the subject.</span>
+extent but from its profundity: not because there is so
+much to say, but because, pursue we it never so far, more
+will remain unexpressed, since incapable of expression.
+For that which it is at once most necessary and least possible
+to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
+institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries&mdash;whose
+outer form is the same, while its essence
+and spirit are constantly changing. It is when we come
+to consider it in this light that the difficulties of so vast a
+subject are felt in all their force. Try to explain in words
+the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as it
+appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and
+that which we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in
+its life, sinks into a heap of barren and scarcely intelligible
+formulas. Who has been able to describe the Papacy in
+the power it once wielded over the hearts and imaginations
+of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
+see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and
+superstition, planted and reared by the enemy of mankind,
+are hardly further from entering into the mystery of its
+being than the complacent political philosopher, who explains
+in neat phrases the process of its growth, analyses
+it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
+the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion,
+a sort of tabular view of its results for good and for evil.
+So, too, is the Holy Empire above all description or explanation;
+not that it is impossible to discover the beliefs
+which created and sustained it, but that the power of
+those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by men
+whose minds have been differently trained, and whose
+imaginations are fired by different ideals. Something,
+yet still how little, we should know of it if we knew what
+were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar when he laid the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">393</a></span>
+foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
+he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his
+grandson, when they strove to avert the surely coming
+ruin. Something more succeeding generations will know,
+who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than we, still
+living in the midst of a reaction against all that is mediæval,
+can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to
+see and understand new forms of political life, whose
+nature we cannot so much as conjecture. Seeing more
+than we do, they will also see some things less distinctly.
+The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
+horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as
+they journey onwards into the future. But its importance
+in universal history it can never lose. For into it all the
+life of the ancient world was gathered: out of it all the
+life of the modern world arose.</p>
+
+<p class="center p2">THE END.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394"></a></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">395</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>APPENDIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>NOTE A.<a href="#noteA" id="noteA"></a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap s08">On the Burgundies.</span></h3>
+
+<p>It would be hard to mention any geographical name
+which, by its application at different times to different
+districts, has caused, and continues to cause, more confusion
+than this name Burgundy. There may, therefore,
+be some use in a brief statement of the more important
+of those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of
+the subject, the following may be given as the ten senses
+in which the name is most frequently to be met with:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (<i lang="la">regnum Burgundionum</i>),
+founded <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 406, occupying the whole valley of
+the Saone and lower Rhone, from Dijon to the Mediterranean,
+and including also the western half of Switzerland.
+It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 534.</p>
+
+<p>II. The kingdom of Burgundy (<i lang="la">regnum Burgundiæ</i>),
+mentioned occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a
+separate principality, confined within boundaries apparently
+somewhat narrower than those of the older kingdom
+last named.</p>
+
+<p>III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (<i lang="la">regnum
+Provinciæ seu Burgundiæ</i>)&mdash;also, though less accurately,
+called the kingdom of Cis-Jurane Burgundy&mdash;was founded
+by Boso in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 877, and included Provence, Dauphiné,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">396</a></span>
+the southern part of Savoy, and the country between the
+Saone and the Jura.</p>
+
+<p>IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (<i lang="la">regnum
+Iurense</i>, <i lang="la">Burgundia Transiurensis</i>), founded by Rudolf in
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 888, recognized in the same year by the Emperor
+Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and all
+Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.</p>
+
+<p>V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (<i lang="la">regnum Burgundiæ</i>,
+<i lang="la">regnum Arelatense</i>), formed by the union, under
+Conrad the Pacific, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 937, of the kingdoms described
+above as III and IV. On the death, in 1032, of the last
+independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by bequest,
+partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad
+II (the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the
+Empire. In the thirteenth century, France began to absorb
+it, bit by bit, and has now (since the annexation of
+Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss portion
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>VI. The Lesser Duchy (<i lang="la">Burgundia Minor</i>), (Klein
+Burgund), corresponded very nearly with what is now
+Switzerland west of the Reuss, including the Valais. It
+was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) <i>minus</i> the parts of
+Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
+from history after the extinction of the house of
+Zahringen in the thirteenth century. Legally it was part
+of the Empire till <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, though practically independent
+long before that date.</p>
+
+<p>VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy
+(Franche Comté), (Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper
+Burgundy), to which the name of Cis-Jurane Burgundy
+originally and properly belonged, lay between the Saone
+and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was
+therefore a fief of the Empire. The French dukes of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">397</a></span>
+Burgundy were invested with it in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1384, and in 1678
+it was annexed to the crown of France.</p>
+
+<p>VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft)
+was in Western Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between
+Thun and Solothurn. It was a part of the Lesser
+Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned after the
+thirteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative
+division of the Empire, was established by
+Charles V in 1548; and included the Free County of
+Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
+Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother
+Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold.</p>
+
+<p>X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne),
+the most northerly part of the old kingdom of the
+Burgundians, was always a fief of the crown of France,
+and a province of France till the Revolution. It was of
+this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles the Bold
+were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free
+County (VII).</p>
+
+<p class="p2">The most copious and accurate information regarding
+the obscure history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV,
+and V) is to be found in the contributions of Baron
+Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois historian, to the
+<span lang="de"><i>Archiv für Schweizer Geschichte</i></span>. See also an admirable
+article in the <i>National Review</i> for October 1860, entitled
+'The Franks and the Gauls.'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">398</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>NOTE B.<a href="#noteB" id="noteB"></a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08"><span class="smcap">On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom
+of Denmark, and the Duchies of Schleswig and
+Holstein.</span></span></h3>
+
+<p>The history of the relations of Denmark and the
+Duchies to the Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small
+part of the great Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But
+having been unnecessarily mixed up with two questions
+properly quite distinct,&mdash;the first, as to the relation of
+Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
+crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements
+which the Danish kings have in recent times contracted
+with the German powers,&mdash;it has borne its part in making
+the whole question the most intricate and interminable
+that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
+Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire
+are as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of
+the Frankish Emperors early in the ninth century. Having
+recovered their independence in the confusion that followed
+the fall of the Carolingian dynasty, they were again
+subdued by Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great, and
+continued tolerably submissive till the death of Frederick
+II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that
+time Denmark has been always independent, although her
+king was, until the treaty of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1865, a member of the
+German Confederation for Holstein.</p>
+
+<p>II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the
+Eyder being, as Eginhard tells us, the boundary between
+Saxonia Transalbiana (Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">399</a></span>
+(wherein lay the town of Sliesthorp), inhabited
+by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great conquered
+all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
+southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of
+the Empire, erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained
+till the days of Conrad II, who made the Eyder again the
+boundary, retaining of course his suzerainty over the
+kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time the
+colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun;
+and ever since the numbers of the Danish population
+seem to have steadily declined, and the mass of the people
+to have grown more and more disposed to sympathize
+with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire,
+as it is at this day of the North German Bund.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">400</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>NOTE C.<a href="#noteC" id="noteC"></a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08"><span class="smcap">On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies.</span></span></h3>
+
+<p>This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate
+to be more than touched upon here. But a few brief
+statements may have their use; for the practice of the
+Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time to time,
+that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without
+some clue. And if there were space to explain the
+causes of each change of title, it would be seen that the
+subject, dry as it may appear, is very far from being a
+barren or a dull one.</p>
+
+<p>I. <span class="smcap">Titles of Emperors.</span></p>
+<p>
+Charles the Great styled himself <span lang="la">'Carolus serenissimus
+Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
+Romanum (<span lang="en"><i>or</i></span> Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et
+per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'</span></p>
+
+<p>Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled
+simply <span lang="la">'Imperator Augustus.'</span> Sometimes <span lang="la">'rex Francorum
+et Langobardorum'</span> was added<a name="FNanchor_428" id="FNanchor_428" href="#Footnote_428" class="fnanchor">[428]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German
+kings.</p>
+
+<p>A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome,
+<span lang="la">'rex,'</span> or <span lang="la">'rex Francorum Orientalium,'</span> or <span lang="la">'Francorum
+atque Saxonum rex;'</span> after it, simply <span lang="la">'Imperator Augustus.'</span>
+Otto III is usually said to have introduced the form
+<span lang="la">'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,'</span> but some authorities
+state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">401</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the
+title of Emperor till crowned at Rome (in conformity with
+the superstitious notion which had begun with Charles the
+Bald), but anxious to claim the sovereignty of Rome, as
+indissolubly attached to the German crown, began to call
+themselves <span lang="la">'reges Romanorum.'</span> The title did not, however,
+become common or regular till the time of Henry IV,
+in whose proclamations it occurs constantly.</p>
+
+<p>From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable
+practice was for the monarch to be called <span lang="la">'Romanorum
+rex semper Augustus,'</span> till his coronation at Rome
+by the Pope; after it, <span lang="la">'Romanorum Imperator semper
+Augustus.'</span></p>
+
+<p>In <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to
+Rome by the Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius
+II permitting him to call himself <span lang="la">'Imperator electus'</span>
+(erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I (brother of
+Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
+upon their German coronation, and it was till <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1806
+their strict legal designation<a name="FNanchor_429" id="FNanchor_429" href="#Footnote_429" class="fnanchor">[429]</a>,
+and was always employed
+by them in proclamations or other official documents.
+The term 'elect' was however omitted, even in formal
+documents when the sovereign was addressed or spoken
+of in the third person; and in ordinary practice he was
+simply 'Roman Emperor.'</p>
+
+<p>Maximilian added the title <span lang="la">'Germaniæ rex,'</span> which had
+never been known before, although the phrase <span lang="la">'rex Germanorum'</span>
+may be found employed once or twice in early
+times. <span lang="la">'Rex Teutonicorum,'</span> <span lang="la">'regnum Teutonicum<a name="FNanchor_430" id="FNanchor_430" href="#Footnote_430" class="fnanchor">[430]</a>
+,'</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">402</a></span>
+occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A great
+many titles of less consequence were added from time to
+time. Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course,
+as Emperor, but in virtue of his vast hereditary possessions<a name="FNanchor_431" id="FNanchor_431" href="#Footnote_431" class="fnanchor">[431]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor
+has not at all the same meaning now that it had even so
+lately as two centuries ago. It is now a commonplace,
+not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous than that
+of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots.
+It is given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of
+China and Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is
+peculiarly affected by new dynasties; and has indeed
+grown so fashionable, that what with Emperors of Brazil,
+of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of King seems
+in a fair way to become obsolete<a name="FNanchor_432" id="FNanchor_432" href="#Footnote_432" class="fnanchor">[432]</a>. But in former times
+there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always
+mentioned with a certain reverence: his name summoned
+up a host of thoughts and associations, which we cannot
+comprehend or sympathize with. His office, unlike that
+of modern Emperors, was by its very nature elective, and
+not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest
+or the will of the people, rested on and represented
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">403</a></span>
+pure legality. War could give him nothing which law
+had not given him already: the people could delegate
+no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy
+of God.</p>
+
+<p>II. <span class="smcap">The Crowns.</span></p>
+
+<p>Of the four crowns something has been said in the text.
+They were those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy,
+at Arles; of Italy, sometimes at Pavia, more
+usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at Rome.</p>
+
+<p>The German crown was taken by every Emperor after
+the time of Otto the Great; that of Italy by every one,
+or almost every one, who took the Roman down to
+Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
+would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry
+III, Frederick I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown
+was received at Rome by most Emperors till Frederick
+III; after him by none save Charles V, who obtained
+both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
+manner. But down to <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1806, every Emperor bound
+himself by his capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive
+it.</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered that none of these inferior
+crowns was necessarily connected with that of the Roman
+Empire, which might have been held by a simple knight
+without a foot of land in the world. For as there had
+been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence
+(son of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were
+not kings of Germany, so there were several (all those
+who preceded Conrad II) who were not kings of Burgundy,
+and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not
+kings of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that
+although no crown save the German was assumed by the
+successors of Charles V, their wider rights remained in full
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">404</a></span>
+force, and were never subsequently relinquished. There
+was nothing, except the practical difficulty and absurdity
+of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having
+himself crowned at Arles<a name="FNanchor_433" id="FNanchor_433" href="#Footnote_433" class="fnanchor">[433]</a>,
+Milan, and Rome.</p>
+
+<p>III. <span class="smcap">The King of the Romans (<span lang="de">Römischer Köni</span>g).</span></p>
+
+<p>It has been shewn above how and why, about the time
+of Henry II, the German monarch began to entitle himself
+<span lang="la">'Romanorum rex.'</span> Now it was not uncommon in
+the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to be
+crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of
+the latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation,
+it must be remembered, which is now merely a
+spectacle, was in those days not only a sort of sacrament,
+but a matter of great political importance.) This plan
+was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as Germany
+was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the
+delays and dangers of an election while the throne was
+vacant. But as it seemed against the order of nature to
+have two Emperors at once<a name="FNanchor_434" id="FNanchor_434" href="#Footnote_434" class="fnanchor">[434]</a>,
+and as the sovereign's
+authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but
+on the German coronation, the practice came to be that
+each Emperor during his own life procured, if he could,
+the election of his successor, who was crowned at Aachen,
+in later times at Frankfort, and took the title of 'King
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">405</a></span>
+of the Romans.' During the presence of the Emperor
+in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince
+of Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he
+succeeded at once, without any second election or coronation,
+and assumed (after the time of Ferdinand I) the
+title of 'Emperor Elect<a name="FNanchor_435" id="FNanchor_435" href="#Footnote_435" class="fnanchor">[435]</a>.' Before Ferdinand's time, he
+would have been expected to go to Rome to be crowned
+there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each
+monarch generally contrived in this way to have his son
+or some other near relative chosen to succeed him. But
+many were foiled in their attempts to do so; and, in such
+cases, an election was held after the Emperor's death,
+according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.</p>
+
+<p>The first person who thus became king of the Romans
+in the lifetime of an Emperor seems to have been Henry
+VI, son of Frederick I.</p>
+
+<p>It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his
+son king of Rome.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">406</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>NOTE D.<a href="#noteD" id="noteD"></a><br />
+<br />
+<span class="s08"><span class="smcap">Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome.</span></span></h3>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+
+<p><span lang="la">Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.</span></p>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards
+archbishop of Tours (born <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1057). Extracted
+from his works as printed by Migne, <i>Patrologiæ Cursus
+Completus</i><a name="FNanchor_436" id="FNanchor_436" href="#Footnote_436" class="fnanchor">[436]</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">407</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>INDEX.</h2>
+
+<ul class="idx">
+<li class="alpha">A.</li>
+
+<li>Aachen, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a> note, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Adalbert</span> (St.), <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;
+ the church founded at Rome to receive his ashes, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Adelheid</span> (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Adolf</span> of Nassau, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Adso</span>, his <i lang="la">Vita Antichristi</i>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Aistulf</span> the Lombard, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alaric</span>, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alberic</span> (consul or senator), <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Albert I</span> (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Albigenses, revolt of the, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alboin</span>, his invasion of Italy, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alcuin</span> of York, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alexander III</span> (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+ their meeting at Venice, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Alfonso</span> of Castile, his double election with Richard of England, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li>
+
+<li>America, discovery of, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Anastasius</span>, his account of the coronation of Charles, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Angelo</span> (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_114">114</a> note;
+ in later times, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Architecture, Roman, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+ analogy between it and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;
+ preservation of an antique character in both, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Ardoin</span> (Marquis of Ivrea), <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Arles; <i>see</i> <a href="#Burgundy">Burgundy</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Arnold</span> of Brescia, Rome under, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+ put to death at the instance of Pope Hadrian, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Arnulf</span> (Emperor), <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Athanaric</span>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Athanasius</span>, the triumph of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Athaulf</span> the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Augsburg, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;
+ treaty of, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Augustine</span>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Aulic Council, the, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Austria, privilege of, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;
+ her claim to represent the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Austrian succession, war of the, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Avignon, exactions of the court of, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;
+ its subservience to France, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Avitus</span>, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">408</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="alpha">B.</li>
+
+<li>Barbarians, feared by the Romans, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;
+ Roman armies largely composed of, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;
+ admitted to Roman titles and honours, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;
+ their feelings towards the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;
+ their desire to preserve its institutions, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;
+ value of the Roman officials and Christian bishops to the, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Bartolommeo</span> (San), the church of, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Basil</span> the Macedonian and Lewis II, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</li>
+
+<li>'Basileus,' the title of, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, <a href="#Page_76">76</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Belisarius</span>, his war with the Ostrogoths, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</li>
+
+<li><a name="Belltower">Bell-tower</a>, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Benedict</span> of Soracte, <a href="#Page_51">51</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Benedict VIII</span> (Pope), alleged decree of, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Benevento, the Annals of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Berengar</span> of Friuli, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;
+ his death, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Berengar II</span> (King of Italy), <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Bernard</span> (St.), <a href="#Page_109">109</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+ perversion of its meaning, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1309, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+ the king of, an elector, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Boniface VIII</span> (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;
+ declares himself Vicar of the Empire, <a href="#Page_219">219</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Boso</span>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;
+ Roman Civil Law not forgotten in, at a late date, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;
+ Roman ensigns and devices in, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by invaders, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+ by the Romans of the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+ by modern restorers of churches, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li>
+
+<li><a name="Burgundy" id="Burgundy">Burgundy</a>, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ added to the Empire under Conrad II, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;
+ effect of its loss on the Empire, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>;
+ confusion caused by the name, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>;
+ ten senses in which it is met with, <a href="#Page_395">395</a>- <a href="#Page_397">397</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;
+ Otto's policy towards, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+ attitude towards Emperor, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">C.</li>
+
+<li>Campanile; <i>see</i> <a href="#Belltower">Bell-tower</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Canon law, correspondence between it and the <span lang="la">Corpus Juris Civilis</span>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;
+ its consolidation by Gregory IX, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Capet</span> (Hugh), <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Capitulary of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 802, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Caracalla</span> (Emperor), effect of his edict, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Carolingian Emperors, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 888, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;
+ Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, <a href="#Page_85">85</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Carroccio, the, <a href="#Page_178">178</a> note, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Cathari and other heretics, spread of, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Catholicity or Romanism, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Celibacy, enforcement of, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Cenci, name of, <a href="#Page_289">289</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charlemagne</span>; <i>see</i> <a href="#Charles">Charles I</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="Charles" id="Charles">Charles</a> I</span> (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;
+ is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the people, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">409</a></span>
+ his personal ambition, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;
+ his treatment of Pope Leo III, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;
+ title of 'Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;
+ crowned at Rome, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;
+ important consequences of his coronation, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>;
+ its real meaning, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;
+ contemporary accounts, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ their uniformity, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;
+ illegality of the transaction, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;
+ three theories respecting it held four centuries after, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;
+ was the coronation a surprise? <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;
+ his reluctance to assume the imperial title, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;
+ solution suggested by Döllinger, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;
+ seeks the hand of Irene, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;
+ defect of his imperial title, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;
+ theoretically the successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;
+ has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;
+ his authority in matters ecclesiastical, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;
+ presses Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a heretic, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;
+ his spiritual despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;
+ importance attached by him to the Imperial name, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;
+ issues a Capitulary, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;
+ draws closer the connexion of Church and State, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;
+ new position in civil affairs acquired with the Imperial title, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;
+ his position as Frankish king, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;
+ partial failure of his attempt to breathe a Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;
+ his personal habits and sympathies, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;
+ groundlessness of the claims of the modern French to, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;
+ the conception of his Empire Roman, not Teutonic, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;
+ his Empire held together by the Church, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;
+ appreciation of his character generally, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;
+ impress of his mind on mediæval society, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;
+ buried at Aachen, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;
+ inscription on his tomb, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;
+ canonised as a saint, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;
+ his plan of Empire, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles II</span> (the <span class="smcap">Bald</span>), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles III</span> (the <span class="smcap">Fat</span>), <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles IV</span>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+ his electoral constitution, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;
+ his Golden Bull, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+ general results of his policy, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+ his object through life, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;
+ the University of Prague founded by, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;
+ welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles V</span>, accession of, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>;
+ casts in his lot with the Catholics, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;
+ the momentous results, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>;
+ failure of his repressive policy, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles VI</span>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles VII</span>, his disastrous reign, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles VIII</span> (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Milan, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles Martel</span>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles</span> of Valois, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Charles</span> the <span class="smcap">Bold</span> and Frederick III, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Chemnitz</span>, his comments on the condition and prospects of the Empire, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Childeric</span>, his deposition by the Holy See, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Chivalry, the orders of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;
+ growth of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;
+ alliance of, with the State, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;
+ organization of, framed on the model of the secular administration, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;
+ the Emperor the head of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;
+ maintains the Imperial idea, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;
+ attitude of Charles the Great towards, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;
+ the bond that holds together the Empire of Charles, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;
+ first gives men a sense of unity, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">410</a></span>
+ how regarded in Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;
+ draws tighter all bonds of outward union, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;
+ unity of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;
+ becomes the exact counterpart of the Empire, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;
+ position of, in Germany, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ Otto's position towards, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;
+ effect of the Reformation upon, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;
+ influence of the Empire upon the history of, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Churches, national, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern restorers of, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+ mosaics and bell-tower in the, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Cities, in Lombardy, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+ growth of in Germany, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;
+ their power, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Civil law, revival of the study of, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;
+ its study forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Civilis</span>, the Batavian, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;
+ their idea of political unity, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;
+ their power in the eleventh century, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to the, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;
+ their ambition and corruption in the later Middle Age, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Clovis</span>, his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;
+ his unbroken success, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Coins, papal, <a href="#Page_278">278</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Colonna</span> (John), Petrarch's letters to, <a href="#Page_270">270</a> and note;
+ the family of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Commons, the, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Concordat of Worms, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Conrad I</span> (King of the East Franks), <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Conrad II</span>, the reign of, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;
+ comparison between the prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;
+ the crown of Burgundy first gained by, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Conrad III</span>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Conrad IV</span>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Conradin</span> (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Constance, the Council of, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;
+ the peace of, signed by Frederick I, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Constantine</span>, his vigorous policy, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;
+ the Donation of, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Constantinople, capture of, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Coronations, ceremonies at, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+ the four, gone through by the Emperors, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>;
+ their meaning, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;
+ churches in which they were performed, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon Law, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Crescentius</span>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;
+ not legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;
+ how treated by the Popes, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Crowns, the four, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Crusades, the, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">D.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Dante</span>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;
+ his attitude towards the Empire, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;
+ his treatise <i>De Monarchia</i>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+ sketch of its argument, <a href="#Page_264">264</a> et seq.;
+ its omissions, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Dark Ages, existing relics of the, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Decretals, the False, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">411</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Denmark, and the Slaves, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ imperial authority in, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;
+ its relations to the Empire, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Diet, the, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>;
+ its rights as settled <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;
+ its altered character <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1654, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;
+ its triflings, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Diocletian</span>, his vigorous policy, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Divine right of the Emperor, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Döllinger</span> (Dr.), <a href="#Page_60">60</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Dominicans, the order of, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a> note, <a href="#Page_261">261</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Dukes, the, in Germany, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">E.</li>
+
+<li>East, imperial pretensions in the, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Eastern Church, the, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;
+ decay of its power in the West, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;
+ how regarded by the Popes, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Edict of Caracalla, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Edward II</span> (King of England), his declaration of England's independence of the Empire, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Edward III</span> (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;
+ his election against Charles IV, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Eginhard</span>, his statement respecting Charles's coronation, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Elective constitution, the, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>;
+ difficulty of maintaining the principle in practice, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+ its object the choice of the fittest man, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+ restraint of the sovereign, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>;
+ recognition of the popular will, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Elector, the title of, its advantage, <a href="#Page_232">232</a> note;
+ personages upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Electoral body in primitive times, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Electoral function, conception of the, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Electorate, the Eighth, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+ the Ninth, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Electors, the Seven, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>;
+ their names and offices, <a href="#Page_230">230</a> note;
+ the question of their vote, <a href="#Page_257">257</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Emperor, the position of, in the second century, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;
+ the head of the Church, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;
+ sanctity of the name, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+ correspondence between his position and functions and those of the Pope, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;
+ proofs from mediæval documents, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;
+ and from the coronation ceremonies, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+ illustrations from mediæval art, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;
+ nature of his power, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+ fusion of his functions with those of German King, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;
+ his office feudalized, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+ attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;
+ his dignities and titles, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>;
+ the title not assumed till the Roman coronation, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;
+ origin and results of this practice, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;
+ policy of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+ his office as peace-maker, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;
+ divine right of the, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;
+ his right of creating kings, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;
+ his international place at the Council of Constance, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;
+ change in titles of, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;
+ his rights as settled <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;
+ altered meaning of the word now-a-days, <a href="#Page_402">402</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>;
+ persons eligible as, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;
+ after Henry VII, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;
+ their short-sighted policy towards Rome, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+ their visits to Rome, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;
+ their approach, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;
+ their entrance, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;
+ hostility of the Pope and people to the, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">412</a></span>
+ their burial-places, <a href="#Page_287">287</a> note;
+ nature of the question at issue between the Popes and the, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>;
+ their titles, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Carolingian, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Franconian, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in Germany, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;
+ their policy, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>;
+ repeated attempts to set them aside, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>;
+ causes of the long retention of the throne by the, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>;
+ modern pretensions of, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Italian, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Saxon, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
+
+<li><a name="Emperors" id="Emperors">Emperors</a>, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;
+ their short-sighted policy, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+ their memorials in Rome, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+ names of those buried in Italy, <a href="#Page_287">287</a> note;
+ their struggles against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;
+ obliteration of national distinctions in, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;
+ unity of, threatened from without and from within, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;
+ preserved for a time by the policy of Diocletian and Constantine, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;
+ partition of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;
+ influence of the Church in supporting, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;
+ armies of, composed of barbarians, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;
+ how regarded by the barbarians, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;
+ belief in eternity of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;
+ reunion of Italy to, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;
+ its influence in the Transalpine provinces, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;
+ influence of religion and jurisprudence in supporting, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;
+ belief in, not extinct in the eighth century, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;
+ restoration of by Charles the Great, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;
+ the 'translation' of the, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;
+ divided between the grandsons of Charles, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;
+ dissolution of, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;
+ ideal state supposed to be embodied in, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;
+ never, strictly speaking, restored, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;
+ a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;
+ wherein it differed therefrom, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;
+ motives for establishment of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ identical with Holy Roman Church, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+ its rights proved from the Bible, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;
+ its anti-national character, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;
+ its union with the German kingdom, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+ dissimilarity between the two, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;
+ results of the union, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ its pretensions in Hungary, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;
+ in Poland, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;
+ in Denmark, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;
+ in France, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ in Sweden, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ in Spain, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ in England, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;
+ in Naples, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;
+ in Venice, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;
+ in the East, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;
+ the epithet 'Holy' applied by Frederick I, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;
+ origin and meaning of epithet, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;
+ its fall with Frederick II, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;
+ Italy lost to, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;
+ change in its position, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;
+ its continuance due to its connexion with the German kingdom, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>;
+ its relations with the Papacy, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;
+ its financial distress, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+ theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;
+ its duties as an international judge and mediator, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>;
+ why an international power, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;
+ illustrations, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;
+ attitude of new learning towards, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>;
+ doctrine of its rights and functions never carried out in fact, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>;
+ end of its history in Italy, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+ relation between it and the city, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;
+ reaches its lowest point in Frederick III's reign, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;
+ its loss of Burgundy, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>, and of Switzerland, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">413</a></span>
+ change in its character, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;
+ effects of the Renaissance upon, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>;
+ effects of the Reformation upon, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;
+ its influence upon the name and associations of, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>;
+ narrowing of its bounds, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;
+ causes of the continuance of, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;
+ its relation to the balance of power, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;
+ its position in Europe, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;
+ its last phase, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>;
+ signs of its approaching fall, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;
+ its end, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>;
+ the desire for its re-establishment, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;
+ unwillingness of certain states, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>;
+ technically never extinguished, <a href="#Page_364">364</a> note;
+ summary of its nature and results, <a href="#Page_366">366</a>;
+ claim of Austria to represent, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+ of France, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+ of Russia, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+ of Greece, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+ of the Turks, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>;
+ parallel between the Papacy and, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>;
+ never truly mediæval, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>;
+ sense in which it was Roman, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;
+ its condition in the tenth century, <a href="#Page_374">374</a>;
+ essential principles of, <a href="#Page_377">377</a>;
+ its influence on Germany, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>;
+ Austria as heir of, <a href="#Page_381">381</a>;
+ its bearing on the progress of Europe, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;
+ ways in which it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;
+ its influence upon modern jurisprudence, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;
+ upon the history of the Church, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>;
+ influence of its inner life on the minds of men, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;
+ principles adverse to, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>;
+ change marked by its fall, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>;
+ its relations to the nationalities of Europe, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>;
+ difficulty of fully understanding, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;
+ consequences, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;
+ struggle between, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+ their relations, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;
+ parallel between, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>;
+ compared as perpetuation of a name, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Empire Western, last days of the, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;
+ its extinction by Odoacer, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;
+ its restoration, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Empire, French, under Napoleon, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Engelbert</span>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>England, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;
+ Otto's position towards, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ authority not exercised by any Emperors in, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;
+ vague notion that it must depend on the Empire, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;
+ imperial pretensions towards, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;
+ position of the regal power in, as compared with Germany, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+ feudalism in, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Eudes</span> (Count of Champagne), <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;
+ on the nationalities of, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">F.</li>
+
+<li>False Decretals, the, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Ferdinand I</span>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a> note, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_401">401</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Ferdinand II</span>, accession of, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;
+ his plans, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;
+ deprives the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Feudal aristocracy, power of the, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Feudalism, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;
+ reason of its firm grasp upon society, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>;
+ hostility between it and imperialism, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;
+ its results in France, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;
+ in England, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;
+ in Germany, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Financial distress of the Empire, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Florus</span> the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, <a href="#Page_85">85</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Fontenay, battle of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li>France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">414</a></span>
+ imperial authority exercised in, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ her irritation at Germany's precedence, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ growth of the regal power in, as compared with Germany, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+ alliance of the Protestants with, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;
+ territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;
+ feudalism in, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;
+ under Napoleon, <a href="#Page_360">360</a>;
+ her claim to represent the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Francis I</span>, reign of, <a href="#Page_351">351</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Francis II</span>, accession of, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>;
+ resignation of imperial crown by, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_363">363</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Franciscans, the order of, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Franconian Emperors, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
+
+<li>'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, <a href="#Page_142">142</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Franks, rise of the, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;
+ success of their arms, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>;
+ Catholics from the first, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;
+ their greatness chiefly due to the clergy, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;
+ enter Rome, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Frankfort, synod held at, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;
+ coronations at, <a href="#Page_316">316</a> note, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Frederick I</span> (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;
+ his relations to the Popedom, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;
+ his contest with Pope Hadrian IV, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>;
+ incident at their meeting on the way to Rome, <a href="#Page_314">314</a> note;
+ his contest with Pope Alexander III, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;
+ their meeting at Venice, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+ magnificent ascriptions of dignity to, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;
+ assertion of his prerogative in Italy, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;
+ his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+ his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+ his temporary success, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;
+ victory of the Lombards over, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;
+ his prosperity as German king, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;
+ his glorious life and happy death, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;
+ legend respecting him, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;
+ extent of his jurisdiction, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;
+ his dominion in the East, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;
+ his letter to Saladin, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;
+ anecdote of, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Frederick II</span>, character of, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;
+ events of his struggle with the Papacy, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;
+ results of his reign, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+ the charge of heresy against, <a href="#Page_251">251</a> note;
+ memorials left by, in Rome, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Frederick III</span>, abases himself before the Romish court, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>;
+ Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;
+ his calamitous reign, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Frederick</span> (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Frederick</span> of Prussia (the Great), <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Freedom popular, growth of, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">G.</li>
+
+<li>Gallic race, political character of the, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Gauverfassung, the so-called, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gerbert</span> (Pope Sylvester II), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li>
+
+<li>'German Emperor,' the title of, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Germanic constitution, the, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+ influence upon, of the theory of the Empire as an international power, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;
+ attempted reforms of, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;
+ means by which it was proposed to effect them, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>;
+ causes of their failure, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Germany, beginning of the national existence of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>;
+ chooses Arnulf as king, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">415</a></span>
+ overrun by Hungarians, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;
+ establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;
+ desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;
+ position of in the tenth century, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+ union of the Empire with, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;
+ results of the union, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ dissimilarity of the two systems, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;
+ feudalism in, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;
+ the feudal polity of, generally, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+ nature of the history of, till the twelfth century, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>;
+ princes of, ally themselves with the Pope against the Emperor, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+ its hatred of the Romish Court, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;
+ the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;
+ growth of towns in, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+ decline of imperial power in, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>;
+ state of during Great Interregnum, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;
+ decline of regal power in, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;
+ encroachments of nobles in, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;
+ kingdom of, not originally elective, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>;
+ how it ultimately became elective, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;
+ changes in the constitution of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;
+ its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>;
+ its loss of imperial territories, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+ its internal weakness, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;
+ position of the Emperor in, compared with that of his predecessors in Europe, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;
+ beginning of the Hapsburg influence in, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;
+ first consciousness of its nationality, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>;
+ destruction of its State-system, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;
+ its troubles, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>;
+ finally severed from Rome, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>;
+ after the peace of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>;
+ effect of a number of petty independent states upon, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;
+ feudalism in, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>;
+ its political life in the eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>;
+ foreign thrones acquired by its princes, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;
+ French aggression upon, <a href="#Page_346">346</a>;
+ its weakness and stagnation, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>;
+ popular feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>;
+ Napoleon in, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>;
+ changes in, by war of 1866, <a href="#Page_365">365</a> note;
+ influence of the Holy Empire on, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gerson</span>, chancellor of Paris, plans of, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Ghibeline, the name of, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Goethe</span>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a> note, <a href="#Page_316">316</a> note, <a href="#Page_356">356</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Golden Bull of Charles IV, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;
+ Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;
+ her claim to represent the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, <a href="#Page_37">37</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory the Great</span>, fame of his sanctity and writings, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;
+ means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory II</span> (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with the Byzantine princes, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory III</span> (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour against the Lombards, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory V</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_146">146</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap"><a name="Gregory" id="Gregory">Gregory</a> VII</span> (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures to the clergy, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>;
+ war between him and Henry IV, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+ his letter to William the Conqueror, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;
+ passage in his second excommunication of Henry, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;
+ results of the struggle between them, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+ his death, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+ his theory as to the rights of the Pope with respect to the election of Emperors, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+ his silence about the Translation of the Empire, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">416</a></span>
+ his simile between the Empire and the Popedom, <a href="#Page_373">373</a>;
+ his demands on the Emperor, <a href="#Page_386">386</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory IX</span> (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;
+ receives the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gregory X</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Grotius</span>, <a href="#Page_384">384</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Guelf, the name of, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Guido</span>, or <span class="smcap">Guy</span>, of Spoleto, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Guiscard</span>, Robert, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gundobald</span> the Burgundian, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gunther</span> of Schwartzburg, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Gustavus Adolphus</span>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">H.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hadrian I</span> (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the Lombards, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;
+ motives of his policy, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;
+ his allusion to Constantine's Donation, <a href="#Page_118">118</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hadrian IV</span> (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;
+ his pretensions, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hallam</span>, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Hanseatic Confederacy, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Hapsburg, the castle of, <a href="#Page_213">213</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Harold</span> the <span class="smcap">Blue-toothed</span>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry I</span> (the Fowler), <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry II</span> crowned Emperor, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry II</span> (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector of the German Liberties,' <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry II</span> (King of England), his submissive tone towards Frederick I, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry III</span>, power of the Empire at its meridian under, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;
+ his reform of the Popedom, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;
+ fatal results of his encroachments, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;
+ his death, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry IV</span>, election of, <a href="#Page_226">226</a> note;
+ war between him and Gregory VII, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+ his humiliation, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>;
+ results of the struggle, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;
+ his death, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry V</span> (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+ his quarrel with Pope Paschal II, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+ his perilous position, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+ comparison between the prerogative at his death and that at the accession of Conrad II, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;
+ tumults produced by his coronation, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry V</span> (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor Sigismund, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry VI</span>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;
+ his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to the Empire, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+ opposition to the scheme, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+ his untimely death, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry VII</span>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+ in Italy, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>;
+ his death, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Henry VIII</span> (King of England), <a href="#Page_334">334</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hilary</span>, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hildebert</span> (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past and present of Rome, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hildebrand</span>; <i>see</i> <a href="#Gregory">Gregory VII</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hippolytus</span> a Lapide, the treatise of, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Hohenstaufen; <i>see</i> <a href="#Emperors">Emperors, Swabian</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Hohenstaufen, the castle of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Holland, declared independent, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Holstein, its relations to the Empire, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hugh Capet</span>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Hugh</span> of Burgundy, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Hungarians, the, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">417</a></span>
+ its connexion with the Hapsburgs, <a href="#Page_184">184</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Huss</span>, the writings of, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">I.</li>
+
+<li>Iconoclastic controversy, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span lang="la">'Imperator electus,'</span> the title of, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediæval, <a href="#Page_375">375</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Imperial titles and ceremonies, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Innocent III</span> (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+ his pretensions, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+ his struggle with Frederick II, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Innocent X</span> and the sacred number Seven of the electors, <a href="#Page_227">227</a> note;
+ his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li>
+
+<li>International power, the need of an, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;
+ why the Roman Empire an, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;
+ enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Investitures, the struggle of the, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Irene</span> (Empress), behaviour of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Irminsûl, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;
+ meaning of term, <a href="#Page_69">69</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Italian Emperors, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments appeared, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Italy, under Odoacer, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;
+ attempt of Theodoric to establish a national monarchy in, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;
+ reconquered by Justinian, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;
+ harassed by the Lombards, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;
+ condition of, previous to Otto's descent into, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;
+ Otto the Great's first expedition into, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ its connexion with Germany, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;
+ Otto's rule in, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;
+ liberties of the northern cities of, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;
+ Frederick I in, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;
+ Henry VII in, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;
+ lost to the Empire, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+ names of Emperors buried in, <a href="#Page_287">287</a> note;
+ the nation at the present day, <a href="#Page_389">389</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Italy, Southern, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">J.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">John VIII</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">John XII</span> (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;
+ plots against him, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+ his reprobate life, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+ Liudprand's list of the charges against, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;
+ letter recounting them sent to him, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+ his reply, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+ Otto's answer, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+ deposed by Otto, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;
+ regret of the Romans at his expulsion, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;
+ his return and death, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">John XXII</span> (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Joseph II</span>, reign of, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Julius Cæsar</span>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>, <a href="#Page_392">392</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Julius II</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_316">316</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;
+ aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;
+ influence of the Empire on modern, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Justinian</span>, Italy reconquered by, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;
+ study of the legislation of, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</li>
+
+<li>'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory IX, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Jutland, Otto penetrates into, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">K.</li>
+
+<li>Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">418</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">L.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lactantius</span>, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lambert</span> (son of Guido of Spoleto), <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the Pope, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, <a href="#Page_37">37</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of Charles, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Law, old, the influence exercised by, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;
+ era of the revived study of, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Learning, revival of, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+ connexion between it and imperialism, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leo I</span> (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leo</span> the <span class="smcap">Isaurian</span> (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the worship of images, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leo III</span> (Pope), his accession, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>;
+ his adventures, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;
+ crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;
+ charter of, issued on same day, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;
+ relation of, to the act of coronation, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;
+ lectured by Charles, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leo VIII</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Leonine city, the, <a href="#Page_286">286</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leopold I</span>, ninth electorate conferred by, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Leopold II</span>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis I</span> (the Pious), <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis II</span>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a> note, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis III</span> (son of Boso), <a href="#Page_82">82</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis IV</span>, his conflict with Pope John XXII, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis XII</span> (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and Milan, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis XIV</span> (King of France), <a href="#Page_346">346</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis</span> (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lewis</span> the <span class="smcap">Child</span> (son of Arnulf), <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Literature, revival of, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+ connexion between it and imperialism, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Liudprand</span> (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations against John XII, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;
+ account of his embassy to the princess Theophano, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Liudprand</span> (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the exarchate, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Lombard cities, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;
+ their victory over Frederick I, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Lombards, arrival of the, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 568, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;
+ their aversion to the clergy, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;
+ the Popes seek help from the Franks against the, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;
+ extinction of their kingdom by Charlemagne, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lothar I</span> (son of Lewis the Pious), <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_403">403</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lothar II</span>, election of, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Lothar</span> (son of Hugh of Burgundy), <a href="#Page_83">83</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Lotharingia or Lorraine, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Luneville, the Peace of, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Luther</span>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">M.</li>
+
+<li>Majesty, the title of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Mallum, the popular assembly so called, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Manuel Comnenus</span>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mario (Monte), <a href="#Page_283">283</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Marsilius</span> of Padua, his <span lang="la">'de Imperio Romano,'</span> <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">419</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Maximilian I</span>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;
+ character of his epoch, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;
+ events of his reign, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;
+ his title of <span lang="la">'Imperator electus,'</span> <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_405">405</a>;
+ his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Maximilian II</span>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mediæval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mediæval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Michael</span>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Michael Angelo</span>, capital rebuilt by, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;
+ theology of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;
+ philosophy of, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;
+ relations of Church and State during, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>;
+ mode of interpreting Scriptures in, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;
+ art of, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>;
+ opposition of theory and practice in, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>;
+ real beginning of, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;
+ reverence for ancient forms and phrases in, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>;
+ absence of the idea of change or progress in, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;
+ the city of Rome in, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;
+ barbarism of the aristocracy in, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+ ambition and corruption of the clergy in the latter, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+ destruction of old buildings by the Romans of, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>;
+ existing relics of, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;
+ aspiration for unity during, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;
+ the Visible Church in the, <a href="#Page_370">370</a>;
+ ferocity of the heroes of, <a href="#Page_382">382</a>;
+ ways in which the Empire affected the political institutions of, <a href="#Page_383">383</a>;
+ idea of the communion of saints during, <a href="#Page_387">387</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;
+ the rebuilding of, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;
+ victory of Frederick II over, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+ pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mahommedanism, rise of, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of Charles, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Mommsen</span>, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Monarchy, elective, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Mosaics in the churches of Rome, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Müller</span>, Johannes von, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Münster, the treaty of; <i>see</i> <a href="#Westphalia">Westphalia</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">N.</li>
+
+<li>Naples, imperial authority in, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;
+ pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Napoleon</span>, as compared with Charles the Great, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;
+ extinction of Electorates by, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;
+ Emperor of the West, <a href="#Page_357">357</a>;
+ his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne, <a href="#Page_358">358</a>;
+ attitude of the Papacy towards, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>;
+ his mission in Germany, <a href="#Page_361">361</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;
+ relations of the Empire to the, <a href="#Page_390">390</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against, <a href="#Page_388">388</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nicæa, first council of, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;
+ second council of, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Nicephorus</span>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Nicholas I</span> (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Nicholas II</span> (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Nicholas V</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nobles, the, in feudal times, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;
+ encroachments of the, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Nürnberg, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">420</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="alpha">O.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Occam</span>, the English Franciscan, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Odo</span>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Odoacer</span>, extinction of the Western Empire by, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 476, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;
+ his original position, <a href="#Page_25">25</a> note;
+ his assumption of the title of King, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;
+ nature of his government, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Optatus</span> (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise <i lang="la">Contra Donatistas</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Orsini, the family of, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Osnabrück, treaty of; <i>see</i> <a href="#Westphalia">Westphalia</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Ostrogoths, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;
+ war between Belisarius and the, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Otto I</span>, the <span class="smcap">Great</span>, appealed to by Adelheid, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;
+ his first expedition into Italy, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ invitation sent by the Pope to, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ his victory over the Hungarians, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;
+ crowned king of Italy at Rome, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>;
+ his coronation a favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;
+ causes of the revival of the Empire under, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;
+ his coronation feast the inauguration of the Teutonic realm, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;
+ consequences of his assumption of the imperial title, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ his position towards the Church, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;
+ changes in title, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;
+ his imperial office feudalized, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;
+ the Germans made a single people by, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;
+ incidents which befel him in Rome, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>;
+ inquires into the character and manners of Pope John XII, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;
+ his letters to John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+ deposes John, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;
+ appoints Leo in his stead, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;
+ his suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of John, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+ his rule in Italy, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;
+ resumes Charles's plans of foreign conquest, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;
+ his policy towards Byzantium, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+ seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;
+ his policy towards the West Franks, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;
+ his Northern and Eastern conquests, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ extent of his empire, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+ comparison between it and that of Charles, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;
+ beneficial results of his rule, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;
+ how styled by Nicephorus, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Otto II</span>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;
+ memorials left by, in Rome, <a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Otto III</span>, his plans and ideas, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;
+ his intense religious belief in the Emperor's duties, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;
+ his reason for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;
+ his early death, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>;
+ his burial at Aachen, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;
+ respect in which his life was so memorable, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;
+ compared with Frederick II, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;
+ his expostulation with the Roman people, <a href="#Page_285">285</a> note;
+ memorials left by, in Rome, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Otto IV</span>, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+ overthrown by Innocent, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;
+ explanation of a curious seal of, <a href="#Page_266">266</a> note.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">P.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Palgrave</span> (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis, <a href="#Page_30">30</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Palsgrave</span>, deprived of his vote, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;
+ reinstated, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;
+ Frederick I's bad relations with, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;
+ Henry III's purification of, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>;
+ growth of its power, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+ its relations with the Empire, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;
+ its condition after the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">421</a></span>
+ its attitude towards Napoleon, <a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;
+ its consequences, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;
+ struggle between them, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+ their relations, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;
+ parallel between, <a href="#Page_369">369</a>;
+ compared as perpetuation of a name, <a href="#Page_372">372</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Partition treaty of Verdun, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Paschal II</span> (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;
+ date when it was bestowed on Pipin, <a href="#Page_40">40</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Patritius</span>, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of the Empire, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Persecution, Protestant, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Peter's (St.), old, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Petrarch</span>, his feelings towards the Empire, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>;
+ towards the city of Rome, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Pfeffinger</span>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Philip</span> of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick and, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;
+ his assassination, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth century, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Pipin</span> of Herstal, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Pipin</span> the <span class="smcap">Short</span> appointed successor to Childeric, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;
+ twice rescues Rome from the Lombards, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;
+ receives the title of Patrician of the Romans, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;
+ import of this title, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;
+ date at which it was bestowed, <a href="#Page_40">40</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Pius VII</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_359">359</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Placitum, the popular assembly so called, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Podiebrad</span> (George), (King of Bohemia), <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Poland, imperial authority in, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;
+ partition of, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Politics, beginning of the existence of, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Popes, emancipation of the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;
+ appeal to the Franks for succour against the Lombards, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;
+ their reasons for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;
+ their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;
+ their profligacy in the tenth century, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+ their theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;
+ their position and functions, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;
+ growth of their pretensions, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>;
+ and power, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;
+ their relations to the Emperor, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;
+ their temporal power, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;
+ their position as international judges, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>;
+ reaction against their pretensions, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>;
+ their aversion to the study of ancient jurisprudence, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>;
+ hostility of, to the Germans, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>;
+ nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and, <a href="#Page_385">385</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Porcaro</span> (Stephen), conspiracy of, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Prætaxation, the so-called right of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Prague, University of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad II and death of Henry V, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">422</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="alpha">R.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Radulfus de Colonna</span>, his account of the origin of the separation of Greeks and Latins, <a href="#Page_37">37</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Ravenna, exarch of, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Reformation, dawnings of the, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;
+ Charles V's attitude towards the, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>;
+ influence of its spirit on the Empire, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;
+ its real meaning, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>;
+ its effect on the doctrines regarding the Visible Church, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>;
+ consequent effect upon the Empire, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>;
+ its small immediate influence on political and religious liberty, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>;
+ conduct of the Protestant States after the, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>;
+ its influence on the name and associations of the Empire, <a href="#Page_332">332</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;
+ wars of, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Renaissance, the, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span lang="la">'Renovatio Romani Imperii,'</span> signification of the seal bearing legend of, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Rhine, towns of the, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;
+ provisions of the Confederation of the, <a href="#Page_362">362</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Richard I</span> (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor Henry VI, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;
+ his release, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Richard</span> (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with Alfonso X of Castile, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Richelieu</span>, policy of, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Ricimer</span> (patrician), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rienzi</span>, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;
+ his character and career, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+ Otto's vigorous measures against the, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;
+ their revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;
+ the title of King of the, <a href="#Page_404">404</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Romanism or Catholicity, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;
+ prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;
+ lingering influences of her Church and Law, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;
+ claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>;
+ republican institutions of, renewed, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;
+ profligacy of, in the tenth century, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;
+ under Arnold of Brescia, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;
+ imitations of old, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;
+ in the Middle Ages, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>;
+ absence of Gothic in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>;
+ the modern traveller in, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_283">283</a>;
+ causes of her rapid decay, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>;
+ peculiarities of her position, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;
+ her internal history from the sixth to the twelfth century, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;
+ her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;
+ growth of a republican feeling in, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>;
+ short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>;
+ causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;
+ her internal condition, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;
+ her people, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>;
+ her nobility, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;
+ her bishop, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>;
+ relation of the Emperor to, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;
+ the Emperors' visits to, <a href="#Page_282">282</a>;
+ dislike of, to the Germans, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;
+ memorials of Otto III in, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>;
+ of Otto II, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+ of Frederick II, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>;
+ causes of the want of mediæval monuments in, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+ barbarism of the aristocracy of, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>;
+ ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+ tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;
+ destruction and alteration of old buildings in, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+ her modern churches, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>;
+ existing relics of Dark and Middle Ages in, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">423</a></span>
+ changed aspect of, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>;
+ analogy between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical constitution, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>;
+ relation of, to the Empire, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>;
+ feelings of modern Italians towards, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;
+ perpetuation of the name of, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>;
+ parallel instances, <a href="#Page_367">367</a>;
+ Hildebert's lines contrasting the past and present of, <a href="#Page_406">406</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Romulus Augustulus</span>, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf</span> (King of Transjurane), <a href="#Page_81">81</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf</span> of Hapsburg, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+ financial distress under, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>;
+ Schiller's description of the coronation feast of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a> note, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf II</span>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf III</span>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf</span> of Swabia, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Rudolf III</span> (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath Burgundy to Henry II, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">S.</li>
+
+<li>Sachsenspiegel, the, <a href="#Page_108">108</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Saladin</span> (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Saxon Emperors, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ its relation to the Empire, <a href="#Page_398">398</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth century, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Seal, ascribed to <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Septimius Severus</span>, concentration of power in his hands, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Sergius IV</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_228">228</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Seven Years' War, <a href="#Page_352">352</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Sicily, imperial authority in, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Sigismund</span> (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Sigismund</span> (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;
+ at the Council of Constance, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Simony, measures taken against, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Slavic races, the, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_378">378</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Smalkaldic league, the, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Southern Italy, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Spain, Otto's position towards, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;
+ authority not exercised by any Emperor in, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;
+ compared with Germany, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Speyer, Diet of, <a href="#Page_111">111</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Stephania</span> (widow of Crescentius), <a href="#Page_148">148</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;
+ the towns of, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;
+ theory of the Emperors of the house of, respecting the coronation of Charles, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Swiss Confederation, the, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>;
+ her gains by treaties of Westphalia, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Switzerland lost to the Empire, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Sylvester</span> (Pope), <a href="#Page_43">43</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">T.</li>
+
+<li>Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_9">9</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Tertullian</span>, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, <a href="#Page_21">21</a> note, <a href="#Page_23">23</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Teutberga</span> (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Teutonic race, political character of the, <a href="#Page_376">376</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Theodebert</span> (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the institutions of the Empire, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">424</a></span></li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Theodoric</span> the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a national monarchy in Italy, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;
+ its failure, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;
+ his usual place of residence, <a href="#Page_28">28</a> note;
+ prosperity under his reign, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Theodosius</span> (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Theophano</span> (princess), <a href="#Page_141">141</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Thirty Years' War, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>;
+ its unsatisfactory results, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;
+ its substantial advantage to the German princes, <a href="#Page_338">338</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Thomas</span> (St.), his statement respecting the election of Emperors, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Titles, change of, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_400">400</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
+
+<li>'Translation of the Empire,' <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Transubstantiation, <a href="#Page_326">326</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Turks, the, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;
+ their claim to represent the Roman Empire, <a href="#Page_368">368</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Turpin</span> (Archbishop), <a href="#Page_51">51</a> note.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">U.</li>
+
+<li>University of Prague, foundation of, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Urban IV</span> (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">V.</li>
+
+<li>Venice, her attitude, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;
+ imperial pretensions towards, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;
+ maintains her independence, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Verdun, partition treaty of, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Vespasian</span>, his dying jest, <a href="#Page_23">23</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Vienna, Congress of, <a href="#Page_364">364</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Villani</span> (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;
+ his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, <a href="#Page_304">304</a> note.</li>
+
+<li>Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by the, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>.</li>
+
+<li class="alpha">W.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Wallenstein</span>, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Wenzel</span> of Bohemia, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Western Empire, its last days, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;
+ its extinction by Odoacer, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;
+ its restoration, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</li>
+
+<li><a name="Westphalia" id="Westphalia">Westphalia</a>, the Peace of, <a href="#Page_336">336</a>;
+ its advantages to France, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;
+ to Sweden, <a href="#Page_341">341</a>;
+ its importance in imperial history, <a href="#Page_342">342</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Wickliffe</span>, excitement caused by his writings, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">William</span> the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Wippo</span>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Witukind</span>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a> note.</li>
+
+<li><span class="smcap">Woitech</span> (St. Adalbert), <a href="#Page_269">269</a>.</li>
+
+<li>World-Monarchy, the idea of a, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+ influence of metaphysics upon the theory, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>.</li>
+
+<li>World-Religion, the idea of a, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>;
+ coincides with the World-Empire, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>.</li>
+
+<li>Worms, Concordant of, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;
+ Diet of, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+<h2 class="fntitle">FOOTNOTES:</h2>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>
+ The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to
+complete and publish, a set of chronological tables which may
+be made to serve as a sort of skeleton history of mediæval Germany
+and Italy.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>
+ Reckoning the Anti-pope Felix (<span class="smcap">A.D</span>. 356) as Felix II.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a>
+ Crowned Emperor, but at Bologna, not at Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a>
+ According to the vicious financial
+system that prevailed, the <i>curiales</i>
+in each city were required to
+collect the taxes, and when there
+was a deficit, to supply it from
+their own property.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>
+ See the eloquent passage of
+Claudian, <i lang="la">In secundum consulatum
+Stilichonis</i>, 129, <i>sqq.</i>, from which
+the following lines are taken (150-60):&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Hæc est in gremio victos quæ sola recepit,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Matris, non dominæ, ritu; civesque vocavit</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quod sedem mutare licet: quod cernere Thulen</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Oronten,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquam</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Romanæ ditionis erit.'</span></p>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>
+ In the Roman jurisprudence, <i lang="la">ius sacrum</i> is a branch of <i>ius
+publicum</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>
+ Tertullian, writing circ. <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+200, says: <span lang="la">'Sed quid ego amplius
+de religione atque pietate Christiana
+in imperatorem quem necesse
+est suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus
+noster elegerit. Et merito
+dixerim, noster est magis Cæsar, ut
+a nostro Deo constitutus.'</span>&mdash;<i>Apologet.</i>
+cap. 34.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>
+ See the book of Optatus, bishop
+of Milevis, <i lang="la">Contra Donatistas</i>. <span lang="la">'Non
+enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed
+ecclesia in republica, id est, in imperio
+Romano, cum super imperatorem
+non sit nisi solus Deus:'</span> (p.
+999 of vol. ii. of Migne's <i lang="la">Patrologiæ
+Cursus completus</i>.) The
+treatise of Optatus is full of interest,
+as shewing the growth of the idea
+of the visible Church, and of the
+primacy of Peter's chair, as constituting
+its centre and representing
+its unity.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.'</span>&mdash;Tac.
+<i>Ann.</i> i. 2.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>
+ Tac. <i>Ann.</i> ii. 9.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>
+ Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself
+a Vandal by extraction.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>
+ Of course not the consulship itself, but the <i lang="la">ornamenta consularia</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a>
+ Jornandes, <i lang="la">De Rebus Geticis</i>, cap. 28.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>
+ Tac. <i>Hist.</i> i. and iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Vester quidem est populus
+meus sed me plus servire vobis
+quam illi præesse delectat. Traxit
+istud a proavis generis mei apud
+vos decessoresque vestros semper
+animo Romana devotio, ut illa
+nobis magis claritas putaretur,
+quam vestra per militiæ titulos porrigeret
+celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus
+meis semper magis ambitum
+est quod a principibus sumerent
+quam quod a patribus attulissent.
+Cumque gentem nostram videamur
+regere, non aliud nos quam milites
+vestros credimus ordinari.... Per
+nos administratis remotarum spatia
+regionum: patria nostra vester orbis
+est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen
+orientis, et radius qui illis partibus
+oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem
+vobis divinitus præstitam
+obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum
+terminis diffusio felicium
+sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
+honore sit dictum.'</span>&mdash;Letter
+printed among the works of Avitus,
+Bishop of Vienne. (Migne's
+<i lang="la">Patrologia</i>, vol. lix. p. 285.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">This letter, as its style shews,
+is the composition not of Sigismund
+himself, but of Avitus, writing on
+Sigismund's behalf. But this makes
+it scarcely less valuable evidence
+of the feelings of the time.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Referre solitus est (<i>sc.</i> Ataulphus)
+se in primis ardenter inhiasse:
+ut obliterato Romanorum
+nomine Romanum omne solum
+Gothorum imperium et faceret et
+vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter
+loquar, Gothia quod Romania fuisset;
+fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod
+quondam Cæsar Augustus. At ubi
+multa experientia probavisset, neque
+Gothos ullo modo parere legibus
+posse propter effrenatam barbariem,
+neque reipublicæ interdici
+leges oportere sine quibus respublica
+non est respublica; elegisse se saltem,
+ut gloriam sibi de restituendo
+in integrum augendoque Romano
+nomine Gothorum viribus quæreret,
+habereturque apud posteros Romanæ
+restitutionis auctor postquam
+esse non potuerat immutator. Ob
+hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare
+paci nitebatur.'</span>&mdash;Orosius, vii. 43.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a>
+ Athaulf formed only to abandon
+it.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a>
+ See, among other passages,
+Varro, <i lang="la">De lingua Latina</i>, iv. 34;
+Cic., <i lang="la">Pro Domo</i>, 33; and in the
+<i lang="la">Corpus Iuris Civilis</i>, Dig. i. 5, 17;
+l. 1, 33; xiv. 2, 9; quoted by
+Ægidi, <span lang="de"><i>Der Fürstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden</i></span>. The phrase
+<span lang="la">'urbs æterna'</span> appears in a novel
+issued by Valentinian III.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Tertullian speaks of Rome as
+<span lang="la">'civitas sacrosancta.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a>
+ Lact. <i>Divin. Instit.</i> vii. 25:
+<span lang="la">'Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum
+ruinamque rerum brevi fore: nisi
+quod incolumi urbe Roma nihil
+istiusmodi videtur esse metuendum.
+At vero cum caput illud orbis occident,
+et <span class="greek" title="rhymê">ῥύμη</span> esse cœperit quod
+Sibyllæ fore aiunt, quis dubitet
+venisse iam finem rebus humanis,
+orbique terrarum? Illa, illa est
+civitas quæ adhuc sustentat omnia,
+precandusque nobis et adorandus
+est Deus cœli si tamen statuta eius
+et placita differri possunt, ne citius
+quam putemus tyrannus ille abominabilis
+veniat qui tantum facinus
+moliatur, ac lumen illud effodiat
+cuius interitu mundus ipse lapsurus
+est.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Cf. Tertull. <i>Apolog.</i> cap. xxxii:
+<span lang="la">'Est et alia maior necessitas nobis
+orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro
+omni statu imperii rebusque Romanis,
+qui vim maximam universo
+orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam
+sæculi acerbitates horrendas
+comminantem Romani imperii commeatu
+scimus retardari.'</span> Also the
+same writer, <i lang="la">Ad Scapulam</i>, cap. ii:
+<span lang="la">'Christianus sciens imperatorem a
+Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut
+ipsum diligat et revereatur et honoret
+et salvum velit cum toto
+Romano imperio quousque sæculum
+stabit: tamdiu enim stabit.'</span> So too
+the author&mdash;now usually supposed
+to be Hilary the Deacon&mdash;of the
+Commentary on the Pauline Epistles
+ascribed to S. Ambrose: <span lang="la">'Non
+prius veniet Dominus quam regni
+Romani defectio fiat, et appareat
+antichristus qui interficiet sanctos,
+reddita Romanis libertate, sub suo
+tamen nomine.'</span>&mdash;Ad II Thess. ii.
+4, 7.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a>
+ For example, by the <span lang="la">'restitutio natalium,'</span> and the '<span lang="la">adrogatio per
+rescriptum principis,'</span> or, as it is expressed, <span lang="la">'per sacrum oraculum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a>
+ Even the Christian Emperors
+took the title of Pontifex Maximus,
+till Gratian refused it: <span class="greek" title="athemiston
+einai Christianô to schêma nomisas">ἀθέμιστον εἶναι Χριστιάνῳ τὸ σχῆμα νομίσας</span>.&mdash;Zosimus,
+lib. iv. cap. 36.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Maiore formidine et callidiore
+timiditate Cæsarem observatis quam
+ipsum ex Olympo Iovem, et merito,
+si sciatis.... Citius denique apud
+vos per omnes Deos quam per unum
+genium Cæsaris peieratur.'</span>&mdash;Tertull.
+<i>Apolog.</i> c. xxviii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Cf. Zos. v. 51: <span class="greek" title="ei men gar pros
+ton theon tetychêkei didomenos horkos,
+ên an hôs eikos paridein endidontas
+tê tou theou philanthrôpia tên epi
+tê asebeia syngnômên. epei de
+kata tên tou basileôs omômokesan
+kephalês, ouk einai themiton
+autois eis ton tosouton horkon examartein.">εἰ μὲν γὰρ πρὸς
+τὸν θεὸν τετυχήκει διδόμενος ὅρκος,
+ἦν ἂν ὡς εἰκὸς παριδεῖν ἐνδίδοντας
+τῇ τοῦ θεοῦ φιλανθρωπίᾳ τὴν ἐπὶ
+τῇ ἀσεβείᾳ συγγνώμην. ἐπεὶ δὲ
+κατὰ τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως ὀμωμόκεσαν
+κεφαλῆς, οὐκ εἶναι θεμιτὸν
+αὐτοῖς εἰς τὸν τοσοῦτον ὅρκον ἐξαμαρτεῖν.</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a>
+ Tac. <i>Ann.</i> i. 73; iii. 38, etc.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a>
+ It is curious that this should
+have begun in the first years of the
+Empire. See, among other passages
+that might be cited from the Augustan
+poets, Virg. <i>Georg.</i> i. 42;
+iv. 462; Hor. <i>Od.</i> iii. 3, 11;
+Ovid, <i>Epp. ex Ponto</i>, iv. 9. 105.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a>
+ Hence Vespasian's dying jest,
+<span lang="la">'Ut puto, deus fio.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a>
+ <span class="greek" title="hopou an ho basileus ê, ekei hê Rhômê">ὅπου ἂν ὁ βασιλεὺς ᾖ, ἐκεῖ ἡ Ῥώμη</span>.&mdash;Herodian.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a>
+ If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a>
+ Odoacer or Odovaker, as it
+seems his name ought to be written,
+is usually, but incorrectly, described
+as a King of the Heruli, who led
+his people into Italy and overthrew
+the Empire of the West; others
+call him King of the Rugii, or
+Skyrri, or Turcilingi. The truth
+seems to be that he was not a king
+at all, but the son of a Skyrrian
+chieftain (Edecon, known as one of
+the envoys whom Attila sent to
+Constantinople), whose personal
+merits made him chosen by the
+barbarian auxiliaries to be their
+leader. The Skyrri were a small
+tribe, apparently akin to the more
+powerful Heruli, whose name is
+often extended to them.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a>
+ <span class="greek" title="Augoustos ho Orestou huios
+ akousas Zênôna palin tên basileian
+ anakektêsthai tês heô ...
+ ênankase tên boulên aposteilai
+ presbeian Zênôni sêmainousan hôs
+ idias men autois basileias ou deoi,
+ koinos de apochrêsei monos ôn autokratôr
+ ep' amphoterois tois perasi.
+ ton mentoi Odoachon hyp' autôn probeblêsthai
+ hikanon onta sôzein ta
+ par' autois pragmata politikên
+ echôn noun kai synesin homou kai
+ machimon. kai deisthai tou Zênônos
+ patrikiou te autô aposteilai axian
+ kai tên tôn Italôn toutô epheinai
+ dioikêsin">Αὔγουστος ὁ Ὀρέστου υἱὸς
+ ἀκούσας Ζήνωνα πάλιν τὴν βασιλείαν
+ ἀνακεκτῆσθαι τῆς ἕω ...
+ ἠνάγκασε τὴν βουλὴν ἀποστεῖλαι
+ πρεσβεῖαν Ζήνωνι σημαίνουσαν ὡς
+ ἰδίας μὲν αὐτοῖς βασιλείας οὐ δέοι,
+ κοινὸς δὲ ἀποχρήσει μόνος ὢν αὐτοκράτωρ
+ ἐπ' ἀμφοτέροις τοῖς πέρασι.
+ τὸν μέντοι Ὀδόαχον ὑπ' αὐτῶν προβεβλῆσθαι
+ ἱκανὸν ὄντα σώζειν τὰ
+ παρ' αὐτοῖς πράγματα πολιτικὴν
+ ἐχὼν νοῦν καὶ σύνεσιν ὁμοῦ καὶ
+ μάχιμον. καὶ δεῖσθαι τοῦ Ζήνωνος
+ πατρικίου τε αὐτῷ ἀποστεῖλαι ἀξίαν
+ καὶ τὴν τῶν Ἰτάλων τουτῷ ἐφεῖναι
+ διοίκησιν</span>.&mdash;Malchus ap. Photium
+in <i>Corp. Hist. Byzant.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a>
+ Not king of Italy, as is often
+said. The barbarian kings did not
+for several centuries employ territorial
+titles; the title 'king of
+France,' for instance, was first used
+by Henry IV. Jornandes tells us
+that Odoacer never so much as
+assumed the insignia of royalty.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a>
+ Sismondi, <span lang="fr"><i>Histoire de la Chute
+de l'Empire Occidentale</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Nil deest nobis imperio vestro
+famulantibus.'</span>&mdash;Theodoric to Zeno:
+Jornandes, <i lang="la">De Rebus Geticis</i>, cap.
+57.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Unde et pæne omnibus barbaris
+Gothi sapientiores exstiterunt
+Græcisque pæne consimiles.'</span>&mdash;Jorn.
+cap. 5.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a>
+ Theodoric (Thiodorich) seems
+to have resided usually at Ravenna,
+where he died and was buried; a remarkable
+building which tradition
+points out as his tomb stands a little
+way out of the town, near the railway
+station, but the porphyry sarcophagus,
+in which his body is
+supposed to have lain, has been
+removed thence, and may be seen
+built up into the wall of the building
+called his palace, situated close
+to the church of Sant' Apollinare,
+and not far from the tomb of
+Dante. There does not appear to
+be any sufficient authority for attributing
+this building to Ostrogothic
+times; it is very different from the
+representation of Theodoric's palace
+which we have in the contemporary
+mosaics of Sant' Apollinare in urbe.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">In the German legends, however,
+Theodoric is always the prince of
+Verona (Dietrich von Berne), no
+doubt because that city was better
+known to the Teutonic nations, and
+because it was thither that he moved
+his court when transalpine affairs
+required his attention. His castle
+there stood in the old town on the
+left bank of the Adige, on the
+height now occupied by the citadel;
+it is doubtful whether any traces of
+it remain, for the old foundations
+which we now see may have belonged
+to the fortress erected by
+Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the
+fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Igitur Chlodovechus ab imperatore
+Anastasio codicillos de
+consulatu accepit, et in basilica
+beati Martini tunica blatea indutus
+est et chlamyde, imponens vertici
+diadema ... et ab ea die tanquam
+consul aut (=et) Augustus est vocitatus.'</span>&mdash;Gregory
+of Tours, ii. 58.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a>
+ Sir F. Palgrave (<i>English Commonwealth</i>)
+considers this grant as
+equivalent to a formal ratification
+of Clovis' rule in Gaul. Hallam
+rates its importance lower (<i>Middle
+Ages</i>, note iii. to chap. i.). Taken
+in connection with the grant of
+south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
+by Justinian, it may fairly be held
+to shew that the influence of the
+Empire was still felt in these distant
+provinces.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a>
+ Even so early as the middle
+of the fifth century, S. Leo the
+Great could say to the Roman
+people, <span lang="la">'Isti (sc. Petrus et Paulus)
+sunt qui te ad hanc gloriam provexerunt
+ut gens sancta, populus
+electus, civitas sacerdotalis et regia,
+per sacram B. Petri sedem caput
+orbis effecta latius præsideres religione
+divina quam dominatione terrena.'</span>&mdash;<i>Sermon
+on the feast of
+SS. Peter and Paul.</i> (Opp. <i>ap.</i> Migne
+tom. i. p. 336.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Ius Romanum est adhuc in
+viridi observantia et eo iure præsumitur
+quilibet vivere nisi adversum
+probetur.'</span>&mdash;Maranta, quoted
+by Marquard Freher.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Denique gens Francorum
+multos et fœcundissimos fructus
+Domino attulit, non solum credendo,
+sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'</span>
+says the emperor Lewis
+II in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 871.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a>
+ Martin, as in earlier times
+Sylverius.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a>
+ A singular account of the
+origin of the separation of the
+Greeks and Latins occurs in the
+treatise of Radulfus de Columna
+(Ralph Colonna, or, as some think,
+de Coloumelle), <i lang="la">De translatione Imperii
+Romani</i> (circ. 1300). 'The
+tyranny of Heraclius,' says he,
+'provoked a revolt of the Eastern
+nations. They could not be reduced,
+because the Greeks at the
+same time began to disobey the
+Roman Pontiff, receding, like Jeroboam,
+from the true faith. Others
+among these schismatics (apparently
+with the view of strengthening their
+political revolt) carried their heresy
+further and founded Mohammedanism.'
+Similarly, the Franciscan
+Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says
+that Mohammed, 'a rich Persian,'
+invented his religion to keep the
+East from returning to allegiance to
+Rome. It is worth remarking that
+few, if any, of the earlier historians
+(from the tenth to the fifteenth
+century) refer to the Emperors of
+the West from Constantine to
+Augustulus: the very existence of
+this Western line seems to have
+been even in the eighth or ninth
+century altogether forgotten.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a>
+ Anastasius, <i lang="la">Vitæ Pontificum
+Romanorum</i> i. <i>ap.</i> Muratori.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a>
+ Letter in <i lang="la">Codex Carolinus</i>, in
+Muratori's <i lang="la">Scriptores Rerum Italicarum</i>,
+vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed
+<span lang="la">'Subregulo Carolo.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a>
+ Letter in <i>Cod. Carol.</i> (Mur.
+<i>R. S. I.</i> iii. [2.] p. 96), a strange
+mixture of earnest adjurations,
+dexterous appeals to Frankish
+pride, and long scriptural quotations:
+<span lang="la">'Declaratum quippe est quod
+super omnes gentes vestra Francorum
+gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei
+Petro exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam
+quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis
+per manus Vicarii mei commendavi.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a>
+ The exact date when Pipin received
+the title cannot be made
+out. Pope Stephen's next letter
+(p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed
+<span lang="la">'Pipino, Carolo et Carolomanno
+patriciis.'</span> And so the <i lang="la">Chronicon
+Casinense</i> (Mur. iv. 273) says it
+was first given to Pipin. Gibbon
+can hardly be right in attributing
+it to Charles Martel, although one
+or two documents may be quoted
+in which it is used of him. As
+one of these is a letter of Pope
+Gregory II's, the explanation may
+be that the title was offered or intended
+to be offered to him, although
+never accepted by him.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a>
+ The title of Patrician appears
+even in the remote West: it stands
+in a charter of Ina the West Saxon
+king, and in one given by Richard
+of Normandy in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1015. Ducange,
+<i>s.v.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a>
+ After the <i lang="la">translatio ad Francos</i>
+of <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 800, the two Empires
+corresponded exactly to the two
+Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="i6"><span lang="la">'Plaudentem cerne senatum</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'</span></p>
+<p class="i10"><i>In Eutrop.</i> ii. 135.</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a>
+ Several Emperors during this
+period had been patrons of images,
+as was Irene at the moment of
+which I write: the stain nevertheless
+adhered to their government
+as a whole.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a>
+ I should not have thought it
+necessary to explain that the sentence
+in the text is meant simply
+to state what were (so far as can
+be made out) the sentiments and
+notions of the ninth century, if a
+writer in the <i>Tablet</i> (reviewing a
+former edition) had not understood
+it as an expression of the author's
+own belief.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">To a modern eye there is of
+course no necessary connection between
+the Roman Empire and a
+catholic and apostolic Church; in
+fact, the two things seem rather,
+such has been the impression made
+on us by the long struggle of
+church and state, in their nature
+mutually antagonistic. The interest
+of history lies not least in this, that
+it shews us how men have at different
+times entertained wholly
+different notions respecting the relation
+to one another of the same
+ideas or the same institutions.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a>
+ Monachus Sangallensis, <i lang="la">De
+Gestis Karoli</i>; in Pertz, <i lang="la">Monumenta
+Germaniæ Historica</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a>
+ Monachus Sangallensis; <i lang="la">ut
+supra</i>. So Pope Gregory the Great
+two centuries earlier: <span lang="la">'Quanto
+cæteros homines regia dignitas
+antecedit, tanto cæterarum gentium
+regna regni Francorum culmen
+excellit.'</span> Ep. v. 6.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a>
+ Alciatus, <i lang="la">De Formula imperii
+Romani</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a>
+ Or rather, according to the
+then prevailing practice of beginning
+the year from Christmas-day,
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 801.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a>
+ An elaborate description of old
+St. Peter's may be found in Bunsen's
+and Platner's <span lang="de"><i>Beschreibung der Stadt
+Rom</i></span>; with which compare Bunsen's
+work on the Basilicas of
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a>
+ The primitive custom was for
+the bishop to sit in the centre of
+the apse, at the central point of
+the east end of the church (or, as
+it would be more correct to say,
+the end furthest from the door)
+just as the judge had done in those
+law courts on the model of which
+the first basilicas were constructed.
+This arrangement may still be seen
+in some of the churches of Rome,
+as well as elsewhere in Italy; nowhere
+better than in the churches
+of Ravenna, particularly the beautiful
+one of Sant' Apollinare in
+Classe, and in the cathedral of
+Torcello, near Venice.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a>
+ On this chair were represented
+the labours of Hercules and the
+signs of the zodiac. It is believed
+at Rome to be the veritable chair
+of the Apostle himself, and whatever
+may be thought of such an
+antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily
+traced back to the third
+or fourth century of Christianity.
+(The story that it is inscribed
+with verses from the Koran is,
+I believe, without foundation.)
+It is now enclosed in a gorgeous
+casing of gilded wood (some say,
+of bronze), and placed aloft at the
+extremity of St. Peter's, just over
+the spot where a bishop's chair
+would in the old arrangement of
+the basilica have stood. The sarcophagus
+in which Charles himself
+lay, till the French scattered his
+bones abroad, had carved on it
+the rape of Proserpine. It may
+still be seen in the gallery of the
+basilica at Aachen.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a>
+ Eginhard, <i lang="la">Vita Karoli</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a>
+ The coronation scene is described
+in all the annals of the time,
+to which it is therefore needless to
+refer more particularly.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a>
+ Before the end of the tenth
+century we find the monk Benedict
+of Soracte ascribing to Charles
+an expedition to Palestine, and
+other marvellous exploits. The
+romance which passes under the
+name of Archbishop Turpin is well
+known. All the best stories about
+Charles&mdash;and some of them are
+very good&mdash;may be found in the
+book of the Monk of St. Gall.
+Many refer to his dealings with
+the bishops, towards whom he is
+described as acting like a good-humoured
+schoolmaster.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a>
+ Baronius, <i>Ann.</i>, ad ann. 800;
+Bellarminus, <i lang="la">De translatione imperii
+Romani adversus Illyricum</i>;
+Spanhemius, <i lang="la">De ficta translatione
+imperii</i>; Conringius, <i lang="la">De imperio
+Romano Germanico</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a>
+ See especially Greenwood, <i>Cathedra Petri</i>, vol. iii. p. 109.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a>
+ <i>Ann. Lauresb. ap.</i> Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> i.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a>
+ <i>Apud</i> Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> i.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Vitæ Pontif.</i> in Mur. <i>S. R. I.</i>
+Anastasius in reporting the shout
+of the people omits the word
+<span lang="la">'Romanorum,'</span> which the other
+annalists insert after <span lang="la">'imperatori.'</span>
+The balance of probability is certainly
+in his favour.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a>
+ Lorentz, <span lang="de"><i>Leben Alcuins</i></span>. And cf. Döllinger, <span lang="de"><i>Das Kaiserthum Karls
+des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a>
+ See a very learned and interesting
+tract entitled <span lang="de"><i>Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger</i></span>,
+recently published by Dr. v.
+Döllinger of Munich.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a>
+ <span class="greek" title="Apokrisiarioi para Karoullou
+ kai Leontos aitoumenoi zeuchthênai
+ autên tô Karoullô pros gamon
+ kai henôsai ta Heôa kai ta Hesperia."> Ἀποκρισιάριοι παρὰ Καρούλλου
+ καὶ Λέοντος αἰτούμενοι ζευχθῆναι
+ αὐτὴν τῷ Καρούλλῳ πρὸς γάμον
+ καὶ ἑνῶσαι τὰ Ἑωὰ καὶ τὰ Ἑσπερία.</span>&mdash;Theoph.
+<i>Chron.</i> in <i>Corp. Scriptt.
+Hist. Byz.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a>
+ Their ambassadors at last saluted
+him by the desired title
+<span lang="la">'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum
+et basileum appellantes.'</span> Eginh.
+<i>Ann.</i>, ad ann. 812.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a>
+ Harun er Rashid; Eginh. <i>Vita
+Karoli</i>, c. 16.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a>
+ So Pope John VIII in a document
+quoted by Waitz, <span lang="de"><i>Deutsche
+Verfassungs-geschichte</i></span>, iii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a>
+ Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> iii. (legg. I.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a>
+ Pütter, <i>Historical Development
+of the German Constitution</i>; so too
+Conring, and esp. David Blondel,
+<i>Adv. Chiffletium</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Græcia capta ferum victorem
+cepit,'</span> is repeated in this conquest
+of the Teuton by the Roman.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a>
+ The notion that once prevailed
+that the Irminsûl was the 'pillar of
+Hermann,' set up on the spot of
+the defeat of Varus, is now generally
+discredited. Some German
+antiquaries take the pillar to be a
+rude figure of the native god Irmin;
+but nothing seems to be known of
+this alleged deity: and it is more
+probable that the name Irmin is
+after all merely an altered form
+of the Keltic word which appears in
+Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone
+(<i>Maen</i>, a stone). Thus the pillar,
+so far from being the monument of
+the great Teutonic victory, would
+commemorate a pre-Teutonic race,
+whose name for it the invading
+tribes adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott,
+of Westminster, to whose kindness
+I am indebted for this explanation,
+informs me that a rude ditty recording
+the destruction of the pillar
+by Charles was current on the spot
+a few years ago. It ran thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="de">'Irmin slad Irmin</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Der Kaiser wird kommen</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Mit Hammer und Stangen</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Wird Irmin uphangen.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a>
+ Eginhard, <i>Ann</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a>
+ Most probably the Scots of Ireland&mdash;Eginhard, <i>Vita Karoli</i>, cap. 16.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a>
+ Eginhard, <i>Vita Karoli</i>, cap. 23.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a>
+ Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines
+in Pertz (<i>M. G. H.</i> ii.), beginning,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Sedes regni principalis,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Prima regum curia.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">This city is commonly called Aken
+in English books of the seventeenth
+century, and probably that ought to
+be taken as its proper English name.
+That name has, however, fallen so
+entirely into disuse that I do not
+venture to use it; and as the employment
+of the French name Aix-la-Chapelle
+seems inevitably to produce
+the belief that the place is
+and was, even in Charles's time, a
+French town, there is nothing for it
+but to fall back upon the comparatively
+unfamiliar German name.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a>
+ Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies
+near the left shore of the Rhine
+between Mentz and Bingen.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a>
+ Eginhard, <i>Vita Karoli</i>, cap. 29.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a>
+ Eginhard, <i>Vita Karoli</i>, cap. 17.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a>
+ It is not a little curious that of
+the three whom the modern French
+have taken to be their national
+heroes all should have been foreigners,
+and two foreign conquerors.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a>
+ This basilica was built upon
+the model of the church of the
+Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and
+as it was the first church of any
+size that had been erected in those
+regions for centuries past, it excited
+extraordinary interest among the
+Franks and Gauls. In many of its
+features it greatly resembles the
+beautiful church of San Vitale, at
+Ravenna (also modelled upon that
+of the Holy Sepulchre) which was
+begun by Theodoric, and completed
+under Justinian. Probably
+San Vitale was used as a pattern
+by Charles's architects: we know
+that he caused marble columns to
+be brought from Ravenna to deck
+the church at Aachen. Over the
+tomb of Charles, below the central
+dome (to which the Gothic
+choir we now see was added some
+centuries later), there hangs a huge
+chandelier, the gift of Frederick
+Barbarossa.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Romuleum Francis præstitit
+imperium.'</span>&mdash;Elegy of Ermoldus
+Nigellus, in Pertz; <i>M. G. H.</i>, t. i.
+So too Florus the Deacon,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Romula genti,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Regnorumque simul mater Roma inclyta cessit:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Munere apostolico, Christi munimine fretus.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a>
+ Usage has established this
+translation of <span lang="la">'Hludowicus Pius,'</span>
+but 'gentle' or 'kind-hearted'
+would better express the meaning
+of the epithet.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a>
+ Von Ranke discovers in this
+early traces of the aversion of the
+Germans to the pretensions of the
+spiritual power.&mdash;<i>History of Germany
+during the Reformation</i>: Introduction.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a>
+ Singularly enough, when one
+thinks of modern claims, the dynasty
+of France (Francia occidentalis)
+had the least share of it.
+Charles the Bald was the only
+West Frankish Emperor, and reigned
+a very short time.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a>
+ Tac. <i>Hist.</i> i. 4.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a>
+ For an account of the various
+applications of the name Burgundy,
+see <a href="#noteA">Appendix, Note A</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a>
+ The accession of Boso took
+place in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 877, eleven years
+before Charles the Fat's death.
+But the new kingdom could not
+be considered legally settled until
+the latter date, and its establishment
+is at any rate a part of that
+general break-up of the great
+Carolingian empire whereof <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+888 marks the crisis. See <a href="#noteA">Appendix
+A</a> at the end.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">It is a curious mark of the reverence
+paid to the Carolingian blood,
+that Boso, a powerful and ambitious
+prince, seems to have chiefly
+rested his claims on the fact that
+he was husband of Irmingard,
+daughter of the Emperor Lewis II.
+Baron de Gingins la Sarraz quotes
+a charter of his (drawn up when
+he seems to have doubted whether
+to call himself king) which begins,
+<span lang="la">'Ego Boso Dei gratia id quod sum,
+et coniux mea Irmingardis proles
+imperialis.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a>
+ Lewis had been surprised by
+Berengar at Verona, blinded, and
+forced to take refuge in his own
+kingdom of Provence.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a>
+ Alberic is called variously senator,
+consul, patrician, and prince of
+the Romans.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a>
+ Adelheid was daughter of Rudolf,
+king of Trans-Jurane Burgundy.
+She was at this time in
+her nineteenth year.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a>
+ <i>Chron. Moiss.</i>, in Pertz; <i>M. G. H.</i> i. 305.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a>
+ See especially the poem of
+Florus the Deacon (printed in
+the Benedictine collection and in
+Migne), a bitter lament over the
+dissolution of the Carolingian
+Empire. It is too long for quotation.
+I give four lines here:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quos Rhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta fatigant.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a>
+ Witukind, <i>Annales</i>, in Pertz.
+It may, however, be doubted whether
+the annalist is not here giving
+a very free rendering of the triumphant
+cries of the German army.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">[98]</span></a>
+ Cf. esp. the <span lang="la">'<i>Libellus de imperatoria
+potestate in urbe Roma</i>,'</span>
+in Pertz.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">[99]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Licet videamus Romanorum
+regnum in maxima parte jam destructum,
+tamen quamdiu reges
+Francorum duraverint qui Romanum
+imperium tenere debent, dignitas
+Romani imperii ex toto non
+peribit, quia stabit in regibus
+suis.'</span>&mdash;<i lang="la">Liber de Antichristo</i>, addressed
+by Adso, abbot of Moutier-en-Der,
+to queen Gerberga (circa
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 950).</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">[100]</span></a>
+ From the money which Otto
+struck in Italy, it seems probable
+that he did occasionally use the title
+of king of Italy or of the Lombards.
+That he was crowned can hardly be
+considered quite certain.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">[101]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'A papa imperator ordinatur,'</span>
+says Hermannus Contractus. <span lang="la">'Dominum
+Ottonem, ad hoc usque
+vocatum regem, non solum Romano
+sed et pœne totius Europæ
+populo acclamante imperatorem
+consecravit Augustum.'</span>&mdash;<i>Annal.
+Quedlinb.</i>, ad ann. 962. <span lang="la">'Benedictionem
+a domno apostolico Iohanne,
+cuius rogatione huc venit, cum sua
+coniuge promeruit imperialem ac
+patronus Romanæ effectus est ecclesiæ.'</span>&mdash;Thietmar.
+<span lang="la">'Acclamatione
+totius Romani populi ab apostolico
+Iohanne, filio Alberici, imperator et
+Augustus vocatur et ordinatur.'</span>&mdash;Continuator
+Reginonis. And similarly
+the other annalists.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">[102]</span></a>
+ I do not mean to say that the
+system of ideas which it is endeavoured
+to set forth in the following
+pages was complete in this
+particular form, either in the days of
+Charles or in those of Otto, or in those
+of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems
+to have been constantly growing and
+decaying from the fourth century
+to the sixteenth, the relative prominence
+of its cardinal doctrines varying
+from age to age. But, just as the
+painter who sees the ever-shifting
+lights and shades play over the face
+of a wide landscape faster than his
+brush can place them on the canvas,
+in despair at representing their
+exact position at any single moment,
+contents himself with painting
+the effects that are broadest
+and most permanent, and at giving
+rather the impression which the
+scene makes on him than every
+detail of the scene itself, so here,
+the best and indeed the only practicable
+course seems to be that of
+setting forth in its most self-consistent
+form the body of ideas and
+beliefs on which the Empire rested,
+although this form may not be exactly
+that which they can be asserted
+to have worn in any one
+century, and although the illustrations
+adduced may have to be taken
+sometimes from earlier, sometimes
+from later writers. As the doctrine
+of the Empire was in its essence
+the same during the whole Middle
+Age, such a general description as
+is attempted here may, I venture
+to hope, be found substantially true
+for the tenth as well as for the
+fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">[103]</span></a>
+ Empires like the Persian did
+nothing to assimilate the subject
+races, who retained their own laws
+and customs, sometimes their own
+princes, and were bound only to
+serve in the armies and fill the
+treasury of the Great King.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">[104]</span></a>
+ Od. iii. 72:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="i2"><span class="greek" title="... ê mapsidiôs alalêsthe,">ἢ μαψίδιως ἀλάλησθε,</span></p>
+<p><span class="greek" title="hoia te lêïstêres, hypeir hala, toit' aloôntai">οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ' ἀλόωνται</span></p>
+<p><span class="greek" title="psychas parthemenoi, kakon allodapoisi pherontes?"> ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν <b>ἀλλοδαποῖσι</b> φέροντες;</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
+v. 214, <span class="greek" title="allotrios phôs">ἀλλότριος φώς</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">[105]</span></a>
+ Plato, in the beginning of the
+Laws, represents it as natural between
+all states: <span class="greek" title="polemos physei
+hyparchei pros hapasas tas poleis">πολεμὸς φύσει
+ὑπάρχει πρὸς ἁπάσας τὰς πόλεις</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106"><span class="label">[106]</span></a>
+ See especially Acts xvii. 26;
+Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.; iv.
+3-6; Col. iii. 11.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107"><span class="label">[107]</span></a>
+ This is drawn out by Laurent,
+<span lang="fr"><i>Histoire du Droit des Gens</i></span>; and
+Ægidi, <span lang="de"><i>Der Fürstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108"><span class="label">[108]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Romanos enim vocitant homines
+nostræ religionis.'</span>&mdash;Gregory of
+Tours, quoted by Ægidi, from A.
+F. Pott, <i>Essay on the Words 'Römisch,'
+'Romanisch,' 'Roman,'
+'Romantisch.'</i> So in the Middle
+Ages, <span class="greek" title="Rhômaioi">Ῥωμαῖοι</span> is used to mean
+Christians, as opposed to <span class="greek" title="Hellênes"> Ἕλληνες</span>,
+heathens.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Cf. Ducange, <span lang="la">'Romani olim dicti
+qui alias Christiani vel etiam Catholici.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109"><span class="label">[109]</span></a>
+ As a reviewer in the <i>Tablet</i>
+(whose courtesy it is the more pleasant
+to acknowledge since his point
+of view is altogether opposed to
+mine) has understood this passage
+as meaning that 'people imagined
+the Christian religion was to last
+for ever because the Holy Roman
+Empire was never to decay,' it may
+be worth while to say that this is
+far from being the purport of the
+argument which this chapter was
+designed to state. The converse
+would be nearer the truth:&mdash;'people
+imagined the Holy Roman Empire
+was never to decay, because the
+Christian religion was to last for
+ever.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The phenomen may perhaps be
+stated thus:&mdash;Men who were already
+disposed to believe the Roman Empire
+to be eternal for one set of reasons,
+came to believe the Christian
+Church to be eternal for another and,
+to them, more impressive set of reasons.
+Seeing the two institutions
+allied in fact, they took their alliance
+and connection to be eternal
+also; and went on for centuries
+believing in the necessary existence
+of the Roman Empire because they
+believed in its necessary union with
+the Catholic Church.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110"><span class="label">[110]</span></a>
+ Augustine, in the <i lang="la">De Civitate
+Dei</i>. His influence, great through
+all the Middle Ages, was greater on
+no one than on Charles.&mdash;<span lang="la">'Delectabatur
+et libris sancti Augustini,
+præcipueque his qui De Civitate Dei
+prætitulati sunt.'</span>&mdash;Eginhard, <i lang="la">Vita
+Karoli</i>, cap. 24.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111"><span class="label">[111]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Quapropter universorum precibus
+fidelium optandum est, ut in
+omnem gloriam vestram extendatur
+imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides... veraciter in una confessione
+cunctorum cordibus infigatur, quatenus
+summi Regis donante pietate
+eadem sanctæ pacis et perfectæ caritatis
+omnes ubique regat et custodiat
+unitas.'</span> Quoted by Waitz (<span lang="de"><i>Deutsche
+Verfassungsgeschichte</i></span>, ii. 182) from
+an unprinted letter of Alcuin.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112"><span class="label">[112]</span></a>
+ A curious illustration of this
+tendency of mind is afforded by
+the descriptions we meet with of
+Learning or Theology (<i lang="la">Studium</i>)
+as a concrete existence, having a
+visible dwelling in the University
+of Paris. The three great powers
+which rule human life, says one
+writer, the Popedom, the Empire,
+and Learning, have been severally
+entrusted to the three foremost
+nations of Europe: Italians, Germans,
+French. <span lang="la">'His siquidem tribus,
+scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio,
+tanquam tribus virtutibus, videlicet
+naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
+ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur,
+augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
+tribus, tanquam fundamento,
+pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia
+tanquam materialiter proficit. Et
+sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
+fundamento et uno tecto eget,
+parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
+quatuor habet parietes, hoc
+est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
+Arelatum, Mediolanum,
+Romam.'</span>&mdash;<i lang="la">Jordanis Chronica</i>; <i>ap.</i>
+Schardius <i lang="la">Sylloge Tractatuum</i>. And
+see Döllinger, <span lang="de"><i>Die Vergangenheit
+und Gegenwart der katholischen
+Theologie</i></span>, p. 8.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113"><span class="label">[113]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Una est sola respublica totius
+populi Christiani, ergo de necessitate
+erit et unus solus princeps et rex
+illius reipublicæ, statutus et stabilitus
+ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
+dilatationem et defensionem.
+Ex qua ratione concludit etiam
+Augustinus (<i>De Civitate Dei</i>, lib.
+xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam
+fuit nec potuit nec poterit esse
+verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
+qualitercumque et secundum
+quid, non simpliciter, qui
+fuerunt extra fidem Catholicam et
+ecclesiam.'</span>&mdash;Engelbert (abbot of
+Admont in Upper Austria), <i lang="la">De
+Ortu et Fine imperii Romani</i> (circ.
+1310).</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">In this <span lang="la">'de necessitate'</span> everything
+is included.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114"><span class="label">[114]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Footnote_37">note f, p. 32</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115"><span class="label">[115]</span></a>
+ This is admirably brought out by Ægidi, <span lang="de"><i>Der Fürstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116"><span class="label">[116]</span></a>
+ See the original forgery (or
+rather the extracts which Gratian
+gives from it) in the <i lang="la">Corpus Iuris
+Canonici</i>, <i>Dist.</i> xcvi. cc. 13, 14.
+<span lang="la">'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem
+potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
+Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus
+veneranter honorari, et amplius
+quam nostrum imperium et
+terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri
+gloriose exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem
+et gloriæ dignitatem atque
+vigorem et honorificentiam imperialem....
+Beato Sylvestro patri
+nostro summo pontifici et universali
+urbis Romæ papæ, et omnibus
+eius successoribus pontificibus, qui
+usque in finem mundi in sede beati
+Petri erunt sessuri, de præsenti
+contradimus palatium imperii nostri
+Lateranense, deinde diadema, videlicet
+coronam capitis nostri, simulque
+phrygium, necnon et superhumerale,
+verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream
+et tunicam coccineam, et
+omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et
+dignitatem imperialem præsidentium
+equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia
+sceptra, simulque cuncta
+signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta
+imperialia et omnem processionem
+imperialis culminis et
+gloriam potestatis nostræ....
+Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur
+ita et clerum sanctæ Romanæ ecclesiæ
+ornari decernimus.... Unde
+ut pontificalis apex non vilescat sed
+magis quam terreni imperii dignitas
+gloria et potentia decoretur, ecce
+tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam
+urbem et omnes Italiæ seu
+occidentalium regionum provincias
+loca et civitates beatissimo papæ
+Sylvestro universali papæ contradimus
+atque relinquimus....
+Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum
+et Christianæ religionis caput ab
+imperatore cœlesti constitutum est,
+iustum non est ut illic imperator
+terrenus habeat potestatem.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The practice of kissing the
+Pope's foot was adopted in imitation
+of the old imperial court. It
+was afterwards revived by the German
+Emperors.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117"><span class="label">[117]</span></a>
+ Döllinger has shewn in a recent
+work (<span lang="de"><i>Die Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters</i></span>)
+that the common belief that
+Gregory II excited the revolt against
+Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">So Anastasius, <span lang="la">'Ammonebat (<i>sc.</i>
+Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
+amore Romani imperii desisterent.'</span>&mdash;<i>Vitæ
+Pontif. Rom.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_118" id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118"><span class="label">[118]</span></a>
+ Of this curious seal, a leaden
+one, preserved at Paris, a figure is
+given upon the cover of this volume.
+There are very few monuments of
+that age whose genuineness can be
+considered altogether beyond doubt;
+but this seal has many respectable
+authorities in its favour. See,
+among others, Le Blanc, <span lang="fr"><i>Dissertation
+historique sur quelques Monnoies
+de Charlemagne</i></span>, Paris, 1689;
+J. M. Heineccius, <i lang="la">De Veteribus
+Germanorum aliarumque nationum
+sigillis</i>, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
+<i lang="la">Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum</i>, ed.
+Vignoli, Romæ, 1752; Götz,
+<i lang="de">Deutschlands Kayser-Münzen des
+Mittelalters</i>, Dresden, 1827; and
+the authorities cited by Waitz,
+<span lang="de"><i>Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte</i></span>, iii.
+179, n. 4.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_119" id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119"><span class="label">[119]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Præterea mirari se dilecta
+fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
+set Romanorum imperatores
+nos appellemus; set scire te convenit
+quia nisi Romanorum imperatores
+essemus, utique nec Francorum.
+A Romanis enim hoc
+nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus,
+apud quos profecto primum tantæ
+culmen sublimitatis effulsit,'</span> &amp;c&mdash;<i>Letter
+of the Emperor Lewis II to
+Basil the Emperor at Constantinople</i>,
+from <i>Chron. Salernit. ap.</i> Murat.
+<i>S. R. I.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_120" id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120"><span class="label">[120]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Illam (<i>sc.</i> Romanam ecclesiam)
+solus ille fundavit, et super
+petram fidei mox nascentis erexit,
+qui beato æternæ vitæ clavigero
+terreni simul et cœlestis imperii
+iura commisit.'</span>&mdash;<i lang="la">Corpus Iuris
+Canonici</i>, <i>Dist.</i> xxii. c. 1. The
+expression is not uncommon in
+mediæval writers. So <span lang="la">'unum est
+imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
+Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta
+in terris,'</span> in Lewis II's
+letter.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_121" id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121"><span class="label">[121]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus
+episcopus dici potest rex et
+sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster
+Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
+videtur incongruum suum vocare
+successorem. Corporale et temporale
+ex spirituali et perpetuo dependet,
+sicut corporis operatio ex
+virtute animæ. Sicut ergo corpus
+per animam habet esse virtutem et
+operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio
+principum per spiritualem
+Petri et successorum eius.'</span>&mdash;St.
+Thomas Aquinas, <i lang="la">De Regimine
+Principum</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_122" id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122"><span class="label">[122]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur
+imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
+et imperator ecclesiam fovere et
+defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
+certe sic.... Patronis
+vero concessum est ut prælatos in
+ecclesiis sui patronatus eligant.
+Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat
+patronatus, ut qui tenetur eam defendere,
+sentire debet honorem et
+emolumentum.'</span> I quote this from
+a curious document in Goldast's
+collection of tracts (<i lang="la">Monarchia Imperii</i>),
+entitled '<i>Letter of the four
+Universities, Paris, Oxford, Prague,
+and the <span lang="la">"Romana generalitas,"</span> to the
+Emperor Wenzel and Pope Urban</i>,'
+<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1380. The title can scarcely
+be right, but if the document is,
+as in all probability it is, not later
+than the fifteenth century, its being
+misdescribed, or even its being a
+forgery, does not make it less valuable
+as an evidence of men's ideas.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_123" id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123"><span class="label">[123]</span></a>
+ So Leo III in a charter issued
+on the day of Charles's coronation:
+<span lang="la">'... actum in præsentia gloriosi
+atque excellentissimi filii nostri
+Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem
+et provectionem sanctæ
+universalis ecclesiæ hodie Augustum
+sacravimus.'</span>&mdash;Jaffé <i lang="la">Regesta Pontificum
+Romanorum</i>, ad ann. 800.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans,
+a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
+to the Emperor an almost papal authority
+over the Church itself:&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Cœli habet hic (<i>sc.</i> Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Tu regis ecclesiæ, nam regit ille poli;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="la">Hic te cœlicolas ducet ad usque choros.'</span></p>
+<p class="i10">In D. Bouquet, v. 415.</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_124" id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124"><span class="label">[124]</span></a>
+ Perhaps at no more than
+three: in the time of Charles and
+Leo; again under Otto III and
+his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester
+II; thirdly, under Henry
+III; certainly never thenceforth.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_125" id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125"><span class="label">[125]</span></a>
+ <i>The Sachsenspiegel</i> (<i lang="la">Speculum
+Saxonicum</i>, circ. <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1240), the
+great North-German law book,
+says, 'The Empire is held from
+God alone, not from the Pope.
+Emperor and Pope are supreme
+each in what has been entrusted
+to him: the Pope in what concerns
+the soul; the Emperor in all that
+belongs to the body and to knighthood.'
+<i>The Schwabenspiegel</i>, compiled
+half a century later, subordinates
+the prince to the pontiff:
+<span lang="de">'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes
+daz lihet der Babest dem
+Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem
+Babest gesetzt daz er damit richte.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_126" id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126"><span class="label">[126]</span></a>
+ So Boniface VIII in the bull
+<i lang="la">Unam Sanctam</i>, will have but one
+head for the Christian people.
+<span lang="la">'Igitur ecclesiæ unius et unicæ
+unum corpus, unum caput, non duo
+capita quasi monstrum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_127" id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127"><span class="label">[127]</span></a>
+ St. Bernard writes to Conrad
+III: <span lang="la">'Non veniat anima mea in
+consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio
+pacem et libertatem ecclesiæ
+vel ecclesiæ prosperitatem et exaltationem
+imperii nocituram.'</span> So in
+the <i lang="la">De Consideratione</i>: <span lang="la">'Si utrumque
+simul habere velis, perdes
+utrumque,'</span> of the papal claim to
+temporal and spiritual authority,
+quoted by Gieseler.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_128" id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128"><span class="label">[128]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus
+ensem, habensque in capite Constantini
+diadema, stricto dextra capulo
+ensis accincti, ait: "Numquid
+ego summus sum pontifex? nonne
+ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
+possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Cæsar,
+ego sum imperator."'</span>&mdash;Fr. Pipinus
+(ap. Murat. <i>S. R. I.</i> ix.) l. iv. c. 47.
+These words, however, are by this
+writer ascribed to Boniface, when
+receiving the envoys of the emperor
+Albert I, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1299. I have not
+been able to find authority for their
+use at the jubilee, but give the current
+story for what it is worth.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">It has been suggested that Dante
+may be alluding to this sword scene
+in a well-known passage of the
+Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="it">'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="it">Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="it">Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="it">L' un l' altro ha spento, ed è giunta la spada</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="it">Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="it">Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_129" id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129"><span class="label">[129]</span></a>
+ See especially Peter de Andlo
+(<i lang="la">De Imperio Romano</i>); Ralph
+Colonna (<i lang="la">De translatione Imperii
+Romani</i>); Dante (<i lang="la">De Monarchia</i>);
+Engelbert (<i lang="la">De Ortu et Fine Imperii
+Romani</i>); Marsilius Patavinus
+(<i lang="la">De translatione Imperii Romani</i>);
+Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (<i lang="la">De Ortu
+et Authoritate Imperii Romani</i>);
+Zoannetus (<i lang="la">De Imperio Romano
+atque ejus Iurisdictione</i>); and the
+writers in Schardius's <i>Sylloge</i>, and
+in Goldast's Collection of Tracts,
+entitled <i lang="la">Monarchia Imperii</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_130" id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130"><span class="label">[130]</span></a>
+ Letter of Lewis II to Basil the
+Macedonian, in <i>Chron. Salernit.</i> in
+Mur. <i>S. R. I.</i>; also given by Baronius,
+<i>Ann. Eccl.</i> ad ann. 871.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_131" id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131"><span class="label">[131]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti:
+Vicarius es Christi.'</span>&mdash;Wippo,
+<i lang="la">Vita Chuonradi</i> (<i>ap.</i> Pertz),
+c. 3.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_132" id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132"><span class="label">[132]</span></a>
+ Letter in Radewic, <i>ap.</i> Murat,
+<i>S. R. I.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_133" id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133"><span class="label">[133]</span></a>
+ Lewis IV is styled in one of
+his proclamations, <span lang="la">'Gentis humanæ,
+orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi
+a Deo electus præesse.'</span>&mdash;Pfeffinger,
+<i lang="la">Vitriarius Illustratus</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_134" id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134"><span class="label">[134]</span></a>
+ In a document issued by the
+Diet of Speyer (<span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1529) the
+Emperor is called <span lang="de">'Oberst, Vogt, und
+Haupt der Christenheit.'</span> Hieronymus
+Balbus, writing about the same
+time, puts the question whether all
+Christians are subject to the Emperor
+in temporal things, as they
+are to the Pope in spiritual, and
+answers it by saying, <span lang="la">'Cum ambo
+ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et
+eadem semita incedant, de utroque
+idem puto sentiendum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_135" id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135"><span class="label">[135]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Non magis ad Papam depositio
+seu remotio pertinet quam
+ad quoslibet regum prælatos, qui
+reges suos prout assolent, consecrant
+et inungunt.'</span>&mdash;<i>Letter of Frederick
+II</i> (lib. i. c. 3).</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_136" id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136"><span class="label">[136]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Liber Ceremonialis Romanus</i>,
+lib. i. sect. 5; with which compare
+the <i lang="la">Coronatio Romana</i> of Henry
+VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's Dissertation
+in vol. i. of the <i lang="la">Antiquitates
+Italiæ Medii Ævi</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_137" id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137"><span class="label">[137]</span></a>
+ See Goldast, <i>Collection of Imperial
+Constitutions</i>; and Moser,
+<span lang="de"><i>Römische Kayser</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_138" id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138"><span class="label">[138]</span></a>
+ The abbot Engelbert (<i lang="la">De Ortu
+et Fine Imperii Romani</i>) quotes
+Origen and Jerome to this effect,
+and proceeds himself to explain,
+from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling
+away will precede the coming of
+Antichrist. There will be a triple
+<span lang="la">'discessio,'</span> of the kingdoms of the
+earth from the Roman Empire, of
+the Church from the Apostolic See,
+of the faithful from the faith. Of
+these, the first causes the second;
+the temporal sword to punish heretics
+and schismatics being no longer
+ready to work the will of the rulers
+of the Church.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_139" id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139"><span class="label">[139]</span></a>
+ A full statement of the views
+that prevailed in the earlier Middle
+Age regarding Antichrist&mdash;as well
+as of the singular prophecy of the
+Frankish Emperor who shall appear
+in the latter days, conquer the
+world, and then going to Jerusalem
+shall lay down his crown on the
+Mount of Olives and deliver over
+the kingdom to Christ&mdash;may be
+found in the little treatise, <i lang="la">Vita
+Antichristi</i>, which Adso, monk and
+afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der,
+compiled (cir. 950) for the
+information of Queen Gerberga,
+wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist
+is to be born a Jew of the
+tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), <span lang="la">'non
+de episcopo et monacha, sicut alii
+delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
+meretrice et crudelissimo
+nebulone. Totus in peccato
+concipietur, in peccato generabitur,
+in peccato nascetur.'</span> His birthplace
+is Babylon: he is to be
+brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Adso's book may be found printed
+in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_140" id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140"><span class="label">[140]</span></a>
+ S. Thomas explains the prophecy
+in a remarkable manner,
+shewing how the decline of the
+Empire is no argument against its
+fulfilment. <span lang="la">'Dicendum quod nondum
+cessavit, sed est commutatum
+de temporali in spirituale, ut dicit
+Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis:
+et ideo discessio a Romano imperio
+debet intelligi non solum a temporali
+sed etiam a spirituali, scilicit
+a fide Catholica Romanæ Ecclesiæ.
+Est autem hoc conveniens signum
+nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
+imperium omnibus dominabatur:
+ita e contra signum adventus
+Antichristi est discessio ab eo.'</span>&mdash;<i>Comment.
+ad 2 Thess.</i> ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_141" id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141"><span class="label">[141]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Footnote_149">note z, page 119</a>. The
+Papal party sometimes insisted that
+both swords were given to Peter,
+while the imperialists assigned the
+temporal sword to John. Thus a
+gloss to the <span lang="de"><i>Sachsenspiegel</i></span> says,
+<span lang="de">'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter,
+dat het nu de paves: dat andere hadde
+Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_142" id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142"><span class="label">[142]</span></a>
+ 2 Thess. ii. 7.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_143" id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143"><span class="label">[143]</span></a>
+ St. Augustine, however, though
+he states the view (applying the
+passage to the Roman Empire)
+which was generally received in
+the Middle Ages, is careful not
+to commit himself positively to
+it.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_144" id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144"><span class="label">[144]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Jordanis Chronica</i> (written towards the close of the thirteenth
+century).</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_145" id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145"><span class="label">[145]</span></a>
+ Compare with this the words
+which Pope Hadrian I. had used
+some twenty-three years before, of
+Charles as representative of Constantine:
+<span lang="la">'Et sicut temporibus
+Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
+a sanctæ recordationis piissimo
+Constantino magno imperatore, per
+eius largitatem sancta Dei catholica
+et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
+atque exaltata est, et potestatem
+in his Hesperiæ partibus
+largiri dignatus est, ita et in his
+vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
+nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est,
+beati Petri apostoli germinet atque
+exsultet, ut omnes gentes quæ hæc
+audierint edicere valeant, 'Domine
+salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in
+die in qua invocaverimus te;' quia
+ecce novus Christianissimus Dei
+Constantinus imperator his temporibus
+surrexit, per quem omnia
+Deus sanctæ suæ ecclesiæ beati
+apostolorum principis Petri largiri
+dignatus est.'</span>&mdash;<i>Letter XLIX of Cod.
+Carol.</i>, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 777 (in Mur. <i lang="la">Scriptores
+Rerum Italicarum</i>).</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">This letter is memorable as containing
+the first allusion, or what
+seems an allusion, to Constantine's
+Donation.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The phrase <span lang="la">'sancta Dei ecclesia,
+id est, B. Petri apostoli,'</span> is worth
+noting.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_146" id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146"><span class="label">[146]</span></a>
+ The church in which the opening
+scene of Boccaccio's <i>Decameron</i>
+is laid.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_147" id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147"><span class="label">[147]</span></a>
+ So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i.
+p. 144), and so also Messrs. Crowe
+and Cavalcaselle, in their <i>New History
+of Painting in Italy</i>, vol. ii.
+pp. 85 <i>sqq.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_148" id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148"><span class="label">[148]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">Domini canes</span>. Spotted because
+of their black-and-white
+raiment.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_149" id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149"><span class="label">[149]</span></a>
+ There is of course a great deal
+more detail in the picture, which
+it does not appear necessary to
+describe. St. Dominic is a conspicuous
+figure.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">It is worth remarking that the
+Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
+hand, and so made slightly inferior
+to him while superior to every one
+else, holds in his hand, instead of
+the usual imperial globe, a death's
+head, typifying the transitory nature
+of his power.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_150" id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150"><span class="label">[150]</span></a>
+ Although this was of course
+never his legal title. Till 1806
+he was <span lang="la">'Romanorum Imperator
+semper Augustus;'</span> <span lang="de">'Römischer
+Kaiser.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_151" id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151"><span class="label">[151]</span></a>
+ Pütter, <i lang="la">Dissertationes de Instauratione
+Imperii Romani</i>; cf.
+Goldast's <i>Collection of Constitutions</i>;
+and the proclamations and other
+documents collected in Pertz,
+<i>M. G. H.</i> legg. I.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_152" id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152"><span class="label">[152]</span></a>
+ Pütter (<i lang="la">De Instauratione Imperii
+Romani</i>) will have it that upon
+this mistake, as he calls it, of Otto's,
+the whole subsequent history of the
+Empire turned; that if Otto had
+but continued to style himself <span lang="la">'Francorum
+Rex,'</span> Germany would have
+been spared all her Italian wars.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_153" id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153"><span class="label">[153]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum
+Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
+audivimus dicere quia vos vultis
+alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
+da Deum omnipotentem excommunico
+vos, ut non habeatis licentiam
+missam celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'</span>&mdash;Liudprand,
+<i lang="la">ut supra</i>. The
+'da' is curious, as shewing the
+progress of the change from Latin
+to Italian. The answer sent by
+Otto and the council takes exception
+to the double negative.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_154" id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154"><span class="label">[154]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Cives fidelitatem promittunt
+hæc addentes et firmiter iurantes
+nunquam se papam electuros aut
+ordinaturos præter consensum atque
+electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis
+Cæsaris Augusti filiique ipsius
+Ottonis.'</span>&mdash;Liudprand, <i lang="la">Gesta Ottonis</i>,
+lib. vi.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_155" id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155"><span class="label">[155]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo
+est percussus ut infra dierum octo
+spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,'</span>
+says the chronicler, crediting
+with but little of his wonted cleverness
+the supposed author of John's
+death, who well might have desired
+a long life for so useful a
+servant.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">He adds a detail too characteristic
+of the time to be omitted&mdash;<span lang="la">'Sed
+eucharistiæ viaticum, ipsius
+instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
+percepit.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_156" id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156"><span class="label">[156]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Corpus Iuris Canonici</i>, Dist.
+lxiii., <span lang="la">'<i>In synodo</i>.'</span> A decree which
+is probably substantially genuine,
+although the form in which we
+have it is evidently of later date.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_157" id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157"><span class="label">[157]</span></a>
+ Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines&mdash;</p>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Romanæ febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_158" id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158"><span class="label">[158]</span></a>
+ There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
+kingdom of Burgundy.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_159" id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159"><span class="label">[159]</span></a>
+ Liudprand, <i lang="la">Legatio Constantinopolitana</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_160" id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160"><span class="label">[160]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Sancti imperii nostri olim
+servos principes, Beneventanum
+scilicet, tradat,'</span> &amp;c. The epithet
+is worth noticing.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_161" id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161"><span class="label">[161]</span></a>
+ Liudprand calls the Eastern
+Franks <span lang="la">'Franci Teutonici'</span> to distinguish
+them from the Romanized
+Franks of Gaul or <span lang="la">'Francigenæ,'</span>
+as they were frequently called. The
+name 'Frank' seems even so early
+as the tenth century to have been
+used in the East as a general name
+for the Western peoples of Europe.
+Liudprand says that the Greek
+Emperor included <span lang="la">'sub Francorum
+nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.'</span>
+Probably this use dates
+from the time of Charles.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_162" id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162"><span class="label">[162]</span></a>
+ Conring, <i lang="la">De Finibus Imperii</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_163" id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163"><span class="label">[163]</span></a>
+ Basileus was a favourite title of
+the English kings before the Conquest.
+Titles like this used in these
+early English charters prove, it need
+hardly be said, absolutely nothing
+as to the real existence of any
+rights or powers of the English
+king beyond his own borders. What
+they do prove (over and above the
+taste for florid rhetoric in the royal
+clerks) is the impression produced
+by the imperial style, and by the
+idea of the emperor's throne as supported
+by the thrones of kings and
+other lesser potentates.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_164" id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164"><span class="label">[164]</span></a>
+ The coins of Crescentius are
+said to exhibit the insignia of the
+old Empire.&mdash;Palgrave, <i>Normandy
+and England</i>, i. 715. But probably
+some at least of them are forgeries.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_165" id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165"><span class="label">[165]</span></a>
+ Proclamation in Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_166" id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166"><span class="label">[166]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Imperator antiquam Romanorum
+consuetudinem iam ex magna
+parte deletam suis cupiens renovare
+temporibus multa faciebat quæ diversi
+diverse sentiebant.'</span>&mdash;Thietmar,
+<i>Chron.</i> ix.; ap. Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> t. iii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_167" id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167"><span class="label">[167]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Annales Quedlinb.</i>, ad ann.
+1002.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_168" id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168"><span class="label">[168]</span></a>
+ Henry had already entered
+Italy in 1004.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_169" id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169"><span class="label">[169]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Annales Beneventani</i>, in Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_170" id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170"><span class="label">[170]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#noteA">Appendix, Note A</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_171" id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171"><span class="label">[171]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Roma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta.'</span>&mdash;See <a href="#Footnote_37">note <i>i</i>,
+p. 32</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_172" id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172"><span class="label">[172]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Claves tibi <i>ad regnum</i> dimisimus.'</span>&mdash;Pope
+Stephen to Charles
+Martel, in <i lang="la">Codex Carolinus</i>, ap.
+Muratori, <i>S. R. I.</i> iii. Some, however,
+prefer to read <span lang="la">'ad rogum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_173" id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173"><span class="label">[173]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Corpus Iuris Canonici</i>, Dist.
+lxiii. c. 22.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_174" id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174"><span class="label">[174]</span></a>
+ Dist. lxiii. c. 30. This decree
+is, however, in all probability spurious.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_175" id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175"><span class="label">[175]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Nos elegimus merito et approbavimus
+una cum annisu et voto
+patrum amplique senatus et gentis
+togatæ,'</span> &amp;c., ap. Baron. <i>Ann. Eccl.</i>,
+ad ann. 876.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_176" id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176"><span class="label">[176]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Divina vos pietas B. principum
+apostolorum Petri et Pauli interventione
+per vicarium ipsorum
+dominum Ioannem summum pontificem... ad imperiale culmen
+S. Spiritus iudicio provexit.'</span>&mdash;<i>Concil.
+Ticinense</i>, in Mur., <i>S. R. I.</i>
+ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_177" id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177"><span class="label">[177]</span></a>
+ Strictly speaking, Henry was at this time only king of the Romans:
+he was not crowned Emperor at Rome till 1084.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_178" id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178"><span class="label">[178]</span></a>
+ Letter of Gregory VII to William I, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1080. I quote from Migne,
+t. cxlviii. p. 568.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_179" id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179"><span class="label">[179]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Gradum statim post Principes
+Electores.'</span>&mdash;Frederick I's Privilege
+of Austria, in Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> legg.
+ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_180" id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180"><span class="label">[180]</span></a>
+ Hohenstaufen is a castle in
+what is now the kingdom of Würtemberg,
+about four miles from the
+Göppingen station of the railway
+from Stuttgart to Ulm. It stands,
+or rather stood, on the summit of
+a steep and lofty conical hill, commanding
+a boundless view over the
+great limestone plateau of the
+Rauhe Alp, the eastern declivities
+of the Schwartzwald, and the bare
+and tedious plains of western Bavaria.
+Of the castle itself, destroyed
+in the Peasants' War, there
+remain only fragments of the wall-foundations:
+in a rude chapel lying
+on the hill slope below are some
+strange half-obliterated frescoes;
+over the arch of the door is inscribed
+<span lang="la">'Hic transibat Cæsar.'</span> Frederick
+Barbarossa had another famous
+palace at Kaiserslautern, a small town
+in the Palatinate, on the railway
+from Mannheim to Treves, lying in
+a wide valley at the western foot of
+the Hardt mountains. It was destroyed
+by the French and a
+house of correction has been built
+upon its site; but in a brewery
+hard by may be seen some of the
+huge low-browed arches of its lower
+story.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_181" id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181"><span class="label">[181]</span></a>
+ A great deal of importance seems to have been attached to this
+symbolic act of courtesy. See Art. I of the <span lang="de">Sachsenspiegel</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_182" id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182"><span class="label">[182]</span></a>
+ Letter to the German bishops in Radewic; Mur., <i>S. R. I.</i>, t. vi.
+p. 833.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_183" id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183"><span class="label">[183]</span></a>
+ A picture in the great hall of the ducal palace (the <span lang="it">Sala del Maggio
+Consiglio</span>) represents the scene. See Rogers' Italy.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_184" id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184"><span class="label">[184]</span></a>
+ Psalm xci.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_185" id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185"><span class="label">[185]</span></a>
+ Document of 1230, quoted by
+Von Raumer, v. p. 81.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_186" id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186"><span class="label">[186]</span></a>
+ Speech of archbishop of Milan,
+in Radewic; Mur. vi.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_187" id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187"><span class="label">[187]</span></a>
+ Frederick's election (at Frankfort)
+was made <span lang="la">'non sine quibusdam
+Italiæ baronibus.'</span>&mdash;Otto Fris. i.
+But this was the exception.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_188" id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188"><span class="label">[188]</span></a>
+ See also <a href="#Page_269"><i>post</i>, Chapter XVI.</a></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_189" id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189"><span class="label">[189]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Senatus Populusque Romanus
+urbis et orbis totius domino Conrado.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_190" id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190"><span class="label">[190]</span></a>
+ Otto of Freysing.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_191" id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191"><span class="label">[191]</span></a>
+ Later in his reign, Frederick
+condescended to negotiate with
+these Roman magistrates against
+a hostile Pope, and entered into
+a sort of treaty by which they
+were declared exempt from all
+jurisdiction but his own.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_192" id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192"><span class="label">[192]</span></a>
+ See the first note to Shelley's
+<i>Hellas</i>. Sismondi is mainly answerable
+for this conception of Barbarossa's
+position.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_193" id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193"><span class="label">[193]</span></a>
+ They say rebelliously, says
+Frederick, <span lang="la">'Nolumus hunc regnare
+super nos ... at nos maluimus
+honestam mortem quam ut,'</span> &amp;c.&mdash;Letter
+in Pertz. <i>M. G. H.</i> legg. ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_194" id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194"><span class="label">[194]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'De tributo Cæsaris nemo cogitabat;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Omnes erant Cæsares, nemo censum dabat;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by
+Grimm.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_195" id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195"><span class="label">[195]</span></a>
+ Charles the Great was canonized
+by Frederick's anti-pope and
+confirmed afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_196" id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196"><span class="label">[196]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Acta Concil. Hartzhem.</i> iii.,
+quoted by Von Raumer, ii. 6.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_197" id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197"><span class="label">[197]</span></a>
+ Poems relating to Frederick I,
+<i lang="la">ut supra</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_198" id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198"><span class="label">[198]</span></a>
+ The carroccio was a waggon
+with a flagstaff planted on it, which
+served the Lombards for a rallying-point
+in battle.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_199" id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199"><span class="label">[199]</span></a>
+ Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen,
+and Frankfort.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">[Since this was first written
+Frankfort has been annexed by
+Prussia, and her three surviving
+sisters have, by their entrance into
+the North German confederation,
+lost something of their independence.]</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_200" id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200"><span class="label">[200]</span></a>
+ The legend is one which appears
+under various forms in many
+countries.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_201" id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201"><span class="label">[201]</span></a>
+ 'Pruzzi,' says the biographer
+of St. Adalbert, <span lang="la">'quorum Deus est
+venter et avaritia iuncta cum
+morte.'</span>&mdash;<i>M. G. H.</i> t. iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">It is curious that this non-Teutonic
+people should have given
+their name to the great German
+kingdom of the present.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_202" id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202"><span class="label">[202]</span></a>
+ Conring, <i lang="la">De Finibus Imperii</i>.
+It is hardly necessary to observe
+that the connection of Hungary
+with the Hapsburgs is of comparatively
+recent origin, and of a purely
+dynastic nature. The position of
+the archdukes of Austria as kings
+of Hungary had nothing to do
+legally with the fact that many of
+them were also chosen Emperors,
+although practically their possession
+of the imperial crown had greatly
+aided them in grasping and retaining
+the thrones of Hungary and
+Bohemia.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_203" id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203"><span class="label">[203]</span></a>
+ Cf. Pfeffel, <span lang="fr"><i>Abrégé Chronologique</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_204" id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204"><span class="label">[204]</span></a>
+ Letter of Frederick I to Otto
+of Freising, prefixed to the latter's
+History. This king is also called
+Sweyn.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_205" id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205"><span class="label">[205]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#noteB">Appendix, Note B</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_206" id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206"><span class="label">[206]</span></a>
+ Albertus Stadensis apud Conringium, <i lang="la">De Finibus Imperii</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_207" id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207"><span class="label">[207]</span></a>
+ There is an allusion to this in
+the poems of the Cid. Arthur
+Duck, <i lang="la">De Usu et Authoritate Iuris
+Civilis</i>, quotes the view of some
+among the older jurists, that Spain
+having been, as far as the Romans
+were concerned, a <i lang="la">res derelicta</i>, recovered
+by the Spaniards themselves
+from the Moors, and thus acquired
+by <i lang="la">occupatio</i>, ought not to be subject
+to the Emperors.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_208" id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208"><span class="label">[208]</span></a>
+ One of the greatest of English
+kings appears performing an act of
+courtesy to the Emperor which was
+probably construed into an acknowledgment
+of his own inferior position.
+Describing the Roman coronation
+of the Emperor Conrad II,
+Wippo (c. 16) tells us <span lang="la">'His ita peractis
+in duorum regum præsentia
+Ruodolfi regis Burgundiæ et Chnutonis
+regis Anglorum divino officio
+finito imperator duorum regum medius
+ad cubiculum suum honorifice
+ductus est.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_209" id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209"><span class="label">[209]</span></a>
+ Letter in Otto Fris. i.: <span lang="la">'Nobis
+submittuntur Francia et Hispania,
+Anglia et Dania.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_210" id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210"><span class="label">[210]</span></a>
+ Letter in Radewic says, <span lang="la">'Regnum
+nostrum vobis exponimus....
+Vobis imperandi cedat auctoritas,
+nobis non deerit voluntas obsequendi.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_211" id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211"><span class="label">[211]</span></a>
+ The alleged instances of homage
+by the Scots to the Saxon
+and early Norman kings are almost
+all complicated in some such
+way. They had once held also
+the earldom of Huntingdon from
+the English crown, and some have
+supposed (but on no sufficient
+grounds) that homage was also done
+by them for Lothian.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_212" id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212"><span class="label">[212]</span></a>
+ Selden, <i>Titles of Honour</i>, part i.
+chap. ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_213" id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213"><span class="label">[213]</span></a>
+ Edward refused upon the
+ground that he was '<i lang="la">rex inunctus</i>.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_214" id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214"><span class="label">[214]</span></a>
+ Sigismund had shortly before
+given great offence in France by
+dubbing knights.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_215" id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215"><span class="label">[215]</span></a>
+ Sigismund answered, <span lang="la">'Nihil se
+contra superioritatem regis prætexere.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_216" id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216"><span class="label">[216]</span></a>
+ Selden, <i>Titles of Honour</i>, part i.
+chap. ii. Nevertheless, notaries in
+Scotland, as elsewhere, continued
+for a long time to style themselves
+<span lang="la">'Ego M. auctoritate imperiali (<span lang="en">or</span>
+papali) notarius.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_217" id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217"><span class="label">[217]</span></a>
+ It is not necessary to prove
+this letter to have been the composition
+of Frederick or his ministers.
+If it be (as it doubtless is)
+contemporary, it is equally to the
+purpose as an evidence of the
+feelings and ideas of the age.
+As a reviewer of a former edition
+of this book has questioned its
+authenticity, I may mention that
+it is to be found not only in
+Hoveden, but also in the <span lang="la">'Itinerarium
+regis Ricardi,'</span> in Ralph de
+Diceto, and in the <span lang="la">'Chronicon
+Terrae Sanctae.'</span> [See Mr. Stubbs'
+edition of Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 356.]</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_218" id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218"><span class="label">[218]</span></a>
+ Liutprand, <i lang="la">Legatio Constantinopolitana</i>.
+Nicephorus says, <span lang="la">'Vis
+maius scandalum quam quod se imperatorem
+vocat.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_219" id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219"><span class="label">[219]</span></a>
+ Otto of Freising, i.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_220" id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220"><span class="label">[220]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Isaachius a Deo constitutus
+Imperator, sacratissimus, excellentissimus,
+potentissimus, moderator
+Romanorum, Angelus totius orbis,
+heres coronæ magni Constantini,
+dilecto fratri imperii sui, maximo
+principi Alemanniæ.'</span> A remarkable
+speech of Frederick's to the envoys
+of Isaac, who had addressed a letter
+to him as <span lang="la">'Rex Alemaniæ'</span> is preserved
+by Ansbert (<i lang="la">Historia de Expeditione
+Friderici Imperatoris</i>):&mdash;<span lang="la">'Dominus
+Imperator divina se illustrante
+gratia ulterius dissimulare non
+valens temerarium fastum regis (<i>sc.</i>
+Græcorum) et usurpantem vocabulum
+falsi imperatoris Romanorum,
+hæc inter cætera exorsus est:&mdash;"Omnibus
+qui sanæ mentis sunt
+constat, quia unus est Monarchus
+Imperator Romanorum, sicut et
+unus est pater universitatis, pontifex
+videlicet Romanus; ideoque cum
+ego Romani imperii sceptrum plusquam
+per annos XXX absque omnium
+regum vel principum contradictione
+tranquille tenuerim et in
+Romana urbe a summo pontifice
+imperiali benedictione unctus sim et
+sublimatus, quia denique Monarchiam
+prædecessores mei imperatores
+Romanorum plusquam per
+CCCC annos etiam gloriose transmiserint,
+utpote a Constantinopolitana
+urbe ad pristinam sedem imperii,
+caput orbis Romam, acclamatione
+Romanorum et principum
+imperii, auctoritate quoque summi
+pontificis et S. catholicæ ecclesiæ
+translatam, propter tardum et infructuosum
+Constantinopolitani imperatoris
+auxilium contra tyrannos
+ecclesiæ, mirandum est admodum cur
+frater meus dominus vester Constantinopolitanus
+imperator usurpet
+inefficax sibi idem vocabulum et
+glorietur stulte alieno sibi prorsus
+honore, cum liquido noverit me et
+nomine dici et re esse Fridericum
+Romanorum imperatorem semper
+Augustum."'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Isaac was so far moved by Frederick's
+indignation that in his next
+letter he addressed him as <span lang="la">'generosissimum
+imperatorem Alemaniæ,'</span>
+and in a third thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="la">'Isaakius in Christo fidelis divinitus
+coronatus, sublimis, potens,
+excelsus, hæres coronæ magni Constantini
+et Moderator Romeon Angelus
+nobilissimo Imperatori antiquæ
+Romæ, regi Alemaniæ et dilecto
+fratri imperii sui, salutem,'</span> &amp;c., &amp;c.
+(Ansbert, <i lang="la">ut supra</i>.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_221" id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221"><span class="label">[221]</span></a>
+ Baronius, ad ann.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_222" id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222"><span class="label">[222]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#noteC">Appendix, Note C</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_223" id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223"><span class="label">[223]</span></a>
+ Godefr. Viterb., <i>Pantheon</i>, in
+Mur., <i>S. R. I.</i>, tom. vii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_224" id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224"><span class="label">[224]</span></a>
+ Dönniges, <span lang="de"><i>Deutsches Staatsrecht</i></span>,
+thinks that the crown of
+Italy, neglected by the Ottos, and
+taken by Henry II, was a recognition
+of the separate nationality of
+Italy. But Otto I seems to have
+been crowned king of Italy, and
+Muratori (<i>Ant. It.</i> Dissert. iii.)
+believes that Otto II and Otto III
+were likewise.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_225" id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225"><span class="label">[225]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#noteA">Appendix, note A</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_226" id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226"><span class="label">[226]</span></a>
+ Some add a fifth crown, of
+Germany (making that of Aachen
+Frankish), which they say belonged
+to Regensburg&mdash;Marquardus Freherus.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_227" id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227"><span class="label">[227]</span></a>
+ <span lang="de">'Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar
+kronet men mit der Yseren Krone,
+so is he Konig over alle Dudesche
+Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de
+is Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen.
+Dy drüdde is tho Rome; dy is
+guldin, so is he Keyser over alle dy
+Werlt.'</span>&mdash;Gloss to the <i lang="de">Sachsenspiegel</i>,
+quoted by Pfeffinger. Similarly
+Peter de Andlo.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_228" id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228"><span class="label">[228]</span></a>
+ Cf. Gewoldus, <i lang="la">De Septemviratu
+imperii Romani</i>. One would
+expect some ingenious allegorizer
+to have discovered that the crown
+of Burgundy must be, and therefore
+is, of copper or bronze, making the
+series complete, like the four ages
+of men in Hesiod. But I have not
+been able to find any such.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_229" id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229"><span class="label">[229]</span></a>
+ Hence the numbers attached to
+the names of the Emperors are often
+different in German and Italian
+writers, the latter not reckoning
+Henry the Fowler nor Conrad I.
+So Henry III (of Germany) calls
+himself <span lang="la">'Imperator Henricus Secundus;'</span>
+and all distinguish the
+years of their <i lang="la">regnum</i> from those
+of the <i lang="la">imperium</i>. Cardinal Baronius
+will not call Henry V anything
+but Henry III, not recognizing
+Henry IV's coronation, because it
+was performed by an antipope.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_230" id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230"><span class="label">[230]</span></a>
+ Life of S. Adalbert (written
+at Rome early in the eleventh
+century, probably by a brother of
+the monastery of SS. Boniface and
+Alexius) in Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i> iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_231" id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231"><span class="label">[231]</span></a>
+ Given by Glaber Rudolphus.
+It is on the face of it a most impudent
+forgery: <span lang="la">'Ne quisquam
+audacter Romani Imperii sceptrum
+præpostere gestare princeps appetat
+neve Imperator dici aut
+esse valeat nisi quem Papa Romanus
+morum probitate aptum
+elegerit, eique commiserit insigne
+imperiale.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_232" id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232"><span class="label">[232]</span></a>
+ Universal and undisputed in
+the West, which, for practical purposes,
+meant the world. The denial
+of the supreme jurisdiction of
+Peter's chair by the eastern churches
+affected very slightly the belief of
+Latin Christendom, just as the existence
+of a rival emperor at Constantinople
+with at least as good
+a legal title as the Teutonic Cæsar,
+was readily forgotten or ignored
+by the German and Italian subjects
+of the latter.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_233" id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233"><span class="label">[233]</span></a>
+ Odious especially for the inscription,&mdash;</p>
+
+ <div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Rex venit ante fores nullo prius urbis honore;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Post homo fit Papæ, sumit quo dante coronam.'</span>&mdash;Radewic.</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_234" id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234"><span class="label">[234]</span></a>
+ Mediæval history is full of
+instances of the superstitious
+veneration attached to the rite of
+coronation (made by the Church
+almost a sacrament), and to the
+special places where, or even
+utensils with which it was performed.
+Everyone knows the
+importance in France of Rheims
+and its sacred <i>ampulla</i>; so the
+Scottish king must be crowned
+at Scone, an old seat of Pictish
+royalty&mdash;Robert Bruce risked a
+great deal to receive his crown
+there; so no Hungarian coronation
+was valid unless made with the
+crown of St. Stephen; the possession
+whereof is still accounted so
+valuable by the Austrian court.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Great importance seems to have
+been attached to the imperial globe
+(Reichsapfel) which the Pope delivered
+to the Emperor at his coronation.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_235" id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235"><span class="label">[235]</span></a>
+ Whether the poem which
+passes under the name of Gunther
+Ligurinus be his work or that of
+some scholar in a later age is for
+the present purpose indifferent.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_236" id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236"><span class="label">[236]</span></a>
+ Zedler, <i>Universal Lexicon</i>,
+s. v. <i>Reich</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_237" id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237"><span class="label">[237]</span></a>
+ It does not occur before
+Frederick I's time in any of the
+documents printed by Pertz; and
+this is the date which Boeclerus also
+assigns in his treatise, <i lang="la">De Sacro
+Imperio Romano</i>, vindicating the
+terms <span lang="la">'sacrum'</span> and <span lang="la">'Romanum'</span>
+against the aspersions of Blondel.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_238" id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238"><span class="label">[238]</span></a>
+ Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i>, tom. iv.
+(legum ii.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_239" id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239"><span class="label">[239]</span></a>
+ Ibid. iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_240" id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240"><span class="label">[240]</span></a>
+ Radewic. <i>ap.</i> Pertz.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_241" id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241"><span class="label">[241]</span></a>
+ Blondellus adv. Chiffletium.
+Most of these theories are stated
+by Boeclerus. Jordanes (<i lang="la">Chronica</i>)
+says, <span lang="la">'Sacri imperii quod non est
+dubium sancti Spiritus ordinatione,
+secundum qualitatem ipsam et exigentiam
+meritorum humanorum
+disponi.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_242" id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242"><span class="label">[242]</span></a>
+ Marquard Freher's notes to
+Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_243" id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243"><span class="label">[243]</span></a>
+ So in the song on the capture
+of the Emperor Lewis II by Adalgisus
+of Benevento, we find the
+words, <span lang="la">'Ludhuicum comprenderunt
+sancto, pio, Augusto.'</span> (Quoted by
+Gregorovius, <span lang="de"><i>Geschichte der Stadt
+Rom im Mittelalter</i></span>, iii. p. 185.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_244" id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244"><span class="label">[244]</span></a>
+ Goldast, <i>Constitutiones</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_245" id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245"><span class="label">[245]</span></a>
+ Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i>, legg. ii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_246" id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246"><span class="label">[246]</span></a>
+ 'Apostolic majesty' was the
+proper title of the king of Hungary.
+The Austrian court has recently
+revived it.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_247" id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247"><span class="label">[247]</span></a>
+ Moser, <span lang="de"><i>Römische Kayser</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_248" id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248"><span class="label">[248]</span></a>
+ Urban IV used the title in
+1259: Francis I (of France) calls
+the Empire <span lang="la">'sacrosanctum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_249" id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249"><span class="label">[249]</span></a>
+ Cf. 'Holy Russia.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_250" id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250"><span class="label">[250]</span></a>
+ It is almost superfluous to
+observe that the beginning of the
+title 'Holy' has nothing to do
+with the beginning of the Empire
+itself. Essentially and substantially,
+the Holy Roman Empire
+was, as has been shewn
+already, the creation of Charles
+the Great. Looking at it more
+technically, as the monarchy, not
+of the whole West, like that of
+Charles, but of Germany and
+Italy, with a claim, which was
+never more than a claim, to universal
+sovereignty, its beginning
+is fixed by most of the German
+writers, whose practice has been
+followed in the text, at the coronation
+of Otto the Great. But
+the title was at least one, and
+probably two centuries later.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_251" id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251"><span class="label">[251]</span></a>
+ I quote from the <span lang="la">Liber Augustalis</span>
+printed among Petrarch's works
+the following curious description of
+Frederick: <span lang="la">'Fuit armorum strenuus,
+linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus,
+epicurus, nihil curans vel
+credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus
+Romanae ecclesiae.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote">As Otto III had been called
+<span lang="la">'mirabilia mundi,'</span> so Frederick II
+is often spoken of in his own time
+as <span lang="la">'stupor mundi Fridericus.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_252" id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252"><span class="label">[252]</span></a>
+ <span lang="it">'Quà entro è lo secondo Federico.'</span>&mdash;<i>Inferno</i>, canto x.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_253" id="Footnote_253" href="#FNanchor_253"><span class="label">[253]</span></a>
+ The interregnum is by some
+reckoned as the two years before
+Richard's election; by others, as
+the whole period from the death
+of Frederick II or that of his son
+Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession
+in 1273.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_254" id="Footnote_254" href="#FNanchor_254"><span class="label">[254]</span></a>
+ Surnamed, from his scientific
+tastes, 'the Wise.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_255" id="Footnote_255" href="#FNanchor_255"><span class="label">[255]</span></a>
+ Hapsburg is a castle in the
+Aargau on the banks of the Aar,
+and near the line of railway from
+Olten to Zürich, from a point on
+which a glimpse of it may be had.
+'Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,'
+says Gibbon, 'the castle
+of Hapsburg, the abbey of Königsfeld,
+and the town of Bruck have
+successively arisen. The philosophic
+traveller may compare the
+monuments of Roman conquests,
+of feudal or Austrian tyranny, of
+monkish superstition, and of industrious
+freedom. If he be truly
+a philosopher, he will applaud the
+merit and happiness of his own
+time.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_256" id="Footnote_256" href="#FNanchor_256"><span class="label">[256]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Corpus Iuris Canonici</i>, Decr.
+Greg. i. 6, cap. 34, <span lang="la"><i>Venerabilem</i>:
+'Ius et authoritas examinandi personam
+electam in regem et promovendam
+ad imperium, ad nos
+spectat, qui eum inungimus, consecramus,
+et coronamus.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_257" id="Footnote_257" href="#FNanchor_257"><span class="label">[257]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Illis principibus,'</span> writes Innocent,
+<span lang="la">'ius et potestatem eligendi
+regem [Romanorum] in imperatorem
+postmodum promovendum recognoscimus,
+ad quos de iure ac
+antiqua consuetudine noscitur pertinere,
+præsertim quum ad eos ius
+et potestas huiusmodi ab apostolica
+sede pervenerit, quæ Romanum
+imperium in persona magnifici
+Caroli a Græcis transtulit in Germanos.'</span>&mdash;Decr.
+Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+<i lang="la">Venerabilem</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_258" id="Footnote_258" href="#FNanchor_258"><span class="label">[258]</span></a>
+ Its influence, however, as Döllinger
+(<span lang="de"><i>Das Kaiserthum Karls des
+Grossen und seiner Nachfolger</i></span>)
+remarks, first became great when
+this letter, some forty or fifty years
+after Innocent wrote it, was inserted
+in the digest of the canon law.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_259" id="Footnote_259" href="#FNanchor_259"><span class="label">[259]</span></a>
+ Vid. supra, pp. 52-58.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_260" id="Footnote_260" href="#FNanchor_260"><span class="label">[260]</span></a>
+ Upon this so-called 'Translation
+of the Empire,' many books remain
+to us: many more have probably
+perished. A good although far
+from impartial summary of the
+controversy may be found in Vagedes,
+<i lang="la">De Ludibriis Aulæ Romanæ
+in transferendo Imperio Romano</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_261" id="Footnote_261" href="#FNanchor_261"><span class="label">[261]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Vacante imperio Romano,
+cum in illo ad sæcularem iudicem
+nequeat haberi recursus, ad summum
+pontificem, cui in persona
+B. Petri terreni simul et cœlestis
+imperii iura Deus ipse commisit,
+imperii prædicti iurisdictio regimen
+et dispositio devolvitur.'</span>&mdash;Bull
+<i lang="la">Si fratrum</i> (of John XXI, in <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1316), in <i>Bullar. Rom.</i> So again:
+<span lang="la">'Attendentes quod Imperii Romani
+regimen cura et administratio tempore
+quo illud vacare contingit ad
+nos pertinet, sicut dignoscitur pertinere.'</span>
+So Boniface VIII, refusing
+to recognize Albert I, because he
+was ugly and one-eyed (<span lang="la">'est homo
+monoculus et vultu sordido, non
+potest esse Imperator'</span>), and had
+taken a wife from the serpent brood
+of Frederick II (<span lang="la">'de sanguine viperali
+Friderici'</span>), declared himself
+Vicar of the Empire, and assumed
+the crown and sword of Constantine.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_262" id="Footnote_262" href="#FNanchor_262"><span class="label">[262]</span></a>
+ Avignon was not yet in the
+territory of France: it lay within
+the bounds of the kingdom of
+Arles. But the French power was
+nearer than that of the Emperor;
+and pontiffs many of them French
+by extraction sympathized, as was
+natural, with princes of their own
+race.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_263" id="Footnote_263" href="#FNanchor_263"><span class="label">[263]</span></a>
+ Quoted by Moser, <span lang="de"><i>Römische
+Kayser</i></span>, from <i>Chron. Hirsang.</i>:
+<span lang="la">'Regni vires temporum iniuria
+nimium contritæ vix uni alendo
+regi sufficerent, tantum abesse ut
+sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_264" id="Footnote_264" href="#FNanchor_264"><span class="label">[264]</span></a>
+ At Rupert's death, under
+whom the mischief had increased
+greatly, there were, we are told,
+many bishops better off than the
+Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_265" id="Footnote_265" href="#FNanchor_265"><span class="label">[265]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Proventus Imperii ita minimi
+sunt ut legationibus vix suppetant.'</span>&mdash;Quoted
+by Moser.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_266" id="Footnote_266" href="#FNanchor_266"><span class="label">[266]</span></a>
+ Albert I tried in vain to wrest
+the tolls of the Rhine from the
+grasp of the Rhenish electors.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_267" id="Footnote_267" href="#FNanchor_267"><span class="label">[267]</span></a>
+ The Æthelings of the line of
+Cerdic, among the West Saxons,
+and the Bavarian Agilolfings, may
+thus be compared with the Achæmenids
+of Persia or the heroic
+houses of early Greece.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_268" id="Footnote_268" href="#FNanchor_268"><span class="label">[268]</span></a>
+ Wippo, describing the election
+of Conrad the Franconian,
+says, <span lang="la">'Inter confinia Moguntiæ
+et Wormatiæ convenerunt cuncti
+primates et, ut ita dicam, vires
+et viscera regni.'</span> So Bruno says
+that Henry IV was elected by
+the '<i lang="la">populus</i>.' So Gunther Ligurinus
+of Frederick I's election:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Acturi sacræ de successione coronæ</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">So Amandus, secretary of Frederick
+Barbarossa, in describing his
+election, says, <span lang="la">'Multi illustres heroes
+ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi et
+aliis Italiæ dominiis, ac maior et
+potior pars principum ex Transalpino
+regno.'</span>&mdash;Quoted by Mur.
+<i>Antiq.</i> Diss. iii. And see many
+other authorities to the same effect,
+collected by Pfeffinger, <i lang="la">Vitriarius
+illustratus</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_269" id="Footnote_269" href="#FNanchor_269"><span class="label">[269]</span></a>
+ Alciatus, <i lang="la">De Formula Romani
+Imperii</i>. He adds that the Gauls
+and Italians were incensed at the
+preference shewn to Germany. So
+too Radulfus de Columna.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_270" id="Footnote_270" href="#FNanchor_270"><span class="label">[270]</span></a>
+ Quoted by Gewoldus, <i lang="la">De Septemviratu
+Sacri Imperii Romani</i>,
+himself a violent advocate of
+Gregory's decree, though living as
+late as the days of Ferdinand II.
+As late as <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648 we find Pope
+Innocent X maintaining that the
+sacred number <i>Seven</i> of the electors
+was <span lang="la">'apostolica auctoritate olim
+præfinitus.'</span> Bull <i lang="la">Zelo domus</i> in
+<i>Bullar. Rom.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_271" id="Footnote_271" href="#FNanchor_271"><span class="label">[271]</span></a>
+ Sometimes we hear of a decree
+made by Pope Sergius IV and his
+cardinals (of course equally fabulous
+with Otto's). So John Villani,
+iv. 2.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_272" id="Footnote_272" href="#FNanchor_272"><span class="label">[272]</span></a>
+ In 1152 we read, <span lang="la">'Id iuris
+Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur
+ut non per sanguinis propaginem
+sed per principum electionem
+reges creentur.'</span>&mdash;Otto Fris. Gulielmus
+Brito, writing not much
+later, says (quoted by Freher),&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_273" id="Footnote_273" href="#FNanchor_273"><span class="label">[273]</span></a>
+ Innocent III, during the contest
+between Philip and Otto IV,
+speaks of <span lang="la">'principes ad quos principaliter
+spectat regis Romani electio.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_274" id="Footnote_274" href="#FNanchor_274"><span class="label">[274]</span></a>
+<span lang="la">'Rex Bohemiæ non eligit,
+quia non est Teutonicus,'</span> says a
+writer early in the fourteenth century.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_275" id="Footnote_275" href="#FNanchor_275"><span class="label">[275]</span></a>
+ The names and offices of the
+seven are concisely given in these
+lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, <i lang="la">De Imperio
+Romano</i>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Marchio præpositus cameræ, pincerna Bohemus,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per sæcula summum.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">It is worth while to place beside
+this the first stanza of Schiller's
+ballad, <span lang="de"><i>Der Graf von Hapsburg</i></span>,
+in which the coronation feast of
+Rudolf is described:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="de">'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="de">Im alterthümlichen Saale,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Sass König Rudolphs heilige Macht</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="de">Beim festlichen Krönungsmahle.</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Es schenkte der Böhme des perlenden Weins,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="de">Und alle die Wähler, die Sieben,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Umstanden geschäftig den Herrscher der Welt,</span></p>
+<p class="i1"><span lang="de">Die Würde des Amtes zu üben.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">It is a poetical licence, however (as
+Schiller himself admits), to bring the
+Bohemian there, for King Ottocar
+was far away at home, mortified
+at his own rejection, and already
+meditating war.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_276" id="Footnote_276" href="#FNanchor_276"><span class="label">[276]</span></a>
+ The electoral prince (Kurfürst)
+of Hessen-Cassel. His retention of
+the title has this advantage, that it
+enables the Germans readily to distinguish
+electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen)
+from the Grand Duchy (Hessen-Darmstadt)
+and the landgraviate
+(Hessen Homburg). [Since the
+above was written (in 1865) this
+last relic of the electoral system has
+passed away, the Elector of Hessen
+having been dethroned in 1866,
+and his territories (to the great
+satisfaction of the inhabitants, whom
+he had worried by a long course of
+petty tyrannies) annexed to the
+Prussian kingdom, along with
+Hanover, Nassau, and the free
+city of Frankfort. Count Bismarck,
+as he raises his master nearer and
+nearer to the position of a Germanic
+Emperor, destroys one by
+one the historical memorials of that
+elder Empire which people had
+learned to associate with the Austrian
+house.]</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_277" id="Footnote_277" href="#FNanchor_277"><span class="label">[277]</span></a>
+ Goethe, whose imagination
+was wonderfully attracted by the
+splendours of the old Empire, has
+given in the second part of <i>Faust</i>
+a sort of fancy sketch of the origin
+of the great offices and the territorial
+independence of the German
+princes. Two lines express concisely
+the fiscal rights granted by
+the Emperor to the electors:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1"><span lang="de">'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="de">Berg-, Salz- und Münz-regal euch angehören soll.'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_278" id="Footnote_278" href="#FNanchor_278"><span class="label">[278]</span></a>
+ This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_279" id="Footnote_279" href="#FNanchor_279"><span class="label">[279]</span></a>
+ See esp. Ægidi, <span lang="de"><i>Der Fürstenrath
+nach dem Luneviller Frieden</i></span>,
+and the passages by him
+quoted.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_280" id="Footnote_280" href="#FNanchor_280"><span class="label">[280]</span></a>
+ The archbishop of Mentz addresses
+Conrad II on his election
+thus: <span lang="la">'Deus quum a te multa
+requirat tum hoc potissimum desiderat
+ut facias iudicium et iustitiam
+et pacem patriæ quæ respicit
+ad te, ut sis defensor ecclesiarum et
+clericorum, tutor viduarum et orphanorum.'</span>&mdash;Wippo,
+Vita Chuonradi,
+c. 3, <i>ap.</i> Pertz. So Pope Urban IV
+writes to Richard: <span lang="la">'Ut consternatis
+Imperii Romani inimicis, in pacis
+pulchritudine sedeat populus Christianus
+et requie opulenta quiescat.'</span>
+Compare also the <span lang="la">'Edictum de
+crimine læsæ maiestatis'</span> issued by
+Henry VII in Italy: <span lang="la">'Ad reprimenda
+multorum facinora qui ruptis totius
+debitæ fidelitatis habenis adversus
+Romanum imperium, in cuius
+tranquillitate totius orbis regularitas
+requiescit, hostili animo armati conentur
+nedum humana, verum etiam
+divina præcepta, quibus iubetur quod
+omnis anima Romanorum principi
+sit subiecta, scelestissimis facinoribus
+et rebellionibus demoliri,'</span> &amp;c.&mdash;Pertz,
+<i>M. G. H.</i>, legg. ii. p. 544.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">See also a curious passage in the
+Life of St. Adalbert, describing the
+beginning of the reign at Rome of
+the Emperor Otto III, and his cousin
+and nominee Pope Gregory V:
+<span lang="la">'Lætantur cum primatibus minores
+civitatis: cum afflicto paupere exultant
+agmina viduarum, quia novus
+imperator dat iura populis; dat
+iura novus papa.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_281" id="Footnote_281" href="#FNanchor_281"><span class="label">[281]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Imperator est monarcha omnium
+regum et principum terrenorum ... nec insurgat superbia
+Gallicorum quæ dicat quod non
+recognoscit superiorem, mentiuntur,
+quia de iure sunt et esse debent sub
+rege Romanorum et Imperatore.'</span>&mdash;Speech
+of Boniface VIII. It is
+curious to compare with this the
+words addressed nearly five centuries
+earlier by Pope John VIII to Lewis,
+king of Bavaria: <span lang="la">'Si sumpseritis
+Romanum imperium, omnia regna
+vobis subiecta existent.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_282" id="Footnote_282" href="#FNanchor_282"><span class="label">[282]</span></a>
+ So Alfonso, king of Naples,
+writes to Frederick III: <span lang="la">'Nos reges
+omnes debemus reverentiam Imperatori,
+tanquam summo regi, qui
+est Caput et Dux regum.'</span>&mdash;Quoted
+by Pfeffinger, <i lang="la">Vitriarius illustratus</i>,
+i. 379. And Francis I (of France),
+speaking of a proposed combined
+expedition against the Turks, says,
+<span lang="la">'Cæsari nihilominus principem ea
+in expeditione locum non gravarer
+ex officio cedere.'</span>&mdash;For a long time
+no European sovereign save the
+Emperor ventured to use the title
+of 'Majesty.' The imperial chancery
+conceded it in 1633 to the kings of
+England and Sweden; in 1641 to
+the king of France.&mdash;Zedler, <i>Universal
+Lexicon</i>, <i>s. v.</i> Majestät.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_283" id="Footnote_283" href="#FNanchor_283"><span class="label">[283]</span></a>
+ For with the progress of society
+and the growth of commerce
+the old feudal customs were through
+the greater part of Western Europe,
+and especially in Germany, either
+giving way to or being remodelled
+and supplemented by the civil law.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_284" id="Footnote_284" href="#FNanchor_284"><span class="label">[284]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Imperator est animata lex in
+terris.'</span>&mdash;Quoted by Von Raumer,
+v. 81.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_285" id="Footnote_285" href="#FNanchor_285"><span class="label">[285]</span></a>
+ Thus we are told of the Emperor
+Charles the Bald, when he
+confirmed the election of Boso, king
+of Burgundy and Provence, <span lang="la">'Dedit
+Bosoni Provinciam (<i>sc.</i> Carolus
+Calvus), et corona in vertice capitis
+imposita, eum regem appellari iussit,
+ut more priscorum imperatorum
+regibus videretur dominari.'</span>&mdash;<i>Regin.
+Chron.</i> Frederick II made
+his son Enzio (that famous Enzio
+whose romantic history every one
+who has seen Bologna will remember)
+king of Sardinia, and also
+erected the duchy of Austria into
+a kingdom, although for some
+reason the title seems never to
+have been used; and Lewis IV gave
+to Humbert of Dauphiné the title
+of King of Vienne, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1336.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_286" id="Footnote_286" href="#FNanchor_286"><span class="label">[286]</span></a>
+ It is probably for this reason
+that the <i lang="la">Ordo Romanus</i> directs
+the Emperor and Empress to be
+crowned (in St. Peter's) at the altar
+of St. Maurice, the patron saint of
+knighthood.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_287" id="Footnote_287" href="#FNanchor_287"><span class="label">[287]</span></a>
+ See especially Gerlach Buxtorff,
+<i lang="la">Dissertatio ad Auream Bullam</i>;
+and Augustinus Stenchus,
+<i lang="la">De Imperio Romano</i>; quoted by
+Marquard Freher. It was keenly
+debated, while Charles V and
+Francis I (of France) were rival
+candidates, whether any one but
+a German was eligible. By birth
+Charles was either a Spaniard or
+a Fleming; but this difficulty his
+partisans avoided by holding that
+he had been, according to the civil
+law, <i lang="la">in potestate</i> of Maximilian his
+grandfather. However, to say nothing
+of the Guidos and Berengars
+of earlier days, the examples of
+Richard and Alfonso are conclusive
+as to the eligibility of others than
+Germans. Edward III of England
+was, as has been said, actually
+elected; Henry VIII was a candidate.
+And attempts were frequently
+made to elect the kings of France.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_288" id="Footnote_288" href="#FNanchor_288"><span class="label">[288]</span></a>
+ The mediæval practice seems to
+have been that which still prevails
+in the Roman Catholic Church&mdash;to
+presume the doctrinal orthodoxy
+and external conformity of every
+citizen, whether lay or clerical,
+until the contrary be proved. Of
+course when heresy was rife it
+went hard with suspected men,
+unless they could either clear themselves
+or submit to recant. But
+no one was required to pledge himself
+beforehand, as a qualification
+for any office, to certain doctrines.
+And thus, important as an Emperor's
+orthodoxy was, he does not
+appear to have been subjected to
+any test, although the Pope pretended
+to the right of catechizing
+him in the faith and rejecting him
+if unsound. In the <i lang="la">Ordo Romanus</i>
+we find a long series of questions
+which the Pontiff was to administer,
+but it does not appear, and is in the
+highest degree unlikely, that such
+a programme was ever carried out.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The charge of heresy was one of
+the weapons used with most effect
+against Frederick II.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_289" id="Footnote_289" href="#FNanchor_289"><span class="label">[289]</span></a>
+ Honorius II in 1229 forbade
+it to be studied or taught in the
+University of Paris. Innocent IV
+published some years later a still
+more sweeping prohibition.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_290" id="Footnote_290" href="#FNanchor_290"><span class="label">[290]</span></a>
+ See Von Savigny, <i>History of
+Roman Law in the Middle Ages</i>,
+vol. iii. pp. 81, 341-347.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_291" id="Footnote_291" href="#FNanchor_291"><span class="label">[291]</span></a>
+ Charles the Bold of Burgundy
+was a potentate incomparably
+stronger than the Emperor Frederick
+III from whom he sought the
+regal title.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_292" id="Footnote_292" href="#FNanchor_292"><span class="label">[292]</span></a>
+ Cf. Sismondi, <span lang="fr"><i>Républiques Italiennes</i></span>, iv. chap. xxvii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_293" id="Footnote_293" href="#FNanchor_293"><span class="label">[293]</span></a>
+ See Dante, <i>Paradiso</i>, canto vi.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_294" id="Footnote_294" href="#FNanchor_294"><span class="label">[294]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1"><span lang="it">'Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piange</span></p>
+<p><span lang="it">Vedova, sola, e di e notte chiama:</span></p>
+<p><span lang="it">"Cesare mio, perchè non m' accompagne?"'</span></p>
+<p class="i10"><i lang="it">Purgatorio</i>, canto vi.</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_295" id="Footnote_295" href="#FNanchor_295"><span class="label">[295]</span></a>
+ <i>Purgatorio</i>, canto vii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_296" id="Footnote_296" href="#FNanchor_296"><span class="label">[296]</span></a>
+ <i>Inferno</i>, canto xxxiv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_297" id="Footnote_297" href="#FNanchor_297"><span class="label">[297]</span></a>
+ Not that the doctors of the
+civil law were necessarily political
+partisans of the Emperors. Savigny
+says that there were on the contrary
+more Guelfs than Ghibelines
+among the jurists of Bologna.&mdash;<i>Roman
+Law in the Middle Ages</i>,
+vol. iii. p. 80.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_298" id="Footnote_298" href="#FNanchor_298"><span class="label">[298]</span></a>
+ Cf. Palgrave, <i>Normandy and
+England</i>, vol. ii. (of Otto and Adelheid).
+The <i lang="la">Ordo Romanus</i> talks
+of a <span lang="la">'Camera Iuliæ'</span> in the Lateran
+palace, reserved for the Empress.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_299" id="Footnote_299" href="#FNanchor_299"><span class="label">[299]</span></a>
+ See notes to <i>Chron. Casin.</i> in
+Muratori, <i>S. R. I.</i> iv. 515.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_300" id="Footnote_300" href="#FNanchor_300"><span class="label">[300]</span></a>
+ <span lang="de">Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des
+Reichs</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_301" id="Footnote_301" href="#FNanchor_301"><span class="label">[301]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Novellæ Constitutiones</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_302" id="Footnote_302" href="#FNanchor_302"><span class="label">[302]</span></a>
+ Marquard Freher. The question
+whether the seven electors
+vote as <i lang="la">singuli</i> or as a <i lang="la">collegium</i>,
+is solved by shewing that they
+have stepped into the place of the
+senate and people of Rome, whose
+duty it was to choose the Emperor,
+though (it is naïvely added) the
+soldiers sometimes usurped it.&mdash;Peter
+de Andlo, <i lang="la">De Imperio Romano</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_303" id="Footnote_303" href="#FNanchor_303"><span class="label">[303]</span></a>
+ Thus Charles, in a capitulary
+added to a revised edition of the
+Lombard law issued in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 801,
+says, <span lang="la">'Anno consulatus nostri
+primo.'</span> So Otto III calls himself
+<span lang="la">'Consul Senatus populique Romani.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_304" id="Footnote_304" href="#FNanchor_304"><span class="label">[304]</span></a>
+ Francis II, the last Emperor,
+was one hundred and twentieth
+from Augustus. Some chroniclers
+call Otto the Great Otto II, counting
+in Salvius Otho, the successor
+of Galba.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_305" id="Footnote_305" href="#FNanchor_305"><span class="label">[305]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Page_45">p. 45</a> and <a href="#Footnote_162">note to p. 143</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_306" id="Footnote_306" href="#FNanchor_306"><span class="label">[306]</span></a>
+ Nürnberg herself was not of
+Roman foundation. But this makes
+the imitation all the more curious.
+The fashion even passed from the
+cities to rural communities like
+some of the Swiss cantons. Thus
+we find <span lang="la">'Senatus populusque Uronensis.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_307" id="Footnote_307" href="#FNanchor_307"><span class="label">[307]</span></a>
+ See Palgrave, <i>Normandy and England</i>, i. p. 379.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_308" id="Footnote_308" href="#FNanchor_308"><span class="label">[308]</span></a>
+ Æneas Sylvius, <i lang="la">De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_309" id="Footnote_309" href="#FNanchor_309"><span class="label">[309]</span></a>
+ Thus some civilians held Constantine's
+Donation null; but the
+canonists, we are told, were clear as
+to its legality.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_310" id="Footnote_310" href="#FNanchor_310"><span class="label">[310]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Et idem dico de istis aliis regibus
+et principibus, qui negant se
+esse subditos regi Romanorum, ut
+rex Franciæ, Angliæ, et similes. Si
+enim fatentur ipsum esse Dominum
+universalem, licet ab illo universali
+domino se subtrahant ex privilegio
+vel ex præscriptione vel consimili,
+non ergo desunt esse cives Romani,
+per ea quæ dicta sunt. Et per hoc
+omnes gentes quæ obediunt S. matri
+ecclesiæ sunt de populo Romano.
+Et forte si quis diceret dominum
+Imperatorem non esse dominum et
+monarcham totius orbis, esset hæreticus,
+quia diceret contra determinationem
+ecclesiæ et textum S.
+evangelii, dum dicit, "Exivit edictum
+a Cæsare Augusto ut describeretur
+universus orbis." Ita et
+recognovit Christus Imperatorem
+ut dominum.'</span>&mdash;Bartolus, <i>Commentary
+on the Pandects</i>, xlviii. i. 24;
+<i lang="la">De Captivis et postliminio reversis</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_311" id="Footnote_311" href="#FNanchor_311"><span class="label">[311]</span></a>
+ Peter de Andlo, <i lang="la">multis locis</i>
+(see esp. cap. viii.), and other writings
+of the time. Cf. Dante's
+letter to Henry VII: <span lang="la">'Romanorum
+potestas nec metis Italiæ nec tricornis
+Siciliæ margine coarctatur.
+Nam etsi vim passa in angustum
+gubernacula sua contraxit undique,
+tamen de inviolabili iure fluctus
+Amphitritis attingens vix ab inutili
+unda Oceani se circumcingi dignatur.
+Scriptum est enim</span></p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="o1"><span lang="la">"Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Cæsar,</span></p>
+<p><span lang="la">Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris."'</span></p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote">So Fr. Zoannetus, in the sixteenth
+century, declares it to be a mortal
+sin to resist the Empire, as the
+power ordained of God.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_312" id="Footnote_312" href="#FNanchor_312"><span class="label">[312]</span></a>
+ Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini
+(afterwards Pope Pius II), <i lang="la">De Ortu
+et Authoritate Imperii Romani</i>. Cf.
+Gerlach Buxtorff, <i lang="la">Dissertatio ad
+Auream Bullam</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_313" id="Footnote_313" href="#FNanchor_313"><span class="label">[313]</span></a>
+ It has hitherto been the common
+opinion that the <i>De Monarchia</i>
+was written in the view of
+Henry's expedition. But latterly
+weighty reasons have been advanced
+for believing that its date must be
+placed some years later.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_314" id="Footnote_314" href="#FNanchor_314"><span class="label">[314]</span></a>
+ Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_315" id="Footnote_315" href="#FNanchor_315"><span class="label">[315]</span></a>
+ Quoting Aristotle's <i>Politics</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_316" id="Footnote_316" href="#FNanchor_316"><span class="label">[316]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Non enim cives propter consules
+nec gens propter regem, sed e
+converso consules propter cives, rex
+propter gentem.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_317" id="Footnote_317" href="#FNanchor_317"><span class="label">[317]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Reges et principes in hoc
+unico concordantes, ut adversentur
+Domino suo et uncto suo Romano
+Principi,'</span> having quoted <span lang="la">'Quare
+fremuerunt gentes.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_318" id="Footnote_318" href="#FNanchor_318"><span class="label">[318]</span></a>
+ Especially in the opportune
+death of Alexander the Great.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_319" id="Footnote_319" href="#FNanchor_319"><span class="label">[319]</span></a>
+ Cic., <i>De Off.</i>, ii. <span lang="la">'Ita ut illud
+patrocinium orbis terrarum potius
+quam imperium poterat nominari.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_320" id="Footnote_320" href="#FNanchor_320"><span class="label">[320]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Si Pilati imperium non de
+iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non
+fuit adeo punitum.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_321" id="Footnote_321" href="#FNanchor_321"><span class="label">[321]</span></a>
+ There is a curious seal of the
+Emperor Otto IV (figured in J. M.
+Heineccius, <i lang="la">De veteribus Germanorum
+atque aliarum nationum sigillis</i>),
+on which the sun and moon
+are represented over the head of the
+Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot
+explain it, but there seems to be no
+reason why we should not take the
+device as typifying the accord of the
+spiritual and temporal powers which
+was brought about at the accession
+of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the
+favoured candidate of Pope Innocent
+III.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The analogy between the lights
+of heaven and the princes of earth
+is one which mediæval writers are
+very fond of. It seems to have
+originated with Gregory VII.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_322" id="Footnote_322" href="#FNanchor_322"><span class="label">[322]</span></a>
+ Typifying the spiritual and
+temporal powers. Dante meets this
+by distinguishing the homage paid
+to Christ from that which his Vicar
+can rightfully demand.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_323" id="Footnote_323" href="#FNanchor_323"><span class="label">[323]</span></a>
+ Hist. Eccl. l. ix. c. 6: <span class="greek" title="ton de
+ phanai, hôs ouch hekôn tade epicheirei,
+ alla tis synechôs enochlôn auton
+ biazetai, kai epitattei tên Rhômên
+ porthein">τὸν δὲ
+ φάναι, ὡς οὐχ ἑκὼν τάδε ἐπιχειρεῖ,
+ ἀλλά τις συνεχῶς ἐνοχλῶν αὐτὸν
+ βιάζεται, καὶ ἐπιτάττει τὴν Ῥώμην
+ πορθεῖν</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_324" id="Footnote_324" href="#FNanchor_324"><span class="label">[324]</span></a>
+ See the two Lives of St. Adalbert
+in Pertz, <i>M. G. H.</i>, iv., evidently
+compiled soon after his
+death.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_325" id="Footnote_325" href="#FNanchor_325"><span class="label">[325]</span></a>
+ Another letter of Petrarch's
+to John Colonna, written immediately
+after his arrival in the city,
+deserves to be quoted, it is so like
+what a stranger would now write
+off after his first day in Rome:&mdash;<span lang="la">'In
+præsens nihil est quod inchoare
+ausim, miraculo rerum tantarum
+et stuporis mole obrutus ...
+præsentia vero, mirum dictu, nihil
+imminuit sed auxit omnia: vere
+maior fuit Roma maioresque sunt
+reliquiæ quam rebar: iam non
+orbem ab hac urbe domitum sed
+tam sero domitum miror. Vale.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_326" id="Footnote_326" href="#FNanchor_326"><span class="label">[326]</span></a>
+ The idea of the continuance
+of the sway of Rome under a new
+character is one which mediæval
+writers delight to illustrate. In
+<a href="#noteD">Appendix, Note D</a>, there is quoted
+as a specimen a poem upon Rome,
+by Hildebert (bishop of Le Mans,
+and afterwards archbishop of
+Tours), written in the beginning
+of the twelfth century.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_327" id="Footnote_327" href="#FNanchor_327"><span class="label">[327]</span></a>
+ In writing this chapter I have
+derived much assistance from the
+admirable work of Ferdinand Gregorovius,
+<span lang="de"><i>Geschichte der Stadt Rom
+im Mittelalter</i></span>. Unfortunately no
+English translation of it exists; but
+I am informed by the author that
+one is likely ere long to appear.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_328" id="Footnote_328" href="#FNanchor_328"><span class="label">[328]</span></a>
+ Republican forms of some sort
+had existed before Arnold's arrival,
+but we hear the name of no other
+leader mentioned; and doubtless it
+was by him chiefly that the spirit
+of hostility to the clerical power
+was infused into the minds of the
+Romans.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_329" id="Footnote_329" href="#FNanchor_329"><span class="label">[329]</span></a>
+ The series of papal coins is
+interrupted (with one or two slight
+exceptions) from <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 984 (not long
+after the time of Alberic) to <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1304. In their place we meet with
+various coins struck by the municipal
+authorities, some of which
+bear on the obverse the head of
+the Apostle Peter, with the legend
+Roman. Pricipe: on the reverse
+the head of the Apostle Paul,
+legend, Senat. Popul. Q. R. Gregorovius,
+<i lang="la">ut supra</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_330" id="Footnote_330" href="#FNanchor_330"><span class="label">[330]</span></a>
+ Rienzi called himself Augustus
+as well as tribune; <span lang="it">'tribuno Augusto
+de Roma.'</span> (He pretended,
+or his friends pretended for him&mdash;it
+was at any rate believed&mdash;that
+he was an illegitimate son of the
+Emperor Henry the Seventh.) He
+cited, on his appointment, the Pope
+and cardinals to appear before the
+people of Rome and give an account
+of their conduct; and after them
+the Emperor. <span lang="it">'Ancora citao lo
+Bavaro (Lewis the Fourth). Puoi
+citao li elettori de lo imperio in
+Alemagna, e disse "Voglio vedere
+che rascione haco nella elettione,"
+che trovasse scritto che passato
+alcuno tempo la elettione recadeva
+a li Romani.'</span>&mdash;<i>Vita di Cola di
+Rienzi</i>, c. xxvi (written by a contemporary).
+I give the spelling as
+it stands in Muratori's edition.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_331" id="Footnote_331" href="#FNanchor_331"><span class="label">[331]</span></a>
+ The Germans called this hill,
+which is the highest in or near
+Rome, conspicuous from a beautiful
+group of stone-pines upon
+its brow, Mons Gaudii; the origin
+of the Italian name, Monte
+Mario, is not known, unless it be,
+as some think, a corruption of
+Mons Malus.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">It was on this hill that Otto the
+Third hanged Crescentius and his
+followers.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_332" id="Footnote_332" href="#FNanchor_332"><span class="label">[332]</span></a>
+ I quote this from the <i lang="la">Ordo
+Romanus</i> as it stands in Muratori's
+third Dissertation in the <i lang="la">Antiquitates
+Italiæ medii ævi</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_333" id="Footnote_333" href="#FNanchor_333"><span class="label">[333]</span></a>
+ Great stress was laid on one
+part of the procedure,&mdash;the holding
+by the Emperor of the Pope's
+stirrup for him to mount, and the
+leading of his palfrey for some
+distance. Frederick Barbarossa's
+omission of this mark of respect
+when Pope Hadrian IV met him on
+his way to Rome, had nearly caused
+a breach between the two potentates,
+Hadrian absolutely refusing
+the kiss of peace until Frederick
+should have gone through the form,
+which he was at last forced to do in
+a somewhat ignominious way.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_334" id="Footnote_334" href="#FNanchor_334"><span class="label">[334]</span></a>
+ A remarkable speech of expostulation
+made by Otto III to the
+Roman people (after one of their
+revolts) from the tower of his house
+on the Aventine has been preserved
+to us. It begins thus: <span lang="la">'Vosne
+estis mei Romani? Propter vos
+quidem meam patriam, propinquos
+quoque reliqui; amore vestro Saxones
+et cunctos Theotiscos, sanguinem
+meum, proieci; vos in remotas
+partes imperii nostri adduxi, quo
+patres vestri cum orbem ditione premerent
+numquam pedem posuerunt;
+scilicet ut nomen vestrum et gloriam
+ad fines usque dilatarem; vos filios
+adoptavi: vos cunctis prætuli.'</span>&mdash;<i>Vita
+S. Bernwardi</i>; in Pertz, <i>M. G.
+H.</i>, t. iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">(It is from this form 'Theotiscus'
+that the Italian 'Tedesco' seems to
+have been derived.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_335" id="Footnote_335" href="#FNanchor_335"><span class="label">[335]</span></a>
+ The Leonine city, so called
+from Pope Leo IV, lay between
+the Vatican and St. Peter's and the
+river.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_336" id="Footnote_336" href="#FNanchor_336"><span class="label">[336]</span></a>
+ It would seem that Otto was
+deceived, and that in reality they are
+the bones of St. Paulinus of Nola.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_337" id="Footnote_337" href="#FNanchor_337"><span class="label">[337]</span></a>
+ The only other of the Teutonic
+Emperors buried in Italy were, so
+far as I know, Lewis the Second
+(whose tomb, with an inscription
+commemorating his exploits, is built
+into the wall of the north aisle of
+the famous church of S. Ambrose at
+Milan), Henry the Sixth and Frederick
+the Second, who lie at Palermo,
+Conrad IV, buried at Foggia, and
+Henry the Seventh, whose sarcophagus
+may be seen in the Campo
+Santo of Pisa, a city always conspicuous
+for her zeal on the imperial
+side.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Six Emperors lie buried at Speyer,
+three or four at Prague, two at
+Aachen, two at Bamberg, one at
+Innsbruck, one at Magdeburg, one
+at Quedlinburg, two at Munich,
+and most of the later ones at
+Vienna.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_338" id="Footnote_338" href="#FNanchor_338"><span class="label">[338]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Footnote_198">note s, p. 178</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_339" id="Footnote_339" href="#FNanchor_339"><span class="label">[339]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Page_117">p. 117</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_340" id="Footnote_340" href="#FNanchor_340"><span class="label">[340]</span></a>
+ These highly curious frescoes
+are in the chapel of St. Sylvester
+attached to the very ancient church
+of Quattro Santi on the Cœlian
+hill, and are supposed to have been
+executed in the time of Pope
+Innocent III. They represent scenes
+in the life of the Saint, more particularly
+the making of the famous
+donation to him by Constantine,
+who submissively holds the bridle
+of his palfrey.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_341" id="Footnote_341" href="#FNanchor_341"><span class="label">[341]</span></a>
+ The last imperial coronation,
+that of Charles the Fifth, took place
+in the church of St. Petronius at
+Bologna, Pope Clement VII being
+unwilling to receive Charles in
+Rome. It is a grand church, but
+the choir, where the ceremony took
+place, seems to have been 'restored,'
+that is to say modernized, since
+Charles' time.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_342" id="Footnote_342" href="#FNanchor_342"><span class="label">[342]</span></a>
+ The name of Cenci is a very
+old one at Rome: it is supposed to
+be an abbreviation of Crescentius.
+We hear in the eleventh century of
+a certain Cencius, who on one occasion
+made Gregory VII prisoner.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_343" id="Footnote_343" href="#FNanchor_343"><span class="label">[343]</span></a>
+ Thus in the church of San
+Lorenzo without the walls there
+are several pointed windows, now
+bricked up; and similar ones may
+be seen in the church of Ara Cœli
+on the summit of the Capitol. So
+in the apse of St. John Lateran
+there are three or four windows of
+Gothic form: and in its cloister, as
+well as in that of St. Paul without
+the walls, a great deal of beautiful
+Lombard work. The elegant porch
+of the church of Sant' Antonio
+Abate is Lombard. In the apse of
+the church of San Giovanni e Paolo
+on the Cœlian hill there is an external
+arcade exactly like those of
+the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are these
+the only instances.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The ruined chapel attached to
+the fortress of the Caetani family&mdash;the
+family to which Boniface the
+Eighth belonged, and whose head
+is now the first of the Roman nobility&mdash;is
+a pretty little building,
+more like northern Gothic than
+anything within the walls of Rome.
+It stands upon the Appian Way,
+opposite the tomb of Cæcilia Metella,
+which the Caetani used as a
+stronghold.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_344" id="Footnote_344" href="#FNanchor_344"><span class="label">[344]</span></a>
+ A good deal of the mischief
+done by Robert Guiscard, from
+which the parts of the city lying
+beyond the Coliseum towards the
+river and St. John Lateran never
+recovered, is attributed to the Saracenic
+troops in his service. Saracen
+pirates are said to have once before
+sacked Rome. Genseric was not
+a heathen, but he was a furious
+Arian, which, as far as respect to
+the churches of the orthodox went,
+was nearly the same thing. He is
+supposed to have carried off the
+seven-branched candlestick and
+other vessels of the Temple, which
+Titus had brought from Jerusalem
+to Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_345" id="Footnote_345" href="#FNanchor_345"><span class="label">[345]</span></a>
+ We are told that one cause of
+the ferocity of the German part of
+the army of Charles was their anger
+at the ruinous condition of the imperial
+palace.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_346" id="Footnote_346" href="#FNanchor_346"><span class="label">[346]</span></a>
+ Under the influence, partly of
+this anti-pagan spirit, partly of his
+own restless vanity, partly of a
+passion to be doing something, Pope
+Sixtus the Fifth did a great deal of
+mischief in the way of destroying
+or spoiling the monuments of antiquity.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_347" id="Footnote_347" href="#FNanchor_347"><span class="label">[347]</span></a>
+ These campaniles are generally
+supposed to date from the ninth
+and tenth centuries. I am informed,
+however, by Mr. J. H.
+Parker, of Oxford, whose antiquarian
+skill is well known, that
+he is led to believe by an examination
+of their mouldings that few or
+none, unless it be that of San
+Prassede, are older than the twelfth
+century.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">This of course applies only to
+the existing buildings. The type
+of tower may be, and indeed no
+doubt is, older.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Somewhat similar towers may
+be observed in many parts of the
+Italian Alps, especially in the wonderful
+mountain land north of
+Venice, where such towers are of
+all dates from the eleventh or
+twelfth down to the nineteenth
+century, the ancient type having in
+these remote valleys been adhered
+to because the builder had no other
+models before him. In the valley
+of Cimolais I have seen such a campanile
+in course of erection, precisely
+similar to others in the neighbouring
+villages some eight centuries
+old.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">The very curious round towers
+of Ravenna, some four or five of
+which are still standing, seem to
+have originally had similar windows,
+though these have been all, or nearly
+all, stopped up. The Roman towers
+are all square.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_348" id="Footnote_348" href="#FNanchor_348"><span class="label">[348]</span></a>
+ The Palatine hill seems to have
+been then, as it is for the most part
+now, a waste of stupendous ruins.
+In the great imperial palace upon
+its northern and eastern sides was
+the residence of an official of the
+Eastern court in the beginning of
+the eighth century. In the time of
+Charles, some seventy years later,
+this palace was no longer habitable.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_349" id="Footnote_349" href="#FNanchor_349"><span class="label">[349]</span></a>
+ Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica form.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_350" id="Footnote_350" href="#FNanchor_350"><span class="label">[350]</span></a>
+ It was thus that most of the
+earlier Teutonic Emperors, and
+notably Charles and Otto, professed
+to have obtained the crown;
+although practically it was partly a
+matter of conquest and partly of
+private arrangement with the Pope.
+In later times, the seven Germanic
+princes were recognized as the
+legally qualified electoral body, but
+their appearance on the stage was
+a result of the confusion of the
+German kingdom with the Roman
+Empire, and in strictness they had
+nothing to do with the Roman
+crown at all. The right to bestow
+it could only&mdash;on principle&mdash;belong
+to some Roman authority, and
+those who felt the difficulty were
+driven to suppose a formal cession
+of their privilege by the Roman
+people to the seven electors. See
+<a href="#Page_227">p. 227</a> <i>supra</i>: and cf. Matthew
+Villani (iv. 77), <span lang="it">'Il popolo Romano,
+non da se, ma la chiesa per lui,
+concedette la elezione degli Imperadori
+a sette principi della
+Magna.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_351" id="Footnote_351" href="#FNanchor_351"><span class="label">[351]</span></a>
+ That which Dante, Arnold of
+Brescia, and the rest really have in
+common with the modern Italian
+'party of movement' is their hostility
+to the temporal power of the
+Popes.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_352" id="Footnote_352" href="#FNanchor_352"><span class="label">[352]</span></a>
+ See Dean Stanley's <i>Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church</i>,
+Lecture II.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_353" id="Footnote_353" href="#FNanchor_353"><span class="label">[353]</span></a>
+ It is not without interest to
+observe that the council of Basel
+shewed signs of reciprocating imperial
+care by claiming those very
+rights over the Empire to which
+the Popes were accustomed to pretend.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_354" id="Footnote_354" href="#FNanchor_354"><span class="label">[354]</span></a>
+ The councils of Basel and
+Florence were not recognized from
+first to last by all Europe, as was the
+council of Constance. When the
+assembly of Trent met, the great
+religious schism had already made a
+general council, in the true sense of
+the word, impossible.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_355" id="Footnote_355" href="#FNanchor_355"><span class="label">[355]</span></a>
+ <span lang="it">'E pero venendo gl'imperadori
+della Magna col supremo
+titolo, e volendo col senno e colla
+forza della Magna reggiere gli
+Italiani, non lo fanno e non lo
+possono fare.'</span>&mdash;M. Villani, iv. 77.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">Matthew Villani's etymology of
+the two great faction names of
+Italy is worth quoting, as a fair
+sample of the skill of mediævals in
+such matters:&mdash;<span lang="it">'La Italia tutta e
+divisa mistamente in due parti,
+l'una che seguita ne' fatti del
+mondo la santa chiesa&mdash;e questi
+son dinominati Guelfi; cioè, guardatori
+di fè. E l'altra parte seguitano
+lo 'mperio o fedele o enfedele che
+sia delle cose del mondo a santa
+chiesa. E chiamansi Ghibellini,
+quasi guida belli; cioè, guidatori
+di battaglie.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_356" id="Footnote_356" href="#FNanchor_356"><span class="label">[356]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Nam quamvis Imperatorem
+et regem et dominum vestrum esse
+fateamini, precario tamen ille imperare
+videtur: nulla ei potentia
+est; tantum ei paretis quantum
+vultis, vultis autem minimum.'</span>&mdash;Æneas
+Sylvius to the princes of
+Germany, quoted by Hippolytus a
+Lapide.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_357" id="Footnote_357" href="#FNanchor_357"><span class="label">[357]</span></a>
+ See Ægidi, <span lang="de"><i>Der Fürstenrath
+nach dem Luneviller Frieden</i></span>; a
+book which throws more light than
+any other with which I am acquainted
+on the inner nature of the
+Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_358" id="Footnote_358" href="#FNanchor_358"><span class="label">[358]</span></a>
+ The two immediately preceding
+Emperors, Albert II (1438-1439)
+and Frederick III, father of Maximilian
+(1439-1493), had been
+Hapsburgs. It is nevertheless from
+Maximilian that the ascendancy of
+that family must be dated.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_359" id="Footnote_359" href="#FNanchor_359"><span class="label">[359]</span></a>
+ Reichsregiment.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_360" id="Footnote_360" href="#FNanchor_360"><span class="label">[360]</span></a>
+ Wenzel had encouraged the
+leagues of the cities, and incurred
+thereby the hatred of the nobles.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_361" id="Footnote_361" href="#FNanchor_361"><span class="label">[361]</span></a>
+ The Germans, like our own
+ancestors, called foreign, <i>i. e.</i> non-Teutonic
+nations, Welsh. Yet apparently
+not all such nations, but
+only those which they in some way
+associated with the Roman Empire,
+the Cymry of Roman Britain,
+the Romanized Kelts of Gaul, the
+Italians, the Roumans or Wallachs
+of Transylvania and the Principalities.
+It does not appear that
+either the Magyars or any Slavonic
+people were called by any form of
+the name Welsh.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_362" id="Footnote_362" href="#FNanchor_362"><span class="label">[362]</span></a>
+ The German crown was received
+at Aachen, the ancient
+Frankish capital, where may still
+be seen, in the gallery of the basilica,
+the marble throne on which
+the Emperors from the days of
+Charles to those of Ferdinand I
+were crowned. It was upon this
+chair that Otto III had found the
+body of Charles seated, when he
+opened his tomb in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1001.
+After Ferdinand I, the coronation
+as well as the election took place
+at Frankfort. An account of the
+ceremony may be found in Goethe's
+<span lang="de"><i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i></span>. Aachen,
+though it remained and indeed is
+still a German town, lay in too
+remote a corner of the country to
+be a convenient capital, and was
+moreover in dangerous proximity
+to the West Franks, as stubborn
+old Germans continue to call them.
+As early as <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1353 we find
+bishop Leopold of Bamberg complaining
+that the French had arrogated
+to themselves the honours of
+the Frankish name, and called themselves
+<span lang="la">'reges Franciæ,'</span> instead of
+'<span lang="la">reges Franciæ occidentalis.'</span>&mdash;Lupoldus
+Bebenburgensis, apud Schardium,
+<i>Sylloge Tractatuum</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_363" id="Footnote_363" href="#FNanchor_363"><span class="label">[363]</span></a>
+ Erwählter Kaiser. See <a href="#noteC">Appendix,
+Note C</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_364" id="Footnote_364" href="#FNanchor_364"><span class="label">[364]</span></a>
+ Romanorum rex (after Henry
+II) till the coronation at Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_365" id="Footnote_365" href="#FNanchor_365"><span class="label">[365]</span></a>
+ But the Emperor was only one
+of many claimants to this kingdom;
+they multiplied as the prospect of
+regaining it died away.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_366" id="Footnote_366" href="#FNanchor_366"><span class="label">[366]</span></a>
+ The latter does not occur, even
+in English books, till comparatively
+recent times. English writers of
+the seventeenth century always call
+him 'The Emperor,' pure and simple,
+just as they invariably say
+'the French king.' But the phrase
+<span lang="fr">'Empereur d'Almayne'</span> may be
+found in very early French writers.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_367" id="Footnote_367" href="#FNanchor_367"><span class="label">[367]</span></a>
+ See Moser, <span lang="de"><i>Römische Kayser</i></span>;
+Goldast's and other collections of
+imperial edicts and proclamations.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_368" id="Footnote_368" href="#FNanchor_368"><span class="label">[368]</span></a>
+ The so-called <span lang="de">'Wahlcapitulation.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_369" id="Footnote_369" href="#FNanchor_369"><span class="label">[369]</span></a>
+ The electors long refused to
+elect Charles, dreading his great
+hereditary power, and were at last
+induced to do so only by their
+overmastering fear of the Turks.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_370" id="Footnote_370" href="#FNanchor_370"><span class="label">[370]</span></a>
+ Nearly all the Hapsburgs seem
+to have wanted that sort of genial
+heartiness which, apt as it is to be
+stifled by education in the purple,
+has nevertheless been possessed by
+several other royal lines, greatly
+contributing to their vitality; as for
+instance by more than one prince
+of the houses of Brunswick and
+Hohenzollern.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_371" id="Footnote_371" href="#FNanchor_371"><span class="label">[371]</span></a>
+ See this brought out with great
+force in the very interesting work
+of Padre Tosti, <span lang="it"><i>Prolegomeni alla
+Storia Universale della Chiesa</i></span>, from
+which I quote one passage, which
+bears directly on the matter in
+hand: <span lang="it">'Il grido della riforma clericale
+aveva un eco terribile in tutta
+la compagnia civile dei popoli:
+essa percuoteva le cime del laicale
+potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la
+gerarchia sociale. Se l'imperadore
+Sigismondo nel concilio di Costanza
+non avesse fiutate queste consequenze
+nella eresia di Hus e di
+Girolamo di Praga, forse non avrebbe
+con tanto zelo mandati alle
+fiamme que' novatori. Rotto da
+Lutero il vincolo di suggezione al
+Papa ed ai preti in fatti di religione,
+avvenne che anche quello
+che sommetteva il vassallo al barone,
+il barone al imperadore si
+allentasse. Il popolo con la Bibbia
+in mano era prete, vescovo, e papa;
+e se prima contristato della prepotenza
+di chi gli soprastava, ricorreva
+al successore di San Pietro,
+ora ricorreva a se stesso, avendogli
+commesse Fra Martino le chiavi
+del regno dei Cieli.'</span>&mdash;vol. ii. pp.
+398, 9.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_372" id="Footnote_372" href="#FNanchor_372"><span class="label">[372]</span></a>
+ It was not till the end of the
+eleventh century that transubstantiation
+was definitely established as
+a dogma.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_373" id="Footnote_373" href="#FNanchor_373"><span class="label">[373]</span></a>
+ See the passages quoted in <a href="#Footnote_113">note m, p. 98</a>; and <a href="#Footnote_132">note g, p. 110</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_374" id="Footnote_374" href="#FNanchor_374"><span class="label">[374]</span></a>
+ Henry VIII of England when
+he rebelled against the Pope called
+himself King of Ireland (his predecessors
+had used only the title
+<span lang="la">'Dominus Hiberniæ'</span>) without asking
+the Emperor's permission, in
+order to shew that he repudiated
+the temporal as well as the spiritual
+dominion of Rome.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">So the Statute of Appeals is careful
+to deny and reject the authority
+of 'other foreign potentates,' meaning,
+no doubt, the Emperor as well
+as the Pope.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_375" id="Footnote_375" href="#FNanchor_375"><span class="label">[375]</span></a>
+ Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_376" id="Footnote_376" href="#FNanchor_376"><span class="label">[376]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_377" id="Footnote_377" href="#FNanchor_377"><span class="label">[377]</span></a>
+ Even then the Roman pontiffs
+had lapsed into that scolding, anile
+tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of
+Hildebrand, or the stern precision
+of Innocent III) which is now
+seldom absent from their public
+utterances. Pope Innocent the
+Tenth pronounces the provisions
+of the treaty, <span lang="la">'ipso iure nulla,
+irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta,
+damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque
+et effectu vacua, omnino
+fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore.'</span> In
+spite of which they were observed.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote">This bull may be found in vol.
+xvii. of the <i>Bullarium</i>. It bears
+date Nov. 20th, <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1648.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_378" id="Footnote_378" href="#FNanchor_378"><span class="label">[378]</span></a>
+ The Imperial Chamber (Kammergericht)
+continued, with frequent
+and long interruptions, to
+sit while the Empire lasted. But
+its slowness and formality passed
+that of any other legal body the
+world has yet seen, and it had
+no power to enforce its sentences.
+The Aulic council was little more
+efficient, and was generally disliked
+as the tool of imperial intrigue.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_379" id="Footnote_379" href="#FNanchor_379"><span class="label">[379]</span></a>
+ The <span lang="la">'matricula'</span> specifying the
+quota of each state to the imperial
+army could not be any longer employed.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_380" id="Footnote_380" href="#FNanchor_380"><span class="label">[380]</span></a>
+ <span lang="de"><i>Erbfeind des heiligen Reichs.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_381" id="Footnote_381" href="#FNanchor_381"><span class="label">[381]</span></a>
+ Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in
+1713.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_382" id="Footnote_382" href="#FNanchor_382"><span class="label">[382]</span></a>
+ Quoted by Ludwig Haüsser, <span lang="de"><i>Deutsche Geschichte</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_383" id="Footnote_383" href="#FNanchor_383"><span class="label">[383]</span></a>
+ The distinction is well expressed by the German <span lang="de">'Reich'</span> and
+<span lang="de">'Kaiserthum,'</span> to which we have unfortunately no terms to correspond.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_384" id="Footnote_384" href="#FNanchor_384"><span class="label">[384]</span></a>
+ So the Elector of Saxony proposed
+in 1532 that Albert II,
+Frederick III, and Maximilian
+having been all of one house,
+Charles V's successor should be
+chosen from some other.&mdash;Moser,
+<span lang="de"><i>Römische Kayser</i></span>. See the various
+attempts of France in Moser. The
+coronation engagements (<span lang="de">Wahlcapitulation</span>)
+of every Emperor
+bound him not to attempt to make
+the throne hereditary in his family.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_385" id="Footnote_385" href="#FNanchor_385"><span class="label">[385]</span></a>
+ In 1658 France offered to subsidize
+the Elector of Bavaria if he
+would become Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_386" id="Footnote_386" href="#FNanchor_386"><span class="label">[386]</span></a>
+ Whether an Evangelical was
+eligible for the office of Emperor
+was a question often debated, but
+never actually raised by the candidature
+of any but a Roman Catholic
+prince. The <span lang="la">'exacta æqualitas'</span>
+conceded by the Peace of Westphalia
+might appear to include so
+important a privilege. But when
+we consider that the peculiar relation
+in which the Emperor stood to
+the Holy Roman Church was one
+which no heretic could hold, and
+that the coronation oaths could not
+have been taken by, nor the coronation
+ceremonies (among which
+was a sort of ordination) performed
+upon a Protestant, the conclusion
+must be unfavourable to the claims
+of any but a Catholic.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_387" id="Footnote_387" href="#FNanchor_387"><span class="label">[387]</span></a>
+</p>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+ <div class="poetry-container">
+ <div class="poem">
+ <p class="o1">'The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,</p>
+<p>Tries the dread summits of Cæsarian power.</p>
+<p>With unexpected legions bursts away,</p>
+<p>And sees defenceless realms receive his sway....</p>
+<p>The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom</p>
+<p>Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom;</p>
+<p>His foes' derision and his subjects' blame,</p>
+<p>And steals to death from anguish and from shame.'</p>
+<p class="i10"><span class="smcap">Johnson</span>, <i>Vanity of Human Wishes</i>.</p>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_388" id="Footnote_388" href="#FNanchor_388"><span class="label">[388]</span></a>
+ The following nine reasons for
+the long continuance of the Empire
+in the House of Hapsburg are given
+by Pfeffinger (<i lang="la">Vitriarius Illustratus</i>),
+writing early in the eighteenth century:&mdash;</p>
+
+<ul class="fn">
+<li>1. The great power of Austria.</li>
+
+<li>2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.</li>
+
+<li>3. The majority of Catholics among the electors.</li>
+
+<li>4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances.</li>
+
+<li>5. Her moderation.</li>
+
+<li>6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.</li>
+
+<li>7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
+the blood of former Cæsars.</li>
+
+<li>8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were
+deprived of the crown.</li>
+
+<li>9. Her own eagerness to have it.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_389" id="Footnote_389" href="#FNanchor_389"><span class="label">[389]</span></a>
+ The Pope undertook a journey
+to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and
+met with a sufficiently cold reception.
+When he saw the famous
+minister Kaunitz and gave him his
+hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and
+shook it.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_390" id="Footnote_390" href="#FNanchor_390"><span class="label">[390]</span></a>
+ 'You are in your own house:
+be the master.'</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_391" id="Footnote_391" href="#FNanchor_391"><span class="label">[391]</span></a>
+ Joseph II was foiled in his
+attempt to assert them.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_392" id="Footnote_392" href="#FNanchor_392"><span class="label">[392]</span></a>
+ Goethe spent some time in
+studying law at Wetzlar among
+those who practised in the Kammergericht.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_393" id="Footnote_393" href="#FNanchor_393"><span class="label">[393]</span></a>
+ Cf. Pütter, <i>Historical Developement
+of the Political Constitution of
+the German Empire</i>, vol. iii.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_394" id="Footnote_394" href="#FNanchor_394"><span class="label">[394]</span></a>
+ Frederick the Great said of
+the Diet, <span lang="de">'Es ist ein Schattenbild,
+eine Versammlung aus Publizisten
+die mehr mit Formalien als mit
+Sachen sich beschäftigen, und, wie
+Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_395" id="Footnote_395" href="#FNanchor_395"><span class="label">[395]</span></a>
+ Cf. Haüsser, <span lang="de"><i>Deutsche Geschichte</i></span>;
+Introduction.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_396" id="Footnote_396" href="#FNanchor_396"><span class="label">[396]</span></a>
+ Quoted by Haüsser.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_397" id="Footnote_397" href="#FNanchor_397"><span class="label">[397]</span></a>
+ Rotteck and Welcker, <span lang="de"><i>Staats
+Lexikon</i></span>, s. v. <span lang="de">'Deutsches Reich.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_398" id="Footnote_398" href="#FNanchor_398"><span class="label">[398]</span></a>
+ <i lang="de">Deutschlands Erwartungen
+vom Fürstenbunde</i>, quoted in the
+<span lang="de"><i>Staats Lexikon</i></span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_399" id="Footnote_399" href="#FNanchor_399"><span class="label">[399]</span></a>
+ <span lang="de"><i>Wahrheit und Dichtung</i></span>, book i.
+The <span lang="de">Römer Saal</span> is still one of the
+sights of Frankfort. The portraits,
+however, which one now sees in it,
+seem to be all or nearly all of them
+modern; and few have any merit
+as works of art.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_400" id="Footnote_400" href="#FNanchor_400"><span class="label">[400]</span></a>
+ <i lang="la">Jordanis Chronica</i>, ap. Schardium,
+<i lang="la">Sylloge Tractatuum</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_401" id="Footnote_401" href="#FNanchor_401"><span class="label">[401]</span></a>
+ In an address by Napoleon to
+the Senate in 1804, bearing date
+10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the
+words, <span lang="fr">'Mes descendans conserveront
+longtemps ce trône, le premier
+de l'univers.'</span> Answering a deputation
+from the department of the
+Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, <span lang="fr">'La Providence,
+qui a voulu que je rétablisse
+le trône de Charlemagne, vous a
+fait naturellement rentrer, avec la
+Hollande et les villes anséatiques,
+dans le sein de l'Empire.'</span>&mdash;<i>Œuvres
+de Napoléon</i>, tom. v. p. 521.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="fr">'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne,
+parce que, comme Charlemagne,
+je réunis la couronne de
+France à celle des Lombards, et
+que mon Empire confine avec
+l'Orient.'</span> (Quoted by Lanfrey, <i>Vie
+de Napoleon</i>, iii. 417.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="fr">'Votre Sainteté est souveraine
+de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'</span>
+(Letter of Napoleon to Pope
+Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="fr">'Dites bien,'</span> says Napoleon to
+Cardinal Fesch, '<span lang="fr">que je suis Charlemagne,
+leur Empereur</span> [of the Papal
+Court] <span lang="fr">que je dois être traité de
+même. Je fais connaitre au Pape
+mes intentions en peu de mots, s'il
+n'y acquiesce pas, je le réduirai à
+la même condition qu'il était avant
+Charlemagne.'</span> (Lanfrey, <span lang="fr"><i>Vie de
+Napoleon</i></span>, iii. 420.)</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_402" id="Footnote_402" href="#FNanchor_402"><span class="label">[402]</span></a>
+ Napoleon said on one occasion,
+<span lang="fr">'Je n'ai pas succédé a Louis
+Quatorze, mais à Charlemagne.'</span>&mdash;Bourrienne,
+<span lang="fr"><i>Vie de Napoléon</i></span>, iv.
+In 1804, shortly before he was
+crowned, he had the imperial insignia
+of Charles brought from the
+old Frankish capital, and exhibited
+them in a jeweller's shop in Paris,
+along with those which had just
+been made for his own coronation;&mdash;(Bourrienne,
+<i lang="la">ut supra</i>.) Somewhat
+in the same spirit in which he
+displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in
+order to incite his subjects to the
+conquest of England.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_403" id="Footnote_403" href="#FNanchor_403"><span class="label">[403]</span></a>
+ <span lang="fr">'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands
+interêts</span> (of political order and the
+spiritual authority of the Pope) <span lang="fr">qu'en
+annulant les donations des Empereurs
+Français, mes predecesseurs,
+et en réunissant les états romains à
+la France.'</span>&mdash;Proclamation issued
+in 1809: <i>Œuvres</i>, iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_404" id="Footnote_404" href="#FNanchor_404"><span class="label">[404]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#noteC">Appendix, Note C</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_405" id="Footnote_405" href="#FNanchor_405"><span class="label">[405]</span></a>
+ Pope Pius VII wrote to the
+First Consul, <span lang="la">'Carissime in Christo
+Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt
+nobis tuæ voluntatis studia erga nos,
+ut <i>quotiescunque</i> ope aliqua in rebus
+nostris indigemus, eam a te fidenter
+petere non dubitare debeamus.'</span>&mdash;Quoted
+by Ægidi.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_406" id="Footnote_406" href="#FNanchor_406"><span class="label">[406]</span></a>
+ Let us place side by side the
+letters of Hadrian to Charles in the
+<i lang="la">Codex Carolinus</i>, and the following
+preamble to the Concordat of <span class="s08">A.D.</span>
+1801, between the First Consul
+and the Pope (which I quote from
+the <i lang="la">Bullarium Romanum</i>), and
+mark the changes of a thousand
+years.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="la">'Gubernium reipublicæ [Gallicæ]
+recognoscit religionem Catholicam
+Apostolicam Romanam eam esse
+religionem quam longe maxima pars
+civium Gallicæ reipublicæ profitetur.</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><span lang="la">'Summus pontifex pari modo
+recognoscit eandem religionem
+maximam utilitatem maximumque
+decus percepisse et hoc quoque
+tempore præstolari ex catholico
+cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon
+ex peculiari eius professione quam
+faciunt reipublicæ consules.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_407" id="Footnote_407" href="#FNanchor_407"><span class="label">[407]</span></a>
+ Cf. Heeren, <i>Political System</i>,
+vol. iii. 273.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_408" id="Footnote_408" href="#FNanchor_408"><span class="label">[408]</span></a>
+ He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers,
+and so forth. The
+Legion of Honour, which was
+thought important enough to be
+mentioned in the coronation oath,
+was meant to be something like
+the mediæval orders of knighthood:
+whose connexion with the Empire
+has already been mentioned.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_409" id="Footnote_409" href="#FNanchor_409"><span class="label">[409]</span></a>
+ Napoleon's feelings towards
+Germany may be gathered from
+the phrase he once used, <span lang="fr">'Il faut
+depayser l'Allemagne.'</span></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_410" id="Footnote_410" href="#FNanchor_410"><span class="label">[410]</span></a>
+ Thus in documents issued by
+the Emperor during these two years
+he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect,
+Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
+<span lang="de">(erwählter Römischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser
+von Oesterreich)</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_411" id="Footnote_411" href="#FNanchor_411"><span class="label">[411]</span></a>
+ This Act of Confederation of
+the Rhine (<span lang="de">Rheinbund</span>) is printed
+in Koch's <span lang="fr"><i>Traités</i></span> (continued by
+Schöll), vol. viii., and Meyer's <i lang="la">Corpus
+Iuris Confœderationis Germanicæ</i>,
+vol. i. It has every appearance of
+being a translation from the French,
+and was no doubt originally drawn
+up in that language. Napoleon is
+called in one place <span lang="de">'Der nämliche
+Monarch, dessen Absichten sich
+stets mit den wahren Interessen
+Deutschlands übereinstimmend gezeigt
+haben.'</span> The phrase 'Roman
+Empire' does not occur: we hear
+only of the 'German Empire,'
+'body of German states' (<span lang="de">Staatskörper</span>),
+and so forth. This Confederation
+of the Rhine was eventually
+joined by every German
+State except Austria, Prussia, Electoral
+Hesse, and Brunswick.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_412" id="Footnote_412" href="#FNanchor_412"><span class="label">[412]</span></a>
+ <span lang="fr"><i>Histoire des Traités</i></span>, vol. viii.
+The original may be found in
+Meyer's <i lang="la">Corpus Iuris Confœderationis
+Germanicæ</i>, vol. i. p. 70. It
+is a document in no way remarkable,
+except from the ludicrous resemblance
+which its language suggests
+to the circular in which a
+tradesman, announcing the dissolution
+of an old partnership, solicits,
+and hopes by close attention to
+merit, a continuance of his customers'
+patronage to his business,
+which will henceforth be carried on
+under the name of, &amp;c., &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_413" id="Footnote_413" href="#FNanchor_413"><span class="label">[413]</span></a>
+ Koch (Schöll), <span lang="fr"><i>Histoire des
+Traités</i></span>, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
+Haüsser, <span lang="de"><i>Deutsche Geschichte</i></span>, vol.
+iv.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_414" id="Footnote_414" href="#FNanchor_414"><span class="label">[414]</span></a>
+ Great Britain had refused in
+1806 to recognize the dissolution
+of the Empire. And it may indeed
+be maintained that in point
+of law the Empire was never extinguished
+at all, but lives on as
+a disembodied spirit to this day.
+For it is clear that, technically
+speaking, the abdication of a sovereign
+can destroy only his own
+rights, and does not dissolve the
+state over which he presides.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_415" id="Footnote_415" href="#FNanchor_415"><span class="label">[415]</span></a>
+ <span lang="fr">'Les états d'Allemagne seront
+independans et unis par un lien
+federatif.'</span>&mdash;<span lang="fr"><i>Histoire des Traités</i></span>, xi.
+p. 257.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_416" id="Footnote_416" href="#FNanchor_416"><span class="label">[416]</span></a>
+ The late king of Prussia was
+actually elected Emperor by the
+revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in
+1848. He refused the crown.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_417" id="Footnote_417" href="#FNanchor_417"><span class="label">[417]</span></a>
+ [Since the above was written
+(in <span class="s08">A.D.</span> 1865) sudden and momentous
+changes have been effected
+in Germany by the war of 1866;
+the Prussian kingdom has been enlarged
+by the annexation of Hanover,
+Hessen-Cassel, Nassau, and
+Frankfort; the establishment of the
+North German Confederation has
+brought all the states north of the
+Main under Prussian control; while
+even the potentates of the south
+have virtually accepted the hegemony
+of the house of Hohenzollern.
+It was the author's intention to
+have added here a chapter examining
+these changes by the light of
+the past history of Germany and
+the Empire, and tracing out the
+causes to which the success of
+Prussia is to be ascribed. But
+at this moment (July 15th, 1870)
+the French Emperor declares war
+against Prussia, and there rises to
+meet the challenge an united German
+people,&mdash;united for the time,
+at least, by the folly of the enemy
+who has so long plotted for and
+profited by its disunion. Whatever
+the result of the struggle may be,
+it is almost certain to alter still
+further the internal constitution of
+Germany; and there is therefore
+little use in discussing the existing
+system, and tracing the progress
+hitherto of a development which,
+if not suddenly arrested, is likely
+to be greatly accelerated by the
+events which we see passing.]</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_418" id="Footnote_418" href="#FNanchor_418"><span class="label">[418]</span></a>
+ See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the object
+of the expedition to Mexico.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_419" id="Footnote_419" href="#FNanchor_419"><span class="label">[419]</span></a>
+ One may also compare the retention
+of the office of consul at
+Rome till the time of Justinian:
+indeed it even survived his formal
+abolition. The relinquishment of
+the title 'King of Great Britain,
+France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed
+many excellent persons.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_420" id="Footnote_420" href="#FNanchor_420"><span class="label">[420]</span></a>
+ I speak, of course, of the Papacy
+as an autocratic power claiming a
+more than spiritual authority.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_421" id="Footnote_421" href="#FNanchor_421"><span class="label">[421]</span></a>
+ <span lang="la">'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior
+Deo est quam cœlum. Non enim
+propter cœlum ecclesia, sed e converso
+propter ecclesiam cœlum.'</span>
+From the tract entitled 'A Letter of
+the four Universities to Wenzel and
+Urban VIII,' quoted in an earlier
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_422" id="Footnote_422" href="#FNanchor_422"><span class="label">[422]</span></a>
+ Von Raumer, <i>Geschichte der Hohenstaufen</i>, v.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_423" id="Footnote_423" href="#FNanchor_423"><span class="label">[423]</span></a>
+ Meaning thereby not the citizens
+of Rome in her republican
+days, but the Italo-Hellenic subjects
+of the Roman Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_424" id="Footnote_424" href="#FNanchor_424"><span class="label">[424]</span></a>
+ Take, among many instances,
+those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
+<span lang="de"><i>Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit</i></span>; and Rotteck
+and Welcker's <span lang="de"><i>Staats Lexikon</i></span>.
+The German newspapers are indeed
+sufficient illustration.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_425" id="Footnote_425" href="#FNanchor_425"><span class="label">[425]</span></a>
+ See especially Von Sybel, <span lang="de"><i>Die
+Deutsche Nation und das Kaiserreich</i></span>;
+and the answers of Ficker
+and Von Wydenbrugk.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_426" id="Footnote_426" href="#FNanchor_426"><span class="label">[426]</span></a>
+ Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the feudal
+law of land.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_427" id="Footnote_427" href="#FNanchor_427"><span class="label">[427]</span></a>
+ Mommsen, <span lang="de"><i>Römische Geschichte</i></span>, iii. <i>sub. fin.</i></p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_428" id="Footnote_428" href="#FNanchor_428"><span class="label">[428]</span></a>
+ Waitz (<span lang="de"><i>Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte</i></span>)
+says that the phrase
+<span lang="la">'semper Augustus'</span> may be found
+in the times of the Carolingians,
+but not in official documents.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_429" id="Footnote_429" href="#FNanchor_429"><span class="label">[429]</span></a>
+ There is some reason to think
+that towards the end of the Empire
+people had begun to fancy that
+'erwählter' did not mean 'elect,'
+but 'elective.' Cf. <a href="#Footnote_410">note m, p. 362</a>.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_430" id="Footnote_430" href="#FNanchor_430"><span class="label">[430]</span></a>
+ These expressions seem to have
+been intended to distinguish the
+kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic
+Franks from that of the
+Western or Gallicized Franks
+(Francigenæ), which having been
+for some time <span lang="la">'regnum Francorum
+Occidentalium,'</span> grew at last to be
+simply <span lang="la">'regnum Franciæ,'</span> the East
+Frankish kingdom being swallowed
+up in the Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_431" id="Footnote_431" href="#FNanchor_431"><span class="label">[431]</span></a>
+ It is right to remark that
+what is stated here can be taken
+as only generally and probably
+true: so great are the discrepancies
+among even the most careful
+writers on the subject, and so
+numerous the forgeries of a later
+age, which are to be found among
+the genuine documents of the
+early Empire. Goldast's <i>Collections</i>,
+for instance, are full of
+forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed
+information may be found
+in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Pütter,
+and in the host of writers to whom
+they refer.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_432" id="Footnote_432" href="#FNanchor_432"><span class="label">[432]</span></a>
+ We in England may be thought
+to have made some slight movement
+in the same direction by calling
+the united great council of the
+Three Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_433" id="Footnote_433" href="#FNanchor_433"><span class="label">[433]</span></a>
+ Although to be sure the Burgundian
+dominions had all passed
+from the Emperor to France, the
+kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
+Confederation.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_434" id="Footnote_434" href="#FNanchor_434"><span class="label">[434]</span></a>
+ Nevertheless, Otto II was
+crowned Emperor, and reigned for
+some time along with his father,
+under the title of 'Co-Imperator.'
+So Lothar I was associated in the
+Empire with Lewis the Pious, as
+Lewis himself had been crowned
+in the lifetime of Charles. Many
+analogies to the practice of the
+Romano-Germanic Empire in this
+respect might be adduced from the
+history of the old Roman, as well
+as of the Byzantine Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_435" id="Footnote_435" href="#FNanchor_435"><span class="label">[435]</span></a>
+ Maximilian had obtained this
+title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
+Pope. Ferdinand took it as of
+right, and his successors followed
+the example.</p>
+
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_436" id="Footnote_436" href="#FNanchor_436"><span class="label">[436]</span></a>
+ See <a href="#Footnote_324">note d, p. 270</a>.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Holy Roman Empire
+
+Author: James Bryce
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2013 [EBook #44101]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Melissa McDaniel, Stephen Rowland, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+ Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
+ been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+ Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
+
+
+
+
+ THE
+ HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE
+
+ BY
+ JAMES BRYCE, D.C.L.
+
+ _FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE
+ and
+ PROFESSOR OF CIVIL LAW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD_
+
+
+ THIRD EDITION REVISED
+
+
+ London
+ MACMILLAN AND CO.
+ 1871
+
+
+
+
+ OXFORD:
+ By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, and E. Pickard Hall,
+ PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
+
+
+The object of this treatise is not so much to give a narrative history
+of the countries included in the Romano-Germanic Empire--Italy during
+the middle ages, Germany from the ninth century to the nineteenth--as
+to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution or system, the
+wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs and traditions which have
+almost wholly passed away from the world. Such a description, however,
+would not be intelligible without some account of the great events
+which accompanied the growth and decay of imperial power; and it has
+therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a
+narrative than of a dissertation; and to combine with an exposition of
+what may be called the theory of the Empire an outline of the
+political history of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs
+of mediaeval Italy. To make the succession of events clearer, a
+Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has been prefixed[1].
+
+The present edition has been carefully revised and corrected
+throughout; and a good many additions have been made to both text and
+notes.
+
+ LINCOLN'S INN,
+ August 11, 1870.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete
+and publish, a set of chronological tables which may be made to serve
+as a sort of skeleton history of mediaeval Germany and Italy.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ Introductory.
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+ The Roman Empire before the Invasion of the Barbarians.
+
+ The Empire in the Second Century 5
+ Obliteration of National distinctions 6
+ Rise of Christianity 10
+ Its Alliance with the State 10
+ Its Influence on the Idea of an Imperial Nationality 13
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+ The Barbarian Invasions.
+
+ Relations between the Primitive Germans and the Romans 15
+ Their Feelings towards Rome and her Empire 16
+ Belief in its Eternity 20
+ Extinction by Odoacer of the Western branch of the Empire 26
+ Theodoric the Ostrogothic King 27
+ Gradual Dissolution of the Empire 30
+ Permanence of the Roman Religion and the Roman Law 31
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ Restoration of the Empire in the West.
+
+ The Franks 34
+ Italy under Greeks and Lombards 37
+ The Iconoclastic Schism 38
+ Alliance of the Popes with the Frankish Kings 39
+ The Frankish Conquest of Italy 41
+ Adventures and Plans of Pope Leo III 43
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 48
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+ Empire and Policy of Charles.
+
+ Import of the Coronation at Rome 52
+ Accounts given in the Annals of the time 53
+ Question as to the Intentions of Charles 58
+ Legal Effect of the Coronation 62
+ Position of Charles towards the Church 64
+ Towards his German Subjects 67
+ Towards the other Races of Europe 70
+ General View of his Character and Policy 72
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ Carolingian and Italian Emperors.
+
+ Reign of Lewis I 76
+ Dissolution of the Carolingian Empire 78
+ Beginnings of the German Kingdom 79
+ Italian Emperors 80
+ Otto the Saxon King 84
+ Coronation of Otto at Rome 87
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ Theory of the Mediaeval Empire.
+
+ The World Monarchy and the World Religion 91
+ Unity of the Christian Church 94
+ Influence of the Doctrine of Realism 97
+ The Popes as heirs to the Roman Monarchy 99
+ Character of the revived Roman Empire 102
+ Respective Functions of the Pope and the Emperor 104
+ Proofs and Illustrations 109
+ Interpretations of Prophecy 112
+ Two remarkable Pictures 116
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ The Roman Empire and the German Kingdom.
+
+ The German or East Frankish Monarchy 122
+ Feudality in Germany 123
+ Reciprocal Influence of the Roman and Teutonic Elements on
+ the Character of the Empire 127
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ Saxon and Franconian Emperors.
+
+ Adventures of Otto the Great in Rome 134
+ Trial and Deposition of Pope John XII 135
+ Position of Otto in Italy 139
+ His European Policy 140
+ Comparison of his Empire with the Carolingian 144
+ Character and Projects of the Emperor Otto III 146
+ The Emperors Henry II and Conrad II 150
+ The Emperor Henry III 151
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+ Struggle of the Empire and the Papacy.
+
+ Origin and Progress of Papal Power 153
+ Relations of the Popes with the early Emperors 155
+ Quarrel of Henry IV and Gregory VII 159
+ Gregory's Ideas 160
+ Concordat of Worms 163
+ General Results of the Contest 164
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ The Emperors in Italy: Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+ Frederick and the Papacy 167
+ Revival of the Study of the Roman Law 172
+ Arnold of Brescia and the Roman Republicans 174
+ Frederick's Struggle with the Lombard Cities 175
+ His Policy as German King 178
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ Imperial Titles and Pretensions.
+
+ Territorial Limits of the Empire--Its Claims of Jurisdiction
+ over other Countries 182
+ Hungary 183
+ Poland 184
+ Denmark 184
+ France 185
+ Sweden 185
+ Spain 185
+ England 186
+ Scotland 187
+ Naples and Sicily 188
+ Venice 188
+ The East 189
+ Rivalry of the Teutonic and Byzantine Emperors 191
+ The Four Crowns 193
+ Origin and Meaning of the title 'Holy Empire' 199
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ Fall of the Hohenstaufen.
+
+ Reign of Henry VI 205
+ Contest of Philip and Otto IV 206
+ Character and Career of the Emperor Frederick II 207
+ Destruction of Imperial Authority in Italy 211
+ The Great Interregnum 212
+ Rudolf of Hapsburg 213
+ Change in the Character of the Empire 214
+ Haughty Demeanour of the Popes 217
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ The Germanic Constitution--the Seven Electors.
+
+ Germany in the Fourteenth Century 222
+ Reign of the Emperor Charles IV 225
+ Origin and History of the System of Election, and of the
+ Electoral Body 225
+ The Golden Bull 230
+ Remarks on the Elective Monarchy of Germany 233
+ Results of Charles IV's Policy 236
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ The Empire as an International Power.
+
+ Revival of Learning 240
+ Beginnings of Political Thought 241
+ Desire for an International Power 242
+ Theory of the Emperor's Functions as Monarch of Europe 244
+ Illustrations 249
+ Relations of the Empire and the New Learning 251
+ The Men of Letters--Petrarch, Dante 254
+ The Jurists 256
+ Passion for Antiquity in the Middle Ages: its Causes 258
+ The Emperor Henry VII in Italy 262
+ The _De Monarchia_ of Dante 264
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ The City of Rome in the Middle Ages.
+
+ Rapid Decline of the City after the Gothic Wars 273
+ Her Condition in the Dark Ages 274
+ Republican Revival of the Twelfth Century 276
+ Character and Ideas of Nicholas Rienzi 278
+ Social State of Mediaeval Rome 280
+ Visits of the Teutonic Emperors 282
+ Revolts against them 284
+ Existing Traces of their Presence in Rome 286
+ Want of Mediaeval, and especially of Gothic Buildings, in
+ Modern Rome 289
+ Causes of this; Ravages of Enemies and Citizens 291
+ Modern Restorations 292
+ Surviving Features of truly Mediaeval Architecture--the
+ Bell-towers 294
+ The Roman Church and the Roman City 296
+ Rome since the Revolution 299
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ The Renaissance: Change in the Character of the Empire.
+
+ Weakness of Germany 302
+ Loss of Imperial Territories 303
+ Gradual Change in the Germanic Constitution 307
+ Beginning of the Predominance of the Hapsburgs 310
+ The Discovery of America 311
+ The Renaissance and its Effects on the Empire 311
+ Projects of Constitutional Reform 313
+ Changes of Title 316
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ The Reformation and its Effects upon the Empire.
+
+ Accession of Charles V 319
+ His Attitude towards the Reformation 321
+ Issue of his Attempts at Coercion 322
+ Spirit and Essence of the Religious Movement 325
+ Its Influence on the Doctrine of the Visible Church 327
+ How far it promoted Civil and Religious Liberty 329
+ Its Effect upon the Mediaeval Theory of the Empire 332
+ Upon the Position of the Emperor in Europe 333
+ Dissensions in Germany 334
+ The Thirty Years' War 335
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ The Peace of Westphalia: Last Stage in the Decline
+ of the Empire.
+
+ Political Import of the Peace of Westphalia 337
+ Hippolytus a Lapide and his Book 339
+ Changes in the Germanic Constitution 340
+ Narrowed Bounds of the Empire 341
+ Condition of Germany after the Peace 342
+ The Balance of Power 345
+ The Hapsburg Emperors and their Policy 348
+ The Emperor Charles VII 351
+ The Empire in its last Phase 352
+ Feelings of the German People 354
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ Fall of the Empire.
+
+ The Emperor Francis II 356
+ Napoleon as the Representative of the Carolingians 357
+ The French Empire 360
+ Napoleon's German Policy 361
+ The Confederation of the Rhine 362
+ End of the Empire 363
+ The German Confederation 364
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ Conclusion: General Summary.
+
+ Causes of the Perpetuation of the Name of Rome 366
+ Parallel instances: Claims now made to represent the Roman
+ Empire 367
+ Parallel afforded by the History of the Papacy 369
+ In how far was the Empire really Roman 374
+ Imperialism: Ancient and Modern 375
+ Essential Principles of the Mediaeval Empire 377
+ Influence of the Imperial System in Germany 378
+ The Claim of Modern Austria to represent the Mediaeval Empire 381
+ Results of the Influence of the Empire upon Europe 383
+ Upon Modern Jurisprudence 383
+ Upon the Development of the Ecclesiastical Power 384
+ Struggle of the Empire with three Hostile Principles 388
+ Its Relations, Past and Present, to the Nationalities
+ of Europe 390
+ Conclusion: Difficulties caused by the Nature of the
+ Subject 392
+
+
+ APPENDIX.
+
+ NOTE A.
+ On the Burgundies 395
+
+ NOTE B.
+ On the Relations to the Empire of the Kingdom of Denmark
+ and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein 398
+
+ NOTE C.
+ On certain Imperial Titles and Ceremonies 400
+
+ NOTE D.
+ Hildebert's Lines contrasting the Past and Present of Rome 406
+
+
+ INDEX 407
+
+
+
+
+ DATES OF
+ SEVERAL IMPORTANT EVENTS
+ IN THE HISTORY OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+ B.C.
+
+ Battle of Pharsalia 48
+
+ A.D.
+
+ Council of Nicaea 325
+
+ End of the separate Western Empire 476
+
+ Revolt of the Italians from the Iconoclastic Emperors 728
+
+ Coronation of Charles the Great 800
+
+ End of the Carolingian Empire 888
+
+ Coronation of Otto the Great 962
+
+ Final Union of Italy to the Empire 1014
+
+ Quarrel between Henry IV and Gregory VII 1076
+
+ The First Crusade 1096
+
+ Battle of Legnano 1176
+
+ Death of Frederick II 1250
+
+ League of the three Forest Cantons of Switzerland 1308
+
+ Career of Rienzi 1347-1354
+
+ The Golden Bull 1356
+
+ Council of Constance 1415
+
+ Extinction of the Eastern Empire 1453
+
+ Discovery of America 1492
+
+ Luther at the Diet of Worms 1521
+
+ Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618
+
+ Peace of Westphalia 1648
+
+ Prussia recognized as a Kingdom 1701
+
+ End of the House of Hapsburg 1742
+
+ Seven Years' War 1756-1763
+
+ Peace of Luneville 1801
+
+ Formation of the German Confederation 1815
+
+ Establishment of the North German Confederation 1866
+
+
+
+
+ CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
+ OF
+ EMPERORS AND POPES.
+
+
+ A. D. B. C.
+ Augustus. 27
+ A. D.
+ Tiberius. 14
+ Caligula. 37
+ Claudius. 41
+ 42 St. Peter, (according
+ to Jerome).
+ Nero. 54
+ 67 Linus, (according to
+ Jerome, Irenaeus,
+ Eusebius).
+ 68 Clement, (according Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
+ to Tertullian and Vespasian. 68
+ Rufinus).
+ 78 Anacletus (?).
+ Titus. 79
+ Domitian. 81
+ 91 Clement, (according
+ to later writers).
+ Nerva. 96
+ Trajan. 98
+ 100 Evaristus (?).
+ 109 Alexander (?).
+ Hadrian. 117
+ 119 Sixtus I.
+ 129 Telesphorus.
+ Antoninus Pius. 138
+ 139 Hyginus.
+ 143 Pius I.
+ 157 Anicetus.
+ Marcus Aurelius. 161
+ 168 Soter.
+ 177 Eleutherius.
+ Commodus. 180
+ Pertinax. 190
+ Didius Julianus. 191
+ Niger. 192
+ 193 Victor (?). Septimius Severus. 193
+ 202 Zephyrinus (?).
+ Caracalla, Geta,
+ Diadumenian. 211
+ Opilius Macrinus. 217
+ Elagabalus. 218
+ 219 Calixtus I.
+ Alexander Severus. 222
+ 223 Urban I.
+ 230 Pontianus.
+ 235 Anterius or Anteros. Maximin. 235
+ 236 Fabianus.
+ The two Gordians, Maximus
+ Pupienus, Balbinus. 237
+ Gordian the Younger. 238
+ Philip. 244
+ Decius. 249
+ 251 Cornelius. Gallus. 251
+ 252 Lucius I. Volusian. 252
+ 253 Stephen I. AEmilian, Valerian,
+ Gallienus. 253
+ 257 Sixtus II.
+ 259 Dionysius.
+ Claudius II. 268
+ 269 Felix.
+ Aurelian. 270
+ 275 Eutychianus. Tacitus. 275
+ Probus. 276
+ Carus. 282
+ 283 Caius.
+ Carinus, Numerian,
+ Diocletian. 284
+ Maximian, joint Emperor
+ with Diocletian. 286
+ 296 Marcellinus. [305(?)
+ 304 Vacancy. Constantius, Galerius. 304(?)
+ Licinius. or 307]
+ 308 Marcellus I. Maximin. 308
+ Constantine, Galerius,
+ Licinius, Maximin,
+ Maxentius, and Maximian
+ reigning jointly. 309
+ 310 Eusebius.
+ 311 Melchiades.
+ 314 Sylvester I.
+ Constantine (the Great)
+ alone. 323
+ 336 Marcus I.
+ 337 Julius I. Constantine II,
+ Constantius II,
+ Constans. 337
+ Magnentius. 350
+ 352 Liberius.
+ Constantius alone. 353
+ 356 Felix (Anti-pope).
+ Julian. 361
+ Jovian. 363
+ Valens and Valentinian I. 364
+ 366 Damasus I.
+ Gratian and Valentinian I. 367
+ Valentinian II and
+ Gratian. 375
+ Theodosius. 379
+ 384 Siricius.
+ Arcadius (in the East),
+ Honorius (in the West). 395
+ 398 Anastasius I.
+ 402 Innocent I.
+ Theodosius II. (E) 408
+ 417 Zosimus.
+ 418 Boniface I.
+ 418 Eulalius (Anti-pope).
+ 422 Celestine I.
+ Valentinian III. (W) 424
+ 432 Sixtus III.
+ 440 Leo I (the Great).
+ Marcian. (E) 450
+ Maximus, Avitus. (W) 455
+ Majorian. (W) 455
+ Leo I. (E) 457
+ 461 Hilarius. Severus. (W) 461
+ Vacancy. (W) 465
+ Anthemius. (W) 467
+ 468 Simplicius.
+ Olybrius. (W) 472
+ Glycerius. (W) 473
+ Julius Nepos. (W) 474
+ Leo II, Zeno, Basiliscus
+ (all E.) 474
+ Romulus Augustulus. (W) 475
+ (End of the Western Line
+ in Romulus Augustus. 476)
+ (Henceforth, till A.D. 800,
+ Emperors reigning at
+ 483 Felix III[2]. Constantinople).
+ Anastasius I. 491
+ 492 Gelasius I.
+ 496 Anastasius II.
+ 498 Symmachus.
+ 498 Laurentius (Anti-pope).
+ 514 Hormisdas.
+ Justin I. 518
+ 523 John I.
+ 526 Felix IV.
+ Justinian. 527
+ 530 Boniface II.
+ 530 Dioscorus (Anti-pope).
+ 532 John II.
+ 535 Agapetus I.
+ 536 Silverius.
+ 537 Vigilius.
+ 555 Pelagius I.
+ 560 John III.
+ Justin II. 565
+ 574 Benedict I.
+ 578 Pelagius II. Tiberius II. 578
+ Maurice. 582
+ 590 Gregory I (the Great).
+ Phocas. 602
+ 604 Sabinianus.
+ 607 Boniface III.
+ 607 Boniface IV.
+ Heraclius. 610
+ 615 Deus dedit.
+ 618 Boniface V.
+ 625 Honorius I.
+ 638 Severinus.
+ 640 John IV.
+ Constantine III,
+ Heracleonas,
+ Constans II. 641
+ 642 Theodorus I.
+ 649 Martin I.
+ 654 Eugenius I.
+ 657 Vitalianus.
+ Constantine IV (Pogonatus). 668
+ 672 Adeodatus.
+ 676 Domnus or Donus I.
+ 678 Agatho.
+ 682 Leo II.
+ 683(?) Benedict II.
+ 685 John V. Justinian II. 685
+ 685(?) Conon.
+ 687 Sergius I.
+ 687 Paschal (Anti-pope).
+ 687 Theodorus (Anti-pope).
+ Leontius. 694
+ Tiberius. 697
+ 701 John VI.
+ 705 John VII. Justinian II restored. 705
+ 708 Sisinnius.
+ 708 Constantine.
+ Philippicus Bardanes. 711
+ Anastasius II. 713
+ 715 Gregory II.
+ Theodosius III. 716
+ Leo III (the Isaurian). 718
+ 731 Gregory III.
+ 741 Zacharias. Constantine V
+ (Copronymus). 741
+ 752 Stephen (II).
+ 752 Stephen II (or III).
+ 757 Paul I.
+ 767 Constantine (Anti-pope).
+ 768 Stephen III (IV).
+ 772 Hadrian I.
+ Leo IV. 775
+ Constantine VI. 780
+ 795 Leo III.
+ Deposition of Constantine
+ VI by Irene. 797
+ Charles I (the Great). 800
+ (Following henceforth the
+ new Western line).
+ Lewis I (the Pious). 814
+ 816 Stephen IV.
+ 817 Paschal I.
+ 824 Eugenius II.
+ 827 Valentinus.
+ 827 Gregory IV.
+ Lothar I. 840
+ 844 Sergius II.
+ 847 Leo IV.
+ 855 Benedict III. Lewis II. 855
+ 855 Anastasius (Anti-pope).
+ 858 Nicholas I.
+ 867 Hadrian II.
+ 872 John VIII.
+ Charles II (the Bald). 875
+ Charles III (the Fat). 881
+ 882 Martin II.
+ 884 Hadrian III.
+ 885 Stephen V.
+ 891 Formosus. Guido. 891
+ Lambert. 894
+ 896 Boniface VI. Arnulf. 896
+ 896 Stephen VI.
+ 897 Romanus.
+ 897 Theodore II.
+ 898 John IX.
+ Lewis (the Child).[+] 899
+ 900 Benedict IV.
+ Lewis III (of Provence). 901
+ 903 Leo V.
+ 903 Christopher.
+ 904 Sergius III.
+ 911 Anastasius III.
+ Conrad I.[+] 912(?)
+ 913 Lando.
+ 914 John X.
+ Berengar. 915
+ Henry I (the Fowler).[+] 918
+ 928 Leo VI.
+ 929 Stephen VII.
+ 931 John XI.
+ 936 Leo VII. Otto I (the Great).[+] 936
+ 939 Stephen VIII.
+ 941 Martin III.
+ 946 Agapetus II.
+ 955 John XII.
+ Otto I, crowned at Rome. 962
+ 963 Leo VIII.
+ 964 Benedict V (Anti-Pope?).
+ 965 John XIII.
+ 972 Benedict VI.
+ Otto II. 973
+ 974 Boniface VII (Anti-pope?).
+ 974 Domnus II (?).
+ 974 Benedict VII.
+ 983 John XIV. Otto III 983
+ 985 John XV.
+ 996 Gregory V.
+ 996 John XVI (Anti-pope).
+ 999 Sylvester II.
+ Henry II (the Saint). 1002
+ 1003 John XVII.
+ 1003 John XVIII.
+ 1009 Sergius IV.
+ 1012 Benedict VIII.
+ 1024 John XIX. Conrad II (the Salic). 1024
+ 1033 Benedict IX.
+ Henry III. 1039
+ 1044 Sylvester (Anti-pope).
+ 1045( Gregory VI.
+ 1046 Clement II.
+ 1048 Damasus II.
+ 1048 Leo IX.
+ 1054 Victor II.
+ Henry IV. 1056
+ 1057 Stephen IX.
+ 1058 Benedict X.
+ 1059 Nicholas II.
+ 1061 Alexander II.
+ 1073 Gregory VII (Hildebrand).
+ 1080 (Clement, Anti-pope).
+ 1086 Victor III.
+ 1087 Urban II.
+ 1099 Paschal II.
+ Henry V. 1106
+ 1118 Gelasius II.
+ 1118 Gregory, (Anti-pope).
+ 1119 Calixtus II.
+ 1121 (Celestine, Anti-pope).
+ 1124 Honorius II.
+ Lothar II (the Saxon). 1125
+ 1130 Innocent II.
+ (Anacletus, Anti-pope).
+ 1138 Victor (Anti-pope). [*]Conrad III. 1138
+ 1143 Celestine II.
+ 1144 Lucius II.
+ 1145 Eugenius III.
+ Frederick I (Barbarossa). 1152
+ 1153 Anastasius IV.
+ 1154 Hadrian IV.
+ 1159 Alexander III.
+ 1159 (Victor, Anti-pope).
+ 1164 (Paschal, Anti-pope).
+ 1168 (Calixtus, Anti-pope).
+ 1181 Lucius III.
+ 1185 Urban III.
+ 1187 Gregory VIII.
+ 1187 Clement III.
+ Henry VI. 1190
+ 1191 Celestine III.
+ 1198 Innocent III. [*]Philip, Otto IV
+ (rivals). 1198
+ Otto IV. 1208
+ Frederick II. 1212
+ 1216 Honorius III.
+ 1227 Gregory IX.
+ 1241 Celestine IV.
+ 1241 Vacancy.
+ 1243 Innocent IV.
+ [*]Conrad IV, [*]William,
+ (rivals). 1250
+ 1254 Alexander IV. Interregnum. 1254
+ [*]Richard (earl of
+ Cornwall).
+ [*]Alfonso (king of
+ Castile), (rivals). 1257
+ 1261 Urban IV.
+ 1265 Clement IV.
+ 1269 Vacancy.
+ 1271 Gregory X.
+ [*]Rudolf I (of Hapsburg). 1272
+ 1276 Innocent V.
+ 1276 Hadrian V.
+ 1277 John XX or XXI.
+ 1277 Nicholas I
+ 1281 Martin IV.
+ 1285 Honorius IV.
+ 1289 Nicholas IV.
+ 1292 Vacancy. [*]Adolf (of Nassau). 1292
+ 1294 Celestine V.
+ 1294 Boniface VIII.
+ [*]Albert I. 1298
+ 1303 Benedict XI.
+ 1305 Clement V.
+ Henry VII. 1308
+ 1314 Vacancy. Lewis IV. 1315
+ (Frederick of Austria,
+ rival).
+ 1316 John XXI or XXII.
+ 1334 Benedict XII.
+ 1342 Clement VI.
+ Charles IV. 1347
+ 1352 Innocent VI. (Guenther of Schwartzburg,
+ rival).
+ 1362 Urban V.
+ 1370 Gregory XI.
+ 1378 Urban VI,
+ Clement VII [*]Wenzel. 1378
+ (Anti-pope).
+ 1389 Boniface IX.
+ 1394 Benedict (Anti-pope).
+ [*]Rupert. 1400
+ 1404 Innocent VII.
+ 1406 Gregory XII.
+ 1409 Alexander V.
+ 1410 John XXII or Sigismund. 1410
+ XXIII. (Jobst of Moravia, rival).
+
+ 1417 Martin V.
+ 1431 Eugene IV.
+ [*]Albert II. 1438
+ 1439 Felix V (Anti-pope).
+ Frederick III. 1440
+ 1447 Nicholas V.
+ 1455 Calixtus IV.
+ 1458 Pius II.
+ 1464 Paul II.
+ 1471 Sixtus IV.
+ 1484 Innocent VIII.
+ 1493 Alexander VI. [*]Maximilian I. 1493
+ 1503 Pius III.
+ 1503 Julius II.
+ 1513 Leo X.
+ Charles V.[3] 1519
+ 1522 Hadrian VI.
+ 1523 Clement VII.
+ 1534 Paul III.
+ 1550 Julius III.
+ 1555 Marcellus II.
+ 1555 Paul IV.
+ [*]Ferdinand I. 1558
+ 1559 Pius IV.
+ [*]Maximilian II. 1564
+ 1566 Pius V.
+ 1572 Gregory XIII.
+ [*]Rudolf II. 1576
+ 1585 Sixtus V.
+ 1590 Urban VII.
+ 1590 Gregory XIV.
+ 1591 Innocent IX.
+ 1592 Clement VIII.
+ 1604 Leo XI.
+ 1604 Paul V.
+ [*]Matthias. 1612
+ [*]Ferdinand II. 1619
+ 1621 Gregory XV.
+ 1623 Urban VIII.
+ [*]Ferdinand III. 1637
+ 1644 Innocent X.
+ 1655 Alexander VII.
+ [*]Leopold I. 1658
+ 1667 Clement IX.
+ 1670 Clement X.
+ 1676 Innocent XI.
+ 1689 Alexander VIII.
+ 1691 Innocent XII.
+ 1700 Clement XI.
+ [*]Joseph I. 1705
+ [*]Charles VI. 1711
+ 1720 Innocent XIII.
+ 1724 Benedict XIII.
+ 1740 Benedict XIV.
+ [*]Charles VII. 1742
+ [*]Francis I. 1745
+ 1758 Clement XII.
+ [*]Joseph II. 1765
+ 1769 Clement XIII.
+ 1775 Pius VI.
+ [*]Leopold II. 1790
+ [*]Francis II. 1792
+ 1800 Pius VII.
+ Abdication of Francis II. 1806
+ 1823 Leo XII.
+ 1829 Pius VIII.
+ 1831 Gregory XVI.
+ 1846 Pius IX.
+
+[*] Those marked with an asterisk were never actually crowned at Rome.
+[+] The names marked with a + are those of German kings who never made any
+claim to the imperial title.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Reckoning the Anti-pope Felix (A.D. 356) as Felix II.
+
+[3] Crowned Emperor, but at Bologna, not at Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+Of those who in August, 1806, read in the English newspapers that the
+Emperor Francis II had announced to the Diet his resignation of the
+imperial crown, there were probably few who reflected that the oldest
+political institution in the world had come to an end. Yet it was so.
+The Empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the
+Danube extinguished, was the same which the crafty nephew of Julius
+had won for himself, against the powers of the East, beneath the
+cliffs of Actium; and which had preserved almost unaltered, through
+eighteen centuries of time, and through the greatest changes in
+extent, in power, in character, a title and pretensions from which all
+meaning had long since departed. Nothing else so directly linked the
+old world to the new--nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts
+of the present and the past, and summed up in those contrasts so much
+of European history. From the days of Constantine till far down into
+the middle ages it was, conjointly with the Papacy, the recognised
+centre and head of Christendom, exercising over the minds of men an
+influence such as its material strength could never have commanded. It
+is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than
+of the external history of the Empire, that the following pages are
+designed to treat. That history is indeed full of interest and
+brilliance, of grand characters and striking situations. But it is a
+subject too vast for any single canvas. Without a minuteness of detail
+sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy
+with the actors, a narrative history can have little value and still
+less charm. But to trace with any minuteness the career of the Empire,
+would be to write the history of Christendom from the fifth century to
+the twelfth, of Germany and Italy from the twelfth to the nineteenth;
+while even a narrative of more restricted scope, which should attempt
+to disengage from a general account of the affairs of those countries
+the events that properly belong to imperial history, could hardly be
+compressed within reasonable limits. It is therefore better, declining
+so great a task, to attempt one simpler and more practicable though
+not necessarily inferior in interest; to speak less of events than of
+principles, and endeavour to describe the Empire not as a State but as
+an Institution, an institution created by and embodying a wonderful
+system of ideas. In pursuance of such a plan, the forms which the
+Empire took in the several stages of its growth and decline must be
+briefly sketched. The characters and acts of the great men who
+founded, guided, and overthrew it must from time to time be touched
+upon. But the chief aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on
+the inner nature of the Empire, as the most signal instance of the
+fusion of Roman and Teutonic elements in modern civilization: to shew
+how such a combination was possible; how Charles and Otto were led to
+revive the imperial title in the West; how far during the reigns of
+their successors it preserved the memory of its origin, and influenced
+the European commonwealth of nations.
+
+Strictly speaking, it is from the year 800 A.D., when a King of the
+Franks was crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III, that the
+beginning of the Holy Roman Empire must be dated. But in history there
+is nothing isolated, and just as to explain a modern Act of Parliament
+or a modern conveyance of lands we must go back to the feudal customs
+of the thirteenth century, so among the institutions of the Middle
+Ages there is scarcely one which can be understood until it is traced
+up either to classical or to primitive Teutonic antiquity. Such a mode
+of inquiry is most of all needful in the case of the Holy Empire,
+itself no more than a tradition, a fancied revival of departed
+glories. And thus, in order to make it clear out of what elements the
+imperial system was formed, we might be required to scrutinize the
+antiquities of the Christian Church; to survey the constitution of
+Rome in the days when Rome was no more than the first of the Latin
+cities; nay, to travel back yet further to that Jewish theocratic
+polity whose influence on the minds of the mediaeval priesthood was
+necessarily so profound. Practically, however, it may suffice to begin
+by glancing at the condition of the Roman world in the third and
+fourth centuries of the Christian era. We shall then see the old
+Empire with its scheme of absolutism fully matured; we shall mark how
+the new religion, rising in the midst of a hostile power, ends by
+embracing and transforming it; and we shall be in a position to
+understand what impression the whole huge fabric of secular and
+ecclesiastical government which Roman and Christian had piled up made
+upon the barbarian tribes who pressed into the charmed circle of the
+ancient civilization.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE BEFORE THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBARIANS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire in the second century.]
+
+[Sidenote: Obliteration of national distinctions.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Capital.]
+
+That ostentation of humility which the subtle policy of Augustus had
+conceived, and the jealous hypocrisy of Tiberius maintained, was
+gradually dropped by their successors, till despotism became at last
+recognised in principle as the government of the Roman Empire. With an
+aristocracy decayed, a populace degraded, an army no longer recruited
+from Italy, the semblance of liberty that yet survived might be swept
+away with impunity. Republican forms had never been known in the
+provinces at all, and the aspect which the imperial administration had
+originally assumed there, soon reacted on its position in the capital.
+Earlier rulers had disguised their supremacy by making a slavish
+senate the instrument of their more cruel or arbitrary acts. As time
+went on, even this veil was withdrawn; and in the age of Septimius
+Severus, the Emperor stood forth to the whole Roman world as the
+single centre and source of power and political action. The warlike
+character of the Roman state was preserved in his title of General;
+his provincial lieutenants were military governors; and a more
+terrible enforcement of the theory was found in his dependence on the
+army, at once the origin and support of all authority. But, as he
+united in himself every function of government, his sovereignty was
+civil as well as military. Laws emanated from him; all officials acted
+under his commission; the sanctity of his person bordered on divinity.
+This increased concentration of power was mainly required by the
+necessities of frontier defence, for within there was more decay than
+disaffection. Few troops were quartered through the country: few
+fortresses checked the march of armies in the struggles which placed
+Vespasian and Severus on the throne. The distant crash of war from the
+Rhine or the Euphrates was scarcely heard or heeded in the profound
+quiet of the Mediterranean coasts, where, with piracy, fleets had
+disappeared. No quarrels of race or religion disturbed that calm, for
+all national distinctions were becoming merged in the idea of a common
+Empire. The gradual extension of Roman citizenship through the
+_coloniae_, the working of the equalized and equalizing Roman law, the
+even pressure of the government on all subjects, the movement of
+population caused by commerce and the slave traffic, were steadily
+assimilating the various peoples. Emperors who were for the most part
+natives of the provinces cared little to cherish Italy or conciliate
+Rome: it was their policy to keep open for every subject a career by
+whose freedom they had themselves risen to greatness, and to recruit
+the senate from the most illustrious families in the cities of Gaul,
+Spain, and Asia. The edict by which Caracalla extended to all natives
+of the Roman world the rights of Roman citizenship, though prompted by
+no motives of kindness, proved in the end a boon. Annihilating legal
+distinctions, it completed the work which trade and literature and
+toleration to all beliefs but one were already performing, and left,
+so far as we can tell, only two nations still cherishing a national
+feeling. The Jew was kept apart by his religion: the Greek boasted his
+original intellectual superiority. Speculative philosophy lent her aid
+to this general assimilation. Stoicism, with its doctrine of a
+universal system of nature, made minor distinctions between man and
+man seem insignificant: and by its teachers the idea of
+cosmopolitanism was for the first time proclaimed. Alexandrian
+Neo-Platonism, uniting the tenets of many schools, first bringing the
+mysticism of the East into connection with the logical philosophies of
+Greece, had opened up a new ground of agreement or controversy for the
+minds of all the world. Yet Rome's commanding position was scarcely
+shaken. Her actual power was indeed confined within narrow limits.
+Rarely were her senate and people permitted to choose the sovereign:
+more rarely still could they control his policy; neither law nor
+custom raised them above other subjects, or accorded to them any
+advantage in the career of civil or military ambition. As in time past
+Rome had sacrificed domestic freedom that she might be the mistress of
+others, so now to be universal, she, the conqueror, had descended to
+the level of the conquered. But the sacrifice had not wanted its
+reward. From her came the laws and the language that had overspread
+the world: at her feet the nations laid the offerings of their labour:
+she was the head of the Empire and of civilization, and in riches,
+fame, and splendour far outshone as well the cities of that time as
+the fabled glories of Babylon or Persepolis.
+
+[Sidenote: Diocletian and Constantine.]
+
+Scarcely had these slowly working influences brought about this unity,
+when other influences began to threaten it. New foes assailed the
+frontiers; while the loosening of the structure within was shewn by
+the long struggles for power which followed the death or deposition of
+each successive emperor. In the period of anarchy after the fall of
+Valerian, generals were raised by their armies in every part of the
+Empire, and ruled great provinces as monarchs apart, owning no
+allegiance to the possessor of the capital.
+
+The founding of the kingdoms of modern Europe might have been
+anticipated by two hundred years, had the barbarians been bolder, or
+had there not arisen in Diocletian a prince active and politic enough
+to bind up the fragments before they had lost all cohesion, meeting
+altered conditions by new remedies. By dividing and localizing
+authority, he confessed that the weaker heart could no longer make its
+pulsations felt to the body's extremities. He parcelled out the
+supreme power among four persons, and then sought to give it a
+factitious strength, by surrounding it with an oriental pomp which his
+earlier predecessors would have scorned. The sovereign's person became
+more sacred, and was removed further from the subject by the
+interposition of a host of officials. The prerogative of Rome was
+menaced by the rivalry of Nicomedia, and the nearer greatness of
+Milan. Constantine trod in the same path, extending the system of
+titles and functionaries, separating the civil from the military,
+placing counts and dukes along the frontiers and in the cities, making
+the household larger, its etiquette stricter, its offices more
+important, though to a Roman eye degraded by their attachment to the
+monarch's person. The crown became, for the first time, the fountain
+of honour. These changes brought little good. Heavier taxation
+depressed the aristocracy[4]: population decreased, agriculture
+withered, serfdom spread: it was found more difficult to raise native
+troops and to pay any troops whatever. The removal of the seat of
+power to Byzantium, if it prolonged the life of a part of the Empire,
+shook it as a whole, by making the separation of East and West
+inevitable. By it Rome's self-abnegation that she might Romanize the
+world, was completed; for though the new capital preserved her name,
+and followed her customs and precedents, yet now the imperial sway
+ceased to be connected with the city which had created it. Thus did
+the idea of Roman monarchy become more universal; for, having lost its
+local centre, it subsisted no longer historically, but, so to speak,
+naturally, as a part of an order of things which a change in external
+conditions seemed incapable of disturbing. Henceforth the Empire would
+be unaffected by the disasters of the city. And though, after the
+partition of the Empire had been confirmed by Valentinian, and finally
+settled on the death of Theodosius, the seat of the Western government
+was removed first to Milan and then to Ravenna, neither event
+destroyed Rome's prestige, nor the notion of a single imperial
+nationality common to all her subjects. The Syrian, the Pannonian, the
+Briton, the Spaniard, still called himself a Roman[5].
+
+[Sidenote: Christianity.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its alliance with the State.]
+
+For that nationality was now beginning to be supported by a new and
+vigorous power. The Emperors had indeed opposed it as disloyal and
+revolutionary: had more than once put forth their whole strength to
+root it out. But the unity of the Empire, and the ease of
+communication through its parts, had favoured the spread of
+Christianity: persecution had scattered the seeds more widely, had
+forced on it a firm organization, had given it martyr-heroes and a
+history. When Constantine, partly perhaps from a genuine moral
+sympathy, yet doubtless far more in the well-grounded belief that he
+had more to gain from the zealous sympathy of its professors than he
+could lose by the aversion of those who still cultivated a languid
+paganism, took Christianity to be the religion of the Empire, it was
+already a great political force, able, and not more able than willing,
+to repay him by aid and submission. Yet the league was struck in no
+mere mercenary spirit, for the league was inevitable. Of the evils and
+dangers incident to the system then founded, there was as yet no
+experience: of that antagonism between Church and State which to a
+modern appears so natural, there was not even an idea. Among the Jews,
+the State had rested upon religion; among the Romans, religion had
+been an integral part of the political constitution, a matter far more
+of national or tribal or family feeling than of personal[6]. Both in
+Israel and at Rome the mingling of religious with civic patriotism had
+been harmonious, giving strength and elasticity to the whole body
+politic. So perfect a union was now no longer possible in the Roman
+Empire, for the new faith had already a governing body of her own in
+those rulers and teachers whom the growth of sacramentalism, and of
+sacerdotalism its necessary consequence, was making every day more
+powerful, and marking off more sharply from the mass of the Christian
+people. Since therefore the ecclesiastical organization could not be
+identical with the civil, it became its counterpart. Suddenly called
+from danger and ignominy to the seat of power, and finding her
+inexperience perplexed by a sphere of action vast and varied, the
+Church was compelled to frame herself upon the model of the secular
+administration. Where her own machinery was defective, as in the case
+of doctrinal disputes affecting the whole Christian world, she sought
+the interposition of the sovereign; in all else she strove not to sink
+in, but to reproduce for herself the imperial system. And just as with
+the extension of the Empire all the independent rights of districts,
+towns, or tribes had disappeared, so now the primitive freedom and
+diversity of individual Christians and local Churches, already
+circumscribed by the frequent struggles against heresy, was finally
+overborne by the idea of one visible catholic Church, uniform in faith
+and ritual; uniform too in her relation to the civil power and the
+increasingly oligarchical character of her government. Thus, under the
+combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, there shaped
+itself a hierarchy of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops, their
+jurisdiction, although still chiefly spiritual, enforced by the laws
+of the State, their provinces and dioceses usually corresponding to
+the administrative divisions of the Empire. As no patriarch yet
+enjoyed more than an honorary supremacy, the head of the Church--so
+far as she could be said to have a head--was virtually the Emperor
+himself. The inchoate right to intermeddle in religious affairs which
+he derived from the office of Pontifex Maximus was readily admitted;
+and the clergy, preaching the duty of passive obedience now as it had
+been preached in the days of Nero and Diocletian[7], were well pleased
+to see him preside in councils, issue edicts against heresy, and
+testify even by arbitrary measures his zeal for the advancement of the
+faith and the overthrow of pagan rites. But though the tone of the
+Church remained humble, her strength waxed greater, nor were occasions
+wanting which revealed the future that was in store for her. The
+resistance and final triumph of Athanasius proved that the new society
+could put forth a power of opinion such as had never been known
+before: the abasement of Theodosius the Emperor before Ambrose the
+Archbishop admitted the supremacy of spiritual authority. In the
+decrepitude of old institutions, in the barrenness of literature and
+the feebleness of art, it was to the Church that the life and feelings
+of the people sought more and more to attach themselves; and when in
+the fifth century the horizon grew black with clouds of ruin, those
+who watched with despair or apathy the approach of irresistible foes,
+fled for comfort to the shrine of a religion which even those foes
+revered.
+
+[Sidenote: It embraces and preserves the imperial idea.]
+
+But that which we are above all concerned to remark here is, that this
+church system, demanding a more rigid uniformity in doctrine and
+organization, making more and more vital the notion of a visible body
+of worshippers united by participation in the same sacraments,
+maintained and propagated afresh the feeling of a single Roman people
+throughout the world. Christianity as well as civilization became
+conterminous with the Roman Empire[8].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[4] According to the vicious financial system that prevailed, the
+_curiales_ in each city were required to collect the taxes, and when
+there was a deficit, to supply it from their own property.
+
+[5] See the eloquent passage of Claudian, _In secundum consulatum
+Stilichonis_, 129, _sqq._, from which the following lines are taken
+(150-60):--
+
+ 'Haec est in gremio victos quae sola recepit,
+ Humanumque genus communi nomine fovit,
+ Matris, non dominae, ritu; civesque vocavit
+ Quos domuit, nexuque pio longinqua revinxit.
+ Hujus pacificis debemus moribus omnes
+ Quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes:
+ Quod sedem mutare licet: quod cernere Thulen
+ Lusus, et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus:
+ Quod bibimus passim Rhodanum, potamus Oronten,
+ Quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nec terminus unquam
+ Romanae ditionis erit.'
+
+[6] In the Roman jurisprudence, _ius sacrum_ is a branch of _ius
+publicum_.
+
+[7] Tertullian, writing circ. A.D. 200, says: 'Sed quid ego amplius de
+religione atque pietate Christiana in imperatorem quem necesse est
+suspiciamus ut eum quem Dominus noster elegerit. Et merito dixerim,
+noster est magis Caesar, ut a nostro Deo constitutus.'--_Apologet._
+cap. 34.
+
+[8] See the book of Optatus, bishop of Milevis, _Contra Donatistas_.
+'Non enim respublica est in ecclesia, sed ecclesia in republica, id
+est, in imperio Romano, cum super imperatorem non sit nisi solus
+Deus:' (p. 999 of vol. ii. of Migne's _Patrologiae Cursus completus_.)
+The treatise of Optatus is full of interest, as shewing the growth of
+the idea of the visible Church, and of the primacy of Peter's chair,
+as constituting its centre and representing its unity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: The Barbarians.]
+
+[Sidenote: Admitted to Roman titles and honours.]
+
+Upon a world so constituted did the barbarians of the North descend.
+From the dawn of history they shew as a dim background to the warmth
+and light of the Mediterranean coast, changing little while kingdoms
+rise and fall in the South: only thought on when some hungry swarm
+comes down to pillage or to settle. It is always as foes that they are
+known. The Romans never forgot the invasion of Brennus; and their
+fears, renewed by the irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, could not
+let them rest till the extension of the frontier to the Rhine and the
+Danube removed Italy from immediate danger. A little more perseverance
+under Tiberius, or again under Hadrian, would probably have reduced
+all Germany as far as the Baltic and the Oder. But the politic or
+jealous advice of Augustus[9] was followed, and it was only along the
+frontiers that Roman arts and culture affected the Teutonic races.
+Commerce was brisk; Roman envoys penetrated the forests to the courts
+of rude chieftains; adventurous barbarians entered the provinces,
+sometimes to admire, oftener, like the brother of Arminius[10], to
+take service under the Roman flag, and rise to a distinction in the
+legion which some feud denied them at home. This was found even more
+convenient by the hirer than by the employed; till by degrees
+barbarian mercenaries came to form the largest, or at least the most
+effective, part of the Roman armies. The body-guard of Augustus had
+been so composed; the praetorians were generally selected from the
+bravest frontier troops, most of them German; the practice could not
+but increase with the extinction of the free peasantry, the growth of
+villenage, and the effeminacy of all classes. Emperors who were, like
+Maximin, themselves foreigners, encouraged a system by whose means
+they had risen, and whose advantages they knew. After Constantine, the
+barbarians form the majority of the troops; after Theodosius, a Roman
+is the exception. The soldiers of the Eastern Empire in the time of
+Arcadius are almost all Goths, vast bodies of whom had been settled in
+the provinces; while in the West, Stilicho[11] can oppose Rhodogast
+only by summoning the German auxiliaries from the frontiers. Along
+with this practice there had grown up another, which did still more to
+make the barbarians feel themselves members of the Roman state.
+Whatever the pride of the old republic might assert, the maxim of the
+Empire had always been that birth and race should exclude no subject
+from any post which his abilities deserved. This principle, which had
+removed all obstacles from the path of the Spaniard Trajan, the
+Pannonian Maximin, the Numidian Philip, was afterwards extended to the
+conferring of honour and power on persons who did not even profess to
+have passed through the grades of Roman service, but remained leaders
+of their own tribes. Ariovistus had been soothed by the title of
+Friend of the Roman People; in the third century the insignia of the
+consulship[12] were conferred on a Herulian chief: Crocus and his
+Alemanni entered as an independent body into the service of Rome;
+along the Rhine whole tribes received, under the name of Laeti, lands
+within the provinces on condition of military service; and the foreign
+aid which the Sarmatian had proffered to Vespasian against his rival,
+and Marcus Aurelius had indignantly rejected in the war with Cassius,
+became the usual, at last the sole support of the Empire, in civil as
+well as in external strife.
+
+Thus in many ways was the old antagonism broken down--Romans admitting
+barbarians to rank and office, barbarians catching something of the
+manners and culture of their neighbours. And thus when the final
+movement came, and the Teutonic tribes slowly established themselves
+through the provinces, they entered not as savage strangers, but as
+colonists knowing something of the system into which they came, and
+not unwilling to be considered its members; despising the degenerate
+provincials who struck no blow in their own defence, but full of
+respect for the majestic power which had for so many centuries
+confronted and instructed them.
+
+[Sidenote: Their feelings towards the Roman Empire.]
+
+Great during all these ages, but greatest when they were actually
+traversing and settling in the Empire, must have been the impression
+which its elaborate machinery of government and mature civilization
+made upon the minds of the Northern invaders. With arms whose
+fabrication they had learned from their foes, these dwellers in the
+forest conquered well-tilled fields, and entered towns whose busy
+workshops, marts stored with the productions of distant countries, and
+palaces rich in monuments of art, equally roused their wonder. To the
+beauty of statuary or painting they might often be blind, but the
+rudest mind must have been awed by the massive piles with which vanity
+or devotion, or the passion for amusement, had adorned Milan and
+Verona, Arles, Treves, and Bordeaux. A deeper awe would strike them as
+they gazed on the crowding worshippers and stately ceremonial of
+Christianity, most unlike their own rude sacrifices. The exclamation
+of the Goth Athanaric, when led into the market-place of
+Constantinople, may stand for the feelings of his nation: 'Without
+doubt the Emperor is a God upon earth, and he who attacks him is
+guilty of his own blood[13].'
+
+[Sidenote: Their desire to preserve its institutions.]
+
+The social and political system, with its cultivated language and
+literature, into which they came, would impress fewer of the
+conquerors, but by those few would be admired beyond all else. Its
+regular organization supplied what they most needed and could least
+construct for themselves, and hence it was that the greatest among
+them were the most desirous to preserve it. The Mongol Attila
+excepted, there is among these terrible hosts no destroyer; the wish
+of each leader is to maintain the existing order, to spare life, to
+respect every work of skill and labour, above all to perpetuate the
+methods of Roman administration, and rule the people as the deputy or
+successor of their Emperor. Titles conferred by him were the highest
+honours they knew: they were also the only means of acquiring
+something like a legal claim to the obedience of the subject, and of
+turning a patriarchal or military chieftainship into the regular sway
+of an hereditary monarch. Civilis had long since endeavoured to govern
+his Batavians as a Roman general[14]. Alaric became master-general of
+the armies of Illyricum. Clovis exulted in the consulship; his son
+Theodebert received Provence, the conquest of his own battle-axe, as
+the gift of Justinian. Sigismund the Burgundian king, created count
+and patrician by the Emperor Anastasius, professed the deepest
+gratitude and the firmest faith to that Eastern court which was
+absolutely powerless to help or to hurt him. 'My people is yours,' he
+writes, 'and to rule them delights me less than to serve you; the
+hereditary devotion of my race to Rome has made us account those the
+highest honours which your military titles convey; we have always
+preferred what an Emperor gave to all that our ancestors could
+bequeath. In ruling our nation we hold ourselves but your lieutenants:
+you, whose divinely-appointed sway no barrier bounds, whose blessed
+beams shine from the Bosphorus into distant Gaul, employ us to
+administer the remoter regions of your Empire: your world is our
+fatherland[15].' A contemporary historian has recorded the remarkable
+disclosure of his own thoughts and purposes, made by one of the ablest
+of the barbarian chieftains, Athaulf the Visigoth, the brother-in-law
+and successor of Alaric. 'It was at first my wish to destroy the Roman
+name, and erect in its place a Gothic empire, taking to myself the
+place and the powers of Caesar Augustus. But when experience taught me
+that the untameable barbarism of the Goths would not suffer them to
+live beneath the sway of law, and that the abolition of the
+institutions on which the state rested would involve the ruin of the
+state itself, I chose the glory of renewing and maintaining by Gothic
+strength the fame of Rome, desiring to go down to posterity as the
+restorer of that Roman power which it was beyond my power to replace.
+Wherefore I avoid war and strive for peace[16].'
+
+Historians have remarked how valuable must have been the skill of
+Roman officials to princes who from leaders of tribes were become
+rulers of wide lands; and in particular how indispensable the aid of
+the Christian bishops, the intellectual aristocracy of their new
+subjects, whose advice could alone guide their policy and conciliate
+the vanquished. Not only is this true; it is but a small part of the
+truth; one form of that manifold and overpowering influence which the
+old system exercised over its foes not less than its own children. For
+it is hardly too much to say that the thought of antagonism to the
+Empire and the wish to extinguish it never crossed the mind of the
+barbarians[17]. The conception of that Empire was too universal, too
+august, too enduring. It was everywhere around them, and they could
+remember no time when it had not been so. It had no association of
+people or place whose fall could seem to involve that of the whole
+fabric; it had that connection with the Christian Church which made it
+all-embracing and venerable.
+
+[Sidenote: The belief in its eternity.]
+
+There were especially two ideas whereon it rested, and from which it
+obtained a peculiar strength and a peculiar direction. The one was the
+belief that as the dominion of Rome was universal, so must it be
+eternal. Nothing like it had been seen before. The empire of Alexander
+had lasted a short lifetime; and within its wide compass were included
+many arid wastes, and many tracts where none but the roving savage had
+ever set foot. That of the Italian city had for fourteen generations
+embraced all the most wealthy and populous regions of the civilized
+world, and had laid the foundations of its power so deep that they
+seemed destined to last for ever. If Rome moved slowly for a time, her
+foot was always planted firmly: the ease and swiftness of her later
+conquests proved the solidity of the earlier; and to her, more justly
+than to his own city, might the boast of the Athenian historian be
+applied: that she advanced farthest in prosperity, and in adversity
+drew back the least. From the end of the republican period her poets,
+her orators, her jurists, ceased not to repeat the claim of
+world-dominion, and confidently predict its eternity[18]. The proud
+belief of his countrymen which Virgil had expressed--
+
+ 'His ego nec metas rerum, nec tempora pono:
+ Imperium sine fine dedi'--
+
+was shared by the early Christians when they prayed for the
+persecuting power whose fall would bring Antichrist upon earth.
+Lactantius writes: 'When Rome the head of the world shall have fallen,
+who can doubt that the end is come of human things, aye, of the earth
+itself. She, she alone is the state by which all things are upheld
+even until now; wherefore let us make prayers and supplications to the
+God of heaven, if indeed his decrees and his purposes can be delayed,
+that that hateful tyrant come not sooner than we look for, he for whom
+are reserved fearful deeds, who shall pluck out that eye in whose
+extinction the world itself shall perish[19].' With the triumph of
+Christianity this belief had found a new basis. For as the Empire had
+decayed, the Church had grown stronger; and now while the one,
+trembling at the approach of the destroyer, saw province after
+province torn away, the other, rising in stately youth, prepared to
+fill her place and govern in her name, and in doing so, to adopt and
+sanctify and propagate anew the notion of a universal and unending
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Sanctity of the imperial name.]
+
+The second chief element in this conception was the association of
+such a state with one irresponsible governor, the Emperor. The hatred
+to the name of King, which their earliest political struggles had left
+in the Romans, by obliging their ruler to take a new and strange
+title, marked him off from all the other sovereigns of the world. To
+the provincials especially he became an awful impersonation of the
+great machine of government which moved above and around them. It was
+not merely that he was, like a modern king, the centre of power and
+the dispenser of honour: his pre-eminence, broken by no comparison
+with other princes, by the ascending ranks of no aristocracy, had in
+it something almost supernatural. The right of legislation had become
+vested in him alone: the decrees of the people, and resolutions of the
+senate, and edicts of the magistrates were, during the last three
+centuries, replaced by imperial constitutions; his domestic council,
+the consistory, was the supreme court of appeal; his interposition,
+like that of some terrestrial Providence, was invoked, and legally
+provided so to be, to reverse or overleap the ordinary rules of
+law[20]. From the time of Julius and Augustus his person had been
+hallowed by the office of chief pontiff[21] and the tribunician power;
+to swear by his head was considered the most solemn of all oaths[22];
+his effigy was sacred[23], even on a coin; to him or to his Genius
+temples were erected and divine honours paid while he lived[24]; and
+when, as it was expressed, he ceased to be among men, the title of
+Divus was accorded to him, after a solemn consecration[25]. In the
+confused multiplicity of mythologies, the worship of the Emperor was
+the only worship common to the whole Roman world, and was therefore
+that usually proposed as a test to the Christians on their trial.
+Under the new religion the form of adoration vanished, the sentiment
+of reverence remained: the right to control Church as well as State,
+admitted at Nicaea, and habitually exercised by the sovereigns of
+Constantinople, made the Emperor hardly less essential to the new
+conception of a world-wide Christian monarchy than he had been to the
+military despotism of old. These considerations explain why the men of
+the fifth century, clinging to preconceived ideas, refused to believe
+in that dissolution of the Empire which they saw with their own eyes.
+Because it could not die, it lived. And there was in the slowness of
+the change and its external aspect, as well as in the fortunes of the
+capital, something to favour the illusion. The Roman name was shared
+by every subject; the Roman city was no longer the seat of government,
+nor did her capture extinguish the imperial power, for the maxim was
+now accepted, Where the Emperor is, there is Rome[26]. But her
+continued existence, not permanently occupied by any conqueror,
+striking the nations with an awe which the history or the external
+splendours of Constantinople, Milan, or Ravenna could nowise inspire,
+was an ever new assertion of the endurance of the Roman race and
+dominion. Dishonoured and defenceless, the spell of her name was still
+strong enough to arrest the conqueror in the moment of triumph. The
+irresistible impulse that drew Alaric was one of glory or revenge, not
+of destruction: the Hun turned back from Aquileia with a vague fear
+upon him: the Ostrogoth adorned and protected his splendid prize.
+
+[Sidenote: Last days of the Western Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Its extinction by Odoacer, A.D. 476.]
+
+In the history of the last days of the Western Empire, two points
+deserve special remark: its continued union with the Eastern branch,
+and the way in which its ideal dignity was respected while its
+representatives were despised. After Stilicho's death, and Alaric's
+invasion, its fall was a question of time. While one by one the
+provinces were abandoned by the central government, left either to be
+occupied by invading tribes or to maintain a precarious independence,
+like Britain and Armorica[27], by means of municipal unions, Italy lay
+at the mercy of the barbarian auxiliaries and was governed by their
+leaders. The degenerate line of Theodosius might have seemed to reign
+by hereditary right, but after their extinction in Valentinian III
+each phantom Emperor--Maximus, Avitus, Majorian, Anthemius,
+Olybrius--received the purple from the haughty Ricimer, general of the
+troops, only to be stripped of it when he presumed to forget his
+dependence. Though the division between Arcadius and Honorius had
+definitely severed the two realms for administrative purposes, they
+were still supposed to constitute a single Empire, and the rulers of
+the East interfered more than once to raise to the Western throne
+princes they could not protect upon it. Ricimer's insolence quailed
+before the shadowy grandeur of the imperial title: his ambition, and
+Gundobald his successor's, were bounded by the name of patrician. The
+bolder genius of Odoacer[28], general of the barbarian auxiliaries,
+resolved to abolish an empty pageant, and extinguish the title and
+office of Emperor of the West. Yet over him too the spell had power;
+and as the Gaulish warrior had gazed on the silent majesty of the
+senate in a deserted city, so the Herulian revered the power before
+which the world had bowed, and though there was no force to check or
+to affright him, shrank from grasping in his own barbarian hand the
+sceptre of the Caesars. When, at Odoacer's bidding, Romulus Augustulus,
+the boy whom a whim of fate had chosen to be the last native Caesar of
+Rome, had formally announced his resignation to the senate, a
+deputation from that body proceeded to the Eastern court to lay the
+insignia of royalty at the feet of the Eastern Emperor Zeno. The West,
+they declared, no longer required an Emperor of its own; one monarch
+sufficed for the world; Odoacer was qualified by his wisdom and
+courage to be the protector of their state, and upon him Zeno was
+entreated to confer the title of patrician and the administration of
+the Italian provinces[29]. The Emperor granted what he could not
+refuse, and Odoacer, taking the title of King[30], continued the
+consular office, respected the civil and ecclesiastical institutions
+of his subjects, and ruled for fourteen years as the nominal vicar of
+the Eastern Emperor. There was thus legally no extinction of the
+Western Empire at all, but only a reunion of East and West. In form,
+and to some extent also in the belief of men, things now reverted to
+their state during the first two centuries of the Empire, save that
+Byzantium instead of Rome was the centre of the civil government. The
+joint tenancy which had been conceived by Diocletian, carried further
+by Constantine, renewed under Valentinian I and again at the death of
+Theodosius, had come to an end; once more did a single Emperor sway
+the sceptre of the world, and head an undivided Catholic Church[31].
+To those who lived at the time, this year (476 A.D.) was no such epoch
+as it has since become, nor was any impression made on men's minds
+commensurate with the real significance of the event. For though it
+did not destroy the Empire in idea, nor wholly even in fact, its
+consequences were from the first great. It hastened the development of
+a Latin as opposed to Greek and Oriental forms of Christianity: it
+emancipated the Popes: it gave a new character to the projects and
+government of the Teutonic rulers of the West. But the importance of
+remembering its formal aspect to those who witnessed it will be felt
+as we approach the era when the Empire was revived by Charles the
+Frank.
+
+[Sidenote: Odoacer.]
+
+[Sidenote: Theodoric.]
+
+[Sidenote: Italy reconquered, by Justinian.]
+
+Odoacer's monarchy was not more oppressive than those of his
+neighbours in Gaul, Spain, and Africa. But the mercenary _foederati_
+who supported it were a loose swarm of predatory tribes: themselves
+without cohesion, they could take no firm root in Italy. During the
+eighteen years of his reign no progress seems to have been made
+towards the re-organization of society; and the first real attempt to
+blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the
+hands of a new and vigorous race was reserved for a more famous
+chieftain, the greatest of all the barbarian conquerors, the
+forerunner of the first barbarian Emperor, Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
+The aim of his reign, though he professed allegiance to the Eastern
+court which had favoured his invasion[32], was the establishment of a
+national monarchy in Italy. Brought up as a hostage in the court of
+Byzantium, he learnt to know the advantages of an orderly and
+cultivated society and the principles by which it must be maintained;
+called in early manhood to roam as a warrior-chief over the plains of
+the Danube, he acquired along with the arts of command a sense of the
+superiority of his own people in valour and energy and truth. When the
+defeat and death of Odoacer had left the peninsula at his mercy, he
+sought no further conquest, easy as it would have been to tear away
+new provinces from the Eastern realm, but strove only to preserve and
+strengthen the ancient polity of Rome, to breathe into her decaying
+institutions the spirit of a fresh life, and without endangering the
+military supremacy of his own Goths, to conciliate by indulgence and
+gradually raise to the level of their masters the degenerate
+population of Italy. The Gothic nation appears from the first less
+cruel in war and more prudent in council than any of their Germanic
+brethren[33]: all that was most noble among them shone forth now in
+the rule of the greatest of the Amali. From his palace at Verona[34],
+commemorated in the song of the Nibelungs, he issued equal laws for
+Roman and Goth, and bade the intruder, if he must occupy part of the
+lands, at least respect the goods and the person of his
+fellow-subject. Jurisprudence and administration remained in native
+hands: two annual consuls, one named by Theodoric, the other by the
+Eastern monarch, presented an image of the ancient state; and while
+agriculture and the arts revived in the provinces, Rome herself
+celebrated the visits of a master who provided for the wants of her
+people and preserved with care the monuments of her former splendour.
+With peace and plenty men's minds took hope, and the study of letters
+revived. The last gleam of classical literature gilds the reign of the
+barbarian. By the consolidation of the two races under one wise
+government, Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom
+and degradation. It was not so to be. Theodoric was tolerant, but
+toleration was itself a crime in the eyes of his orthodox subjects:
+the Arian Goths were and remained strangers and enemies among the
+Catholic Italians. Scarcely had the sceptre passed from the hands of
+Theodoric to his unworthy offspring, when Justinian, who had viewed
+with jealousy the greatness of his nominal lieutenant, determined to
+assert his dormant rights over Italy; its people welcomed Belisarius
+as a deliverer, and in the struggle that followed the race and name of
+the Ostrogoths perished for ever. Thus again reunited in fact, as it
+had been all the while united in name, to the Roman Empire, the
+peninsula was divided into counties and dukedoms, and obeyed the
+exarch of Ravenna, viceroy of the Byzantine court, till the arrival of
+the Lombards in A.D. 568 drove him from some districts, and left him
+only a feeble authority in the rest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Transalpine provinces.]
+
+Beyond the Alps, though the Roman population had now ceased to seek
+help from the Eastern court, the Empire's rights still subsisted in
+theory, and were never legally extinguished. As has been said, they
+were admitted by the conquerors themselves: by Athaulf, when he
+reigned in Aquitaine as the vicar of Honorius, and recovered Spain
+from the Suevi to restore it to its ancient masters; by the Visigothic
+kings of Spain, when they permitted the Mediterranean cities to send
+tribute to Byzantium; by Clovis, when, after the representatives of
+the old government, Syagrius and the Armorican cities, had been
+overpowered or absorbed, he received with delight from the Eastern
+emperor Anastasius the grant of a Roman dignity to confirm his
+possession. Arrayed like a Fabius or Valerius in the consul's
+embroidered robe, the Sicambrian chieftain rode through the streets of
+Tours, while the shout of the provincials hailed him Augustus[35].
+They already obeyed him, but his power was now legalised in their
+eyes, and it was not without a melancholy pride that they saw the
+terrible conqueror himself yield to the spell of the Roman name, and
+do homage to the enduring majesty of their legitimate sovereign[36].
+
+[Sidenote: Lingering influences of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Religion.]
+
+Yet the severed limbs of the Empire forgot by degrees their original
+unity. As in the breaking up of the old society, which we trace from
+the sixth to the eighth century, rudeness and ignorance grew apace, as
+language and manners were changed by the infiltration of Teutonic
+settlers, as men's thoughts and hopes and interests were narrowed by
+isolation from their fellows, as the organization of the Roman
+province and the Germanic tribe alike dissolved into a chaos whence
+the new order began to shape itself, dimly and doubtfully as yet, the
+memory of the old Empire, its symmetry, its sway, its civilization,
+must needs wane and fade. It might have perished altogether but for
+the two enduring witnesses Rome had left--her Church and her Law. The
+barbarians had at first associated Christianity with the Romans from
+whom they learned it: the Romans had used it as their only bulwark
+against oppression. The hierarchy were the natural leaders of the
+people, and the necessary councillors of the king. Their power grew
+with the extinction of civil government and the spread of
+superstition; and when the Frank found it too valuable to be abandoned
+to the vanquished people, he insensibly acquired the feelings and
+policy of the order he entered.
+
+[Sidenote: Jurisprudence.]
+
+As the Empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdoms which the
+conquerors had founded themselves began to dissolve, the Church clung
+more closely to her unity of faith and discipline, the common bond of
+all Christian men. That unity must have a centre, that centre was
+Rome. A succession of able and zealous pontiffs extended her influence
+(the sanctity and the writings of Gregory the Great were famous
+through all the West): never occupied by barbarians, she retained her
+peculiar character and customs, and laid the foundations of a power
+over men's souls more durable than that which she had lost over their
+bodies[37]. Only second in importance to this influence was that which
+was exercised by the permanence of the old law, and of its creature
+the municipality. The barbarian invaders retained the customs of their
+ancestors, characteristic memorials of a rude people, as we see them
+in the Salic law or in the ordinances of Ina and Alfred. But the
+subject population and the clergy continued to be governed by that
+elaborate system which the genius and labour of many generations had
+raised to be the most lasting monument of Roman greatness.
+
+The civil law had maintained itself in Spain and Southern Gaul, nor
+was it utterly forgotten even in the North, in Britain, on the borders
+of Germany. Revised editions of the Theodosian code were issued by the
+Visigothic and Burgundian princes. For some centuries it was the
+patrimony of the subject population everywhere, and in Aquitaine and
+Italy has outlived feudalism. The presumption in later times was that
+all men were to be judged by it who could not be proved to be subject
+to some other[38]. Its phrases, its forms, its courts, its subtlety
+and precision, all recalled the strong and refined society which had
+produced it. Other motives, as well as those of kindness to their
+subjects, made the new kings favour it; for it exalted their
+prerogative, and the submission enjoined by it on one class of their
+subjects soon came to be demanded from the other, by their own laws
+the equals of the prince. Considering attentively how many of the old
+institutions continued to subsist, and studying the feelings of that
+time, as they are faintly preserved in its scanty records, it seems
+hardly too much to say that in the eighth century the Roman Empire
+still existed in the West: existed in men's minds as a power weakened,
+delegated, suspended, but not destroyed.
+
+It is easy for those who read the history of an age in the light of
+those that followed it, to perceive that in this men erred; that the
+tendency of events was wholly different; that society had entered on a
+new phase, wherein every change did more to localize authority and
+strengthen the aristocratic principle at the expense of the despotic.
+We can see that other forms of life, more full of promise for the
+distant future, had already begun to shew themselves: they--with no
+type of power or beauty, but that which had filled the imagination of
+their forefathers, and now loomed on them grander than ever through
+the mist of centuries--mistook, as it has been said of Rienzi in later
+days, memories for hopes, and sighed only for the renewal of its
+strength. Events were at hand by which these hopes seemed destined to
+be gratified.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] 'Addiderat consilium coercendi intra terminos imperii.'--Tac.
+_Ann._ i. 2.
+
+[10] Tac. _Ann._ ii. 9.
+
+[11] Stilicho, the bulwark of the Empire, seems to have been himself a
+Vandal by extraction.
+
+[12] Of course not the consulship itself, but the _ornamenta
+consularia_.
+
+[13] Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 28.
+
+[14] Tac. _Hist._ i. and iv.
+
+[15] 'Vester quidem est populus meus sed me plus servire vobis quam
+illi praeesse delectat. Traxit istud a proavis generis mei apud vos
+decessoresque vestros semper animo Romana devotio, ut illa nobis magis
+claritas putaretur, quam vestra per militiae titulos porrigeret
+celsitudo: cunctisque auctoribus meis semper magis ambitum est quod a
+principibus sumerent quam quod a patribus attulissent. Cumque gentem
+nostram videamur regere, non aliud nos quam milites vestros credimus
+ordinari.... Per nos administratis remotarum spatia regionum: patria
+nostra vester orbis est. Tangit Galliam suam lumen orientis, et radius
+qui illis partibus oriri creditur, hic refulget. Dominationem vobis
+divinitus praestitam obex nulla concludit, nec ullis provinciarum
+terminis diffusio felicium sceptrorum limitatur. Salvo divinitatis
+honore sit dictum.'--Letter printed among the works of Avitus, Bishop
+of Vienne. (Migne's _Patrologia_, vol. lix. p. 285.)
+
+This letter, as its style shews, is the composition not of Sigismund
+himself, but of Avitus, writing on Sigismund's behalf. But this makes
+it scarcely less valuable evidence of the feelings of the time.
+
+[16] 'Referre solitus est (_sc._ Ataulphus) se in primis ardenter
+inhiasse: ut obliterato Romanorum nomine Romanum omne solum Gothorum
+imperium et faceret et vocaret: essetque, ut vulgariter loquar, Gothia
+quod Romania fuisset; fieretque nunc Ataulphus quod quondam Caesar
+Augustus. At ubi multa experientia probavisset, neque Gothos ullo modo
+parere legibus posse propter effrenatam barbariem, neque reipublicae
+interdici leges oportere sine quibus respublica non est respublica;
+elegisse se saltem, ut gloriam sibi de restituendo in integrum
+augendoque Romano nomine Gothorum viribus quaereret, habereturque apud
+posteros Romanae restitutionis auctor postquam esse non potuerat
+immutator. Ob hoc abstinere a bello, ob hoc inhiare paci
+nitebatur.'--Orosius, vii. 43.
+
+[17] Athaulf formed only to abandon it.
+
+[18] See, among other passages, Varro, _De lingua Latina_, iv. 34;
+Cic., _Pro Domo_, 33; and in the _Corpus Iuris Civilis_, Dig. i. 5,
+17; l. 1, 33; xiv. 2, 9; quoted by AEgidi, _Der Fuerstenrath nach dem
+Luneviller Frieden_. The phrase 'urbs aeterna' appears in a novel
+issued by Valentinian III.
+
+Tertullian speaks of Rome as 'civitas sacrosancta.'
+
+[19] Lact. _Divin. Instit._ vii. 25: 'Etiam res ipsa declarat lapsum
+ruinamque rerum brevi fore: nisi quod incolumi urbe Roma nihil
+istiusmodi videtur esse metuendum. At vero cum caput illud orbis
+occident, et [Greek:rhyme] esse coeperit quod Sibyllae fore aiunt, quis
+dubitet venisse iam finem rebus humanis, orbique terrarum? Illa, illa
+est civitas quae adhuc sustentat omnia, precandusque nobis et adorandus
+est Deus coeli si tamen statuta eius et placita differri possunt,
+ne citius quam putemus tyrannus ille abominabilis veniat qui tantum
+facinus moliatur, ac lumen illud effodiat cuius interitu mundus ipse
+lapsurus est.'
+
+Cf. Tertull. _Apolog._ cap. xxxii: 'Est et alia maior necessitas nobis
+orandi pro imperatoribus, etiam pro omni statu imperii rebusque
+Romanis, qui vim maximam universo orbi imminentem ipsamque clausulam
+saeculi acerbitates horrendas comminantem Romani imperii commeatu
+scimus retardari.' Also the same writer, _Ad Scapulam_, cap. ii:
+'Christianus sciens imperatorem a Deo suo constitui, necesse est ut
+ipsum diligat et revereatur et honoret et salvum velit cum toto Romano
+imperio quousque saeculum stabit: tamdiu enim stabit.' So too the
+author--now usually supposed to be Hilary the Deacon--of the
+Commentary on the Pauline Epistles ascribed to S. Ambrose: 'Non prius
+veniet Dominus quam regni Romani defectio fiat, et appareat
+antichristus qui interficiet sanctos, reddita Romanis libertate, sub
+suo tamen nomine.'--Ad II Thess. ii. 4, 7.
+
+[20] For example, by the 'restitutio natalium,' and the 'adrogatio per
+rescriptum principis,' or, as it is expressed, 'per sacrum oraculum.'
+
+[21] Even the Christian Emperors took the title of Pontifex Maximus,
+till Gratian refused it: [Greek: athemiston einai Christiano to schema
+nomisas].--Zosimus, lib. iv. cap. 36.
+
+[22] 'Maiore formidine et callidiore timiditate Caesarem observatis quam
+ipsum ex Olympo Iovem, et merito, si sciatis.... Citius denique apud
+vos per omnes Deos quam per unum genium Caesaris peieratur.'--Tertull.
+_Apolog._ c. xxviii.
+
+Cf. Zos. v. 51: [Greek: ei men gar pros ton theon tetychekei didomenos
+horkos, en an hos eikos paridein endidontas te tou theou philanthropia
+ten epi te asebeia syngnomen. epei de kata ten tou basileos
+omomokesan kephales, ouk einai themiton autois eis ton tosouton horkon
+examartein.]
+
+[23] Tac. _Ann._ i. 73; iii. 38, etc.
+
+[24] It is curious that this should have begun in the first years of
+the Empire. See, among other passages that might be cited from the
+Augustan poets, Virg. _Georg._ i. 42; iv. 462; Hor. _Od._ iii. 3, 11;
+Ovid, _Epp. ex Ponto_, iv. 9. 105.
+
+[25] Hence Vespasian's dying jest, 'Ut puto, deus fio.'
+
+[26] [Greek: hopou an ho basileus e, ekei he Rhome.]--Herodian.
+
+[27] If the accounts we find of the Armorican republic can be trusted.
+
+[28] Odoacer or Odovaker, as it seems his name ought to be written, is
+usually, but incorrectly, described as a King of the Heruli, who led
+his people into Italy and overthrew the Empire of the West; others
+call him King of the Rugii, or Skyrri, or Turcilingi. The truth seems
+to be that he was not a king at all, but the son of a Skyrrian
+chieftain (Edecon, known as one of the envoys whom Attila sent to
+Constantinople), whose personal merits made him chosen by the
+barbarian auxiliaries to be their leader. The Skyrri were a small
+tribe, apparently akin to the more powerful Heruli, whose name is
+often extended to them.
+
+[29] [Greek: Augoustos ho Orestou huios akousas Zenona palin ten
+basileian anakektesthai tes heo ... enankase ten boulen aposteilai
+presbeian Zenoni semainousan hos idias men autois basileias ou deoi,
+koinos de apochresei monos on autokrator ep' amphoterois tois perasi.
+ton mentoi Odoachon hyp' auton probeblesthai hikanon onta sozein
+ta par' autois pragmata politiken echon noun kai synesin homou kai
+machimon. kai deisthai tou Zenonos patrikiou te auto aposteilai axian
+kai ten ton Italon touto epheinai dioikesin]--Malchus ap. Photium in
+_Corp. Hist. Byzant._
+
+[30] Not king of Italy, as is often said. The barbarian kings did not
+for several centuries employ territorial titles; the title 'king of
+France,' for instance, was first used by Henry IV. Jornandes tells us
+that Odoacer never so much as assumed the insignia of royalty.
+
+[31] Sismondi, _Histoire de la Chute de l'Empire Occidentale_.
+
+[32] 'Nil deest nobis imperio vestro famulantibus.'--Theodoric to
+Zeno: Jornandes, _De Rebus Geticis_, cap. 57.
+
+[33] 'Unde et paene omnibus barbaris Gothi sapientiores exstiterunt
+Graecisque paene consimiles.'--Jorn. cap. 5.
+
+[34] Theodoric (Thiodorich) seems to have resided usually at Ravenna,
+where he died and was buried; a remarkable building which tradition
+points out as his tomb stands a little way out of the town, near the
+railway station, but the porphyry sarcophagus, in which his body is
+supposed to have lain, has been removed thence, and may be seen built
+up into the wall of the building called his palace, situated close to
+the church of Sant' Apollinare, and not far from the tomb of Dante.
+There does not appear to be any sufficient authority for attributing
+this building to Ostrogothic times; it is very different from the
+representation of Theodoric's palace which we have in the contemporary
+mosaics of Sant' Apollinare in urbe.
+
+In the German legends, however, Theodoric is always the prince of
+Verona (Dietrich von Berne), no doubt because that city was better
+known to the Teutonic nations, and because it was thither that he
+moved his court when transalpine affairs required his attention. His
+castle there stood in the old town on the left bank of the Adige, on
+the height now occupied by the citadel; it is doubtful whether any
+traces of it remain, for the old foundations which we now see may have
+belonged to the fortress erected by Gian Galeazzo Visconti in the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[35] 'Igitur Chlodovechus ab imperatore Anastasio codicillos de
+consulatu accepit, et in basilica beati Martini tunica blatea indutus
+est et chlamyde, imponens vertici diadema ... et ab ea die tanquam
+consul aut (=et) Augustus est vocitatus.'--Gregory of Tours, ii. 58.
+
+[36] Sir F. Palgrave (_English Commonwealth_) considers this grant as
+equivalent to a formal ratification of Clovis' rule in Gaul. Hallam
+rates its importance lower (_Middle Ages_, note iii. to chap. i.).
+Taken in connection with the grant of south-eastern Gaul to Theodebert
+by Justinian, it may fairly be held to shew that the influence of the
+Empire was still felt in these distant provinces.
+
+[37] Even so early as the middle of the fifth century, S. Leo the
+Great could say to the Roman people, 'Isti (sc. Petrus et Paulus) sunt
+qui te ad hanc gloriam provexerunt ut gens sancta, populus electus,
+civitas sacerdotalis et regia, per sacram B. Petri sedem caput orbis
+effecta latius praesideres religione divina quam dominatione
+terrena.'--_Sermon on the feast of SS. Peter and Paul._ (Opp. _ap._
+Migne tom. i. p. 336.)
+
+[38] 'Ius Romanum est adhuc in viridi observantia et eo iure
+praesumitur quilibet vivere nisi adversum probetur.'--Maranta, quoted
+by Marquard Freher.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
+
+
+It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that the thoughts
+and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were
+constantly directed. Yet not from Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the
+exhausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we
+may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the
+Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the
+furthest corner of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within
+the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service
+of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
+heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which
+doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity almost divine.
+
+[Sidenote: The Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 486.]
+
+Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of Rome, that of the
+Franks was by far the greatest. In the third century they appear, with
+Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe
+leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was
+a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former
+hostility to Rome, and her future representatives were thenceforth,
+with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to
+high place: Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western
+provinces; Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and
+his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius
+against Attila in the great battle of Chalons; his countrymen
+endeavour in vain to save Gaul from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not
+till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the
+booty; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving
+his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances
+from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had
+entered it some sixty years before. Few conquerors have had a career
+of more unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius
+he was left master of the northern provinces: the Burgundian kingdom
+in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to dependence:
+last of all, the Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle,
+and Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frankish
+arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of
+Tolbiac led to the submission of the Alemanni: their allies the
+Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by
+Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the
+tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed,
+stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of
+course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor,
+although the widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
+a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom
+at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the
+predominance of a single nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul
+as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
+hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the
+middle of the eighth century a change began. Under the rule of Pipin
+of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the
+last feeble Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
+became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while
+establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength
+in projects of foreign ambition. The form those projects took arose
+from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not
+solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their
+past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited them, it was
+to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See.
+The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians,
+Lombards, had been most of them converted by Arian missionaries who
+proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian
+doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest
+converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the
+clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the
+hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
+Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of the
+priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian and
+Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively easy for them to blend
+with the Roman population in the provinces. They had done good service
+against the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface in
+his mission to the heathen of Germany[39]; and at length, as the most
+powerful among Catholic nations, they attracted the eyes of the
+ecclesiastical head of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy: the Lombards.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes.]
+
+Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication
+of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D.
+568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and
+founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the
+country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the
+Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than
+nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders
+were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met
+with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the
+spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we
+may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the
+Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their
+aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils.
+Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
+Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the
+Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of
+Ravenna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his
+confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the
+victims of his anger[40]. But as the city became more accustomed in
+independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet
+legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In
+the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom
+or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the
+orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
+deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished[41].
+
+[Sidenote: Iconoclastic controversy.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes appeal to the Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.]
+
+The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer
+faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of
+idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed
+fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
+sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in
+Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence
+of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain:
+the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and
+protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he
+could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the
+Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the
+champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he
+overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The
+Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a
+heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a
+Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for
+Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
+communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual
+ruler of the Frankish realm[42]. As the crisis becomes more pressing,
+Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to
+him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church[43].
+Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman
+people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain
+that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the
+rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political
+movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate
+sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son
+Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with
+Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a
+monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of
+Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock
+the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one
+then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an
+international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave
+to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto
+unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in
+raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem
+and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of
+Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was
+summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
+Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second
+time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter
+himself[44]. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed
+on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy,
+receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician[45].
+
+[Sidenote: Import of this title.]
+
+As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this
+title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time
+when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to
+be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank,
+the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually
+conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time
+also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish
+to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
+Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too
+in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian
+princes[46]. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice
+seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
+thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men
+take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an
+extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the
+duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It
+was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop
+bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
+for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the
+title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and
+defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always
+'_Patricius Romanorum_;' not, as in former times, '_Patricius_' alone:
+hence it is usually associated with the terms '_defensor_' and
+'_protector_.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of
+obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been
+conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority
+in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the
+Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the
+Franks.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
+
+So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from
+their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal.
+But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
+menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or
+Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of
+Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself
+the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral
+part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his
+victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were
+to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian
+with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader
+and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that
+sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to
+bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the
+pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in
+the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and
+Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years
+before.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles and Hadrian.]
+
+It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that
+in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise
+the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The
+Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most
+powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by
+swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it
+might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their
+words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
+expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an
+indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless
+in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and
+passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the
+stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not
+defended, as almost inseparable from an intense and restless genius,
+which, be it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing them fix
+upon everything its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
+The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since
+the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the
+ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most
+abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of
+territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
+a sort of justification--for Rome, a city with neither trade nor
+industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to
+provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the
+purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did.
+It was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than for
+religion or the safety of the city--neither of which were really
+endangered by the Lombard attacks--that had prompted their passionate
+appeals to Charles Martel and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope
+of having these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's greater
+son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it
+was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the
+dawning prospect of an independent principality, that now began to
+seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is
+probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established,
+to which must be assigned the extraordinary forgery of the Donation of
+Constantine, whereby it was pretended that power over Italy and the
+whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope
+Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Pope Leo III, A.D. 796.]
+
+For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of
+Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it
+does not appear that he sent thither any official representative;
+while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
+admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the
+years of his reign to date documents. In A.D. 796, Leo the Third
+succeeded Pope Hadrian, and signalized his devotion to the Frankish
+throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of
+the holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter, asking
+that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the
+people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to
+seek the Patrician's help for himself. In A.D. 798 a sedition broke
+out: the Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to the
+church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men,
+headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was
+wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
+to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish lands. Charles
+had led his army against the revolted Saxons: thither Leo following
+overtook him at Paderborn in Westphalia. The king received with
+respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
+some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under the escort of
+Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers; promising to follow ere
+long in person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony, and in
+the autumn of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more, while Leo
+revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was
+now ripe.
+
+[Sidenote: Belief in the Roman Empire not extinct.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives of the Pope.]
+
+Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Caesar of
+the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to
+his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the
+latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
+only during one brief interval between the death of Totila the last
+Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his
+power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul,
+Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire
+as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been
+admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been
+cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was
+dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days
+when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen
+the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system
+he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of
+consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
+Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant England the
+fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities,
+and before long began to call themselves _imperatores_ and _basileis_
+of Britain. Within the last century and a half the rise of
+Mohammedanism[47] had brought out the common Christianity of Europe
+into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one
+Empire, one Commander of the faithful: the Christian commonwealth
+needed more than ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
+could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing ever feebler
+and more alien to the West. The name of 'respublica,' permanent at the
+elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its
+government was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
+drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms of an Oriental
+despotism. Claudian had already sneered at 'Greek Quirites[48]:' the
+general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the
+difference of manners and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
+The Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes, who
+while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage
+Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years[49] had been contaminated
+by a heresy the more odious that it touched not speculative points of
+doctrine but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy their
+power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had asked their
+confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment of the intruding
+Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to
+confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights
+subsisted: they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
+must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman city. Nor could
+the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal: without
+the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary
+consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church[50]. For, as will be shewn
+more fully hereafter, men could not separate in fact what was
+indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with
+the great Christian state: they were but two names for the same thing.
+Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are
+said to have already contemplated[51], and towards which the events of
+the last fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The
+widowed empress Irene, equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and
+her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a woman,
+an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne of the world. By
+what right, it might well be asked, did the factions of Byzantium
+impose a master on the original seat of empire? It was time to provide
+better for the most august of human offices: an election at Rome was
+as valid as at Constantinople--the possessor of the real power should
+also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted
+where that possessor was to be found. The Frank had been always
+faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
+auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders,
+against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him
+the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
+was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations,
+Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to
+imitate his customs[52]. In Charles, the hero who united under one
+sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
+pontiff might well see--as later ages saw--the new golden head of a
+second image[53], erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and
+clay seemed crumbling to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks
+of Constantinople.
+
+[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles at Rome, A.D. 800.]
+
+At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The Pope's cause was heard;
+his innocence, already vindicated by a miracle, was pronounced by the
+Patrician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
+remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, A.D.
+800[54], he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. On the spot where
+now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the
+buildings of the modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as
+that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the
+oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less
+like than was this basilica to those northern cathedrals, shadowy,
+fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by
+clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of
+mediaeval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious
+sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of
+Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness,
+its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman
+art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman character[55].
+Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar
+underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph as it
+was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising
+tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest,
+and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the
+bishop's throne[56], itself the curule chair of some forgotten
+magistrate[57]. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of
+the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles--who had exchanged his
+simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman
+patrician[58]--knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight
+of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem
+of the Caesars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to
+the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of
+the world, 'Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori
+vita et victoria[59].' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without,
+was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its
+consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the
+civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from
+that moment modern history begins.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[39] 'Denique gens Francorum multos et foecundissimos fructus Domino
+attulit, non solum credendo, sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'
+says the emperor Lewis II in A.D. 871.
+
+[40] Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.
+
+[41] A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks
+and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph
+Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), _De translatione Imperii
+Romani_ (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a
+revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the
+Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding,
+like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics
+(apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt)
+carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly,
+the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a
+rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning
+to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the
+earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to
+the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very
+existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth
+or ninth century altogether forgotten.
+
+[42] Anastasius, _Vitae Pontificum Romanorum_ i. _ap._ Muratori.
+
+[43] Letter in _Codex Carolinus_, in Muratori's _Scriptores Rerum
+Italicarum_, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'
+
+[44] Letter in _Cod. Carol._ (Mur. _R. S. I._ iii. [2.] p. 96), a
+strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish
+pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod
+super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro
+exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus
+Vicarii mei commendavi.'
+
+[45] The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out.
+Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino,
+Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the _Chronicon Casinense_
+(Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be
+right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two
+documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is
+a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title
+was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted
+by him.
+
+[46] The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands
+in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard
+of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, _s.v._
+
+[47] After the _translatio ad Francos_ of A.D. 800, the two Empires
+corresponded exactly to the two Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.
+
+[48]
+
+ 'Plaudentem cerne senatum
+ Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'
+ _In Eutrop._ ii. 135.
+
+[49] Several Emperors during this period had been patrons of images,
+as was Irene at the moment of which I write: the stain nevertheless
+adhered to their government as a whole.
+
+[50] I should not have thought it necessary to explain that the
+sentence in the text is meant simply to state what were (so far as can
+be made out) the sentiments and notions of the ninth century, if a
+writer in the _Tablet_ (reviewing a former edition) had not understood
+it as an expression of the author's own belief.
+
+To a modern eye there is of course no necessary connection between the
+Roman Empire and a catholic and apostolic Church; in fact, the two
+things seem rather, such has been the impression made on us by the
+long struggle of church and state, in their nature mutually
+antagonistic. The interest of history lies not least in this, that it
+shews us how men have at different times entertained wholly different
+notions respecting the relation to one another of the same ideas or
+the same institutions.
+
+[51] Monachus Sangallensis, _De Gestis Karoli_; in Pertz, _Monumenta
+Germaniae Historica_.
+
+[52] Monachus Sangallensis; _ut supra_. So Pope Gregory the Great two
+centuries earlier: 'Quanto caeteros homines regia dignitas antecedit,
+tanto caeterarum gentium regna regni Francorum culmen excellit.' Ep. v.
+6.
+
+[53] Alciatus, _De Formula imperii Romani_.
+
+[54] Or rather, according to the then prevailing practice of beginning
+the year from Christmas-day, A.D. 801.
+
+[55] An elaborate description of old St. Peter's may be found in
+Bunsen's and Platner's _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom_; with which
+compare Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome.
+
+[56] The primitive custom was for the bishop to sit in the centre of
+the apse, at the central point of the east end of the church (or, as
+it would be more correct to say, the end furthest from the door) just
+as the judge had done in those law courts on the model of which the
+first basilicas were constructed. This arrangement may still be seen
+in some of the churches of Rome, as well as elsewhere in Italy;
+nowhere better than in the churches of Ravenna, particularly the
+beautiful one of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and in the cathedral of
+Torcello, near Venice.
+
+[57] On this chair were represented the labours of Hercules and the
+signs of the zodiac. It is believed at Rome to be the veritable chair
+of the Apostle himself, and whatever may be thought of such an
+antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily traced back to the third
+or fourth century of Christianity. (The story that it is inscribed
+with verses from the Koran is, I believe, without foundation.) It is
+now enclosed in a gorgeous casing of gilded wood (some say, of
+bronze), and placed aloft at the extremity of St. Peter's, just over
+the spot where a bishop's chair would in the old arrangement of the
+basilica have stood. The sarcophagus in which Charles himself lay,
+till the French scattered his bones abroad, had carved on it the rape
+of Proserpine. It may still be seen in the gallery of the basilica at
+Aachen.
+
+[58] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_.
+
+[59] The coronation scene is described in all the annals of the time,
+to which it is therefore needless to refer more particularly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+EMPIRE AND POLICY OF CHARLES.
+
+
+The coronation of Charles is not only the central event of the Middle
+Ages, it is also one of those very few events of which, taking them
+singly, it may be said that if they had not happened, the history of
+the world would have been different. In one sense indeed it has
+scarcely a parallel. The assassins of Julius Caesar thought that they
+had saved Rome from monarchy, but monarchy came inevitable in the next
+generation. The conversion of Constantine changed the face of the
+world, but Christianity was spreading fast, and its ultimate triumph
+was only a question of time. Had Columbus never spread his sails, the
+secret of the western sea would yet have been pierced by some later
+voyager: had Charles V broken his safe-conduct to Luther, the voice
+silenced at Wittenberg would have been taken up by echoes elsewhere.
+But if the Roman Empire had not been restored in the West in the
+person of Charles, it would never have been restored at all, and the
+inexhaustible train of consequences for good and for evil that
+followed could not have been. Why this was so may be seen by examining
+the history of the next two centuries. In that day, as through all the
+Dark and Middle Ages, two forces were striving for the mastery. The
+one was the instinct of separation, disorder, anarchy, caused by the
+ungoverned impulses and barbarous ignorance of the great bulk of
+mankind; the other was that passionate longing of the better minds for
+a formal unity of government, which had its historical basis in the
+memories of the old Roman Empire, and its most constant expression in
+the devotion to a visible and catholic Church. The former tendency, as
+everything shews, was, in politics at least, the stronger, but the
+latter, used and stimulated by an extraordinary genius like Charles,
+achieved in the year 800 a victory whose results were never to be
+lost. When the hero was gone, the returning wave of anarchy and
+barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could not wholly obliterate
+the past: the Empire, maimed and shattered though it was, had struck
+its roots too deep to be overthrown by force, and when it perished at
+last, perished from inner decay. It was just because men felt that no
+one less than Charles could have won such a triumph over the evils of
+the time, by framing and establishing a gigantic scheme of government,
+that the excitement and hope and joy which the coronation evoked were
+so intense. Their best evidence is perhaps to be found not in the
+records of that time itself, but in the cries of lamentation that
+broke forth when the Empire began to dissolve towards the close of the
+ninth century, in the marvellous legends which attached themselves to
+the name of Charles the Emperor, a hero of whom any exploit was
+credible[60], in the devout admiration wherewith his German successors
+looked back to, and strove in all things to imitate, their all but
+superhuman prototype.
+
+[Sidenote: Import of the coronation.]
+
+As the event of A.D. 800 made an unparalleled impression on those who
+lived at the time, so has it engaged the attention of men in
+succeeding ages, has been viewed in the most opposite lights, and
+become the theme of interminable controversies. It is better to look
+at it simply as it appeared to the men who witnessed it. Here, as in
+so many other cases, may be seen the errors into which jurists have
+been led by the want of historical feeling. In rude and unsettled
+states of society men respect forms and obey facts, while careless of
+rules and principles. In England, for example, in the eleventh and
+twelfth centuries, it signified very little whether an aspirant to the
+throne was next lawful heir, but it signified a great deal whether he
+had been duly crowned and was supported by a strong party. Regarding
+the matter thus, it is not hard to see why those who judged the actors
+of A.D. 800 as they would have judged their contemporaries should have
+misunderstood the nature of that which then came to pass. Baronius and
+Bellarmine, Spanheim and Conring, are advocates bound to prove a
+thesis, and therefore believing it; nor does either party find any
+lack of plausible arguments[61]. But civilian and canonist alike
+proceed upon strict legal principles, and no such principles can be
+found in the case, or applied to it. Neither the instances cited by
+the Cardinal from the Old Testament of the power of priests to set up
+and pull down princes, nor those which shew the earlier Emperors
+controlling the bishops of Rome, really meet the question. Leo acted
+not as having alone the right to transfer the crown; the practice of
+hereditary succession and the theory of popular election would have
+equally excluded such a claim; he was the spokesman of the popular
+will, which, identifying itself with the sacerdotal power, hated the
+Greeks and was grateful to the Franks. Yet he was also something more.
+The act, as it specially affected his interests, was mainly his work,
+and without him would never have been brought about at all. It was
+natural that a confusion of his secular functions as leader, and his
+spiritual as consecrating priest, should lay the foundation of the
+right claimed afterwards of raising and deposing monarchs at the will
+of Christ's vicar. The Emperor was passive throughout; he did not, as
+in Lombardy, appear as a conqueror, but was received by the Pope and
+the people as a friend and ally. Rome no doubt became his capital, but
+it had already obeyed him as Patrician, and the greatest fact that
+stood out to posterity from the whole transaction was that the crown
+was bestowed, was at least imposed, by the hands of the pontiff. He
+seemed the trustee and depositary of the imperial authority[62].
+
+[Sidenote: Contemporary accounts.]
+
+The best way of shewing the thoughts and motives of those concerned in
+the transaction is to transcribe the narratives of three contemporary,
+or almost contemporary annalists, two of them German and one Italian.
+The Annals of Lauresheim say:--
+
+'And because the name of Emperor had now ceased among the Greeks, and
+their Empire was possessed by a woman, it then seemed both to Leo the
+Pope himself, and to all the holy fathers who were present in the
+selfsame council, as well as to the rest of the Christian people, that
+they ought to take to be Emperor Charles king of the Franks, who held
+Rome herself, where the Caesars had always been wont to sit, and all
+the other regions which he ruled through Italy and Gaul and Germany;
+and inasmuch as God had given all these lands into his hand, it seemed
+right that with the help of God and at the prayer of the whole
+Christian people he should have the name of Emperor also. Whose
+petition king Charles willed not to refuse, but submitting himself
+with all humility to God, and at the prayer of the priests and of the
+whole Christian people, on the day of the nativity of our Lord Jesus
+Christ he took on himself the name of Emperor, being consecrated by
+the lord Pope Leo[63].'
+
+Very similar in substance is the account of the Chronicle of Moissac
+(ad ann. 801):--
+
+'Now when the king upon the most holy day of the Lord's birth was
+rising to the mass after praying before the confession of the blessed
+Peter the Apostle, Leo the Pope, with the consent of all the bishops
+and priests and of the senate of the Franks and likewise of the
+Romans, set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also
+shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the
+Laudes, he was adored by the Pope after the manner of the emperors of
+old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said
+Emperor abode at Rome certain men were brought unto him, who said that
+the name of Emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them
+the Empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid
+hold on her son the Emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the
+Empire to herself, as it is written of Athaliah in the Book of the
+Kings; which when Leo the Pope and all the assembly of the bishops and
+priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the
+elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian
+people, that they should name Charles king of the Franks to be
+Emperor, seeing that he held Rome the mother of empire where the
+Caesars and Emperors were always used to sit; and that the heathen
+might not mock the Christians if the name of Emperor should have
+ceased among the Christians[64].'
+
+These two accounts are both from a German source: that which follows
+is Roman, written probably within some fifty or sixty years of the
+event. It is taken from the Life of Leo III in the _Vitae Pontificum
+Romanorum_, compiled by Anastasius the papal librarian.
+
+'After these things came the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus
+Christ, and all men were again gathered together in the aforesaid
+basilica of the blessed Peter the Apostle: and then the gracious and
+venerable pontiff did with his own hands crown Charles with a very
+precious crown. Then all the faithful people of Rome, seeing the
+defence that he gave and the love that he bare to the holy Roman
+Church and her Vicar, did by the will of God and of the blessed Peter,
+the keeper of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, cry with one accord
+with a loud voice, 'To Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned of
+God, the great and peacegiving Emperor, be life and victory.' While
+he, before the holy confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, was
+invoking divers saints, it was proclaimed thrice, and he was chosen by
+all to be Emperor of the Romans. Thereon the most holy pontiff
+anointed Charles with holy oil, and likewise his most excellent son to
+be king, upon the very day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; and
+when the mass was finished, then after the mass the most serene lord
+Emperor offered gifts[65].'
+
+[Sidenote: Impression which they convey.]
+
+[Sidenote: Later theories respecting the coronation.]
+
+In these three accounts there is no serious discrepancy as to the
+facts, although the Italian priest, as is natural, heightens the
+importance of the part played by the Pope, while the Germans are too
+anxious to rationalize the event, talking of a synod of the clergy, a
+consultation of the people, and a formal request to Charles, which the
+silence of Eginhard, as well as the other circumstances of the case,
+forbid us to accept as literally true. Similarly Anastasius passes
+over the adoration rendered by the Pope to the Emperor, upon which
+most of the Frankish records insist in a way which puts it beyond
+doubt. But the impression which the three narratives leave is
+essentially the same. They all shew how little the transaction can be
+made to wear a strictly legal character. The Frankish king does not of
+his own might seize the crown, but rather receives it as coming
+naturally to him, as the legitimate consequence of the authority he
+already enjoyed. The Pope bestows the crown, not in virtue of any
+right of his own as head of the Church: he is merely the instrument of
+God's providence, which has unmistakeably pointed out Charles as the
+proper person to defend and lead the Christian commonwealth. The Roman
+people do not formally elect and appoint, but by their applause accept
+the chief who is presented to them. The act is conceived of as
+directly ordered by the Divine Providence which has brought about a
+state of things that admits of but one issue, an issue which king,
+priest, and people have only to recognise and obey; their personal
+ambitions, passions, intrigues, sinking and vanishing in reverential
+awe at what seems the immediate interposition of Heaven. And as the
+result is desired by all parties alike, they do not think of inquiring
+into one another's rights, but take their momentary harmony to be
+natural and necessary, never dreaming of the difficulties and
+conflicts which were to arise out of what seemed then so simple. And
+it was just because everything was thus left undetermined, resting not
+on express stipulation but rather on a sort of mutual understanding, a
+sympathy of beliefs and wishes which augured no evil, that the event
+admitted of being afterwards represented in so many different lights.
+Four centuries later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced into the
+mortal struggle by which the fate of both was decided, three distinct
+theories regarding the coronation of Charles will be found advocated
+by three different parties, all of them plausible, all of them to some
+extent misleading. The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have been
+won by their great predecessor as the prize of conquest, and drew the
+conclusion that the citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as
+against themselves. The patriotic party among the Romans, appealing to
+the early history of the Empire, declared that by nothing but the
+voice of their senate and people could an Emperor be lawfully created,
+he being only their chief magistrate, the temporary depositary of
+their authority. The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact that Leo
+imposed the crown, and argued that as God's earthly vicar it was then
+his, and must always continue to be their right to give to whomsoever
+they would an office which was created to be the handmaid of their
+own. Of these three it was the last view that eventually prevailed,
+yet to an impartial eye it cannot claim, any more than do the two
+others, to contain the whole truth. Charles did not conquer, nor the
+Pope give, nor the people elect. As the act was unprecedented so was
+it illegal; it was a revolt of the ancient Western capital against a
+daughter who had become a mistress; an exercise of the sacred right of
+insurrection, justified by the weakness and wickedness of the
+Byzantine princes, hallowed to the eyes of the world by the sanction
+of Christ's representative, but founded upon no law, nor competent to
+create any for the future.
+
+[Sidenote: Was the coronation a surprise?]
+
+It is an interesting and somewhat perplexing question, how far the
+coronation scene, an act as imposing in its circumstances as it was
+momentous in its results, was prearranged among the parties. Eginhard
+tells us that Charles was accustomed to declare that he would not,
+even on so high a festival, have entered the church had he known of
+the Pope's intention. Even if the monarch had uttered, the secretary
+would hardly have recorded a falsehood long after the motive that
+might have prompted it had disappeared. Of the existence of that
+motive which has been most commonly assumed, a fear of the discontent
+of the Franks who might think their liberties endangered, little or no
+proof can be brought from the records of the time, wherein the nation
+is represented as exulting in the new dignity of their chief as an
+accession of grandeur to themselves. Nor can we suppose that Charles's
+disavowal was meant to soothe the offended pride of the Byzantine
+princes, from whom he had nothing to fear, and who were none the more
+likely to recognise his dignity, if they should believe it to be not
+of his own seeking. Yet it is hard to suppose the whole affair a
+surprise; for it was the goal towards which the policy of the Frankish
+kings had for many years pointed, and Charles himself, in sending
+before him to Rome many of the spiritual and temporal magnates of his
+realm, in summoning thither his son Pipin from the war against the
+Lombards of Benevento, had shewn that he expected some more than
+ordinary result from this journey to the imperial city. Alcuin
+moreover, Alcuin of York, the prime minister of Charles in matters
+religious and literary, appears from one of his extant letters to have
+sent as a Christmas gift to his royal pupil a carefully corrected and
+superbly adorned copy of the Scriptures, with the words 'ad splendorem
+imperialis potentiae.' This has commonly been taken for conclusive
+evidence that the plan had been settled beforehand, and such it would
+be were there not some reasons for giving the letter an earlier date,
+and looking upon the word 'imperialis' as a mere magniloquent
+flourish[66]. More weight is therefore to be laid upon the arguments
+supplied by the nature of the case itself. The Pope, whatever his
+confidence in the sympathy of the people, would never have ventured on
+so momentous a step until previous conferences had assured him of the
+feelings of the king, nor could an act for which the assembly were
+evidently prepared have been kept a secret. Nevertheless, the
+declaration of Charles himself can neither be evaded nor set down to
+mere dissimulation. It is more just to him, and on the whole more
+reasonable, to suppose that Leo, having satisfied himself of the
+wishes of the Roman clergy and people as well as of the Frankish
+magnates, resolved to seize an occasion and place so eminently
+favourable to his long-cherished plan, while Charles, carried away by
+the enthusiasm of the moment and seeing in the pontiff the prophet and
+instrument of the divine will, accepted a dignity which he might have
+wished to receive at some later time or in some other way. If,
+therefore, any positive conclusion be adopted, it would seem to be
+that Charles, although he had probably given a more or less vague
+consent to the project, was surprised and disconcerted by a sudden
+fulfilment which interrupted his own carefully studied designs. And
+although a deed which changed the history of the world was in any case
+no accident, it may well have worn to the Frankish and Roman
+spectators the air of a surprise. For there were no preparations
+apparent in the church; the king was not, like his Teutonic successors
+in aftertime, led in procession to the pontifical throne: suddenly, at
+the very moment when he rose from the sacred hollow where he had knelt
+among the ever-burning lamps before the holiest of Christian
+relics--the body of the prince of the Apostles--the hands of that
+Apostle's representative placed upon his head the crown of glory and
+poured upon him the oil of sanctification. There was something in this
+to thrill the beholders with the awe of a divine presence, and make
+them hail him whom that presence seemed almost visibly to consecrate,
+the 'pious and peace-giving Emperor, crowned of God.'
+
+[Sidenote: Theories of the motives of Charles.]
+
+The reluctance of Charles to assume the imperial title is ascribed by
+Eginhard to a fear of the jealous hostility of the Greeks, who could
+not only deny his claim to it, but might disturb by their intrigues
+his dominions in Italy. Accepting this statement, the problem remains,
+how is this reluctance to be reconciled with those acts of his which
+clearly shew him aiming at the Roman crown? An ingenious and probable,
+if not certain solution, is suggested by a recent historian[67], who
+argues from a minute examination of the previous policy of Charles,
+that while it was the great object of his reign to obtain the crown of
+the world, he foresaw at the same time the opposition of the Eastern
+Court, and the want of legality from which his title would in
+consequence suffer. He was therefore bent on getting from the
+Byzantines, if possible, a transference of their crown; if not, at
+least a recognition of his own: and he appears to have hoped to win
+this by the negotiations which had been for some time kept on foot
+with the Empress Irene. Just at this moment came the coronation by
+Pope Leo, interrupting these deep-laid schemes, irritating the Eastern
+Court, and forcing Charles into the position of a rival who could not
+with dignity adopt a soothing or submissive tone. Nevertheless, he
+seems not even then to have abandoned the hope of obtaining a peaceful
+recognition. Irene's crimes did not prevent him, if we may credit
+Theophanes[68], from seeking her hand in marriage. And when the
+project of thus uniting the East and West in a single Empire, baffled
+for a time by the opposition of her minister AEtius, was rendered
+impossible by her subsequent dethronement and exile, he did not
+abandon the policy of conciliation until a surly acquiescence in
+rather than admission of his dignity had been won from the Byzantine
+sovereigns Michael and Nicephorus[69].
+
+[Sidenote: Defect in the title of the Teutonic Emperors.]
+
+Whether, supposing Leo to have been less precipitate, a cession of the
+crown, or an acknowledgment of the right of the Romans to confer it,
+could ever have been obtained by Charles is perhaps more than
+doubtful. But it is clear that he judged rightly in rating its
+importance high, for the want of it was the great blemish in his own
+and his successors' dignity. To shew how this was so, reference must
+be made to the events of A.D. 476. Both the extinction of the Western
+Empire in that year and its revival in A.D. 800 have been very
+generally misunderstood in modern times, and although the mistake is
+not, in a certain sense, of practical importance, yet it tends to
+confuse history and to blind us to the ideas of the people who acted
+on both occasions. When Odoacer compelled the abdication of Romulus
+Augustulus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a separate power,
+but caused it to be reunited with or sink into the Eastern, so that
+from that time there was, as there had been before Diocletian, a
+single undivided Roman Empire. In A.D. 800 the very memory of the
+separate Western Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theodosius
+till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been long since lost, and
+neither Leo nor Charles nor any one among their advisers dreamt of
+reviving it. They too, like their predecessors, held the Roman Empire
+to be one and indivisible, and proposed by the coronation of the
+Frankish king not to proclaim a severance of the East and West, but to
+reverse the act of Constantine, and make Old Rome again the civil as
+well as the ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her name.
+Their deed was in its essence illegal, but they sought to give it
+every semblance of legality: they professed and partly believed that
+they were not revolting against a reigning sovereign, but legitimately
+filling up the place of the deposed Constantine the Sixth; the people
+of the imperial city exercising their ancient right of choice, their
+bishop his right of consecration.
+
+Their purpose was but half accomplished. They could create but they
+could not destroy: they set up an Emperor of their own, whose
+representatives thenceforward ruled the West, but Constantinople
+retained her sovereigns as of yore; and Christendom saw henceforth two
+imperial lines, not as in the time before A.D. 476, the conjoint heads
+of a single realm, but rivals and enemies, each denouncing the other
+as an impostor, each professing to be the only true and lawful head of
+the Christian Church and people. Although therefore we must in
+practice speak during the next seven centuries (down till A.D. 1453,
+when Constantinople fell before the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a
+Western Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and was one
+which either court ought to have repudiated. The Byzantines always did
+repudiate it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to facts, they
+sometimes condescended to employ it themselves. But their theory was
+always the same. Charles was held to be the legitimate successor, not
+of Romulus Augustulus, but of Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius,
+and all the Eastern line; and hence it is that in all the annals of
+the time and of many succeeding centuries, the name of Constantine VI,
+the sixty-seventh in order from Augustus, is followed without a break
+by that of Charles, the sixty-eighth.
+
+[Sidenote: Government of Charles as Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: His authority in matters ecclesiastical.]
+
+The maintenance of an imperial line among the Greeks was a continuing
+protest against the validity of Charles's title. But from their enmity
+he had little to fear, and in the eyes of the world he seemed to step
+into their place, adding the traditional dignity which had been theirs
+to the power that he already enjoyed. North Italy and Rome ceased for
+ever to own the supremacy of Byzantium; and while the Eastern princes
+paid a shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish Emperor--as the
+recognised head of Christendom--received from the patriarch of
+Jerusalem the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner of Calvary;
+the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says Eginhard, from Aaron king of
+the Persians[70]. Out of this peaceful intercourse with the great
+Khalif the romancers created a crusade. Within his own dominions his
+sway assumed a more sacred character. Already had his unwearied and
+comprehensive activity made him throughout his reign an ecclesiastical
+no less than a civil ruler, summoning and sitting in councils,
+examining and appointing bishops, settling by capitularies the
+smallest points of church discipline and polity. A synod held at
+Frankfort in A.D. 794 condemned the decrees of the second council of
+Nicaea, which had been approved by Pope Hadrian, censured in violent
+terms the conduct of the Byzantine rulers in suggesting them, and
+without excluding images from churches, altogether forbade them to be
+worshipped or even venerated. Not only did Charles preside in and
+direct the deliberations of this synod, although legates from the Pope
+were present--he also caused a treatise to be drawn up stating and
+urging its conclusions; he pressed Hadrian to declare Constantine VI a
+heretic for enouncing doctrines to which Hadrian had himself
+consented. There are letters of his extant in which he lectures Pope
+Leo in a tone of easy superiority, admonishes him to obey the holy
+canons, and bids him pray earnestly for the success of the efforts
+which it is the monarch's duty to make for the subjugation of pagans
+and the establishment of sound doctrine throughout the Church. Nay,
+subsequent Popes themselves[71] admitted and applauded the despotic
+superintendence of matters spiritual which he was wont to exercise,
+and which led some one to give him playfully a title that had once
+been applied to the Pope himself, 'Episcopus episcoporum.'
+
+[Sidenote: The imperial office in its ecclesiastical relations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Capitulary of A.D. 802.]
+
+Acting and speaking thus when merely king, it may be thought that
+Charles needed no further title to justify his power. The inference is
+in truth rather the converse of this. Upon what he had done already
+the imperial title must necessarily follow: the attitude of protection
+and control which he held towards the Church and the Holy See
+belonged, according to the ideas of the time, especially and only to
+an Emperor. Therefore his coronation was the fitting completion and
+legitimation of his authority, sanctifying rather than increasing it.
+We have, however, one remarkable witness to the importance that was
+attached to the imperial name, and the enhancement which he conceived
+his office to have received from it. In a great assembly held at
+Aachen, A.D. 802, the lately-crowned Emperor revised the laws of all
+the races that obeyed him, endeavouring to harmonize and correct them,
+and issued a capitulary singular in subject and tone[72]. All persons
+within his dominions, as well ecclesiastical as civil, who have
+already sworn allegiance to him as king, are thereby commanded to
+swear to him afresh as Caesar; and all who have never yet sworn, down
+to the age of twelve, shall now take the same oath. 'At the same time
+it shall be publicly explained to all what is the force and meaning of
+this oath, and how much more it includes than a mere promise of
+fidelity to the monarch's person. Firstly, it binds those who swear it
+to live, each and every one of them, according to his strength and
+knowledge, in the holy service of God; since the lord Emperor cannot
+extend over all his care and discipline. Secondly, it binds them
+neither by force nor fraud to seize or molest any of the goods or
+servants of his crown. Thirdly, to do no violence nor treason towards
+the holy Church, or to widows, or orphans, or strangers, seeing that
+the lord Emperor has been appointed, after the Lord and his saints,
+the protector and defender of all such.' Then in similar fashion
+purity of life is prescribed to the monks; homicide, the neglect of
+hospitality, and other offences are denounced, the notions of sin and
+crime being intermingled and almost identified in a way to which no
+parallel can be found, unless it be in the Mosaic code. There God, the
+invisible object of worship, is also, though almost incidentally, the
+judge and political ruler of Israel; here the whole cycle of social
+and moral duty is deduced from the obligation of obedience to the
+visible autocratic head of the Christian state.
+
+In most of Charles's words and deeds, nor less distinctly in the
+writings of his adviser Alcuin, may be discerned the working of the
+same theocratic ideas. Among his intimate friends he chose to be
+called by the name of David, exercising in reality all the powers of
+the Jewish king; presiding over this kingdom of God upon earth rather
+as a second Constantine or Theodosius than in the spirit and
+traditions of the Julii or the Flavii. Among his measures there are
+two which in particular recall the first Christian Emperor. As
+Constantine founds so Charles erects on a firmer basis the connection
+of Church and State. Bishops and abbots are as essential a part of
+rising feudalism as counts and dukes. Their benefices are held under
+the same conditions of fealty and the service in war of their vassal
+tenants, not of the spiritual person himself: they have similar rights
+of jurisdiction, and are subject alike to the imperial _missi_. The
+monarch tries often to restrict the clergy, as persons, to spiritual
+duties; quells the insubordination of the monasteries; endeavours to
+bring the seculars into a monastic life by instituting and regulating
+chapters. But after granting wealth and power, the attempt was vain;
+his strong hand withdrawn, they laughed at control. Again, it was by
+him first that the payment of tithes, for which the priesthood had
+long been pleading, was made compulsory in Western Europe, and the
+support of the ministers of religion entrusted to the laws of the
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the imperial title in Germany and Gaul.]
+
+[Sidenote: Action of Charles on Europe.]
+
+In civil affairs also Charles acquired, with the imperial title, a new
+position. Later jurists labour to distinguish his power as Roman
+Emperor from that which he held already as king of the Franks and
+their subject allies: they insist that his coronation gave him the
+capital only, that it is absurd to talk of a Roman Empire in regions
+whither the eagles had never flown[73]. In such expressions there
+seems to lurk either confusion or misconception. It was not the actual
+government of the city that Charles obtained in A.D. 800: that his
+father had already held as Patrician and he had constantly exercised
+in the same capacity: it was far more than the titular sovereignty of
+Rome which had hitherto been supposed to be vested in the Byzantine
+princes: it was nothing less than the headship of the world, believed
+to appertain of right to the lawful Roman Emperor, whether he reigned
+on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Rhine. As that headship, although
+never denied, had been in abeyance in the West for several centuries,
+its bestowal on the king of so vast a realm was a change of the first
+moment, for it made the coronation not merely a transference of the
+seat of Empire, but a renewal of the Empire itself, a bringing back of
+it from faith to sight, from the world of belief and theory to the
+world of fact and reality. And since the powers it gave were
+autocratic and unlimited, it must swallow up all minor claims and
+dignities: the rights of Charles the Frankish king were merged in
+those of Charles the successor of Augustus, the lord of the world.
+That his imperial authority was theoretically irrespective of place is
+clear from his own words and acts, and from all the monuments of that
+time. He would not, indeed, have dreamed of treating the free Franks
+as Justinian had treated his half-Oriental subjects, nor would the
+warriors who followed his standard have brooked such an attempt. Yet
+even to German eyes his position must have been altered by the halo of
+vague splendour which now surrounded him; for all, even the Saxon and
+the Slave, had heard of Rome's glories, and revered the name of Caesar.
+And in his effort to weld discordant elements into one body, to
+introduce regular gradations of authority, to control the Teutonic
+tendency to localization by his _missi_--officials commissioned to
+traverse each some part of his dominions, reporting on and redressing
+the evils they found--and by his own oft-repeated personal progresses,
+Charles was guided by the traditions of the old Empire. His sway is
+the revival of order and culture, fusing the West into a compact
+whole, whose parts are never thenceforward to lose the marks of their
+connection and their half-Roman character, gathering up all that is
+left in Europe of spirit and wealth and knowledge, and hurling it with
+the new force of Christianity on the infidel of the South and the
+masses of untamed barbarism to the North and East. Ruling the world by
+the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of the Romans and their
+Caesar whom God had chosen to conquer it, he renews the original
+aggressive movement of the Empire: the civilized world has subdued her
+invader[74], and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence
+the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons,
+Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses
+and baptism the badge of submission. The overthrow of the
+Irminsul[75], in the first Saxon campaign[76], sums up the changes of
+seven centuries. The Romanized Teuton destroys the monument of his
+country's freedom, for it is also the emblem of paganism and
+barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor.
+
+[Sidenote: His position as Frankish king.]
+
+This, however, is not the only side from which Charles's policy and
+character may be regarded. If the unity of the Church and the shadow
+of imperial prerogative was one pillar of his power, the other was the
+Frankish nation. The Empire was still military, though in a sense
+strangely different from that of Julius or Severus. The warlike Franks
+had permeated Western Europe; their primacy was admitted by the
+kindred tribes of Lombards, Bavarians, Thuringians, Alemannians, and
+Burgundians; the Slavic peoples on the borders trembled and paid
+tribute; Alfonso of Asturias found in the Emperor a protector against
+the infidel foe. His influence, if not his exerted power, crossed the
+ocean: the kings of the Scots sent gifts and called him lord[77]: the
+restoration of Eardulf to Northumbria, still more of Egbert to Wessex,
+might furnish a better ground for the claim of suzerainty than many to
+which his successors had afterwards recourse. As it was by Frankish
+arms that this predominance in Europe which the imperial title adorned
+and legalized had been won, so was the government of Charles Roman in
+semblance rather than in fact. It was not by restoring the effete
+mechanism of the old Empire, but by his own vigorous personal action
+and that of his great officers, that he strove to administer and
+reform. With every effort for a strong central government, there is no
+despotism; each nation retains its laws, its hereditary chiefs, its
+free popular assemblies. The conditions granted to the Saxons after
+such cruel warfare, conditions so favourable that in the next century
+their dukes hold the foremost place in Germany, shew how little he
+desired to make the Franks a dominant caste.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of his Empire.]
+
+He repeats the attempt of Theodoric to breathe a Teutonic spirit into
+Roman forms. The conception was magnificent; great results followed
+its partial execution. Two causes forbade success. The one was the
+ecclesiastical, especially the Papal power, apparently subject to the
+temporal, but with a strong and undefined prerogative which only
+waited the occasion to trample on what it had helped to raise. The
+Pope might take away the crown he had bestowed, and turn against the
+Emperor the Church which now obeyed him. The other was to be found in
+the discordance of the component parts of the Empire. The nations were
+not ripe for settled life or extensive schemes of polity; the
+differences of race, language, manners, over vast and thinly-peopled
+lands baffled every attempt to maintain their connection: and when
+once the spell of the great mind was withdrawn, the mutually repellent
+forces began to work, and the mass dissolved into that chaos out of
+which it had been formed. Nevertheless, the parts separated not as
+they met, but having all of them undergone influences which continued
+to act when political connection had ceased. For the work of
+Charles--a genius pre-eminently creative--was not lost in the anarchy
+that followed: rather are we to regard his reign as the beginning of a
+new era, or as laying the foundations whereon men continued for many
+generations to build.
+
+[Sidenote: Personal habits and sympathies.]
+
+No claim can be more groundless than that which the modern French, the
+sons of the Latinized Kelt, set up to the Teutonic Charles. At Rome he
+might assume the chlamys and the sandals, but at the head of his
+Frankish host he strictly adhered to the customs of his country, and
+was beloved by his people as the very ideal of their own character and
+habits[78]. Of strength and stature almost superhuman, in swimming and
+hunting unsurpassed, steadfast and terrible in fight, to his friends
+gentle and condescending, he was a Roman, much less a Gaul, in nothing
+but his culture and his width of view, otherwise a Teuton. The centre
+of his realm was the Rhine; his capitals Aachen[79] and
+Engilenheim[80]; his army Frankish; his sympathies as they are shewn
+in the gathering of the old hero-lays[81], the composition of a German
+grammar, the ordinance against confining prayer to the three
+languages,--Hebrew, Greek, and Latin,--were all for the race from
+which he sprang, and whose advance, represented by the victory of
+Austrasia, the true Frankish fatherland, over Neustria and Aquitaine,
+spread a second Germanic wave over the conquered countries.
+
+[Sidenote: His Empire and character generally.]
+
+There were in his Empire, as in his own mind, two elements; those two
+from the union and mutual action and reaction of which modern
+civilization has arisen. These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to
+the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the Liris, were all the
+conquests of the Frankish sword, and were still governed almost
+exclusively by viceroys and officers of Frankish blood. But the
+conception of the Empire, that which made it a State and not a mere
+mass of subject tribes like those great Eastern dominions which rise
+and perish in a lifetime, the realms of Sesostris, or Attila, or
+Timur, was inherited from an older and a grander system, was not
+Teutonic but Roman--Roman in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and
+precision, in its endeavour to subject the individual to the
+system--Roman in its effort to realize a certain limited and human
+perfection, whose very completeness shall exclude the hope of further
+progress. And the bond, too, by which the Empire was held together was
+Roman in its origin, although Roman in a sense which would have
+surprised Trajan or Severus, could it have been foretold them. The
+ecclesiastical body was already organized and centralized, and it was
+in his rule over the ecclesiastical body that the secret of Charles's
+power lay. Every Christian--Frank, Gaul, or Italian--owed loyalty to
+the head and defender of his religion: the unity of the Empire was a
+reflection of the unity of the Church.
+
+Into a general view of the government and policy of Charles it is not
+possible here to enter. Yet his legislation, his assemblies, his
+administrative system, his magnificent works, recalling the projects
+of Alexander and Caesar[82], the zeal for education and literature
+which he shewed in the collection of manuscripts, the founding of
+schools, the gathering of eminent men from all quarters around him,
+cannot be appreciated apart from his position as restorer of the Roman
+Empire. Like all the foremost men of our race, Charles was all great
+things in one, and was so great just because the workings of his
+genius were so harmonious. He was not a mere barbarian warrior any
+more than he was an astute diplomatist; there is none of all his
+qualities which would not be forced out of its place were we to
+characterize him chiefly by it. Comparisons between famous men of
+different ages are generally as worthless as they are easy: the
+circumstances among which Charles lived do not permit us to institute
+a minute parallel between his greatness and that of those two to whom
+it is the modern fashion to compare him, nor to say whether he was or
+could have become as profound a politician as Caesar, as skilful a
+commander as Napoleon[83]. But neither to the Roman nor to the
+Corsican was he inferior in that one quality by which both he and they
+chiefly impress our imaginations--that intense, vivid, unresting
+energy which swept him over Europe in campaign after campaign, which
+sought a field for its workings in theology, science, literature, no
+less than in politics and war. As it was this wondrous activity that
+made him the conqueror of Europe, so was it by the variety of his
+culture that he became her civilizer. From him, in whose wide deep
+mind the whole mediaeval theory of the world and human life mirrored
+itself, did mediaeval society take the form and impress which it
+retained for centuries, and the traces whereof are among us and upon
+us to this day.
+
+The great Emperor was buried at Aachen, in that basilica which it had
+been the delight of his later years to erect and adorn with the
+treasures of ancient art. His tomb under the dome--where now we see an
+enormous slab, with the words 'Carolo Magno'--was inscribed, '_Magnus
+atque Orthodoxus Imperator_[84].' Poets, fostered by his own zeal,
+sang of him who had given to the Franks the sway of Romulus[85]. The
+gorgeous drapery of romance gradually wreathed itself round his name,
+till by canonization as a saint he received the highest glory the
+world or the Church could confer. For the Roman Church claimed then,
+as she claims still, the privilege which humanity in one form or
+another seems scarce able to deny itself, of raising to honours almost
+divine its great departed; and as in pagan times temples had risen to
+a deified Emperor, so churches were dedicated to St. Charlemagne.
+Between Sanctus Carolus and Divus Julius how strange an analogy and
+how strange a contrast!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[60] Before the end of the tenth century we find the monk Benedict of
+Soracte ascribing to Charles an expedition to Palestine, and other
+marvellous exploits. The romance which passes under the name of
+Archbishop Turpin is well known. All the best stories about
+Charles--and some of them are very good--may be found in the book of
+the Monk of St. Gall. Many refer to his dealings with the bishops,
+towards whom he is described as acting like a good-humoured
+schoolmaster.
+
+[61] Baronius, _Ann._, ad ann. 800; Bellarminus, _De translatione
+imperii Romani adversus Illyricum_; Spanhemius, _De ficta translatione
+imperii_; Conringius, _De imperio Romano Germanico_.
+
+[62] See especially Greenwood, _Cathedra Petri_, vol. iii. p. 109.
+
+[63] _Ann. Lauresb. ap._ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[64] _Apud_ Pertz, _M. G. H._ i.
+
+[65] _Vitae Pontif._ in Mur. _S. R. I._ Anastasius in reporting the
+shout of the people omits the word 'Romanorum,' which the other
+annalists insert after 'imperatori.' The balance of probability is
+certainly in his favour.
+
+[66] Lorentz, _Leben Alcuins_. And cf. Doellinger, _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_.
+
+[67] See a very learned and interesting tract entitled _Das Kaiserthum
+Karls des Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_, recently published by Dr. v.
+Doellinger of Munich.
+
+[68] [Greek: Apokrisiarioi para Karoullou kai Leontos aitoumenoi
+zeuchthenai auten to Karoullo pros gamon kai henosai ta Heoa kai ta
+Hesperia.]--Theoph. _Chron._ in _Corp. Scriptt. Hist. Byz._
+
+[69] Their ambassadors at last saluted him by the desired title
+'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum et basileum appellantes.' Eginh.
+_Ann._, ad ann. 812.
+
+[70] Harun er Rashid; Eginh. _Vita Karoli_, c. 16.
+
+[71] So Pope John VIII in a document quoted by Waitz, _Deutsche
+Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+
+[72] Pertz, _M. G. H._ iii. (legg. I.)
+
+[73] Puetter, _Historical Development of the German Constitution_; so
+too Conring, and esp. David Blondel, _Adv. Chiffletium_.
+
+[74] 'Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit,' is repeated in this conquest
+of the Teuton by the Roman.
+
+[75] The notion that once prevailed that the Irminsul was the 'pillar
+of Hermann,' set up on the spot of the defeat of Varus, is now
+generally discredited. Some German antiquaries take the pillar to be a
+rude figure of the native god Irmin; but nothing seems to be known of
+this alleged deity: and it is more probable that the name Irmin is
+after all merely an altered form of the Keltic word which appears in
+Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone (_Maen_, a stone). Thus the pillar,
+so far from being the monument of the great Teutonic victory, would
+commemorate a pre-Teutonic race, whose name for it the invading tribes
+adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott, of Westminster, to whose kindness I am
+indebted for this explanation, informs me that a rude ditty recording
+the destruction of the pillar by Charles was current on the spot a few
+years ago. It ran thus:--
+
+ 'Irmin slad Irmin
+ Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen
+ Der Kaiser wird kommen
+ Mit Hammer und Stangen
+ Wird Irmin uphangen.'
+
+[76] Eginhard, _Ann_.
+
+[77] Most probably the Scots of Ireland--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+16.
+
+[78] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 23.
+
+[79] Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz (_M. G. H._ ii.),
+beginning,--
+
+ 'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis,
+ Sedes regni principalis,
+ Prima regum curia.'
+
+This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth
+century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English
+name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do
+not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name
+Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place
+is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing
+for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name.
+
+[80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine
+between Mentz and Bingen.
+
+[81] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 29.
+
+[82] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 17.
+
+[83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern
+French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been
+foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.
+
+[84] This basilica was built upon the model of the church of the Holy
+Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and as it was the first church of any size
+that had been erected in those regions for centuries past, it excited
+extraordinary interest among the Franks and Gauls. In many of its
+features it greatly resembles the beautiful church of San Vitale, at
+Ravenna (also modelled upon that of the Holy Sepulchre) which was
+begun by Theodoric, and completed under Justinian. Probably San Vitale
+was used as a pattern by Charles's architects: we know that he caused
+marble columns to be brought from Ravenna to deck the church at
+Aachen. Over the tomb of Charles, below the central dome (to which the
+Gothic choir we now see was added some centuries later), there hangs a
+huge chandelier, the gift of Frederick Barbarossa.
+
+[85] 'Romuleum Francis praestitit imperium.'--Elegy of Ermoldus
+Nigellus, in Pertz; _M. G. H._, t. i. So too Florus the Deacon,--
+
+ 'Huic etenim cessit etiam gens Romula genti,
+ Regnorumque simul mater Roma inclyta cessit:
+ Huius ibi princeps regni diademata sumpsit
+ Munere apostolico, Christi munimine fretus.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+CAROLINGIAN AND ITALIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis the Pious.]
+
+[Sidenote: Partition of Verdun, A.D. 843.]
+
+Lewis the Pious[86], left by Charles's death sole heir, had been some
+years before associated with his father in the Empire, and had been
+crowned by his own hands in a way which, intentionally or not,
+appeared to deny the need of Papal sanction. But it was soon seen that
+the strength to grasp the sceptre had not passed with it. Too mild to
+restrain his turbulent nobles, and thrown by over-conscientiousness
+into the hands of the clergy, he had reigned few years when
+dissensions broke out on all sides. Charles had wished the Empire to
+continue one, under the supremacy of a single Emperor, but with its
+several parts, Lombardy, Aquitaine, Austrasia, Bavaria, each a kingdom
+held by a scion of the reigning house. A scheme dangerous in itself,
+and rendered more so by the absence or neglect of regular rules of
+succession, could with difficulty have been managed by a wise and firm
+monarch. Lewis tried in vain to satisfy his sons (Lothar, Lewis, and
+Charles) by dividing and redividing: they rebelled; he was deposed,
+and forced by the bishops to do penance; again restored, but without
+power, a tool in the hands of contending factions. On his death the
+sons flew to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of modern
+Europe was fought out on the field of Fontenay. In the partition
+treaty of Verdun which followed, the Teutonic principle of equal
+division among heirs triumphed over the Roman one of the transmission
+of an indivisible Empire: the practical sovereignty of all three
+brothers was admitted in their respective territories, a barren
+precedence only reserved to Lothar, with the imperial title which he,
+as the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important result was the
+separation of the Gaulish and German nationalities. Their difference
+of feeling, shewn already in the support of Lewis the Pious by the
+Germans against the Gallo-Franks and the Church[87], took now a
+permanent shape: modern Germany proclaims the era of A.D. 843 the
+beginning of her national existence, and celebrated its thousandth
+anniversary twenty-seven years ago. To Charles the Bald was given
+Francia Occidentalis, that is to say, Neustria and Aquitaine; to
+Lothar, who as Emperor must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
+a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the North Sea to the
+Mediterranean, and including the northern half of Italy: Lewis
+(surnamed, from his kingdom, the German) received all east of the
+Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Carinthia, with possible
+supremacies over Czechs and Moravians beyond. Throughout these regions
+German was spoken; through Charles's kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally
+removed from Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being mixed and
+having no national basis, was the weakest of the three, and soon
+dissolved into the separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy, and
+Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine.
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Carolingian Empire of the West, A.D. 888.]
+
+On the tangled history of the period that follows it is not possible
+to do more than touch. After passing from one branch of the
+Carolingian line to another[88], the imperial sceptre was at last
+possessed and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all the
+dominions of his great-grandfather. This unworthy heir could not avail
+himself of recovered territory to strengthen or defend the expiring
+monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A.D. 887, and his death in 888
+has been usually taken as the date of the extinction of the
+Carolingian Empire of the West. The Germans, still attached to the
+ancient line, chose Arnulf, an illegitimate Carolingian, for their
+king: he entered Italy and was crowned Emperor by his partizan Pope
+Formosus, in 894. But Germany, divided and helpless, was in no
+condition to maintain her power over the southern lands: Arnulf
+retreated in haste, leaving Rome and Italy to sixty years of stormy
+independence.
+
+That time was indeed the nadir of order and civilization. From all
+sides the torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had stemmed was
+rushing down upon his empire. The Saracen wasted the Mediterranean
+coasts, and sacked Rome herself. The Dane and Norseman swept the
+Atlantic and the North Sea, pierced France and Germany by their
+rivers, burning, slaying, carrying off into captivity: pouring through
+the Straits of Gibraltar, they fell upon Provence and Italy. By land,
+while Wends and Czechs and Obotrites threw off the German yoke and
+threatened the borders, the wild Hungarian bands, pressing in from the
+steppes of the Caspian, dashed over Germany like the flying spray of a
+new wave of barbarism, and carried the terror of their battleaxes to
+the Apennines and the ocean. Under such strokes the already loosened
+fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of common defence or wide
+organization: the strong built castles, the weak became their
+bondsmen, or took shelter under the cowl: the governor--count, abbot,
+or bishop--tightened his grasp, turned a delegated into an
+independent, a personal into a territorial authority, and hardly owned
+a distant and feeble suzerain. The grand vision of a universal
+Christian empire was utterly lost in the isolation, the antagonism,
+the increasing localization of all powers: it might seem to have been
+but a passing gleam from an older and better world.
+
+[Sidenote: The German Kingdom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry the Fowler.]
+
+In Germany, the greatness of the evil worked at last its cure. When
+the male line of the eastern branch of the Carolingians had ended in
+Lewis (surnamed the Child), son of Arnulf, the chieftains chose and
+the people accepted Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the
+Saxon duke, both representing the female line of Charles. Henry laid
+the foundations of a firm monarchy, driving back the Magyars and
+Wends, recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be centres of orderly
+life and strongholds against Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to
+claim at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Conrad's weakness had
+at least asserted by the demand of tribute; but death overtook him,
+and the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great.]
+
+The Holy Roman Empire, taking the name in the sense which it commonly
+bore in later centuries, as denoting the sovereignty of Germany and
+Italy vested in a Germanic prince, is the creation of Otto the Great.
+Substantially, it is true, as well as technically, it was a
+prolongation of the Empire of Charles; and it rested (as will be shewn
+in the sequel) upon ideas essentially the same as those which brought
+about the coronation of A.D. 800. But a revival is always more or less
+a revolution: the one hundred and fifty years that had passed since
+the death of Charles had brought with them changes which made Otto's
+position in Germany and Europe less commanding and less autocratic
+than his predecessor's. With narrower geographical limits, his Empire
+had a less plausible claim to be the heir of Rome's universal
+dominion; and there were also differences in its inner character and
+structure sufficient to justify us in considering Otto (as he is
+usually considered by his countrymen) not a mere successor after an
+interregnum, but rather a second founder of the imperial throne in the
+West.
+
+Before Otto's descent into Italy is described, something must be said
+of the condition of that country, where circumstances had again made
+possible the plan of Theodoric, permitted it to become an independent
+kingdom, and attached the imperial title to its sovereign.
+
+[Sidenote: Italian Emperors.]
+
+The bestowal of the purple on Charles the Great was not really that
+'translation of the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks,' which it
+was afterwards described as having been. It was not meant to settle
+the office in one nation or one dynasty: there was but an extension of
+that principle of the equality of all Romans which had made Trajan and
+Maximin Emperors. The '_arcanum imperii_,' whereof Tacitus speaks,
+'_posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri_[89],' had long before become
+_alium quam Romanum_; and now, the names of Roman and Christian having
+grown co-extensive, a barbarian chieftain was, as a Roman citizen,
+eligible to the office of Roman Emperor. Treating him as such, the
+people and pontiff of the capital had in the vacancy of the Eastern
+throne asserted their ancient rights of election, and while attempting
+to reverse the act of Constantine, had re-established the division of
+Valentinian. The dignity was therefore in strictness personal to
+Charles; in point of fact, and by consent, hereditarily transmissible,
+just as it had formerly become in the families of Constantine and
+Theodosius. To the Frankish crown or nation it was by no means legally
+attached, though they might think it so; it had passed to their king
+only because he was the greatest European potentate, and might equally
+well pass to some stronger race, if any such appeared. Hence, when the
+line of Carolingian Emperors ended in Charles the Fat, the rights of
+Rome and Italy might be taken to revive, and there was nothing to
+prevent the citizens from choosing whom they would. At that memorable
+era (A.D. 888) the four kingdoms which this prince had united fell
+asunder; West France, where Odo or Eudes then began to reign, was
+never again united to Germany; East France (Germany) chose Arnulf;
+Burgundy[90] split up into two principalities, in one of which
+(Transjurane) Rudolf proclaimed himself king, while the other
+(Cisjurane with Provence) submitted to Boso[91]; while Italy was
+divided between the parties of Berengar of Friuli and Guido of
+Spoleto. The former was chosen king by the estates of Lombardy; the
+latter, and on his speedy death his son Lambert, was crowned Emperor
+by the Pope. Arnulf's descent chased them away and vindicated the
+claims of the Franks, but on his flight Italy and the anti-German
+faction at Rome became again free. Berengar was made king of Italy,
+and afterwards Emperor. Lewis of Burgundy, son of Boso, renounced his
+fealty to Arnulf, and procured the imperial dignity, whose vain title
+he retained through years of misery and exile, till A.D. 928[92]. None
+of these Emperors were strong enough to rule well even in Italy;
+beyond it they were not so much as recognized. The crown had become a
+bauble with which unscrupulous Popes dazzled the vanity of princes
+whom they summoned to their aid, and soothed the credulity of their
+more honest supporters. The demoralization and confusion of Italy, the
+shameless profligacy of Rome and her pontiffs during this period, were
+enough to prevent a true Italian kingdom from being built up on the
+basis of Roman choice and national unity. Italian indeed it can
+scarcely be called, for these Emperors were still in blood and manners
+Teutonic, and akin rather to their Transalpine enemies than their
+Romanic subjects. But Italian it might soon have become under a
+vigorous rule which should have organized it within and knit it
+together to resist attacks from without. And therefore the attempt to
+establish such a kingdom is remarkable, for it might have had great
+consequences; might, if it had prospered, have spared Italy much
+suffering and Germany endless waste of strength and blood. He who from
+the summit of Milan cathedral sees across the misty plain the gleaming
+turrets of its icy wall sweep in a great arc from North to West, may
+well wonder that a land which nature has so severed from its
+neighbours should, since history begins, have been always the victim
+of their intrusive tyranny.
+
+[Sidenote: Adelheid Queen of Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's first expedition into Italy, A.D. 951.]
+
+[Sidenote: Invitation sent by the Pope to Otto.]
+
+[Sidenote: Motives for reviving the Empire.]
+
+In A.D. 924 died Berengar, the last of these phantom Emperors. After
+him Hugh of Burgundy, and Lothar his son, reigned as kings of Italy,
+if puppets in the hands of a riotous aristocracy can be so called.
+Rome was meanwhile ruled by the consul or senator Alberic[93], who had
+renewed her never quite extinct republican institutions, and in the
+degradation of the papacy was almost absolute in the city. Lothar
+dying, his widow Adelheid[94] was sought in marriage by Adalbert son
+of Berengar II, the new Italian monarch. A gleam of romance is shed on
+the Empire's revival by her beauty and her adventures. Rejecting the
+odious alliance, she was seized by Berengar, escaped with difficulty
+from the loathsome prison where his barbarity had confined her, and
+appealed to Otto the German king, the model of that knightly virtue
+which was beginning to shew itself after the fierce brutality of the
+last age. He listened, descended into Lombardy by the Adige valley,
+espoused the injured queen, and forced Berengar to hold his kingdom as
+a vassal of the East Frankish crown. That prince was turbulent and
+faithless; new complaints reached ere long his liege lord, and envoys
+from the Pope offered Otto the imperial title if he would re-visit and
+pacify Italy. The proposal was well-timed. Men still thought, as they
+had thought in the centuries before the Carolingians, that the Empire
+was suspended, not extinct; and the desire to see its effective power
+restored, the belief that without it the world could never be right,
+might seem better grounded than it had been before the coronation of
+Charles. Then the imperial name had recalled only the faint memories
+of Roman majesty and order; now it was also associated with the golden
+age of the first Frankish Emperor, when a single firm and just hand
+had guided the state, reformed the church, repressed the excesses of
+local power: when Christianity had advanced against heathendom,
+civilizing as she went, fearing neither Hun nor Paynim. One annalist
+tells us that Charles was elected 'lest the pagans should insult the
+Christians, if the name of Emperor should have ceased among the
+Christians[95].' The motive would be bitterly enforced by the
+calamities of the last fifty years. In a time of disintegration,
+confusion, strife, all the longings of every wiser and better soul for
+unity, for peace and law, for some bond to bring Christian men and
+Christian states together against the common enemy of the faith, were
+but so many cries for the restoration of the Roman Empire[96]. These
+were the feelings that on the field of Merseburg broke forth in the
+shout of 'Henry the Emperor:' these the hopes of the Teutonic host
+when after the great deliverance of the Lechfeld they greeted Otto,
+conqueror of the Magyars, as 'Imperator Augustus, Pater Patriae[97].'
+
+[Sidenote: Condition of Italy.]
+
+The anarchy which an Emperor was needed to heal was at its worst in
+Italy, desolated by the feuds of a crowd of petty princes. A
+succession of infamous Popes, raised by means yet more infamous, the
+lovers and sons of Theodora and Marozia, had disgraced the chair of
+the Apostle, and though Rome herself might be lost to decency, Western
+Christendom was roused to anger and alarm. Men had not yet learned to
+satisfy their consciences by separating the person from the office.
+The rule of Alberic had been succeeded by the wildest confusion, and
+demands were raised for the renewal of that imperial authority which
+all admitted in theory[98], and which nothing but the resolute
+opposition of Alberic himself had prevented Otto from claiming in 951.
+From the Byzantine Empire, whither Italy was more than once tempted to
+turn, nothing could be hoped; its dangers from foreign enemies were
+aggravated by the plots of the court and the seditions of the capital;
+it was becoming more and more alienated from the West by the Photian
+schism and the question regarding the Procession of the Holy Ghost,
+which that quarrel had started. Germany was extending and
+consolidating herself, had escaped domestic perils, and might think of
+reviving ancient claims. No one could be more willing to revive them
+than Otto the Great. His ardent spirit, after waging a bold and
+successful struggle against the turbulent magnates of his German
+realm, had engaged him in wars with the surrounding nations, and was
+now captivated by the vision of a wider sway and a loftier
+world-embracing dignity. Nor was the prospect which the papal offer
+opened up less welcome to his people. Aachen, their capital, was the
+ancestral home of the house of Pipin: their sovereign, although
+himself a Saxon by race, titled himself king of the Franks, in
+opposition to the Frankish rulers of the Western branch, whose
+Teutonic character was disappearing among the Romans of Gaul; they
+held themselves in every way the true representatives of the
+Carolingian power, and accounted the period since Arnulf's death
+nothing but an interregnum which had suspended but not impaired their
+rights over Rome. 'For so long,' says a writer of the time, 'as there
+remain kings of the Franks, so long will the dignity of the Roman
+Empire not wholly perish, seeing that it will abide in its
+kings[99].' The recovery of Italy was therefore to German eyes a
+righteous as well as a glorious design: approved by the Teutonic
+Church which had lately been negotiating with Rome on the subject of
+missions to the heathen; embraced by the people, who saw in it an
+accession of strength to their young kingdom. Everything smiled on
+Otto's enterprise, and the connection which was destined to bring so
+much strife and woe to Germany and to Italy was welcomed by the wisest
+of both countries as the beginning of a better era.
+
+[Sidenote: Descent of Otto the Great into Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: His coronation at Rome, A.D. 962.]
+
+Whatever were Otto's own feelings, whether or not he felt that he was
+sacrificing, as modern writers have thought that he did sacrifice, the
+greatness of his German kingdom to the lust of universal dominion, he
+shewed no hesitation in his acts. Descending from the Alps with an
+overpowering force, he was acknowledged as king of Italy at
+Pavia[100]; and, having first taken an oath to protect the Holy See
+and respect the liberties of the city, advanced to Rome. There, with
+Adelheid his queen, he was crowned by John XII, on the day of the
+Purification, the second of February, A.D. 962. The details of his
+election and coronation are unfortunately still more scanty than in
+the case of his great predecessor. Most of our authorities represent
+the act as of the Pope's favour[101], yet it is plain that the consent
+of the people was still thought an essential part of the ceremony, and
+that Otto rested after all on his host of conquering Saxons. Be this
+as it may, there was neither question raised nor opposition made in
+Rome; the usual courtesies and promises were exchanged between Emperor
+and Pope, the latter owning himself a subject, and the citizens swore
+for the future to elect no pontiff without Otto's consent.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[86] Usage has established this translation of 'Hludowicus Pius,' but
+'gentle' or 'kind-hearted' would better express the meaning of the
+epithet.
+
+[87] Von Ranke discovers in this early traces of the aversion of the
+Germans to the pretensions of the spiritual power.--_History of
+Germany during the Reformation_: Introduction.
+
+[88] Singularly enough, when one thinks of modern claims, the dynasty
+of France (Francia occidentalis) had the least share of it. Charles
+the Bald was the only West Frankish Emperor, and reigned a very short
+time.
+
+[89] Tac. _Hist._ i. 4.
+
+[90] For an account of the various applications of the name Burgundy,
+see Appendix, Note A.
+
+[91] The accession of Boso took place in A.D. 877, eleven years before
+Charles the Fat's death. But the new kingdom could not be considered
+legally settled until the latter date, and its establishment is at any
+rate a part of that general break-up of the great Carolingian empire
+whereof A.D. 888 marks the crisis. See Appendix A at the end.
+
+It is a curious mark of the reverence paid to the Carolingian blood,
+that Boso, a powerful and ambitious prince, seems to have chiefly
+rested his claims on the fact that he was husband of Irmingard,
+daughter of the Emperor Lewis II. Baron de Gingins la Sarraz quotes a
+charter of his (drawn up when he seems to have doubted whether to call
+himself king) which begins, 'Ego Boso Dei gratia id quod sum, et
+coniux mea Irmingardis proles imperialis.'
+
+[92] Lewis had been surprised by Berengar at Verona, blinded, and
+forced to take refuge in his own kingdom of Provence.
+
+[93] Alberic is called variously senator, consul, patrician, and
+prince of the Romans.
+
+[94] Adelheid was daughter of Rudolf, king of Trans-Jurane Burgundy.
+She was at this time in her nineteenth year.
+
+[95] _Chron. Moiss._, in Pertz; _M. G. H._ i. 305.
+
+[96] See especially the poem of Florus the Deacon (printed in the
+Benedictine collection and in Migne), a bitter lament over the
+dissolution of the Carolingian Empire. It is too long for quotation. I
+give four lines here:--
+
+ 'Quid faciant populi quos ingens alluit Hister,
+ Quos Rhenus Rhodanusque rigant, Ligerisve, Padusve,
+ Quos omnes dudum tenuit concordia nexos,
+ Foedere nunc rupto divortia moesta fatigant.'
+
+[97] Witukind, _Annales_, in Pertz. It may, however, be doubted
+whether the annalist is not here giving a very free rendering of the
+triumphant cries of the German army.
+
+[98] Cf. esp. the '_Libellus de imperatoria potestate in urbe Roma_,'
+in Pertz.
+
+[99] 'Licet videamus Romanorum regnum in maxima parte jam destructum,
+tamen quamdiu reges Francorum duraverint qui Romanum imperium tenere
+debent, dignitas Romani imperii ex toto non peribit, quia stabit in
+regibus suis.'--_Liber de Antichristo_, addressed by Adso, abbot of
+Moutier-en-Der, to queen Gerberga (circa A.D. 950).
+
+[100] From the money which Otto struck in Italy, it seems probable
+that he did occasionally use the title of king of Italy or of the
+Lombards. That he was crowned can hardly be considered quite certain.
+
+[101] 'A papa imperator ordinatur,' says Hermannus Contractus.
+'Dominum Ottonem, ad hoc usque vocatum regem, non solum Romano sed et
+poene totius Europae populo acclamante imperatorem consecravit
+Augustum.'--_Annal. Quedlinb._, ad ann. 962. 'Benedictionem a domno
+apostolico Iohanne, cuius rogatione huc venit, cum sua coniuge promeruit
+imperialem ac patronus Romanae effectus est ecclesiae.'--Thietmar.
+'Acclamatione totius Romani populi ab apostolico Iohanne, filio
+Alberici, imperator et Augustus vocatur et ordinatur.'--Continuator
+Reginonis. And similarly the other annalists.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THEORY OF THE MEDIAEVAL EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Why the revival of the Empire was desired.]
+
+These were the events and circumstances of the time: let us now look
+at the causes. The restoration of the Empire by Charles may seem to be
+sufficiently accounted for by the width of his conquests, by the
+peculiar connection which already subsisted between him and the Roman
+Church, by his commanding personal character, by the temporary vacancy
+of the Byzantine throne. The causes of its revival under Otto must be
+sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents
+which have already been dwelt upon, there must have been some further
+influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Frankish
+kings, so far from home in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the
+Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
+the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it
+seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and
+necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of
+things. The empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life,
+yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the
+provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the attacks of the
+barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the
+course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual
+representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a
+profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all
+this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem
+the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were
+breasting it even while it was sweeping them ever faster and faster
+away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings,
+new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reformation was the
+illusion dispelled.
+
+[Sidenote: Mediaeval theories.]
+
+The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during
+these centuries. The Middle Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas
+as familiar to the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas
+of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the
+people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government,
+were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their
+speculative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the
+one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism
+was a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence a
+political one. Yet the human mind, so far from being idle, was in
+certain directions never more active; nor was it possible for it to
+remain without general conceptions regarding the relation of men to
+each other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made an
+expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an
+induction of the past; they were partly inherited from the system that
+had preceded, partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
+theology which was ripening into scholasticism[102]. Now the two great
+ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed
+were those of a World-Monarchy and a World-Religion.
+
+[Sidenote: The World-Religion.]
+
+Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge of each
+other, with no experience of wide political union[103], had held
+differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly,
+religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national; and as
+there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and
+of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
+the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles,
+natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings, if keenest in the East,
+frequently shew themselves in the early records of Greece and Italy:
+in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in
+sacking the cities of the stranger[104]; the primitive Latins have the
+same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
+Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions of the
+belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between
+Greeks and barbarians as natural[105], and defend slavery on the same
+ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races
+that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech
+and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more
+effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety
+of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are
+equal[106].
+
+[Sidenote: Coincides with the World-Empire.]
+
+It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because divinity was
+divided, humanity had been divided likewise; the doctrine of the unity
+of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His
+image[107]. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was
+to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of
+race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new
+religion a community of the faithful, a Holy Empire, designed to
+gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold
+polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the
+Caesars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that
+had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts of
+one great world-movement toward unity: the coincidence of their
+boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough
+after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names
+of Roman and Christian convertible[108]. Oecumenical councils, where
+the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the
+temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head, presented
+the most visible and impressive examples of their connection[109]. The
+language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
+sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his generation
+consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome,
+by describing to them its successor and representative, the 'city
+which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God[110].'
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of the unity of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Mediaeval Theology requires One Visible Catholic Church.]
+
+Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and that of the
+religious society, meeting in the higher unity of all Christians,
+which may be indifferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in
+that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which
+had been entrusted to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
+the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the firmness with
+which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to
+pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed
+from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing
+difficulty of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
+by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter
+every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more
+powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one
+body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that
+they can preserve it. Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
+may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the council of Trent,
+there had arisen the idea of supplementing revelation by tradition as
+a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and belief
+above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
+through the universal consciousness, represented by the sacerdotal
+order: principles still maintained by one branch of the Church, and
+for some at least of which far weightier reasons could be assigned
+then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the
+mass of the people, than any to which their modern advocates have
+recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it
+is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in
+the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the
+universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind
+to realize the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
+see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the
+doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the
+essential ceremony; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and
+saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could
+satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
+which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of
+the direct action of angels and devils: which expressed the strivings
+of the soul after purity by the search for the Holy Grail: which in
+the Crusades sent myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the
+sepulchre of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
+approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole
+fabric of mediaeval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible
+Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To
+acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have
+appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized,
+contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius
+of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a
+temporary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties. Had
+this plan, on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later
+times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its adversity
+or to the dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
+rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan
+was one which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church
+was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of
+Christian men dispersed throughout the world.
+
+[Sidenote: Idea of political unity upheld by the clergy.]
+
+Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was the priesthood; and
+it was by them, in whom dwelt whatever of learning and thought was
+left in Europe, that the second great idea whereof mention has been
+made--the belief in one universal temporal state--was preserved. As a
+matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West, and it might
+seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, did not
+so calculate their interest. So far from feeling themselves opposed to
+the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came
+to do in the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
+that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They
+were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves living by the Roman
+law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of
+the historical connection of the two powers. And by them chiefly was
+that idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by none more
+earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles[111]. The
+limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice: bishops
+were princes, the chief ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the
+leaders of their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
+ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the metaphysics of the time upon the theory of
+a World-State.]
+
+But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a universal
+monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical basis, and may be
+traced up to those metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call
+Realism developed itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times
+were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
+system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that which was most
+desirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became a
+search after principles of classification; since simplicity and truth
+were held to consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
+nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a
+sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of the relations of classes
+as containing or excluding each other. These classes, genera or
+species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind
+from phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped
+under and called by some common name; they were real things, existing
+independently of the individuals who composed them, recognized rather
+than created by the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
+quality present in all men, and making them what they are: as regards
+it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between
+individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their
+being lies in the universal property, which alone has a permanent and
+independent existence. The common nature of the individuals thus
+gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual
+and the secular, by two persons, the World-Priest and the
+World-Monarch, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity.
+For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
+expression that a thought could then be apprehended[112]. Although it
+was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine
+and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the
+corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a
+social and public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and
+concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which rewarded
+or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as
+different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all
+Christian men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising through
+successive grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they were
+answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually
+irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily opposed to the
+Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had
+imagined, a communion of the saints without its expression in a
+visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood
+of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the
+image of a universal State[113]. In this, as in so much else, the men
+of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all
+their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the
+very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out
+in practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
+
+[Sidenote: The ideal state supposed to be embodied in the Roman
+Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Constantine's Donation.]
+
+Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never have risen to
+maturity nor sensibly affected the progress of events, had it not
+gained in the pre-existence of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape
+and a definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that
+this came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian Church was
+framing her organization on the model of the state which protected
+her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and improved the analogy
+between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that
+the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
+upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every
+century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before
+the Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that
+to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a
+holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had
+been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway[114].
+In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western
+countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
+power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still
+commanded, until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the
+ninth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the
+exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the
+hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of
+that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most
+stupendous of all the mediaeval forgeries, which under the name of the
+Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the
+unquestioning belief of mankind[115]. Itself a portentous falsehood,
+it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of
+the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the
+eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine
+the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved,
+on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a
+new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
+government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he
+bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
+over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all,
+although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid
+audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the
+Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all
+of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
+same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The
+Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar,
+the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body
+of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
+receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians[116].
+
+[Sidenote: Interdependence of Papacy and Empire.]
+
+The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious
+society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of
+the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman
+clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than
+it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law was
+intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial
+jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and
+those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first
+to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title
+of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
+even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate
+and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it the necessary
+complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally
+imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II
+to break with the Byzantine princes[117], and the maintenance of their
+titular sovereignty till A.D. 800: hence the part which the Holy See
+played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of
+the West capable of fulfilling its duties; hence the grief with which
+its weakness under his successors was seen, the gladness when it
+descended to Otto as representative of the Frankish kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire revived in a new character.]
+
+Up to the era of A.D. 800 there had been at Constantinople a
+legitimate historical prolongation of the Roman Empire. Technically,
+as we have seen, the election of Charles, after the deposition of
+Constantine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old
+rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it
+not, did far more than effect a change of dynasty when he rejected
+Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always
+delusive. As well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
+orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human affairs
+which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new
+order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former
+ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
+unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Caesar, nor the States-general of
+Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in
+1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles
+the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to A.D. 800, which bears the legend
+'Renovatio Romani Imperii[118],' expresses, more justly perhaps than
+was intended by its author, a second birth of the Roman Empire.
+
+It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this
+new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of
+fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one
+dynasty and country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
+character and claims, and was without the power that would have
+enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Great a
+new period begins, in which the ideas that have been described as
+floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the
+imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
+this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
+
+[Sidenote: Position and functions of the Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Correspondence and harmony of the spiritual and temporal
+powers.]
+
+The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion
+of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the
+World-State to be a monarchy; tradition, as well as the continuance of
+certain institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A
+king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the
+Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in
+older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilized world;
+the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
+of Christendom[119]. His functions will be seen most clearly if we
+deduce them from the leading principle of mediaeval mythology, the
+exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the
+celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
+His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigned over
+the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as
+of heaven, so must he (the _Imperator coelestis_[t]) be represented by
+a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor (_Imperator terrenus_[120]),
+whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this
+present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the
+body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's
+manifestation, so must there be a rule and care of men's bodies as
+well as of their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of
+that which is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem
+of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is
+presented to us throughout the Middle Ages[121]. The Pope, as God's
+vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the
+Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their
+dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed
+the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end
+of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is
+to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position
+is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by
+churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect
+their lands and lead their tenants in war[122]. The functions of
+Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to
+the priesthood, and to execute their decrees upon heretics and
+sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
+to use carnal weapons[123]. Thus does the Emperor answer in every
+point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank,
+created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been
+modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its
+details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and
+robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his
+own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a
+clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all
+narrowing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites
+every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their
+essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman
+Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
+the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism;
+that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality;
+manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two
+natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
+to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor,
+commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Union of Church and State.]
+
+In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the
+same, differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not
+whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular
+Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's
+life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore,
+on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
+papal. For, as has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
+not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven: as
+sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor.
+Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable,
+each being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation of both
+being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
+This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of
+Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits
+to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint
+government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the
+duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less
+than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which,
+granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two
+powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of
+strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions,
+in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to
+work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
+worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system which
+Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which culminated so
+triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each
+succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its
+brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who
+are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend
+or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
+
+The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this
+theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only
+at a few points in their history[124]. It was finally supplanted by
+another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development
+of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
+the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent
+churchmen[125]. Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the
+Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the
+Empire be held--held feudally, it was said by many--and it thereby
+thrust down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the sister
+of the spiritual[126]. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and
+under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander,
+of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government,
+required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save
+herself[127]. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
+pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to
+show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300,
+seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown,
+and sceptre, shouting aloud, 'I am Caesar--I am Emperor[128].'
+
+[Sidenote: Proofs from mediaeval documents.]
+
+The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus sketched cannot be
+definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and
+changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise
+us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds
+whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then
+too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines
+mediaeval writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words,
+oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are
+present to the minds of the authors[129]. That which it is easiest to
+prove is the connection of the Empire with religion. From every
+record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and
+sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the
+faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, are
+represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart.
+The belief expressed by Lewis II, 'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
+voce sed in gloriosae pietatis culmine consistit[130],' appears again
+in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to Conrad II[131], as Vicar
+of God; is reiterated by Frederick I[132], when he writes to the
+prelates of Germany, 'On earth God has placed no more than two powers,
+and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and
+one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church[133];' is
+echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V[134]. It
+was a doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the Holy
+See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make the transference
+(_translatio_) from the Greeks to the Germans appear entirely the
+Pope's work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling
+his rival's election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of
+the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his
+realm[135]. His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties
+already noticed. As the counterpart of the Mussulman Commander of the
+Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel
+foes, was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and in later
+times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering
+Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged
+to him to convoke General Councils, a right not without importance
+even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty
+when the object of the council was to settle a disputed election, or,
+as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
+
+[Sidenote: The Coronation ceremonies.]
+
+No better illustrations can be desired than those to be found in the
+office for the imperial coronation at Rome, too long to be transcribed
+here, but well worthy of an attentive study[136]. The rites prescribed
+in it are rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
+besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power, receives a
+ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the
+Pope in celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
+communion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John
+Lateran. The oath to be taken by an elector begins, 'Ego N. volo regem
+Romanorum in Caesarem promovendum, temporale caput populo Christiano
+eligere.' The Emperor swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
+Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
+'Deus qui ad praedicandum aeterni regni evangelium Imperium Romanum
+praeparasti, praetende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma coelestia.'
+Among the Emperor's official titles there occur these: 'Head of
+Christendom,' 'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Temporal Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and of the
+Catholic Faith[137].'
+
+[Sidenote: The rights of the Empire proved from the Bible.]
+
+Very singular are the reasonings used by which the necessity and
+divine right of the Empire are proved out of the Bible. The mediaeval
+theory of the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
+profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the
+Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his
+office was a derogation from the purity of the older system, appears
+divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate
+relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the
+authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
+was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined,
+every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to
+imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction
+which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the
+world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by
+paying tribute to Caesar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no
+power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.'
+
+More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments
+were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical
+interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the
+belief formed itself that the Roman Empire--as the fourth beast of
+Daniel's vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's
+image--was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen
+and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned acceptance[138], and that
+not unnaturally. For no new power had arisen to extinguish the Roman,
+as the Persian monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
+realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic
+herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Burgundian, had
+cherished her memory and preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even
+the name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
+and diverse from all that were before it.' To these predictions, and
+to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the
+Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist[139]. He was to
+succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned
+that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the
+enemy and the end of the world[140]. It is not only when groping in
+the dark labyrinths of prophecy that mediaeval authors are quick in
+detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in
+those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did
+it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom
+they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
+the sense they discovered was one which the language used would
+naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy
+was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple
+text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument
+all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which
+Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual and temporal powers,
+and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the
+Papacy[141]. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the
+seventy-second Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and
+moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon being of course,
+since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is
+the Popedom. Another quoting, 'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur[142],'
+with Augustine's explanation thereof[143], says, that when 'he who
+letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and
+the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race
+will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under
+Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
+symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the seven lamps
+burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Holy
+Empire[144].' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one
+lineage; how Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
+the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to
+reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the
+scriptural proof appear in the hands of mediaeval churchmen, many
+holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we
+forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing
+institution what they found written already; we begin to fancy that
+the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the
+strength of words to which we attach in almost every case a wholly
+different meaning.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations from Mediaeval Art.]
+
+It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass on from the
+theologians to the poets and artists of the Middle Ages, and endeavour
+to trace through their works the influence of the ideas which have
+been expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
+present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance with
+those works themselves such as only minute and long-continued study
+could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how
+much still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature and
+in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a
+piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the
+artist's thought or belief which are all the more precious that they
+are indirect or unconscious. Therefore a history of mediaeval art which
+shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have
+any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in
+method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have
+been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in
+which the theory of the mediaeval empire is unmistakeably set forth.
+One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence; every traveller in
+Italy may examine both for himself.
+
+[Sidenote: Mosaic of the Lateran Palace at Rome.]
+
+The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium,
+constructed by Pope Leo III about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of
+which, made by the order of Sextus V, may still be seen over against
+the facade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state
+banqueting-hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
+finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the
+green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the
+glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine
+Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the
+Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is
+extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax Vobis.'
+Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time
+sitting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the
+Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell,
+to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the
+opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle
+Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and
+Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
+Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an
+archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The
+inscription is, 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo
+regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,
+et in terra pax omnibus bonae voluntatis.'
+
+The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently
+clear. First comes the revelation of the Gospel, and the divine
+commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at
+the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by
+which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed.
+Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who
+keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers
+on a new and firmer basis[145]. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy
+he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the
+banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause
+against heretics and infidels.
+
+[Sidenote: Fresco in S. Maria Novella at Florence.]
+
+The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the
+chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella[146] at
+Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been
+commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena,
+but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this
+view[147]. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350.
+It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and
+filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
+authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the
+time--Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it
+is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter--the
+Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
+side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a
+descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the
+Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king
+of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
+Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their
+feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves
+(heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the
+Dominicans[148]) combat and chase away. From this, the central
+foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a
+great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers:
+they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on
+through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the
+painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and
+Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and
+angels[149].
+
+[Sidenote: Anti-national character of the Empire.]
+
+Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect
+counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those
+who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of
+her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of
+her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to
+those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.
+
+A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and
+illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The
+idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight
+of God,--an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood,
+where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
+humblest curate,--and in the prevalence of one language for worship
+and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or
+rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to
+the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
+tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as
+solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the
+kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far
+from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the
+source and needful condition of their authority in their several
+territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The
+vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had
+concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the
+imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the
+kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an
+undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's
+minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that
+demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was
+or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they
+were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual
+helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending
+all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it.
+Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
+there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy
+of life.
+
+The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international;
+though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important
+aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely
+begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
+territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands,
+but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[102] I do not mean to say that the system of ideas which it is
+endeavoured to set forth in the following pages was complete in this
+particular form, either in the days of Charles or in those of Otto, or
+in those of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems to have been constantly
+growing and decaying from the fourth century to the sixteenth, the
+relative prominence of its cardinal doctrines varying from age to age.
+But, just as the painter who sees the ever-shifting lights and shades
+play over the face of a wide landscape faster than his brush can place
+them on the canvas, in despair at representing their exact position at
+any single moment, contents himself with painting the effects that are
+broadest and most permanent, and at giving rather the impression which
+the scene makes on him than every detail of the scene itself, so here,
+the best and indeed the only practicable course seems to be that of
+setting forth in its most self-consistent form the body of ideas and
+beliefs on which the Empire rested, although this form may not be
+exactly that which they can be asserted to have worn in any one
+century, and although the illustrations adduced may have to be taken
+sometimes from earlier, sometimes from later writers. As the doctrine
+of the Empire was in its essence the same during the whole Middle Age,
+such a general description as is attempted here may, I venture to
+hope, be found substantially true for the tenth as well as for the
+fourteenth century.
+
+[103] Empires like the Persian did nothing to assimilate the subject
+races, who retained their own laws and customs, sometimes their own
+princes, and were bound only to serve in the armies and fill the
+treasury of the Great King.
+
+[104] Od. iii. 72:--
+
+ [Greek: ... e mapsidios alalesthe,
+ hoia te leisteres, hypeir hala, toit' aloontai
+ psychas parthemenoi, kakon allodapoisi pherontes?]
+
+Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
+v. 214, [Greek: allotrios phos].
+
+[105] Plato, in the beginning of the Laws, represents it as natural
+between all states: [Greek: polemos physei hyparchei pros hapasas tas
+poleis].
+
+[106] See especially Acts xvii. 26; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.;
+iv. 3-6; Col. iii. 11.
+
+[107] This is drawn out by Laurent, _Histoire du Droit des Gens_; and
+AEgidi, _Der Fuerstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[108] 'Romanos enim vocitant homines nostrae religionis.'--Gregory of
+Tours, quoted by AEgidi, from A. F. Pott, _Essay on the Words 'Roemisch,'
+'Romanisch,' 'Roman,' 'Romantisch.'_ So in the Middle Ages, [Greek:
+Rhomaioi] is used to mean Christians, as opposed to [Greek: Hellenes],
+heathens.
+
+Cf. Ducange, 'Romani olim dicti qui alias Christiani vel etiam
+Catholici.'
+
+[109] As a reviewer in the _Tablet_ (whose courtesy it is the more
+pleasant to acknowledge since his point of view is altogether opposed
+to mine) has understood this passage as meaning that 'people imagined
+the Christian religion was to last for ever because the Holy Roman
+Empire was never to decay,' it may be worth while to say that this is
+far from being the purport of the argument which this chapter was
+designed to state. The converse would be nearer the truth:--'people
+imagined the Holy Roman Empire was never to decay, because the
+Christian religion was to last for ever.'
+
+The phenomen may perhaps be stated thus:--Men who were already
+disposed to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal for one set of
+reasons, came to believe the Christian Church to be eternal for
+another and, to them, more impressive set of reasons. Seeing the two
+institutions allied in fact, they took their alliance and connection
+to be eternal also; and went on for centuries believing in the
+necessary existence of the Roman Empire because they believed in its
+necessary union with the Catholic Church.
+
+[110] Augustine, in the _De Civitate Dei_. His influence, great
+through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on
+Charles.--'Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, praecipueque his
+qui De Civitate Dei praetitulati sunt.'--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
+24.
+
+[111] 'Quapropter universorum precibus fidelium optandum est, ut in
+omnem gloriam vestram extendatur imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides
+... veraciter in una confessione cunctorum cordibus infigatur,
+quatenus summi Regis donante pietate eadem sanctae pacis et perfectae
+caritatis omnes ubique regat et custodiat unitas.' Quoted by Waitz
+(_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, ii. 182) from an unprinted letter
+of Alcuin.
+
+[112] A curious illustration of this tendency of mind is afforded by
+the descriptions we meet with of Learning or Theology (_Studium_) as a
+concrete existence, having a visible dwelling in the University of
+Paris. The three great powers which rule human life, says one writer,
+the Popedom, the Empire, and Learning, have been severally entrusted
+to the three foremost nations of Europe: Italians, Germans, French.
+'His siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio, tanquam
+tribus virtutibus, videlicet naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
+ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur, augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
+tribus, tanquam fundamento, pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia tanquam
+materialiter proficit. Et sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
+fundamento et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
+quatuor habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
+Arelatum, Mediolanum, Romam.'--_Jordanis Chronica_; _ap._ Schardius
+_Sylloge Tractatuum_. And see Doellinger, _Die Vergangenheit und
+Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie_, p. 8.
+
+[113] 'Una est sola respublica totius populi Christiani, ergo de
+necessitate erit et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublicae,
+statutus et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
+dilatationem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augustinus
+(_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam fuit nec
+potuit nec poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
+qualitercumque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra
+fidem Catholicam et ecclesiam.'--Engelbert (abbot of Admont in Upper
+Austria), _De Ortu et Fine imperii Romani_ (circ. 1310).
+
+In this 'de necessitate' everything is included.
+
+[114] See note 37.
+
+[115] This is admirably brought out by AEgidi, _Der Fuerstenrath nach
+dem Luneviller Frieden_.
+
+[116] See the original forgery (or rather the extracts which Gratian
+gives from it) in the _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, _Dist._ xcvi. cc. 13,
+14. 'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
+Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam
+nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri gloriose
+exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem et gloriae dignitatem atque vigorem
+et honorificentiam imperialem.... Beato Sylvestro patri nostro summo
+pontifici et universali urbis Romae papae, et omnibus eius successoribus
+pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt
+sessuri, de praesenti contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
+deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium,
+necnon et superhumerale, verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream et tunicam
+coccineam, et omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et dignitatem imperialem
+praesidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra,
+simulque cuncta signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta imperialia et
+omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
+nostrae.... Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur ita et clerum sanctae
+Romanae ecclesiae ornari decernimus.... Unde ut pontificalis apex non
+vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii dignitas gloria et potentia
+decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam urbem et omnes
+Italiae seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates
+beatissimo papae Sylvestro universali papae contradimus atque
+relinquimus.... Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christianae
+religionis caput ab imperatore coelesti constitutum est, iustum non est
+ut illic imperator terrenus habeat potestatem.'
+
+The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imitation of
+the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German
+Emperors.
+
+[117] Doellinger has shewn in a recent work (_Die Papst-Fabeln des
+Mittelalters_) that the common belief that Gregory II excited the
+revolt against Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.
+
+So Anastasius, 'Ammonebat (_sc._ Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
+amore Romani imperii desisterent.'--_Vitae Pontif. Rom._
+
+[118] Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure
+is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments
+of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond
+doubt; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour.
+See, among others, Le Blanc, _Dissertation historique sur quelques
+Monnoies de Charlemagne_, Paris, 1689; J. M. Heineccius, _De Veteribus
+Germanorum aliarumque nationum sigillis_, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
+_Vitae Pontificum Romanorum_, ed. Vignoli, Romae, 1752; Goetz,
+_Deutschlands Kayser-Muenzen des Mittelalters_, Dresden, 1827; and the
+authorities cited by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
+179, n. 4.
+
+[119] 'Praeterea mirari se dilecta fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
+set Romanorum imperatores nos appellemus; set scire te convenit quia
+nisi Romanorum imperatores essemus, utique nec Francorum. A Romanis
+enim hoc nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus, apud quos profecto primum
+tantae culmen sublimitatis effulsit,' &c--_Letter of the Emperor Lewis
+II to Basil the Emperor at Constantinople_, from _Chron. Salernit.
+ap._ Murat. _S. R. I._
+
+[120] 'Illam (_sc._ Romanam ecclesiam) solus ille fundavit, et super
+petram fidei mox nascentis erexit, qui beato aeternae vitae clavigero
+terreni simul et coelestis imperii iura commisit.'--_Corpus Iuris
+Canonici_, _Dist._ xxii. c. 1. The expression is not uncommon in
+mediaeval writers. So 'unum est imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
+Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta in terris,' in Lewis II's
+letter.
+
+[121] 'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et
+sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
+videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex
+spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute
+animae. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et
+operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem
+Petri et successorum eius.'--St. Thomas Aquinas, _De Regimine
+Principum_.
+
+[122] 'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
+et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
+certe sic.... Patronis vero concessum est ut praelatos in ecclesiis sui
+patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui
+tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote
+this from a curious document in Goldast's collection of tracts
+(_Monarchia Imperii_), entitled '_Letter of the four Universities,
+Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor
+Wenzel and Pope Urban_,' A.D. 1380. The title can scarcely be right,
+but if the document is, as in all probability it is, not later than
+the fifteenth century, its being misdescribed, or even its being a
+forgery, does not make it less valuable as an evidence of men's ideas.
+
+[123] So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's
+coronation: '... actum in praesentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi
+filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem
+sanctae universalis ecclesiae hodie Augustum sacravimus.'--Jaffe
+_Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, ad ann. 800.
+
+So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
+to the Emperor an almost papal authority over the Church itself:--
+
+ 'Coeli habet hic (_sc._ Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;
+ Tu regis ecclesiae, nam regit ille poli;
+ Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,
+ Hic te coelicolas ducet ad usque choros.'
+ In D. Bouquet, v. 415.
+
+[124] Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo;
+again under Otto III and his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester II;
+thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth.
+
+[125] _The Sachsenspiegel_ (_Speculum Saxonicum_, circ. A.D. 1240),
+the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God
+alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what
+has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the
+Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' _The
+Schwabenspiegel_, compiled half a century later, subordinates the
+prince to the pontiff: 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet
+der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er
+damit richte.'
+
+[126] So Boniface VIII in the bull _Unam Sanctam_, will have but one
+head for the Christian people. 'Igitur ecclesiae unius et unicae unum
+corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum.'
+
+[127] St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in
+consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesiae
+vel ecclesiae prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So in
+the _De Consideratione_: 'Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes
+utrumque,' of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority,
+quoted by Gieseler.
+
+[128] 'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite
+Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait:
+"Numquid ego summus sum pontifex? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
+possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Caesar, ego sum imperator."'--Fr.
+Pipinus (ap. Murat. _S. R. I._ ix.) l. iv. c. 47. These words,
+however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface, when receiving the
+envoys of the emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to
+find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current
+story for what it is worth.
+
+It has been suggested that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene
+in a well-known passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):--
+
+ 'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo
+ Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada
+ Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
+ L' un l' altro ha spento, ed e giunta la spada
+ Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme
+ Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'
+
+
+[129] See especially Peter de Andlo (_De Imperio Romano_); Ralph
+Colonna (_De translatione Imperii Romani_); Dante (_De Monarchia_);
+Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_); Marsilius Patavinus (_De
+translatione Imperii Romani_); AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini (_De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_); Zoannetus (_De Imperio Romano atque ejus
+Iurisdictione_); and the writers in Schardius's _Sylloge_, and in
+Goldast's Collection of Tracts, entitled _Monarchia Imperii_.
+
+[130] Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in _Chron.
+Salernit._ in Mur. _S. R. I._; also given by Baronius, _Ann. Eccl._ ad
+ann. 871.
+
+[131] 'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti: Vicarius es Christi.'--Wippo,
+_Vita Chuonradi_ (_ap._ Pertz), c. 3.
+
+[132] Letter in Radewic, _ap._ Murat, _S. R. I._
+
+[133] Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, 'Gentis humanae,
+orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus praeesse.'--Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius Illustratus_.
+
+[134] In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (A.D. 1529) the
+Emperor is called 'Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit.'
+Hieronymus Balbus, writing about the same time, puts the question
+whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things,
+as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and answers it by saying, 'Cum
+ambo ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et eadem semita incedant, de utroque
+idem puto sentiendum.'
+
+[135] 'Non magis ad Papam depositio seu remotio pertinet quam ad
+quoslibet regum praelatos, qui reges suos prout assolent, consecrant et
+inungunt.'--_Letter of Frederick II_ (lib. i. c. 3).
+
+[136] _Liber Ceremonialis Romanus_, lib. i. sect. 5; with which
+compare the _Coronatio Romana_ of Henry VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's
+Dissertation in vol. i. of the _Antiquitates Italiae Medii AEvi_.
+
+[137] See Goldast, _Collection of Imperial Constitutions_; and Moser,
+_Roemische Kayser_.
+
+[138] The abbot Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_) quotes
+Origen and Jerome to this effect, and proceeds himself to explain,
+from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling away will precede the coming of
+Antichrist. There will be a triple 'discessio,' of the kingdoms of the
+earth from the Roman Empire, of the Church from the Apostolic See, of
+the faithful from the faith. Of these, the first causes the second;
+the temporal sword to punish heretics and schismatics being no longer
+ready to work the will of the rulers of the Church.
+
+[139] A full statement of the views that prevailed in the earlier
+Middle Age regarding Antichrist--as well as of the singular prophecy
+of the Frankish Emperor who shall appear in the latter days, conquer
+the world, and then going to Jerusalem shall lay down his crown on the
+Mount of Olives and deliver over the kingdom to Christ--may be found
+in the little treatise, _Vita Antichristi_, which Adso, monk and
+afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der, compiled (cir. 950) for the
+information of Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist is
+to be born a Jew of the tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), 'non de episcopo
+et monacha, sicut alii delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
+meretrice et crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in peccato concipietur, in
+peccato generabitur, in peccato nascetur.' His birthplace is Babylon:
+he is to be brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.
+
+Adso's book may be found printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.
+
+[140] S. Thomas explains the prophecy in a remarkable manner, shewing
+how the decline of the Empire is no argument against its fulfilment.
+'Dicendum quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in
+spirituale, ut dicit Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo
+discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a temporali sed
+etiam a spirituali, scilicit a fide Catholica Romanae Ecclesiae. Est
+autem hoc conveniens signum nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
+imperium omnibus dominabatur: ita e contra signum adventus Antichristi
+est discessio ab eo.'--_Comment. ad 2 Thess._ ii.
+
+[141] See note 149, page 119. The Papal party sometimes insisted that
+both swords were given to Peter, while the imperialists assigned the
+temporal sword to John. Thus a gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_ says,
+'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het nu de paves: dat andere
+hadde Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'
+
+[142] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
+
+[143] St. Augustine, however, though he states the view (applying the
+passage to the Roman Empire) which was generally received in the
+Middle Ages, is careful not to commit himself positively to it.
+
+[144] _Jordanis Chronica_ (written towards the close of the thirteenth
+century).
+
+[145] Compare with this the words which Pope Hadrian I. had used some
+twenty-three years before, of Charles as representative of
+Constantine: 'Et sicut temporibus Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
+a sanctae recordationis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore, per eius
+largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
+atque exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiae partibus largiri
+dignatus est, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
+nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati Petri apostoli germinet
+atque exsultet, ut omnes gentes quae haec audierint edicere valeant,
+'Domine salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die in qua invocaverimus
+te;' quia ecce novus Christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his
+temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanctae suae ecclesiae beati
+apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est.'--_Letter XLIX of
+Cod. Carol._, A.D. 777 (in Mur. _Scriptores Rerum Italicarum_).
+
+This letter is memorable as containing the first allusion, or what
+seems an allusion, to Constantine's Donation.
+
+The phrase 'sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,' is worth
+noting.
+
+[146] The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's _Decameron_
+is laid.
+
+[147] So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs.
+Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their _New History of Painting in Italy_,
+vol. ii. pp. 85 _sqq._
+
+[148] Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.
+
+[149] There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture,
+which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a
+conspicuous figure.
+
+It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
+hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one
+else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a
+death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE ROMAN EMPIRE AND THE GERMAN KINGDOM.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Union of the Roman Empire with the German kingdom.]
+
+This was the office which Otto the Great assumed in A.D. 962. But it
+was not his only office. He was already a German king; and the new
+dignity by no means superseded the old. This union in one person of
+two characters, a union at first personal, then official, and which
+became at last a fusion of the two into something different from
+either, is the key to the whole subsequent history of Germany and the
+Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany and its monarchy.]
+
+Of the German kingdom little need be said, since it differs in no
+essential respect from the other kingdoms of Western Europe as they
+stood in the tenth century. The five or six great tribes or
+tribe-leagues which composed the German nation had been first brought
+together under the sceptre of the Carolingians; and, though still
+retaining marks of their independent origin, were prevented from
+separating by community of speech and a common pride in the great
+Frankish Empire. When the line of Charles the Great ended in A.D. 911,
+by the death of Lewis the Child (son of Arnulf), Conrad, duke of the
+Franconians, and after him Henry (the Fowler), duke of the Saxons, was
+chosen to fill the vacant throne. By his vigorous yet conciliatory
+action, his upright character, his courage and good fortune in
+repelling the Hungarians, Henry laid deep the foundations of royal
+power: under his more famous son it rose into a stable edifice. Otto's
+coronation feast at Aachen, where the great nobles of the realm did
+him menial service, where Franks, Bavarians, Suabians, Thuringians,
+and Lorrainers gathered round the Saxon monarch, is the inauguration
+of a true Teutonic realm, which, though it called itself not German
+but East Frankish, and claimed to be the lawful representative of the
+Carolingian monarchy, had a constitution and a tendency in many
+respects different.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism.]
+
+There had been under those princes a singular mixture of the old
+German organization by tribes or districts (the so-called
+Gauverfassung), such as we find in the earliest records, with the
+method introduced by Charles of maintaining by means of officials,
+some fixed, others moving from place to place, the control of the
+central government. In the suspension of that government which
+followed his days, there grew up a system whose seeds had been sown as
+far back as the time of Clovis, a system whose essence was the
+combination of the tenure of land by military service with a peculiar
+personal relation between the landlord and his tenant, whereby the one
+was bound to render fatherly protection, the other aid and obedience.
+This is not the place for tracing the origin of feudality on Roman
+soil, nor for shewing how, by a sort of contagion, it spread into
+Germany, how it struck firm root in the period of comparative quiet
+under Pipin and Charles, how from the hands of the latter it took the
+impress which determined its ultimate form, how the weakness of his
+successors allowed it to triumph everywhere. Still less would it be
+possible here to examine its social and moral influence. Politically
+it might be defined as the system which made the owner of a piece of
+land, whether large or small, the sovereign of those who dwelt
+thereon: an annexation of personal to territorial authority more
+familiar to Eastern despotism than to the free races of primitive
+Europe. On this principle were founded, and by it are explained,
+feudal law and justice, feudal finance, feudal legislation, each
+tenant holding towards his lord the position which his own tenants
+held towards himself. And it is just because the relation was so
+uniform, the principle so comprehensive, the ruling class so firmly
+bound to its support, that feudalism has been able to lay upon society
+that grasp which the struggles of more than twenty generations have
+scarcely shaken off.
+
+[Sidenote: The feudal king.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Germanic feudal polity generally.]
+
+Now by the middle of the tenth century, Germany, less fully committed
+than France to feudalism's worst feature, the hopeless bondage of the
+peasantry, was otherwise thoroughly feudalized. As for that equality
+of all the freeborn save the sacred line which we find in the Germany
+of Tacitus, there had been substituted a gradation of ranks and a
+concentration of power in the hands of a landholding caste, so had the
+monarch lost his ancient character as leader and judge of the people,
+to become the head of a tyrannical oligarchy. He was titular lord of
+the soil, could exact from his vassals service and aid in arms and
+money, could dispose of vacant fiefs, could at pleasure declare war or
+make peace. But all these rights he exercised far less as sovereign of
+the nation than as standing in a peculiar relation to the feudal
+tenants, a relation in its origin strictly personal, and whose
+prominence obscured the political duties of prince and subject. And
+great as these rights might become in the hands of an ambitious and
+politic ruler, they were in practice limited by the corresponding
+duties he owed to his vassals, and by the difficulty of enforcing them
+against a powerful offender. The king was not permitted to retain in
+his own hands escheated fiefs, must even grant away those he had held
+before coming to the throne; he could not interfere with the
+jurisdiction of his tenants in their own lands, nor prevent them from
+waging war or forming leagues with each other like independent
+princes. Chief among the nobles stood the dukes, who, although their
+authority was now delegated, theoretically at least, instead of
+independent, territorial instead of personal, retained nevertheless
+much of that hold on the exclusive loyalty of their subjects which had
+belonged to them as hereditary leaders of the tribe under the ancient
+system. They were, with the three Rhenish archbishops, by far the
+greatest subjects, often aspiring to the crown, sometimes not unable
+to resist its wearer. The constant encroachments which Otto made upon
+their privileges, especially through the institution of the Counts
+Palatine, destroyed their ascendancy, but not their importance. It was
+not till the thirteenth century that they disappeared with the rise of
+the second order of nobility. That order, at this period far less
+powerful, included the counts, margraves or marquises and landgraves,
+originally officers of the crown, now feudal tenants; holding their
+lands of the dukes, and maintaining against them the same contest
+which they in turn waged with the crown. Below these came the barons
+and simple knights, then the diminishing class of freemen, the
+increasing one of serfs. The institutions of primitive Germany were
+almost all gone; supplanted by a new system, partly the natural result
+of the formation of a settled from a half-nomad society, partly
+imitated from that which had arisen upon Roman soil, west of the Rhine
+and south of the Alps. The army was no longer the Heerban of the whole
+nation, which had been wont to follow the king on foot in distant
+expeditions, but a cavalry militia of barons and their retainers,
+bound to service for a short period, and rendering it unwillingly
+where their own interest was not concerned. The frequent popular
+assemblies, whereof under the names of the Mallum, the Placitum, the
+Mayfield, we hear so much under Clovis and Charles, were now never
+summoned, and the laws that had been promulgated there were, if not
+abrogated, practically obsolete. No national council existed, save the
+Diet in which the higher nobility, lay and clerical, met their
+sovereign, sometimes to decide on foreign war, oftener to concur in
+the grant of a fief or the proscription of a rebel. Every district had
+its own rude local customs administered by the court of the local
+lord: other law there was none, for imperial jurisprudence had in
+these lately civilized countries not yet filled the place left empty
+by the disuse of the barbarian codes.
+
+[Sidenote: The Roman Empire and the German kingdom.]
+
+This condition of things was indeed better than that utter confusion
+which had gone before, for a principle of order had begun to group and
+bind the tossing atoms; and though the union into which it drove men
+was a hard and narrow one, it was something that they should have
+learnt to unite themselves at all. Yet nascent feudality was but one
+remove from anarchy; and the tendency to isolation and diversity
+continued, despite the efforts of the Church and the Carolingian
+princes, to be all-powerful in Western Europe. The German kingdom was
+already a bond between the German races, and appears strong and united
+when we compare it with the France of Hugh Capet, or the England of
+Ethelred II; yet its history to the twelfth century is little else
+than a record of disorders, revolts, civil wars, of a ceaseless
+struggle on the part of the monarch to enforce his feudal rights, a
+resistance by his vassals equally obstinate and more frequently
+successful. What the issue of the contest might have been if Germany
+had been left to take her own course is matter of speculation, though
+the example of every European state except England and Norway may
+incline the balance in favour of the crown. But the strife had
+scarcely begun when a new influence was interposed: the German king
+became Roman Emperor. No two systems can be more unlike than those
+whose headship became thus vested in one person: the one centralized,
+the other local; the one resting on a sublime theory, the other the
+rude offspring of anarchy; the one gathering all power into the hands
+of an irresponsible monarch, the other limiting his rights and
+authorizing resistance to his commands; the one demanding the equality
+of all citizens as creatures equal before Heaven, the other bound up
+with an aristocracy the proudest, and in its gradations of rank the
+most exact, that Europe had ever seen. Characters so repugnant could
+not, it might be thought, meet in one person, or if they met must
+strive till one swallowed up the other. It was not so. In the fusion
+which began from the first, though it was for a time imperceptible,
+each of the two characters gave and each lost some of its attributes:
+the king became more than German, the Emperor less than Roman, till,
+at the end of six centuries, the monarch in whom two 'persons' had
+been united, appeared as a third different from either of the former,
+and might not inappropriately be entitled 'German Emperor[150].' The
+nature and progress of this change will appear in the after history of
+Germany, and cannot be described here without in some measure
+anticipating subsequent events. A word or two may indicate how the
+process of fusion began.
+
+[Sidenote: Results of this union in one person.]
+
+It was natural that the great mass of Otto's subjects, to whom the
+imperial title, dimly associated with Rome and the Pope, sounded
+grander than the regal, without being known as otherwise different,
+should in thought and speech confound them. The sovereign and his
+ecclesiastical advisers, with far clearer views of the new office and
+of the mutual relation of the two, found it impossible to separate
+them in practice, and were glad to merge the lesser in the greater.
+For as lord of the world, Otto was Emperor north as well as south of
+the Alps. When he issued an edict, he claimed the obedience of his
+Teutonic subjects in both capacities; when as Emperor he led the
+armies of the gospel against the heathen, it was the standard of their
+feudal superior that his armed vassals followed; when he founded
+churches and appointed bishops, he acted partly as suzerain of feudal
+lands, partly as protector of the faith, charged to guide the Church
+in matters temporal. Thus the assumption of the imperial crown brought
+to Otto as its first result an apparent increase of domestic
+authority; it made his position by its historical associations more
+dignified, by its religious more hallowed; it raised him higher above
+his vassals and above other sovereigns; it enlarged his prerogative in
+ecclesiastical affairs, and by necessary consequence gave to
+ecclesiastics a more important place at court and in the
+administration of government than they had enjoyed before. Great as
+was the power of the bishops and abbots in all the feudal kingdoms, it
+stood nowhere so high as in Germany. There the Emperor's double
+position, as head both of Church and State, required the two
+organizations to be exactly parallel. In the eleventh century a full
+half of the land and wealth of the country, and no small part of its
+military strength, was in the hands of Churchmen: their influence
+predominated in the Diet; the archchancellorship of the Empire,
+highest of all offices, belonged of right to the archbishop of Mentz,
+as primate of Germany. It was by Otto, who in resuming the attitude
+must repeat the policy of Charles, that the greatness of the clergy
+was thus advanced. He is commonly said to have wished to weaken the
+aristocracy by raising up rivals to them in the hierarchy. It may have
+been so, and the measure was at any rate a disastrous one, for the
+clergy soon approved themselves not less rebellious than those whom
+they were to restrain. But in accusing Otto's judgment, historians
+have often forgotten in what position he stood to the Church, and how
+it behoved him, according to the doctrine received, to establish in
+her an order like in all things to that which he found already
+subsisting in the State.
+
+[Sidenote: Changes in title.]
+
+The style which Otto adopted shewed his desire thus to merge the king
+in the Emperor[151]. Charles had called himself 'Imperator Caesar
+Carolus rex Francorum invictissimus;' and again, 'Carolus serenissimus
+Augustus, Pius, Felix, Romanorum gubernans Imperium, qui et per
+misericordiam Dei rex Francorum atque Langobardorum.' Otto and his
+first successors, who until their coronation at Rome had used the
+titles of 'Rex Francorum,' or 'Rex Francorum Orientalium,' or oftener
+still 'Rex' alone, discarded after it all titles save the highest of
+'Imperator Augustus;' seeming thereby, though they too had been
+crowned at Aachen and Milan, to claim the authority of Caesar through
+all their dominions. Tracing as we are the history of a title, it is
+needless to dwell on the significance of the change[152]. Charles, son
+of the Ripuarian allies of Probus, had been a Frankish chieftain on
+the Rhine; Otto, the Saxon, successor of the Cheruscan Arminius, would
+rule his native Elbe with a power borrowed from the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Imperial power feudalized.]
+
+Nevertheless, the imperial element did not in every respect
+predominate over the royal. The monarch might desire to make good
+against his turbulent barons the boundless prerogative which he
+acquired with his new crown, but he lacked the power to do so; and
+they, disputing neither the supremacy of that crown nor his right to
+wear it, refused with good reason to let their own freedom be
+infringed upon by any act of which they had not been the authors. So
+far was Otto from embarking on so vain an enterprise, that his rule
+was even more direct and more personal than that of Charles had been.
+There was no scheme of mechanical government, no claim of absolutism;
+there was only the resolve to make the energetic assertion of the
+king's feudal rights subserve the further aims of the Emperor. What
+Otto demanded he demanded as Emperor, what he received he received as
+king; the singular result was that in Germany the imperial office was
+itself pervaded and transformed by feudal ideas. Feudality needing, to
+make its theory complete, a lord paramount of the world, from whose
+grant all ownership in land must be supposed to have emanated, and
+finding such a suzerain in the Emperor, constituted him liege lord of
+all kings and potentates, keystone of the feudal arch, himself, as it
+was expressed, 'holding' the world from God. There were not wanting
+Roman institutions to which these notions could attach themselves.
+Constantine, imitating the courts of the East, had made the
+dignitaries of his household great officials of the State: these were
+now reproduced in the cup-bearer, the seneschal, the marshal, the
+chamberlain of the Empire, so soon to become its electoral princes.
+The holding of land on condition of military service was Roman in its
+origin: the divided ownership of feudal law found its analogies in the
+Roman tenure of emphyteusis. Thus while Germany was Romanized the
+Empire was feudalized, and came to be considered not the antagonist
+but the perfection of an aristocratic system. And it was this
+adaptation to existing political facts that enabled it afterwards to
+assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they
+seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism (if
+one may use a now perverted word) and that of feudalism a deep and
+lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a
+measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman
+government had been, but from the necessities of their position,
+raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects,
+surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus
+were they driven to reduce local independence, and assimilate the
+various races through their vast territories. It was Otto who made the
+Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding
+them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its
+collective greatness to the consciousness of national life, never
+thenceforth to be extinguished.
+
+[Sidenote: The Commons.]
+
+One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy which Roman
+traditions as well as present needs might have suggested, it was
+scarcely possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship
+of the Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of
+freemen, which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the
+population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did
+not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the
+most part, after the Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the
+Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean that free democratic
+communities maintained themselves. Town-life there was none, till
+Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in
+fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and the burgher
+class thus beginning to form was too small to be a power in the state.
+But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of
+its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the
+crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses
+upon both, the ally, though as yet the tacit ally, of the people.
+More, too, than the royal could have done, did the imperial name
+invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of
+its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet
+lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to
+Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint
+of the strong and the defence of the helpless.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[150] Although this was of course never his legal title. Till 1806 he
+was 'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus;' 'Roemischer Kaiser.'
+
+[151] Puetter, _Dissertationes de Instauratione Imperii Romani_; cf.
+Goldast's _Collection of Constitutions_; and the proclamations and
+other documents collected in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. I.
+
+[152] Puetter (_De Instauratione Imperii Romani_) will have it that
+upon this mistake, as he calls it, of Otto's, the whole subsequent
+history of the Empire turned; that if Otto had but continued to style
+himself 'Francorum Rex,' Germany would have been spared all her
+Italian wars.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS.
+
+
+He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately
+amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every
+step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent
+theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men who are
+stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which,
+even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity
+of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people
+must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet such a conclusion would
+be wholly erroneous. Every one knows how little a man's actions
+conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and
+how many things there are which he believes without realizing:
+believes sufficiently to be influenced, yet not sufficiently to be
+governed by them. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of
+theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more
+violent and their conduct more reckless than is often witnessed in
+modern society; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring
+spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they
+would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that
+while everyone believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of
+divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or
+interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed
+was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was one which nobody hesitated
+to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative
+any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the
+limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in
+Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where
+therefore he was forced to rule merely as emperor, and not also as
+king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from
+insult and revolt. That spot was his capital. Accordingly an account
+of what befel the first Saxon emperor in Rome is a not unfitting
+comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in
+the history of the Apostolic Chair.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto the Great in Rome.]
+
+After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the
+partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves
+in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless John the Twelfth, who
+found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master,
+renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and even
+scrupled not to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade
+Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of
+the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most
+profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But
+he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony,
+'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however,
+Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a
+party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope,
+but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the
+nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor
+they had courage enough to stand a siege: John fled into the Campagna
+to join Adalbert, and Otto entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's.
+Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by
+inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a
+tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy.
+Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list
+of them:--'Peter, cardinal-priest, rose and witnessed that he had seen
+the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of
+Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him
+ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They
+said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the
+pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting;
+had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to
+houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and
+hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had
+drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked
+the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated
+matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making
+the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not
+speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is
+to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret
+for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they
+had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the
+clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If John the Pope hath not
+committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and
+even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles,
+the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and
+opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be
+bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on
+the left hand along with those who have said to the Lord God, "Depart
+from us, for we will not know Thy ways."'
+
+The solemnity of this answer seems to have satisfied Otto and the
+council: a letter was despatched to John, couched in respectful terms,
+recounting the charges brought against him, and asking him to appear
+to clear himself by his own oath and that of a sufficient number of
+compurgators. John's reply was short and pithy.
+
+'John the bishop, the servant of the servants of God, to all the
+bishops. We have heard tell that you wish to set up another Pope: if
+you do this, by Almighty God I excommunicate you, so that you may not
+have power to perform mass or to ordain no one[153].'
+
+[Sidenote: Deposition of John XII.]
+
+To this Otto and the synod replied by a letter of humorous
+expostulation, begging the Pope to reform both his morals and his
+Latin. But the messenger who bore it could not find John: he had
+repeated what seems to have been thought his most heinous sin, by
+going into the country with his bow and arrows; and after a search had
+been made in vain, the synod resolved to take a decisive step. Otto,
+who still led their deliberations, demanded the condemnation of the
+Pope; the assembly deposed him by acclamation, 'because of his
+reprobate life,' and having obtained the Emperor's consent, proceeded
+in an equally hasty manner to raise Leo, the chief secretary and a
+layman, to the chair of the Apostle.
+
+[Sidenote: Revolt of the Romans.]
+
+Otto might seem to have now reached a position loftier and firmer than
+that of any of his predecessors. Within little more than a year from
+his arrival in Rome, he had exercised powers greater than those of
+Charles himself, ordering the dethronement of one pontiff and the
+installation of another, forcing a reluctant people to bend themselves
+to his will. The submission involved in his oath to protect the Holy
+See was more than compensated by the oath of allegiance to his crown
+which the Pope and the Romans had taken, and by their solemn
+engagement not to elect nor ordain any future pontiff without the
+Emperor's consent[154]. But he had yet to learn what this obedience
+and these oaths were worth. The Romans had eagerly joined in the
+expulsion of John; they soon began to regret him. They were mortified
+to see their streets filled by a foreign soldiery, the habitual
+licence of their manners sternly repressed, their most cherished
+privilege, the right of choosing the universal bishop, grasped by the
+strong hand of a master who used it for purposes in which they did not
+sympathize. In a fickle and turbulent people, disaffection quickly
+turned to rebellion. One night, Otto's troops being most of them
+dispersed in their quarters at a distance, the Romans rose in arms,
+blocked up the Tiber bridges, and fell furiously upon the Emperor and
+his creature the new Pope. Superior valour and constancy triumphed
+over numbers, and the Romans were overthrown with terrible slaughter;
+yet this lesson did not prevent them from revolting a second time,
+after Otto's departure in pursuit of Adalbert. John the Twelfth
+returned to the city, and when his pontifical career was speedily
+closed by the sword of an injured husband[155], the people chose a new
+Pope in defiance of the Emperor and his nominee. Otto again subdued
+and again forgave them, but when they rebelled for a third time, in
+A.D. 966, he resolved to shew them what imperial supremacy meant.
+Thirteen leaders, among them the twelve tribunes, were executed, the
+consuls were banished, republican forms entirely suppressed, the
+government of the city entrusted to Pope Leo as viceroy. He, too, must
+not presume on the sacredness of his person to set up any claims to
+independence. Otto regarded the pontiff as no more than the first of
+his subjects, the creature of his own will, the depositary of an
+authority which must be exercised according to the discretion of his
+sovereign. The citizens yielded to the Emperor an absolute veto on
+papal elections in A.D. 963. Otto obtained from his nominee, Leo VIII,
+a confirmation of this privilege, which it was afterwards supposed
+that Hadrian I had granted to Charles, in a decree which may yet be
+read in the collections of the canon law[156]. The vigorous exercise
+of such a power might be expected to reform as well as to restrain the
+apostolic see; and it was for this purpose, and in noble honesty, that
+the Teutonic sovereigns employed it. But the fortunes of Otto in the
+city are a type of those which his successors were destined to
+experience. Notwithstanding their clear rights and the momentary
+enthusiasm with which they were greeted in Rome, not all the efforts
+of Emperor after Emperor could gain any firm hold on the capital they
+were so proud of. Visiting it only once or twice in their reigns, they
+must be supported among a fickle populace by a large army of
+strangers, which melted away with terrible rapidity under the sun of
+Italy amid the deadly hollows of the Campagna[157]. Rome soon resumed
+her turbulent independence.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's rule in Italy.]
+
+Causes partly the same prevented the Saxon princes from gaining a firm
+footing throughout Italy. Since Charles the Bald had bartered away for
+the crown all that made it worth having, no Emperor had exercised
+substantial authority there. The _missi dominici_ had ceased to
+traverse the country; the local governors had thrown off control, a
+crowd of petty potentates had established principalities by
+aggressions on their weaker neighbours. Only in the dominions of great
+nobles, like the marquises of Tuscany and Spoleto, and in some of the
+cities where the supremacy of the bishop was paving the way for a
+republican system, could traces of political order be found, or the
+arts of peace flourish. Otto, who, though he came as a conqueror,
+ruled legitimately as Italian king, found his feudal vassals less
+submissive than in Germany. While actually present he succeeded by
+progresses and edicts, and stern justice, in doing something to still
+the turmoil; on his departure Italy relapsed into that disorganization
+for which her natural features are not less answerable than the
+mixture of her races. Yet it was at this era, when the confusion was
+wildest, that there appeared the first rudiments of an Italian
+nationality, based partly on geographical position, partly on the use
+of a common language and the slow growth of peculiar customs and modes
+of thought. But though already jealous of the Tedescan, national
+feeling was still very far from disputing his sway. Pope, princes, and
+cities bowed to Otto as king and Emperor; nor did he bethink himself
+of crushing while it was weak a sentiment whose development threatened
+the existence of his empire. Holding Italy equally for his own with
+Germany, and ruling both on the same principles, he was content to
+keep it a separate kingdom, neither changing its institutions nor
+sending Saxons, as Charles had sent Franks, to represent his
+government[158].
+
+[Sidenote: Otto's foreign policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Towards Byzantium.]
+
+The lofty claims which Otto acquired with the Roman crown urged him to
+resume the plans of foreign conquest which had lain neglected since
+the days of Charles: the growing vigour of the Teutonic people, now
+definitely separating themselves from surrounding races (this is the
+era of the Marks--Brandenburg, Meissen, Schleswig), placed in his
+hands a force to execute those plans which his predecessors had
+wanted. In this, as in his other enterprises, the great Emperor was
+active, wise, successful. Retaining the extreme south of Italy, and
+unwilling to confess the loss of Rome, the Greeks had not ceased to
+annoy her German masters by intrigue, and might now, under the
+vigorous leadership of Nicephorus and Tzimiskes, hope again to menace
+them in arms. Policy, and the fascination which an ostentatiously
+legitimate court exercised over the Saxon stranger, made Otto, as
+Napoleon wooed Maria Louisa, seek for his heir the hand of the
+princess Theophano. Liudprand's account of his embassy represents in
+an amusing manner the rival pretensions of the old and new
+Empires[159]. The Greeks, who fancied that with the name they
+preserved the character and rights of Rome, held it almost as absurd
+as it was wicked that a Frank should insult their prerogative by
+reigning in Italy as Emperor. They refused him that title altogether;
+and when the Pope had, in a letter addressed '_Imperatori Graecorum_,'
+asked Nicephorus to gratify the wishes of the Emperor of the Romans,
+the Eastern was furious. 'You are no Romans,' said he, 'but wretched
+Lombards: what means this insolent Pope? with Constantine all Rome
+migrated hither.' The wily bishop appeased him by abusing the Romans,
+while he insinuated that Byzantium could lay no claim to their name,
+and proceeded to vindicate the Francia and Saxonia of his master.
+'"Roman" is the most contemptuous name we can use--it conveys the
+reproach of every vice, cowardice, falsehood, avarice. But what can be
+expected from the descendants of the fratricide Romulus? to his asylum
+were gathered the offscourings of the nations: thence came these
+[Greek: kosmokratores].' Nicephorus demanded the 'theme' or province of
+Rome as the price of compliance[160]; Tzimiskes was more moderate, and
+Theophano became the bride of Otto II.
+
+[Sidenote: Towards the West Franks.]
+
+Holding the two capitals of Charles the Great, Otto might vindicate
+the suzerainty over the West Frankish kingdom which it had been meant
+that the imperial title should carry with it. Arnulf had asserted it
+by making Eudes, the first Capetian king, receive the crown as his
+feudatory: Henry the Fowler had been less successful. Otto pursued the
+same course, intriguing with the discontented nobles of Louis
+d'Outremer, and receiving their fealty as Superior of Roman Gaul.
+These pretensions, however, could have been made effective only by
+arms, and the feudal militia of the tenth century was no such
+instrument of conquest as the hosts of Clovis and Charles had been.
+The star of the Carolingian of Laon was paling before the rising
+greatness of the Parisian Capets: a Romano-Keltic nation had formed
+itself, distinct in tongue from the Franks, whom it was fast
+absorbing, and still less willing to submit to a Saxon stranger.
+Modern France[161] dates from the accession of Hugh Capet, A.D. 987,
+and the claims of the Roman Empire were never afterwards formally
+admitted.
+
+[Sidenote: Lorraine and Burgundy.]
+
+Of that France, however, Aquitaine was virtually independent.
+Lotharingia and Burgundy belonged to it as little as did England. The
+former of these kingdoms had adhered to the West Frankish king,
+Charles the Simple, against the East Frankish Conrad: but now, as
+mostly German in blood and speech, threw itself into the arms of Otto,
+and was thenceforth an integral part of the Empire. Burgundy, a
+separate kingdom, had, by seeking from Charles the Fat a ratification
+of Boso's election, by admitting, in the person of Rudolf the first
+Transjurane king, the feudal superiority of Arnulf, acknowledged
+itself to be dependent on the German crown. Otto governed it for
+thirty years, nominally as the guardian of the young king Conrad (son
+of Rudolf II).
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark and the Slaves.]
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+Otto's conquests to the North and East approved him a worthy successor
+of the first Emperor. He penetrated far into Jutland, annexed
+Schleswig, made Harold the Blue-toothed his vassal. The Slavic tribes
+were obliged to submit, to follow the German host in war, to allow the
+free preaching of the Gospel in their borders. The Hungarians he
+forced to forsake their nomad life, and delivered Europe from the fear
+of Asiatic invasions by strengthening the frontier of Austria. Over
+more distant lands, Spain and England, it was not possible to recover
+the commanding position of Charles. Henry, as head of the Saxon name,
+may have wished to unite its branches on both sides the sea[162], and
+it was perhaps partly with this intent that he gained for Otto the
+hand of Edith, sister of the English Athelstan. But the claim of
+supremacy, if any there was, was repudiated by Edgar, when,
+exaggerating the lofty style assumed by some of his predecessors, he
+called himself 'Basileus and imperator of Britain[163],' thereby
+seeming to pretend to a sovereignty over all the nations of the island
+similar to that which the Roman Emperor claimed over the states of
+Christendom.
+
+[Sidenote: Extent of Otto's Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Comparison between it and that of Charles.]
+
+This restored Empire, which professed itself a continuation of the
+Carolingian, was in many respects different. It was less wide,
+including, if we reckon strictly, only Germany proper and two-thirds
+of Italy; or counting in subject but separate kingdoms, Burgundy,
+Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Denmark, perhaps Hungary. Its character was
+less ecclesiastical. Otto exalted indeed the spiritual potentates of
+his realm, and was earnest in spreading Christianity among the
+heathen: he was master of the Pope and Defender of the Holy Roman
+Church. But religion held a less important place in his mind and his
+administration: he made fewer wars for its sake, held no councils, and
+did not, like his predecessor, criticize the discourses of bishops. It
+was also less Roman. We do not know whether Otto associated with that
+name anything more than the right to universal dominion and a certain
+oversight of matters spiritual, nor how far he believed himself to be
+treading in the steps of the Caesars. He could not speak Latin, he had
+few learned men around him, he cannot have possessed the varied
+cultivation which had been so fruitful in the mind of Charles.
+Moreover, the conditions of his time were different, and did not
+permit similar attempts at wide organization. The local potentates
+would have submitted to no _missi dominici_; separate laws and
+jurisdictions would not have yielded to imperial capitularies; the
+_placita_ at which those laws were framed or published would not have
+been crowded, as of yore, by armed freemen. But what Otto could he
+did, and did it to good purpose. Constantly traversing his dominions,
+he introduced a peace and prosperity before unknown, and left
+everywhere the impress of an heroic character. Under him the Germans
+became not only a united nation, but were at once raised on a pinnacle
+among European peoples as the imperial race, the possessors of Rome
+and Rome's authority. While the political connection with Italy
+stirred their spirit, it brought with it a knowledge and culture
+hitherto unknown, and gave the newly-kindled energy an object. Germany
+became in her turn the instructress of the neighbouring tribes, who
+trembled at Otto's sceptre; Poland and Bohemia received from her their
+arts and their learning with their religion. If the revived
+Romano-Germanic Empire was less splendid than the Empire of the West
+had been under Charles, it was, within narrower limits, firmer and
+more lasting, since based on a social force which the other had
+wanted. It perpetuated the name, the language, the literature, such as
+it then was, of Rome; it extended her spiritual sway; it strove to
+represent that concentration for which men cried, and became a power
+to unite and civilize Europe.
+
+[Sidenote: Otto II, A.D. 973-983.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto III, A.D. 983-1002.]
+
+[Sidenote: His ideas. Fascination exercised over him by the name of
+Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Pope Sylvester II, A.D. 1000.]
+
+The time of Otto the Great has required a fuller treatment, as the era
+of the Holy Empire's foundation: succeeding rulers may be more quickly
+dismissed. Yet Otto III's reign cannot pass unnoticed: short, sad,
+full of bright promise never fulfilled. His mother was the Greek
+princess Theophano; his preceptor, the illustrious Gerbert: through
+the one he felt himself connected with the old Empire, and had imbibed
+the absolutism of Byzantium; by the other he had been reared in the
+dream of a renovated Rome, with her memories turned to realities. To
+accomplish that renovation, who so fit as he who with the vigorous
+blood of the Teutonic conqueror inherited the venerable rights of
+Constantinople? It was his design, now that the solemn millennial era
+of the founding of Christianity had arrived, to renew the majesty of
+the city and make her again the capital of a world-embracing Empire,
+victorious as Trajan's, despotic as Justinian's, holy as
+Constantine's. His young and visionary mind was too much dazzled by
+the gorgeous fancies it created to see the world as it was: Germany
+rude, Italy unquiet, Rome corrupt and faithless. In A.D. 994, at the
+age of sixteen, he took from his mother's hands the reins of
+government, and entered Italy to receive his crown, and quell the
+turbulence of Rome. There he put to death the rebel Crescentius, in
+whom modern enthusiasm has seen a patriotic republican, who, reviving
+the institutions of Alberic, had ruled as consul or senator, sometimes
+entitling himself Emperor[164]. The young monarch reclaimed, perhaps
+extended, the privilege of Charles and Otto the Great, by nominating
+successive pontiffs: first Bruno his cousin (Gregory V), then Gerbert,
+whose name of Sylvester II recalled significantly the ally of
+Constantine: Gerbert, to his contemporaries a marvel of piety and
+learning, in later legend the magician who, at the price of his own
+soul, purchased preferment from the Enemy, and by him was at last
+carried off in the body. With the substitution of these men for the
+profligate priests of Italy, began that Teutonic reform of the Papacy
+which raised it from the abyss of the tenth century to the point where
+Hildebrand found it. The Emperors were working the ruin of their power
+by their most disinterested acts.
+
+[Sidenote: Schemes of Otto III: Changes of style and usage.]
+
+With his tutor on Peter's chair to second or direct him, Otto laboured
+on his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense
+religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world--in his
+proclamations he calls himself 'Servant of the Apostles,' 'Servant of
+Jesus Christ[165]'--together with the ambitious antiquarianism of a
+fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he
+represented. Even the wording of his laws witnesses to the strange
+mixture of notions that filled his eager brain. 'We have ordained
+this,' says an edict, 'in order that, the church of God being freely
+and firmly stablished, our Empire may be advanced and the crown of our
+knighthood triumph; that the power of the Roman people may be extended
+and the commonwealth be restored; so may we be found worthy after
+living righteously in the tabernacle of this world, to fly away from
+the prison of this life and reign most righteously with the Lord.' To
+exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title '_Romanorum
+Imperator_' instead of the simple '_Imperator_' of his predecessors.
+His seals bear a legend resembling that used by Charles, '_Renovatio
+Imperii Romanorum_;' even the 'commonwealth,' despite the results that
+name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be
+re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine, then the most
+healthy and beautiful quarter of the city; he devised a regular
+administrative system of government for his capital--naming a
+patrician, a prefect, and a body of judges, who were commanded to
+recognize no law but Justinian's. The formula of their appointment has
+been preserved to us: in it the Emperor delivering to the judge a copy
+of the code bids him 'with this code judge Rome and the Leonine city
+and the whole world.' He introduced into the simple German court the
+ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium, not without giving offence to
+many of his followers[166]. His father's wish to draw Italy and
+Germany more closely together, he followed up by giving the
+chancellorship of both countries to the same churchman, by maintaining
+a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue
+with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and
+far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived
+to attempt it, can be but guessed at. It is reasonable to suppose that
+whatever power he might have gained in the South he would have lost in
+the North. Dwelling rarely in Germany, and in sympathies more a Greek
+than a Teuton, he reined in the fierce barons with no such tight hand
+as his grandfather had been wont to do; he neglected the schemes of
+northern conquest; he released the Polish dukes from the obligation of
+tribute. But all, save that those plans were his, is now no more than
+conjecture, for Otto III, 'the wonder of the world,' as his own
+generation called him, died childless on the threshold of manhood; the
+victim, if we may trust a story of the time, of the revenge of
+Stephania, widow of Crescentius, who ensnared him by her beauty, and
+slew him by a lingering poison. They carried him across the Alps with
+laments whose echoes sound faintly yet from the pages of monkish
+chroniclers, and buried him in the choir of the basilica at Aachen
+some fifty paces from the tomb of Charles beneath the central dome.
+Two years had not passed since, setting out on his last journey to
+Rome, he had opened that tomb, had gazed on the great Emperor, sitting
+on a marble throne, robed and crowned, with the Gospel-book open
+before him; and there, touching the dead hand, unclasping from the
+neck its golden cross, had taken, as it were, an investiture of Empire
+from his Frankish forerunner. Short as was his life and few his acts,
+Otto III is in one respect more memorable than any who went before or
+came after him. None save he desired to make the seven-hilled city
+again the seat of dominion, reducing Germany and Lombardy and Greece
+to their rightful place of subject provinces. No one else so forgot
+the present to live in the light of the ancient order; no other soul
+was so possessed by that fervid mysticism and that reverence for the
+glories of the past, whereon rested the idea of the mediaeval Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy independent.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry II Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Southern Italy.]
+
+The direct line of Otto the Great had now ended, and though the Franks
+might elect and the Saxons accept Henry II[167], Italy was nowise
+affected by their acts. Neither the Empire nor the Lombard kingdom
+could as yet be of right claimed by the German king. Her princes
+placed Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the vacant throne of Pavia, moved
+partly by the growing aversion to a Transalpine power, still more by
+the desire of impunity under a monarch feebler than any since
+Berengar. But the selfishness that had exalted Ardoin soon overthrew
+him. Ere long a party among the nobles, seconded by the Pope, invited
+Henry[168]; his strong army made opposition hopeless, and at Rome he
+received the imperial crown, A.D. 1014. It is, perhaps, more singular
+that the Transalpine kings should have clung so pertinaciously to
+Italian sovereignty than that the Lombards should have so frequently
+attempted to recover their independence. For the former had often
+little or no hereditary claim, they were not secure in their seat at
+home, they crossed a huge mountain barrier into a land of treachery
+and hatred. But Rome's glittering lure was irresistible, and the
+disunion of Italy promised an easy conquest. Surrounded by martial
+vassals, these Emperors were generally for the moment supreme: once
+their pennons had disappeared in the gorges of Tyrol, things reverted
+to their former condition, and Tuscany was little more dependent than
+France. In Southern Italy the Greek viceroy ruled from Bari, and Rome
+was an outpost instead of the centre of Teutonic power. A curious
+evidence of the wavering politics of the time is furnished by the
+Annals of Benevento, the Lombard town which on the confines of the
+Greek and Roman realms gave steady obedience to neither. They usually
+date by and recognize the princes of Constantinople[169], seldom
+mentioning the Franks, till the reign of Conrad II; after him the
+Western becomes _Imperator_, the Greek, appearing more rarely, is
+_Imperator Constantinopolitanus_. Assailed by the Saracens, masters
+already of Sicily, these regions seemed on the eve of being lost to
+Christendom, and the Romans sometimes bethought themselves of
+returning under the Byzantine sceptre. As the weakness of the Greeks
+in the South favoured the rise of the Norman kingdom, so did the
+liberties of the northern cities shoot up in the absence of the
+Emperors and the feuds of the princes. Milan, Pavia, Cremona, were
+only the foremost among many populous centres of industry, some of
+them self-governing, all quickly absorbing or repelling the rural
+nobility, and not afraid to display by tumults their aversion to the
+Germans.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad II.]
+
+The reign of Conrad II, the first monarch of the great Franconian
+line, is remarkable for the accession to the Empire of Burgundy, or,
+as it is after this time more often called, the kingdom of Arles[170].
+Rudolf III, the last king, had proposed to bequeath it to Henry II,
+and the states were at length persuaded to consent to its reunion to
+the crown from which it had been separated, though to some extent
+dependent, since the death of Lothar I (son of Lewis the Pious). On
+Rudolf's death in 1032, Eudes, count of Champagne, endeavoured to
+seize it, and entered the north-western districts, from which he was
+dislodged by Conrad with some difficulty. Unlike Italy, it became an
+integral member of the Germanic realm: its prelates and nobles sat in
+imperial diets, and retained till recently the style and title of
+Princes of the Holy Empire. The central government was, however,
+seldom effective in these outlying territories, exposed always to the
+intrigues, finally to the aggressions, of Capetian France.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry III.]
+
+[Sidenote: His reform of the Popedom.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV, A.D. 1056-1106.]
+
+Under Conrad's son Henry the Third the Empire attained the meridian of
+its power. At home Otto the Great's prerogative had not stood so high.
+The duchies, always the chief source of fear, were allowed to remain
+vacant or filled by the relatives of the monarch, who himself
+retained, contrary to usual practice, those of Franconia and (for some
+years) Swabia. Abbeys and sees lay entirely in his gift. Intestine
+feuds were repressed by the proclamation of a public peace. Abroad,
+the feudal superiority over Hungary, which Henry II had gained by
+conferring the title of King with the hand of his sister Gisela, was
+enforced by war, the country made almost a province, and compelled to
+pay tribute. In Rome no German sovereign had ever been so absolute. A
+disgraceful contest between three claimants of the papal chair had
+shocked even the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed them all, and
+appointed their successor: he became hereditary patrician, and wore
+constantly the green mantle and circlet of gold which were the badges
+of that office, seeming, one might think, to find in it some further
+authority than that which the imperial name conferred. The synod
+passed a decree granting to Henry the right of nominating the supreme
+pontiff; and the Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect of
+the world even more by habitual simony than by the flagrant corruption
+of their manners, were forced to receive German after German as their
+bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so severe, and so
+pious. But Henry's encroachments alarmed his own nobles no less than
+the Italians, and the reaction, which might have been dangerous to
+himself, was fatal to his successor. A mere chance, as some might call
+it, determined the course of history. The great Emperor died suddenly
+in A.D. 1056, and a child was left at the helm, while storms were
+gathering that might have demanded the wisest hand.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[153] 'Iohannes episcopus, servus servorum Dei, omnibus episcopis. Nos
+audivimus dicere quia vos vultis alium papam facere: si hoc facitis,
+da Deum omnipotentem excommunico vos, ut non habeatis licentiam missam
+celebrare aut nullum ordinare.'--Liudprand, _ut supra_. The 'da' is
+curious, as shewing the progress of the change from Latin to Italian.
+The answer sent by Otto and the council takes exception to the double
+negative.
+
+[154] 'Cives fidelitatem promittunt haec addentes et firmiter iurantes
+nunquam se papam electuros aut ordinaturos praeter consensum atque
+electionem domini imperatoris Ottonis Caesaris Augusti filiique ipsius
+Ottonis.'--Liudprand, _Gesta Ottonis_, lib. vi.
+
+[155] 'In timporibus adeo a dyabulo est percussus ut infra dierum octo
+spacium eodem sit in vulnere mortuus,' says the chronicler, crediting
+with but little of his wonted cleverness the supposed author of John's
+death, who well might have desired a long life for so useful a
+servant.
+
+He adds a detail too characteristic of the time to be omitted--'Sed
+eucharistiae viaticum, ipsius instinctu qui eum percusserat, non
+percepit.'
+
+[156] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii., '_In synodo_.' A decree
+which is probably substantially genuine, although the form in which we
+have it is evidently of later date.
+
+[157] Cf. St. Peter Damiani's lines--
+
+ 'Roma vorax hominum domat ardua colla virorum,
+ Roma ferax febrium necis est uberrima frugum,
+ Romanae febres stabili sunt iure fideles.'
+
+[158] There was a separate chancellor for Italy, as afterwards for the
+kingdom of Burgundy.
+
+[159] Liudprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_.
+
+[160] 'Sancti imperii nostri olim servos principes, Beneventanum
+scilicet, tradat,' &c. The epithet is worth noticing.
+
+[161] Liudprand calls the Eastern Franks 'Franci Teutonici' to
+distinguish them from the Romanized Franks of Gaul or 'Francigenae,' as
+they were frequently called. The name 'Frank' seems even so early as
+the tenth century to have been used in the East as a general name for
+the Western peoples of Europe. Liudprand says that the Greek Emperor
+included 'sub Francorum nomine tam Latinos quam Teutonicos.' Probably
+this use dates from the time of Charles.
+
+[162] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[163] Basileus was a favourite title of the English kings before the
+Conquest. Titles like this used in these early English charters prove,
+it need hardly be said, absolutely nothing as to the real existence of
+any rights or powers of the English king beyond his own borders. What
+they do prove (over and above the taste for florid rhetoric in the
+royal clerks) is the impression produced by the imperial style, and by
+the idea of the emperor's throne as supported by the thrones of kings
+and other lesser potentates.
+
+[164] The coins of Crescentius are said to exhibit the insignia of the
+old Empire.--Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. 715. But probably
+some at least of them are forgeries.
+
+[165] Proclamation in Pertz, _M. G. H._ ii.
+
+[166] 'Imperator antiquam Romanorum consuetudinem iam ex magna parte
+deletam suis cupiens renovare temporibus multa faciebat quae diversi
+diverse sentiebant.'--Thietmar, _Chron._ ix.; ap. Pertz, _M. G. H._ t.
+iii.
+
+[167] _Annales Quedlinb._, ad ann. 1002.
+
+[168] Henry had already entered Italy in 1004.
+
+[169] _Annales Beneventani_, in Pertz, _M. G. H._
+
+[170] See Appendix, Note A.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+STRUGGLE OF THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY.
+
+
+Reformed by the Emperors and their Teutonic nominees, the Papacy had
+resumed in the middle of the eleventh century the schemes of polity
+shadowed forth by Nicholas I, and which the degradation of the last
+age had only suspended. Under the guidance of her greatest mind,
+Hildebrand, the archdeacon of Rome, she now advanced to their
+completion, and proclaimed that war of the ecclesiastical power
+against the civil power in the person of the Emperor, which became the
+centre of the subsequent history of both. While the nature of the
+struggle cannot be understood without a glance at their previous
+connection, the vastness of the subject warns one from the attempt to
+draw even its outlines, and restricts our view to those relations of
+Popedom and Empire which arise directly out of their respective
+positions as heads spiritual and temporal of the universal Christian
+state.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of the Papal power.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+The eagerness of Christianity in the age immediately following her
+political establishment to purchase by submission the support of the
+civil power, has been already remarked. The change from independence
+to supremacy was gradual. The tale we smile at, how Constantine,
+healed of his leprosy, granted the West to bishop Sylvester, and
+retired to Byzantium that no secular prince might interfere with the
+jurisdiction or profane the neighbourhood of Peter's chair, worked
+great effects through the belief it commanded for many centuries. Nay
+more, its groundwork was true. It was the removal of the seat of
+government from the Tiber to the Bosphorus that made the Pope the
+greatest personage in the city, and in the prostration after Alaric's
+invasion he was seen to be so. Henceforth he alone was a permanent and
+effective, though still unacknowledged power, as truly superior to the
+revived senate and consuls of the phantom republic as Augustus and
+Tiberius had been to the faint continuance of their earlier
+prototypes. Pope Leo the First asserted the universal jurisdiction of
+his see[171], and his persevering successors slowly enthralled Italy,
+Illyricum, Gaul, Spain, Africa, dexterously confounding their
+undoubted metropolitan and patriarchal rights with those of oecumenical
+bishop, in which they were finally merged. By his writings and the
+fame of his personal sanctity, by the conversion of England and the
+introduction of an impressive ritual, Gregory the Great did more than
+any other pontiff to advance Rome's ecclesiastical authority. Yet his
+tone to Maurice of Constantinople was deferential, to Phocas
+adulatory; his successors were not consecrated till confirmed by the
+Emperor or the Exarch; one of them was dragged in chains to the
+Bosphorus, and banished thence to Scythia. When the iconoclastic
+controversy and the intervention of Pipin broke the allegiance of the
+Popes to the East, the Franks, as patricians and Emperors, seemed to
+step into the position which Byzantium had lost[172]. At Charles's
+coronation, says the Saxon poet,
+
+ 'Et summus eundem
+ Praesul adoravit, sicut mos debitus olim
+ Principibus fuit antiquis.'
+
+[Sidenote: Temporal power of the Popes.]
+
+Their relations were, however, no longer the same. If the Frank
+vaunted conquest, the priest spoke only of free gift. What Christendom
+saw was that Charles was crowned by the Pope's hands, and undertook as
+his principal duty the protection and advancement of the Holy Roman
+Church. The circumstances of Otto the Great's coronation gave an even
+more favourable opening to sacerdotal claims, for it was a Pope who
+summoned him to Rome and a Pope who received from him an oath of
+fidelity and aid. In the conflict of three powers, the Emperor, the
+pontiff, and the people--represented by their senate and consuls, or
+by the demagogue of the hour--the most steady, prudent, and
+far-sighted was sure eventually to prevail. The Popedom had no
+minorities, as yet few disputed successions, few revolts within its
+own army--the host of churchmen through Europe. Boniface's conversion
+of Germany under its direct sanction, gave it a hold on the rising
+hierarchy of the greatest European state; the extension of the rule of
+Charles and Otto diffused in the same measure its emissaries and
+pretensions. The first disputes turned on the right of the prince to
+confirm the elected pontiff, which was afterwards supposed to have
+been granted by Hadrian I to Charles, in the decree quoted as
+'_Hadrianus Papa_[173].' This '_ius eligendi et ordinandi summum
+pontificem_,' which Lewis I appears as yielding by the '_Ego
+Ludovicus_[174],' was claimed by the Carolingians whenever they felt
+themselves strong enough, and having fallen into desuetude in the
+troublous times of the Italian Emperors, was formally renewed to Otto
+the Great by his nominee Leo VIII. We have seen it used, and used in
+the purest spirit, by Otto himself, by his grandson Otto III, last of
+all, and most despotically, by Henry III. Along with it there had
+grown up a bold counter-assumption of the Papal chair to be itself the
+source of the imperial dignity. In submitting to a fresh coronation,
+Lewis the Pious admitted the invalidity of his former self-performed
+one: Charles the Bald did not scout the arrogant declaration of John
+VIII[175], that to him alone the Emperor owed his crown; and the
+council of Pavia[176], when it chose him king of Italy, repeated the
+assertion. Subsequent Popes knew better than to apply to the chiefs of
+Saxon and Franconian chivalry language which the feeble Neustrian had
+not resented; but the precedent remained, the weapon was only hid
+behind the pontifical robe to be flashed out with effect when the
+moment should come. There were also two other great steps which papal
+power had taken. By the invention and adoption of the False Decretals
+it had provided itself with a legal system suited to any emergency,
+and which gave it unlimited authority through the Christian world in
+causes spiritual and over persons ecclesiastical. Canonistical
+ingenuity found it easy in one way or another to make this include all
+causes and persons whatsoever: for crime is always and wrong is often
+sin, nor can aught be anywhere done which may not affect the clergy.
+On the gift of Pipin and Charles, repeated and confirmed by Lewis I,
+Charles II, Otto I and III, and now made to rest on the more venerable
+authority of the first Christian Emperor, it could found claims to the
+sovereignty of Rome, Tuscany, and all else that had belonged to the
+exarchate. Indefinite in their terms, these grants were never meant by
+the donors to convey full dominion over the districts--that belonged
+to the head of the Empire--but only as in the case of other church
+estates, a perpetual usufruct or _dominium utile_. They were, in fact,
+mere endowments. Nor had the gifts been ever actually reduced into
+possession: the Pope had been hitherto the victim, not the lord, of
+the neighbouring barons. They were not, however, denied, and might be
+made a formidable engine of attack: appealing to them, the Pope could
+brand his opponents as unjust and impious; and could summon nobles and
+cities to defend him as their liege lord, just as, with no better
+original right, he invoked the help of the Norman conquerors of Naples
+and Sicily.
+
+The attitude of the Roman Church to the imperial power at Henry the
+Third's death was externally respectful. The right of a German king to
+the crown of the city was undoubted, and the Pope was his lawful
+subject. Hitherto the initiative in reform had come from the civil
+magistrate. But the secret of the pontiff's strength lay in this: he,
+and he alone, could confer the crown, and had therefore the right of
+imposing conditions on its recipient. Frequent interregna had weakened
+the claim of the Transalpine monarch and prevented his power from
+taking firm root; his title was never by law hereditary: the holy
+Church had before sought and might again seek a defender elsewhere.
+And since the need of such defence had originated this transference of
+the Empire from the Greeks to the Franks, since to render it was the
+Emperor's chief function, it was surely the Pope's duty as well as his
+right to see that the candidate was capable of fulfilling his task, to
+degrade him if he rejected or misperformed it.
+
+[Sidenote: Hildebrandine reforms.]
+
+The first step was to remove a blemish in the constitution of the
+Church, by fixing a regular body to choose the supreme pontiff. This
+Nicholas II did in A.D. 1059, feebly reserving the rights of Henry IV
+and his successors. Then the reforming spirit, kindled by the abuses
+and depravity of the last century, advanced apace. It had two main
+objects: the enforcement of celibacy, especially on the secular
+clergy, who enjoyed in this respect considerable freedom, and the
+extinction of simony. In the former, the Emperors and a large part of
+the laity were not unwilling to join: the latter no one dared to
+defend in theory. But when Gregory VII declared that it was sin for
+the ecclesiastic to receive his benefice under conditions from a
+layman, and so condemned the whole system of feudal investitures to
+the clergy, he aimed a deadly blow at all secular authority. Half of
+the land and wealth of Germany was in the hands of bishops and abbots,
+who would now be freed from the monarch's control to pass under that
+of the Pope. In such a state of things government itself would be
+impossible.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry IV and Gregory VII.]
+
+[Sidenote: A.D. 1077.]
+
+Henry and Gregory already mistrusted each other: after this decree war
+was inevitable. The Pope cited his opponent to appear and be judged at
+Rome for his vices and misgovernment. The Emperor[177] replied by
+convoking a synod, which deposed and insulted Gregory. At once the
+dauntless monk pronounced Henry excommunicate, and fixed a day on
+which, if still unrepentant, he should cease to reign. Supported by
+his own princes, the monarch might have defied a mandate backed by no
+external force; but the Saxons, never contented since the first place
+had passed from their own dukes to the Franconians, only waited the
+signal to burst into a new revolt, whilst through all Germany the
+Emperor's tyranny and irregularities of life had sown the seeds of
+disaffection. Shunned, betrayed, threatened, he rushed into what
+seemed the only course left, and Canosa saw Europe's mightiest prince,
+titular lord of the world, a suppliant before the successor of the
+Apostle. Henry soon found that his humiliation had not served him;
+driven back into opposition, he defied Gregory anew, set up an
+anti-pope, overthrew the rival whom his rebellious subjects had
+raised, and maintained to the end of his sad and chequered life a
+power often depressed but never destroyed. Nevertheless had all other
+humiliation been spared, that one scene in the yard of the Countess
+Matilda's castle, an imperial penitent standing barefoot and
+woollen-frocked on the snow three days and nights, till the priest who
+sat within should admit and absolve him, was enough to mark a decisive
+change, and inflict an irretrievable disgrace on the crown so abased.
+Its wearer could no more, with the same lofty confidence, claim to be
+the highest power on earth, created by and answerable to God alone.
+Gregory had extorted the recognition of that absolute superiority of
+the spiritual dominion which he was wont to assert so sternly;
+proclaiming that to the Pope, as God's vicar, all mankind are subject,
+and all rulers responsible: so that he, the giver of the crown, may
+also excommunicate and depose. Writing to William the Conqueror, he
+says[178]: 'For as for the beauty of this world, that it may be at
+different seasons perceived by fleshly eyes, God hath disposed the sun
+and the moon, lights that outshine all others; so lest the creature
+whom His goodness hath formed after His own image in this world should
+be drawn astray into fatal dangers, He hath provided in the apostolic
+and royal dignities the means of ruling it through divers offices....
+If I, therefore, am to answer for thee on the dreadful day of judgment
+before the just Judge who cannot lie, the creator of every creature,
+bethink thee whether I must not very diligently provide for thy
+salvation, and whether, for thine own safety, thou oughtest not
+without delay to obey me, that so thou mayest possess the land of the
+living.'
+
+Gregory was not the inventor nor the first propounder of these
+doctrines; they had been long before a part of mediaeval Christianity,
+interwoven with its most vital doctrines. But he was the first who
+dared to apply them to the world as he found it. His was that rarest
+and grandest of gifts, an intellectual courage and power of
+imaginative belief which, when it has convinced itself of aught,
+accepts it fully with all its consequences, and shrinks not from
+acting at once upon it. A perilous gift, as the melancholy end of his
+own career proved, for men were found less ready than he had thought
+them to follow out with unswerving consistency like his the principles
+which all acknowledged. But it was the very suddenness and boldness of
+his policy that secured the ultimate triumph of his cause, awing men's
+minds and making that seem realized which had been till then a vague
+theory. His premises once admitted,--and no one dreamt of denying
+them,--the reasonings by which he established the superiority of
+spiritual to temporal jurisdiction were unassailable. With his
+authority, in whose hands are the keys of heaven and hell, whose word
+can bestow eternal bliss or plunge in everlasting misery, no other
+earthly authority can compete or interfere: if his power extends into
+the infinite, how much more must he be supreme over things finite? It
+was thus that Gregory and his successors were wont to argue: the
+wonder is, not that they were obeyed, but that they were not obeyed
+more implicitly. In the second sentence of excommunication which
+Gregory passed upon Henry the Fourth are these words:--
+
+'Come now, I beseech you, O most holy and blessed Fathers and Princes,
+Peter and Paul, that all the world may understand and know that if ye
+are able to bind and to loose in heaven, ye are likewise able on
+earth, according to the merits of each man, to give and to take away
+empires, kingdoms, princedoms, marquisates, duchies, countships, and
+the possessions of all men. For if ye judge spiritual things, what
+must we believe to be your power over worldly things? and if ye judge
+the angels who rule over all proud princes, what can ye not do to
+their slaves?'
+
+[Sidenote: Results of the struggle.]
+
+Doctrines such as these do indeed strike equally at all temporal
+governments, nor were the Innocents and Bonifaces of later days slow
+to apply them so. On the Empire, however, the blow fell first and
+heaviest. As when Alaric entered Rome, the spell of ages was broken,
+Christendom saw her greatest and most venerable institution
+dishonoured and helpless; allegiance was no longer undivided, for who
+could presume to fix in each case the limits of the civil and
+ecclesiastical jurisdictions? The potentates of Europe beheld in the
+Papacy a force which, if dangerous to themselves, could be made to
+repel the pretensions and baffle the designs of the strongest and
+haughtiest among them. Italy learned how to meet the Teutonic
+conqueror by gaining the papal sanction for the leagues of her cities.
+The German princes, anxious to narrow the prerogative of their head,
+were the natural allies of his enemy, whose spiritual thunders, more
+terrible than their own lances, could enable them to depose an
+aspiring monarch, or extort from him any concessions they desired.
+Their altered tone is marked by the promise they required from Rudolf
+of Swabia, whom they set up as a rival to Henry, that he would not
+endeavour to make the throne hereditary.
+
+[Sidenote: Concordat of Worms, A.D. 1122.]
+
+It is not possible here to dwell on the details of the great struggle
+of the Investitures, rich as it is in the interest of adventure and
+character, momentous as were its results for the future. A word or two
+must suffice to describe the conclusion, not indeed of the whole
+drama, which was to extend over centuries, but of what may be called
+its first act. Even that act lasted beyond the lives of the original
+performers. Gregory the Seventh passed away at Salerno in A.D. 1087,
+exclaiming with his last breath 'I have loved justice and hated
+iniquity, therefore I die in exile.' Nineteen years later, in A.D.
+1106, Henry IV died, dethroned by an unnatural son whom the hatred of
+a relentless pontiff had raised in rebellion against him. But that
+son, the emperor Henry the Fifth, so far from conceding the points in
+dispute, proved an antagonist more ruthless and not less able than his
+father. He claimed for his crown all the rights over ecclesiastics
+that his predecessors had ever enjoyed, and when at his coronation in
+Rome, A.D. 1112, Pope Paschal II refused to complete the rite until he
+should have yielded, Henry seized both Pope and cardinals and
+compelled them by a rigorous imprisonment to consent to a treaty which
+he dictated. Once set free, the Pope, as was natural, disavowed his
+extorted concessions, and the struggle was protracted for ten years
+longer, until nearly half a century had elapsed from the first quarrel
+between Gregory VII and Henry IV. The Concordat of Worms, concluded in
+A.D. 1122, was in form a compromise, designed to spare either party
+the humiliation of defeat. Yet the Papacy remained master of the
+field. The Emperor retained but one-half of those rights of
+investiture which had formerly been his. He could never resume the
+position of Henry III; his wishes or intrigues might influence the
+proceedings of a chapter, his oath bound him from open interference.
+He had entered the strife in the fulness of dignity; he came out of it
+with tarnished glory and shattered power. His wars had been hitherto
+carried on with foreign foes, or at worst with a single rebel noble;
+now his steadiest ally was turned into his fiercest assailant, and had
+enlisted against him half his court, half the magnates of his realm.
+At any moment his sceptre might be shivered in his hand by the bolt of
+anathema, and a host of enemies spring up from every convent and
+cathedral.
+
+[Sidenote: The Crusades.]
+
+Two other results of this great conflict ought not to pass unnoticed.
+The Emperor was alienated from the Church at the most unfortunate of
+all moments, the era of the Crusades. To conduct a great religious war
+against the enemies of the faith, to head the church militant in her
+carnal as the Popes were accustomed to do in her spiritual strife,
+this was the very purpose for which an Emperor had been called into
+being; and it was indeed in these wars, more particularly in the first
+three of them, that the ideal of a Christian commonwealth which the
+theory of the mediaeval Empire proclaimed, was once for all and never
+again realized by the combined action of the great nations of Europe.
+Had such an opportunity fallen to the lot of Henry III, he might have
+used it to win back a supremacy hardly inferior to that which had
+belonged to the first Carolingians. But Henry IV's proscription
+excluded him from all share in an enterprise which he must otherwise
+have led--nay, more, committed it to the guidance of his foes. The
+religious feeling which the Crusades evoked--a feeling which became
+the origin of the great orders of chivalry, and somewhat later of the
+two great orders of mendicant friars--turned wholly against the
+opponent of ecclesiastical claims, and was made to work the will of
+the Holy See, which had blessed and organized the project. A century
+and a half later the Pope did not scruple to preach a crusade against
+the Emperor himself.
+
+Again: it was now that the first seeds were sown of that fear and
+hatred wherewith the German people never thenceforth ceased to regard
+the encroaching Romish court. Branded by the Church and forsaken by
+the nobles, Henry IV retained the affections of the faithful burghers
+of Worms and Liege. It soon became the test of Teutonic patriotism to
+resist Italian priestcraft.
+
+[Sidenote: Limitations of imperial prerogative.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lothar II, 1125-1138.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad III, 1138-1152.]
+
+The changes in the internal constitution of Germany which the long
+anarchy of Henry IV's reign had produced are seen when the nature of
+the prerogative as it stood at the accession of Conrad II, the first
+Franconian Emperor, is compared with its state at Henry V's death. All
+fiefs are now hereditary, and when vacant can be granted afresh only
+by consent of the States; the jurisdiction of the crown is less wide;
+the idea is beginning to make progress that the most essential part of
+the Empire is not its supreme head but the commonwealth of princes and
+barons. The greatest triumph of these feudal magnates is in the
+establishment of the elective principle, which when confirmed by the
+three free elections of Lothar II, Conrad III, and Frederick I, passes
+into an undoubted law. The Prince-Electors are mentioned in A.D. 1156
+as a distinct and important body[179]. The clergy, too, whom the
+policy of Otto the Great and Henry II had raised, are now not less
+dangerous than the dukes, whose power it was hoped they would balance;
+possibly more so, since protected by their sacred character and their
+allegiance to the Pope, while able at the same time to command the
+arms of their countless vassals. Nor were the two succeeding Emperors
+the men to retrieve those disasters. The Saxon Lothar the Second is
+the willing minion of the Pope; performs at his coronation a menial
+service unknown before, and takes a more stringent oath to defend the
+Holy See, that he may purchase its support against the Swabian faction
+in his own dominions. Conrad the Third, the first Emperor of the great
+house of Hohenstaufen[180], represents the anti-papal party; but
+domestic troubles and an unfortunate crusade prevented him from
+effecting anything in Italy. He never even entered Rome to receive the
+crown.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[171] 'Roma per sedem Beati Petri caput orbis effecta.'--See note _i_,
+p. 32.
+
+[172] 'Claves tibi _ad regnum_ dimisimus.'--Pope Stephen to Charles
+Martel, in _Codex Carolinus_, ap. Muratori, _S. R. I._ iii. Some,
+however, prefer to read 'ad rogum.'
+
+[173] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Dist. lxiii. c. 22.
+
+[174] Dist. lxiii. c. 30. This decree is, however, in all probability
+spurious.
+
+[175] 'Nos elegimus merito et approbavimus una cum annisu et voto
+patrum amplique senatus et gentis togatae,' &c., ap. Baron. _Ann.
+Eccl._, ad ann. 876.
+
+[176] 'Divina vos pietas B. principum apostolorum Petri et Pauli
+interventione per vicarium ipsorum dominum Ioannem summum pontificem
+... ad imperiale culmen S. Spiritus iudicio provexit.'--_Concil.
+Ticinense_, in Mur., _S. R. I._ ii.
+
+[177] Strictly speaking, Henry was at this time only king of the
+Romans: he was not crowned Emperor at Rome till 1084.
+
+[178] Letter of Gregory VII to William I, A.D. 1080. I quote from
+Migne, t. cxlviii. p. 568.
+
+[179] 'Gradum statim post Principes Electores.'--Frederick I's
+Privilege of Austria, in Pertz, _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[180] Hohenstaufen is a castle in what is now the kingdom of
+Wuertemberg, about four miles from the Goeppingen station of the railway
+from Stuttgart to Ulm. It stands, or rather stood, on the summit of a
+steep and lofty conical hill, commanding a boundless view over the
+great limestone plateau of the Rauhe Alp, the eastern declivities of
+the Schwartzwald, and the bare and tedious plains of western Bavaria.
+Of the castle itself, destroyed in the Peasants' War, there remain
+only fragments of the wall-foundations: in a rude chapel lying on the
+hill slope below are some strange half-obliterated frescoes; over the
+arch of the door is inscribed 'Hic transibat Caesar.' Frederick
+Barbarossa had another famous palace at Kaiserslautern, a small town
+in the Palatinate, on the railway from Mannheim to Treves, lying in a
+wide valley at the western foot of the Hardt mountains. It was
+destroyed by the French and a house of correction has been built upon
+its site; but in a brewery hard by may be seen some of the huge
+low-browed arches of its lower story.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE EMPERORS IN ITALY: FREDERICK BARBAROSSA.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick of Hohenstaufen, 1152-1189.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the First, better known under his Italian
+surname Barbarossa, is the most brilliant in the annals of the Empire.
+Its territory had been wider under Charles, its strength perhaps
+greater under Henry the Third, but it never appeared in such pervading
+vivid activity, never shone with such lustre of chivalry, as under the
+prince whom his countrymen have taken to be one of their national
+heroes, and who is still, as the half-mythic type of Teutonic
+character, honoured by picture and statue, in song and in legend,
+through the breadth of the German lands. The reverential fondness of
+his annalists and the whole tenour of his life go far to justify this
+admiration, and dispose us to believe that nobler motives were joined
+with personal ambition in urging him to assert so haughtily and carry
+out so harshly those imperial rights in which he had such unbounded
+confidence. Under his guidance the Transalpine power made its greatest
+effort to subdue the two antagonists which then threatened and were
+fated in the end to destroy it--Italian nationality and the Papacy.
+
+[Sidenote: His relations to the Popedom.]
+
+Even before Gregory VII's time it might have been predicted that two
+such potentates as the Emperor and the Pope, closely bound together,
+yet each with pretensions wide and undefined, must ere long come into
+collision. The boldness of that great pontiff in enforcing, the
+unflinching firmness of his successors in maintaining, the supremacy
+of clerical authority, inspired their supporters with a zeal and
+courage which more than compensated the advantages of the Emperor in
+defending rights he had long enjoyed. On both sides the hatred was
+soon very bitter. But even had men's passions permitted a
+reconciliation, it would have been found difficult to bring into
+harmony adverse principles, each irresistible, mutually destructive.
+As the spiritual power, in itself purer, since exercised over the soul
+and directed to the highest of all ends, eternal felicity, was
+entitled to the obedience of all, laymen as well as clergy; so the
+spiritual person, to whom, according to the view then universally
+accepted, there had been imparted by ordination a mysterious sanctity,
+could not without sin be subject to the lay magistrate, be installed
+by him in office, be judged in his court, and render to him any
+compulsory service. Yet it was no less true that civil government was
+indispensable to the peace and advancement of society; and while it
+continued to subsist, another jurisdiction could not be suffered to
+interfere with its workings, nor one-half of the people be altogether
+removed from its control. Thus the Emperor and the Pope were forced
+into hostility as champions of opposite systems, however fully each
+might admit the strength of his adversary's position, however bitterly
+he might bewail the violence of his own partisans. There had also
+arisen other causes of quarrel, less respectable but not less
+dangerous. The pontiff demanded and the monarch refused the lands
+which the Countess Matilda of Tuscany had bequeathed to the Holy See;
+Frederick claiming them as feudal suzerain, the Pope eager by their
+means to carry out those schemes of temporal dominion which
+Constantine's donation sanctioned, and Lothar's seeming renunciation
+of the sovereignty of Rome had done much to encourage. As feudal
+superior of the Norman kings of Naples and Sicily, as protector of the
+towns and barons of North Italy who feared the German yoke, the
+successor of Peter wore already the air of an independent potentate.
+
+[Sidenote: Contest with Hadrian IV.]
+
+No man was less likely than Frederick to submit to these
+encroachments. He was a sort of imperialist Hildebrand, strenuously
+proclaiming the immediate dependence of his office on God's gift, and
+holding it every whit as sacred as his rival's. On his first journey
+to Rome, he refused to hold the Pope's stirrup[181], as Lothar had
+done, till Pope Hadrian the Fourth's threat that he would withhold the
+crown enforced compliance. Complaints arising not long after on some
+other ground, the Pope exhorted Frederick by letter to shew himself
+worthy of the kindness of his mother the Roman Church, who had given
+him the imperial crown, and would confer on him, if dutiful, benefits
+still greater. This word benefits--_beneficia_--understood in its
+usual legal sense of 'fief,' and taken in connection with the picture
+which had been set up at Rome to commemorate Lothar's homage, provoked
+angry shouts from the nobles assembled in diet at Besancon; and when
+the legate answered, 'From whom, then, if not from our Lord the Pope,
+does your king hold the Empire?' his life was not safe from their
+fury. On this occasion Frederick's vigour and the remonstrances of the
+Transalpine prelates obliged Hadrian to explain away the obnoxious
+word, and remove the picture. Soon after the quarrel was renewed by
+other causes, and came to centre itself round the Pope's demand that
+Rome should be left entirely to his government. Frederick, in reply,
+appeals to the civil law, and closes with the words, 'Since by the
+ordination of God I both am called and am Emperor of the Romans, in
+nothing but name shall I appear to be ruler if the control of the
+Roman city be wrested from my hands.' That such a claim should need
+assertion marks the change since Henry III; how much more that it
+could not be enforced. Hadrian's tone rises into defiance; he mingles
+the threat of excommunication with references to the time when the
+Germans had not yet the Empire. 'What were the Franks till Zacharias
+welcomed Pipin? What is the Teutonic king now till consecrated at Rome
+by holy hands? The chair of Peter has given, and can withdraw its
+gifts.'
+
+[Sidenote: With Pope Alexander III.]
+
+The schism that followed Hadrian's death produced a second and more
+momentous conflict. Frederick, as head of Christendom, proposed to
+summon the bishops of Europe to a general council, over which he
+should preside, like Justinian or Heraclius. Quoting the favourite
+text of the two swords, 'On earth,' he continues, 'God has placed no
+more than two powers: above there is but one God, so here one Pope and
+one Emperor. The Divine Providence has specially appointed the Roman
+Empire as a remedy against continued schism[182].' The plan failed;
+and Frederick adopted the candidate whom his own faction had chosen,
+while the rival claimant, Alexander III, appealed, with a confidence
+which the issue justified, to the support of sound churchmen
+throughout Europe. The keen and long doubtful strife of twenty years
+that followed, while apparently a dispute between rival Popes, was in
+substance an effort by the secular monarch to recover his command of
+the priesthood; not less truly so than that contemporaneous conflict
+of the English Henry II and St. Thomas of Canterbury, with which it
+was constantly involved. Unsupported, not all Alexander's genius and
+resolution could have saved him: by the aid of the Lombard cities,
+whose league he had counselled and hallowed, and of the fevers of
+Rome, by which the conquering German host was suddenly annihilated, he
+won a triumph the more signal, that it was over a prince so wise and
+so pious as Frederick. At Venice, who, inaccessible by her position,
+maintained a sedulous neutrality, claiming to be independent of the
+Empire, yet seldom led into war by sympathy with the Popes, the two
+powers whose strife had roused all Europe were induced to meet by the
+mediation of the doge Sebastian Ziani. Three slabs of red marble in
+the porch of St. Mark's point out the spot where Frederick knelt in
+sudden awe, and the Pope with tears of joy raised him, and gave the
+kiss of peace. A later legend, to which poetry and painting have given
+an undeserved currency[183], tells how the pontiff set his foot on the
+neck of the prostrate king, with the words, 'The lion and the dragon
+shalt thou trample under feet[184].' It needed not this exaggeration
+to enhance the significance of that scene, even more full of meaning
+for the future than it was solemn and affecting to the Venetian crowd
+that thronged the church and the piazza. For it was the renunciation
+by the mightiest prince of his time of the project to which his life
+had been devoted: it was the abandonment by the secular power of a
+contest in which it had twice been vanquished, and which it could not
+renew under more favourable conditions.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of the study of the civil law.]
+
+Authority maintained so long against the successor of Peter would be
+far from indulgent to rebellious subjects. For it was in this light
+that the Lombard cities appeared to a monarch bent on reviving all the
+rights his predecessors had enjoyed: nay, all that the law of ancient
+Rome gave her absolute ruler. It would be wrong to speak of a
+re-discovery of the civil law. That system had never perished from
+Gaul and Italy, had been the groundwork of some codes, and the whole
+substance, modified only by the changes in society, of many others.
+The Church excepted, no agent did so much to keep alive the memory of
+Roman institutions. The twelfth century now beheld the study
+cultivated with a surprising increase of knowledge and ardour,
+expended chiefly upon the Pandects. First in Italy and the schools of
+the South, then in Paris and Oxford, they were expounded, commented
+on, extolled as the perfection of human wisdom, the sole, true, and
+eternal law. Vast as has been the labour and thought expended from
+that time to this in the elucidation of the civil law, the most
+competent authorities declare that in acuteness, in subtlety, in all
+those branches of learning which can subsist without help from
+historical criticism, these so-called Glossatores have been seldom
+equalled and never surpassed by their successors. The teachers of the
+canon law, who had not as yet become the rivals of the civilian, and
+were accustomed to recur to his books where their own were silent,
+spread through Europe the fame and influence of the Roman
+jurisprudence; while its own professors were led both by their feeling
+and their interest to give to all its maxims the greatest weight and
+the fullest application. Men just emerging from barbarism, with minds
+unaccustomed to create and blindly submissive to authority, viewed
+written texts with an awe to us incomprehensible. All that the most
+servile jurists of Rome had ever ascribed to their despotic princes
+was directly transferred to the Caesarean majesty who inherited their
+name. He was 'Lord of the world,' absolute master of the lives and
+property of all his subjects, that is, of all men; the sole fountain
+of legislation, the embodiment of right and justice. These doctrines,
+which the great Bolognese jurists, Bulgarus, Martinus, Hugolinus, and
+others who constantly surrounded Frederick, taught and applied, as
+matter of course, to a Teutonic, a feudal king, were by the rest of
+the world not denied, were accepted in fervent faith by his German and
+Italian partisans. 'To the Emperor belongs the protection of the whole
+world,' says bishop Otto of Freysing. 'The Emperor is a living law
+upon earth[185].' To Frederick, at Roncaglia, the archbishop of Milan
+speaks for the assembled magnates of Lombardy: 'Do and ordain
+whatsoever thou wilt, thy will is law; as it is written, "Quicquid
+principi placuit legis habet vigorem, cum populus ei et in eum omne
+suum imperium et potestatem concesserit[186]." The Hohenstaufen
+himself was not slow to accept these magnificent ascriptions of
+dignity, and though modestly professing his wish to govern according
+to law rather than override the law, was doubtless roused by them to a
+more vehement assertion of a prerogative so hallowed by age and by
+what seemed a divine ordinance.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick in Italy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rome under Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+That assertion was most loudly called for in Italy. The Emperors might
+appear to consider it a conquered country without privileges to be
+respected, for they did not summon its princes to the German diets,
+and overawed its own assemblies at Pavia or Roncaglia by the
+Transalpine host that followed them. Its crown, too, was theirs
+whenever they crossed the Alps to claim it, while the elections on the
+banks of the Rhine might be adorned but could not be influenced by the
+presence of barons from the southern kingdom[187]. In practice,
+however, the imperial power stood lower in Italy than in Germany, for
+it had been from the first intermittent, depending on the personal
+vigour and present armed support of each invader. The theoretic
+sovereignty of the Emperor-king was nowise disputed: in the cities
+toll and tax were of right his: he could issue edicts at the Diet, and
+require the tenants in chief to appear with their vassals. But the
+revival of a control never exercised since Henry IV's time, was felt
+as an intolerable hardship by the great Lombard cities, proud of
+riches and population equal to that of the duchies of Germany or the
+kingdoms of the North, and accustomed for more than a century to a
+turbulent independence. For republicanism and popular freedom
+Frederick had little sympathy. At Rome the fervent Arnold of Brescia
+had repeated, but with far different thoughts and hopes, the part of
+Crescentius[188]. The city had thrown off the yoke of its bishop, and
+a commonwealth under consuls and senate professed to emulate the
+spirit while it renewed the forms of the primitive republic. Its
+leaders had written to Conrad III[189], asking him to help them to
+restore the Empire to its position under Constantine and Justinian;
+but the German, warned by St. Bernard, had preferred the friendship of
+the Pope. Filled with a vain conceit of their own importance, they
+repeated their offers to Frederick when he sought the crown from
+Hadrian the Fourth. A deputation, after dwelling in highflown language
+on the dignity of the Roman people, and their kindness in bestowing
+the sceptre on him, a Swabian and a stranger, proceeded, in a manner
+hardly consistent, to demand a largess ere he should enter the city.
+Frederick's anger did not hear them to the end: 'Is this your Roman
+wisdom? Who are ye that usurp the name of Roman dignities? Your
+honours and your authority are yours no longer; with us are consuls,
+senate, soldiers. It was not you who chose us, but Charles and Otto
+that rescued you from the Greek and the Lombard, and conquered by
+their own might the imperial crown. That Frankish might is still the
+same: wrench, if you can, the club from Hercules. It is not for the
+people to give laws to the prince, but to obey his mandate[190].' This
+was Frederick's version of the 'Translation of the Empire[191].'
+
+[Sidenote: The Lombard Cities.]
+
+He who had been so stern to his own capital was not likely to deal
+more gently with the rebels of Milan and Tortona. In the contest by
+which Frederick is chiefly known to history, he is commonly painted as
+the foreign tyrant, the forerunner of the Austrian oppressor[192],
+crushing under the hoofs of his cavalry the home of freedom and
+industry. Such a view is unjust to a great man and his cause. To the
+despot liberty is always licence; yet Frederick was the advocate of
+admitted claims; the aggressions of Milan threatened her neighbours;
+the refusal, where no actual oppression was alleged, to admit his
+officers and allow his regalian rights, seemed a wanton breach of
+oaths and engagements, treason against God no less than himself[193].
+Nevertheless our sympathy must go with the cities, in whose victory we
+recognize the triumph of freedom and civilization. Their resistance
+was at first probably a mere aversion to unused control, and to the
+enforcement of imposts less offensive in former days than now, and by
+long dereliction apparently obsolete[194]. Republican principles were
+not avowed, nor Italian nationality appealed to. But the progress of
+the conflict developed new motives and feelings, and gave them clearer
+notions of what they fought for. As the Emperor's antagonist, the Pope
+was their natural ally: he blessed their arms, and called on the
+barons of Romagna and Tuscany for aid; he made 'The Church' ere long
+their watchword, and helped them to conclude that league of mutual
+support by means whereof the party of the Italian Guelfs was formed.
+Another cry, too, began to be heard, hardly less inspiriting than the
+last, the cry of freedom and municipal self-government--freedom little
+understood and terribly abused, self-government which the cities who
+claimed it for themselves refused to their subject allies, yet both of
+them, through their divine power of stimulating effort and quickening
+sympathy, as much nobler than the harsh and sterile system of a feudal
+monarchy as the citizen of republican Athens rose above the slavish
+Asiatic or the brutal Macedonian. Nor was the fact that Italians were
+resisting a Transalpine invader without its effect; there was as yet
+no distinct national feeling, for half Lombardy, towns as well as
+rural nobles, fought under Frederick; but events made the cause of
+liberty always more clearly the cause of patriotism, and increased
+that fear and hate of the Tedescan for which Italy has had such bitter
+justification.
+
+[Sidenote: Temporary success of Frederick.]
+
+The Emperor was for a time successful: Tortona was taken, Milan razed
+to the ground, her name apparently lost: greater obstacles had been
+overcome, and a fuller authority was now exercised than in the days of
+the Ottos or the Henrys. The glories of the first Frankish conqueror
+were triumphantly recalled, and Frederick was compared by his admirers
+to the hero whose canonization he had procured, and whom he strove in
+all things to imitate[195]. 'He was esteemed,' says one, 'second only
+to Charles in piety and justice.' 'We ordain this,' says a decree: 'Ut
+ad Caroli imitationem ius ecclesiarum statum reipublicae et legum
+integritatem per totum imperium nostrum servaremus[196].' But the hold
+the name of Charles had on the minds of the people, and the way in
+which he had become, so to speak, an eponym of Empire, has better
+witnesses than grave documents. A rhyming poet sings[197]:--
+
+ 'Quanta sit potentia vel laus Friderici
+ Cum sit patens omnibus, non est opus dici;
+ Qui rebelles lancea fodiens ultrici
+ Repraesentat Karolum dextera victrici.'
+
+The diet at Roncaglia was a chorus of gratulations over the
+re-establishment of order by the destruction of the dens of unruly
+burghers.
+
+[Sidenote: Victory of the Lombard league.]
+
+This fair sky was soon clouded. From her quenchless ashes uprose
+Milan; Cremona, scorning old jealousies, helped to rebuild what she
+had destroyed, and the confederates, committed to an all but hopeless
+strife, clung faithfully together till on the field of Legnano the
+Empire's banner went down before the carroccio[198] of the free city.
+Times were changed since Aistulf and Desiderius trembled at the
+distant tramp of the Frankish hosts. A new nation had arisen, slowly
+reared through suffering into strength, now at last by heroic deeds
+conscious of itself. The power of Charles had overleaped boundaries of
+nature and language that were too strong for his successor, and that
+grew henceforth ever firmer, till they made the Empire itself a
+delusive name. Frederick, though harsh in war, and now balked of his
+most cherished hopes, could honestly accept a state of things it was
+beyond his power to change: he signed cheerfully and kept dutifully
+the peace of Constance, which left him little but a titular supremacy
+over the Lombard towns.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick as German king.]
+
+At home no Emperor since Henry III had been so much respected and so
+generally prosperous. Uniting in his person the Saxon and Swabian
+families, he healed the long feud of Welf and Waiblingen: his prelates
+were faithful to him, even against Rome: no turbulent rebel disturbed
+the public peace. Germany was proud of a hero who maintained her
+dignity so well abroad, and he crowned a glorious life with a happy
+death, leading the van of Christian chivalry against the Mussulman.
+Frederick, the greatest of the Crusaders, is the noblest type of
+mediaeval character in many of its shadows, in all its lights.
+
+[Sidenote: The German cities.]
+
+Legal in form, in practice sometimes almost absolute, the government
+of Germany was, like that of other feudal kingdoms, restrained chiefly
+by the difficulty of coercing refractory vassals. All depended on the
+monarch's character, and one so vigorous and popular as Frederick
+could generally lead the majority with him and terrify the rest. A
+false impression of the real strength of his prerogative might be
+formed from the readiness with which he was obeyed. He repaired the
+finances of the kingdom, controlled the dukes, introduced a more
+splendid ceremonial, endeavoured to exalt the central power by
+multiplying the nobles of the second rank, afterwards the 'college of
+princes,' and by trying to substitute the civil law and Lombard feudal
+code for the old Teutonic customs, different in every province. If not
+successful in this project, he fared better with another. Since Henry
+the Fowler's day towns had been growing up through Southern and
+Western Germany, especially where rivers offered facilities for trade.
+Cologne, Treves, Mentz, Worms, Speyer, Nuernberg, Ulm, Regensburg,
+Augsburg, were already considerable cities, not afraid to beard their
+lord or their bishop, and promising before long to counterbalance the
+power of the territorial oligarchy. Policy or instinct led Frederick
+to attach them to the throne, enfranchising many, granting, with
+municipal institutions, an independent jurisdiction, conferring
+various exemptions and privileges; while receiving in turn their
+good-will and loyal aid, in money always, in men when need should
+come. His immediate successors trode in his steps, and thus there
+arose in the state a third order, the firmest bulwark, had it been
+rightly used, of imperial authority; an order whose members, the Free
+Cities, were through many ages the centres of German intellect and
+freedom, the only haven from the storms of civil war, the surest hope
+of future peace and union. In them national congresses to this day
+sometimes meet: from them aspiring spirits strive to diffuse those
+ideas of Germanic unity and self-government, which they alone have
+kept alive. Out of so many flourishing commonwealths, four[199] have
+been spared by foreign conquerors and faithless princes. To the
+primitive order of German freemen, scarcely existing out of the towns,
+except in Swabia and Switzerland, Frederick further commended himself
+by allowing them to be admitted to knighthood, by restraining the
+licence of the nobles, imposing a public peace, making justice in
+every way more accessible and impartial. To the south-west of the
+green plain that girdles in the rock of Salzburg, the gigantic mass of
+the Untersberg frowns over the road which winds up a long defile to
+the glen and lake of Berchtesgaden. There, far up among its limestone
+crags, in a spot scarcely accessible to human foot, the peasants of
+the valley point out to the traveller the black mouth of a cavern, and
+tell him that within Barbarossa lies amid his knights in an enchanted
+sleep[200], waiting the hour when the ravens shall cease to hover
+round the peak, and the pear-tree blossom in the valley, to descend
+with his Crusaders and bring back to Germany the golden age of peace
+and strength and unity. Often in the evil days that followed the fall
+of Frederick's house, often when tyranny seemed unendurable and
+anarchy endless, men thought on that cavern, and sighed for the day
+when the long sleep of the just Emperor should be broken, and his
+shield be hung aloft again as of old in the camp's midst, a sign of
+help to the poor and the oppressed.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[181] A great deal of importance seems to have been attached to this
+symbolic act of courtesy. See Art. I of the Sachsenspiegel.
+
+[182] Letter to the German bishops in Radewic; Mur., _S. R. I._, t.
+vi. p. 833.
+
+[183] A picture in the great hall of the ducal palace (the Sala del
+Maggio Consiglio) represents the scene. See Rogers' Italy.
+
+[184] Psalm xci.
+
+[185] Document of 1230, quoted by Von Raumer, v. p. 81.
+
+[186] Speech of archbishop of Milan, in Radewic; Mur. vi.
+
+[187] Frederick's election (at Frankfort) was made 'non sine quibusdam
+Italiae baronibus.'--Otto Fris. i. But this was the exception.
+
+[188] See also _post_, Chapter XVI.
+
+[189] 'Senatus Populusque Romanus urbis et orbis totius domino
+Conrado.'
+
+[190] Otto of Freysing.
+
+[191] Later in his reign, Frederick condescended to negotiate with
+these Roman magistrates against a hostile Pope, and entered into a
+sort of treaty by which they were declared exempt from all
+jurisdiction but his own.
+
+[192] See the first note to Shelley's _Hellas_. Sismondi is mainly
+answerable for this conception of Barbarossa's position.
+
+[193] They say rebelliously, says Frederick, 'Nolumus hunc regnare
+super nos ... at nos maluimus honestam mortem quam ut,' &c.--Letter in
+Pertz. _M. G. H._ legg. ii.
+
+[194]
+
+ 'De tributo Caesaris nemo cogitabat;
+ Omnes erant Caesares, nemo censum dabat;
+ Civitas Ambrosii, velut Troia, stabat,
+ Deos parum, homines minus formidabat.'
+
+Poems relating to the Emperor Frederick of Hohenstaufen, published by
+Grimm.
+
+[195] Charles the Great was canonized by Frederick's anti-pope and
+confirmed afterwards.
+
+[196] _Acta Concil. Hartzhem._ iii., quoted by Von Raumer, ii. 6.
+
+[197] Poems relating to Frederick I, _ut supra_.
+
+[198] The carroccio was a waggon with a flagstaff planted on it, which
+served the Lombards for a rallying-point in battle.
+
+[199] Luebeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and Frankfort.
+
+[Since this was first written Frankfort has been annexed by Prussia,
+and her three surviving sisters have, by their entrance into the North
+German confederation, lost something of their independence.]
+
+[200] The legend is one which appears under various forms in many
+countries.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IMPERIAL TITLES AND PRETENSIONS.
+
+
+The era of the Hohenstaufen is perhaps the fittest point at which to
+turn aside from the narrative history of the Empire to speak shortly
+of the legal position which it professed to hold to the rest of
+Europe, as well as of certain duties and observances which throw a
+light upon the system it embodied. This is not indeed the era of its
+greatest power: that was already past. Nor is it conspicuously the era
+when its ideal dignity stood highest: for that remained scarcely
+impaired till three centuries had passed away. But it was under the
+Hohenstaufen, owing partly to the splendid abilities of the princes of
+that famous line, partly to the suddenly-gained ascendancy of the
+Roman law, that the actual power and the theoretical influence of the
+Empire most fully coincided. There can therefore be no better
+opportunity for noticing the titles and claims by which it announced
+itself the representative of Rome's universal dominion, and for
+collecting the various instances in which they were (either before or
+after Frederick's time) more or less admitted by the other states of
+Europe.
+
+The territories over which Barbarossa would have declared his
+jurisdiction to extend may be classed under four heads:--
+
+First, the German lands, in which, and in which alone, the Emperor
+was, up till the death of Frederick the Second, effective sovereign.
+
+Second, the non-German districts of the Holy Empire, where the Emperor
+was acknowledged as sole monarch, but in practice little regarded.
+
+Third, certain outlying countries, owing allegiance to the Empire, but
+governed by kings of their own.
+
+Fourth, the other states of Europe, whose rulers, while in most cases
+admitting the superior rank of the Emperor, were virtually independent
+of him.
+
+[Sidenote: Limits of the Empire.]
+
+Thus within the actual boundaries of the Holy Empire were included
+only districts coming under the first and second of the above classes,
+i.e. Germany, the northern half of Italy, and the kingdom of Burgundy
+or Arles--that is to say, Provence, Dauphine, the Free County of
+Burgundy (Franche Comte), and Western Switzerland. Lorraine, Alsace,
+and a portion of Flanders were of course parts of Germany. To the
+north-east, Bohemia and the Slavic principalities in Mecklenburg and
+Pomerania were as yet not integral parts of its body, but rather
+dependent outliers. Beyond the march of Brandenburg, from the Oder to
+the Vistula, dwelt pagan Lithuanians or Prussians[201], free till the
+establishment among them of the Teutonic knights.
+
+[Sidenote: Hungary.]
+
+Hungary had owed a doubtful allegiance since the days of Otto I.
+Gregory VII had claimed it as a fief of the Holy See; Frederick wished
+to reduce it completely to subjection, but could not overcome the
+reluctance of his nobles. After Frederick II, by whom it was recovered
+from the Mongol hordes, no imperial claims were made for so many years
+that at last they became obsolete, and were confessed to be so by the
+Constitution of Augsburg, A.D. 1566[202].
+
+[Sidenote: Poland.]
+
+Under Duke Misico, Poland had submitted to Otto the Great, and
+continued, with occasional revolts, to obey the Empire, till the
+beginning of the Great Interregnum (as it is called) in 1254. Its duke
+was present at the election of Richard, A.D. 1258. Thereafter
+Primislas called himself king, in token of emancipation, and the
+country became independent, though some of its provinces were long
+afterwards reunited to the German state. Silesia, originally Polish,
+was attached to Bohemia by Charles IV, and so became part of the
+Empire; Posen and Galicia were seized by Prussia and Austria, A.D.
+1772. Down to her partition in that year, the constitution of Poland
+remained a copy of that which had existed in the German kingdom in the
+twelfth century[203].
+
+[Sidenote: Denmark.]
+
+Lewis the Pious had received the homage of the Danish king Harold, on
+his baptism at Mentz, A.D. 826; Otto the Great's victories over Harold
+Blue Tooth made the country regularly subject, and added the march of
+Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire: but the boundary
+soon receded to the Eyder, on whose banks might be seen the
+inscription,--
+
+ 'Eidora Romani terminus imperii.'
+
+King Peter[204] attended at Frederick I's coronation, to do homage,
+and receive from the Emperor, as suzerain, his own crown. Since the
+Interregnum Denmark has been always free[205].
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+Otto the Great was the last Emperor whose suzerainty the French kings
+had admitted; nor were Henry VI and Otto IV successful in their
+attempts to enforce it. Boniface VIII, in his quarrel with Philip the
+Fair, offered the French throne, which he had pronounced vacant, to
+Albert I; but the wary Hapsburg declined the dangerous prize. The
+precedence, however, which the Germans continued to assert, irritated
+Gallic pride, and led to more than one contest. Blondel denies the
+Empire any claim to the Roman name; and in A.D. 1648 the French envoys
+at Muenster refused for some time to admit what no other European state
+disputed. Till recent times the title of the Archbishop of Treves,
+'Archicancellarius per Galliam atque regnum Arelatense,' preserved the
+memory of an obsolete supremacy which the constant aggressions of
+France might seem to have reversed.
+
+[Sidenote: Sweden.]
+
+No reliance can be placed on the author who tells us that Sweden was
+granted by Frederick I to Waldemar the Dane[206]; the fact is
+improbable, and we do not hear that such pretensions were ever put
+forth before or after.
+
+[Sidenote: Spain.]
+
+Nor does it appear that authority was ever exercised by any Emperor in
+Spain. Nevertheless the choice of Alfonso X by a section of the German
+electors, in A.D. 1258, may be construed to imply that the Spanish
+kings were members of the Empire. And when, A.D. 1053, Ferdinand the
+Great of Castile had, in the pride of his victories over the Moors,
+assumed the title of 'Hispaniae Imperator,' the remonstrance of Henry
+III declared the rights of Rome over the Western provinces indelible,
+and the Spaniard, though protesting his independence, was forced to
+resign the usurped dignity[207].
+
+[Sidenote: England.]
+
+No act of sovereignty is recorded to have been done by any of the
+Emperors in England, though as heirs of Rome they might be thought to
+have better rights over it than over Poland or Denmark[208]. There
+was, however, a vague notion that the English, like other kingdoms,
+must depend on the Empire: a notion which appears in Conrad III's
+letter to John of Constantinople[209]; and which was countenanced by
+the submissive tone in which Frederick I was addressed by the
+Plantagenet Henry II[210]. English independence was still more
+compromised in the next reign, when Richard I, according to Hoveden,
+'Consilio matris suae deposuit se de regno Angliae et tradidit illud
+imperatori (Henrico VIto) sicut universorum domino.' But as Richard
+was at the same time invested with the kingdom of Arles by Henry VI,
+his homage may have been for that fief only; and it was probably in
+that capacity that he voted, as a prince of the Empire, at the
+election of Frederick II. The case finds a parallel in the claims of
+England over the Scottish king, doubtful, to say the least, as regards
+the domestic realm of the latter, certain as regards Cumbria, which he
+had long held from the Southern crown[211]. But Germany had no Edward
+I. Henry VI is said at his death to have released Richard from his
+submission (this too may be compared with Richard's release to the
+Scottish William the Lion), and Edward II declared, 'regnum Angliae ab
+omni subiectione imperiali esse liberrimum[212].' Yet the idea
+survived: the Emperor Lewis the Bavarian, when he named Edward III his
+vicar in the great French war, demanded, though in vain, that the
+English monarch should kiss his feet[213]. Sigismund[214], visiting
+Henry V at London, before the meeting of the council of Constance, was
+met by the Duke of Gloucester, who, riding into the water to the ship
+where the Emperor sat, required him, at the sword's point, to declare
+that he did not come purposing to infringe on the king's authority in
+the realm of England[215]. One curious pretension of the imperial
+crown called forth many protests. It was declared by civilians and
+canonists that no public notary could have any standing, or attach any
+legality to the documents he drew, unless he had received his diploma
+from the Emperor or the Pope. A strenuous denial of a doctrine so
+injurious was issued by the parliament of Scotland under James
+III[216].
+
+[Sidenote: Naples.]
+
+The kingdom of Naples and Sicily, although of course claimed as a part
+of the Empire, was under the Norman dynasty (A.D. 1060-1189) not
+merely independent, but the most dangerous enemy of the German power
+in Italy. Henry VI, the son and successor of Barbarossa, obtained
+possession of it by marrying Constantia the last heiress of the Norman
+kings. But both he and Frederick II treated it as a separate
+patrimonial state, instead of incorporating it with their more
+northerly dominions. After the death of Conradin, the last of the
+Hohenstaufen, it passed away to an Angevin, then to an Aragonese
+dynasty, continuing under both to maintain itself independent of the
+Empire, nor ever again, except under Charles V, united to the Germanic
+crown.
+
+[Sidenote: Venice.]
+
+One spot in Italy there was whose singular felicity of situation
+enabled her through long centuries of obscurity and weakness, slowly
+ripening into strength, to maintain her freedom unstained by any
+submission to the Frankish and Germanic Emperors. Venice glories in
+deducing her origin from the fugitives who escaped from Aquileia in
+the days of Attila: it is at least probable that her population never
+received an intermixture of Teutonic settlers, and continued during
+the ages of Lombard and Frankish rule in Italy to regard the Byzantine
+sovereigns as the representatives of their ancient masters. In the
+tenth century, when summoned to submit by Otto, they had said, 'We
+wish to be the servants of the Emperors of the Romans' (the
+Constantinopolitan), and though they overthrew this very Eastern
+throne in A.D. 1204, the pretext had served its turn, and had aided
+them in defying or evading the demands of obedience made by the
+Teutonic princes. Alone of all the Italian republics, Venice never,
+down to her extinction by France and Austria in A.D. 1796, recognized
+within her walls any secular authority save her own.
+
+[Sidenote: The East.]
+
+The kings of Cyprus and Armenia sent to Henry VI to confess themselves
+his vassals and ask his help. Over remote Eastern lands, where
+Frankish foot had never trod, Frederick Barbarossa asserted the
+indestructible rights of Rome, mistress of the world. A letter to
+Saladin, amusing from its absolute identification of his own Empire
+with that which had sent Crassus to perish in Parthia, and had blushed
+to see Mark Antony 'consulum nostrum'[217] at the feet of Cleopatra,
+is preserved by Hoveden: it bids the Soldan withdraw at once from the
+dominions of Rome, else will she, with her new Teutonic defenders, of
+whom a pompous list follows, drive him from them with all her ancient
+might.
+
+[Sidenote: The Byzantine Emperors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rivalry of the two Empires.]
+
+Unwilling as were the great kingdoms of Western Europe to admit the
+territorial supremacy of the Emperor, the proudest among them never
+refused, until the end of the Middle Ages, to recognize his precedence
+and address him in a tone of respectful deference. Very different was
+the attitude of the Byzantine princes, who denied his claim to be an
+Emperor at all. The separate existence of the Eastern Church and
+Empire was not only, as has been said above, a blemish in the title of
+the Teutonic sovereigns; it was a continuing and successful protest
+against the whole system of an Empire Church of Christendom, centering
+in Rome, ruled by the successor of Peter and the successor of
+Augustus. Instead of the one Pope and one Emperor whom mediaeval theory
+presented as the sole earthly representatives of the invisible head of
+the Church, the world saw itself distracted by the interminable feud
+of rivals, each of whom had much to allege on his behalf. It was easy
+for the Latins to call the Easterns schismatics and their Emperor an
+usurper, but practically it was impossible to dethrone him or reduce
+them to obedience: while even in controversy no one could treat the
+pretensions of communities who had been the first to embrace
+Christianity and retained so many of its most ancient forms, with the
+contempt which would have been felt for any Western sectaries.
+Seriously, however, as the hostile position of the Greeks seems to us
+to affect the claims of the Teutonic Empire, calling in question its
+legitimacy and marring its pretended universality, those who lived at
+the time seem to have troubled themselves little about it, finding
+themselves in practice seldom confronted by the difficulties it
+raised. The great mass of the people knew of the Greeks not even by
+name; of those who did, the most thought of them only as perverse
+rebels, Samaritans who refused to worship at Jerusalem, and were
+little better than infidels. The few ecclesiastics of superior
+knowledge and insight had their minds preoccupied by the established
+theory, and accepted it with too intense a belief to suffer anything
+else to come into collision with it: they do not seem to have even
+apprehended all that was involved in this one defect. Nor, what is
+still stranger, in all the attacks made upon the claims of the
+Teutonic Empire, whether by its Papal or its French antagonists, do we
+find the rival title of the Greek sovereigns adduced in argument
+against it. Nevertheless, the Eastern Church was then, as she is to
+this day, a thorn in the side of the Papacy; and the Eastern Emperors,
+so far from uniting for the good of Christendom with their Western
+brethren, felt towards them a bitter though not unnatural jealousy,
+lost no opportunity of intriguing for their evil, and never ceased to
+deny their right to the imperial name. The coronation of Charles was
+in their eyes an act of unholy rebellion; his successors were
+barbarian intruders, ignorant of the laws and usages of the ancient
+state, and with no claim to the Roman name except that which the
+favour of an insolent pontiff might confer. The Greeks had themselves
+long since ceased to use the Latin tongue, and were indeed become more
+than half Orientals in character and manners. But they still continued
+to call themselves Romans, and preserved most of the titles and
+ceremonies which had existed in the time of Constantine or Justinian.
+They were weak, although by no means so weak as modern historians have
+been till lately wont to paint them, and the weaker they grew the
+higher rose their conceit, and the more did they plume themselves upon
+the uninterrupted legitimacy of their crown, and the ceremonial
+splendour wherewith custom had surrounded its wearer. It gratified
+their spite to pervert insultingly the titles of the Frankish princes.
+Basil the Macedonian reproached Lewis II with presuming to use the
+name of 'Basileus,' to which Lewis retorted that he was as good an
+emperor as Basil himself, but that, anyhow, _Basileus_ was only the
+Greek for _rex_, and need not mean 'Emperor' at all. Nicephorus would
+not call Otto I anything but 'King of the Lombards[218],' Conrad III
+was addressed by Calo-Johannes as 'amice imperii mei Rex[219];' Isaac
+Angelus had the impudence to style Frederick I 'chief prince of
+Alemannia[220].' The great Emperor, half-resentful, half-contemptuous,
+told the envoys that he was 'Romanorum imperator,' and bade their
+master call himself 'Romaniorum' from his Thracian province. Though
+these ebullitions were the most conclusive proof of their weakness,
+the Byzantine rulers sometimes planned the recovery of their former
+capital, and seemed not unlikely to succeed under the leadership of
+the conquering Manuel Comnenus. He invited Alexander III, then in the
+heat of his strife with Frederick, to return to the embrace of his
+rightful sovereign, but the prudent pontiff and his synod courteously
+declined[221]. The Greeks were, however, too unstable and too much
+alienated from Latin feeling to have held Rome, could they even have
+seduced her allegiance. A few years later they were themselves the
+victims of the French and Venetian crusaders.
+
+[Sidenote: Dignities and titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The four crowns.]
+
+Though Otto the Great and his successors had dropped all titles save
+their highest (the tedious lists of imperial dignities were happily
+not yet in being), they did not therefore endeavour to unite their
+several kingdoms, but continued to go through four distinct
+coronations at the four capitals of their Empire[222]. These are
+concisely given in the verses of Godfrey of Viterbo, a notary of
+Frederick's household[223]:--
+
+ 'Primus Aquisgrani locus est, post haec Arelati,
+ Inde Modoetiae regali sede locari
+ Post solet Italiae summa corona dari:
+ Caesar Romano cum vult diademate fungi
+ Debet apostolicis manibus reverenter inungi.'
+
+By the crowning at Aachen, the old Frankish capital, the monarch
+became 'king;' formerly 'king of the Franks,' or, 'king of the Eastern
+Franks;' now, since Henry II's time, 'king of the Romans, always
+Augustus.' At Monza, (or, more rarely, at Milan) in later times, at
+Pavia in earlier times, he became king of Italy, or of the
+Lombards[224]; at Rome he received the double crown of the Roman
+Empire, 'double,' says Godfrey, as 'urbis et orbis:'--
+
+ 'Hoc quicunque tenet, summus in orbe sedet;'
+
+though others hold that, uniting the mitre to the crown, it typifies
+spiritual as well as secular authority. The crown of Burgundy[225] or
+the kingdom of Arles, first gained by Conrad II, was a much less
+splendid matter, and carried with it little effective power. Most
+Emperors never assumed it at all, Frederick I not till late in life,
+when an interval of leisure left him nothing better to do. These four
+crowns[226] furnish matter of endless discussion to the old writers;
+they tell us that the Roman was golden, the German silver, the Italian
+iron, the metal corresponding to the dignity of each realm[227].
+Others say that that of Aachen is iron, and the Italian silver, and
+give elaborate reasons why it should be so[228]. There seems to be no
+doubt that the allegory created the fact, and that all three crowns
+were of gold, though in that of Italy there was and is inserted a
+piece of iron, a nail, it was believed, of the true Cross.
+
+[Sidenote: Meaning of the four coronations.]
+
+Why, it may well be asked, seeing that the Roman crown made the
+Emperor ruler of the whole habitable globe, was it thought necessary
+for him to add to it minor dignities which might be supposed to have
+been already included in it? The reason seems to be that the imperial
+office was conceived of as something different in kind from the regal,
+and as carrying with it not the immediate government of any particular
+kingdom, but a general suzerainty over and right of controlling all.
+Of this a pertinent illustration is afforded by an anecdote told of
+Frederick Barbarossa. Happening once to inquire of the famous jurists
+who surrounded him whether it was really true that he was 'lord of the
+world,' one of them simply assented, another, Bulgarus, answered, 'Not
+as respects ownership.' In this dictum, which is evidently conformable
+to the philosophical theory of the Empire, we have a pointed
+distinction drawn between feudal sovereignty, which supposes the
+prince original owner of the soil of his whole kingdom, and imperial
+sovereignty, which is irrespective of place, and exercised not over
+things but over men, as God's rational creatures. But the Emperor, as
+has been said already, was also the East Frankish king, uniting in
+himself, to use the legal phrase, two wholly distinct 'persons,' and
+hence he might acquire more direct and practically useful rights over
+a portion of his dominions by being crowned king of that portion, just
+as a feudal monarch was often duke or count of lordships whereof he
+was already feudal superior; or, to take a better illustration, just
+as a bishop may hold livings in his own diocese. That the Emperors,
+while continuing to be crowned at Milan and Aachen, did not call
+themselves kings of the Lombards and of the Franks, was probably
+merely because these titles seemed insignificant compared to that of
+Roman Emperor.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Emperor' not assumed till the Roman coronation.]
+
+[Sidenote: Origin and results of this practice.]
+
+In this supreme title, as has been said, all lesser honours were blent
+and lost, but custom or prejudice forbade the German king to assume it
+till actually crowned at Rome by the Pope[229]. Matters of phrase and
+title are never unimportant, least of all in an age ignorant and
+superstitiously antiquarian: and this restriction had the most
+important consequences. The first barbarian kings had been
+tribe-chiefs; and when they claimed a dominion which was universal,
+yet in a sense territorial, they could not separate their title from
+the spot which it was their boast to possess, and by virtue of whose
+name they ruled. 'Rome,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'seeing
+that she both is and is called the head of the world and the mistress
+of cities, is alone able to give to kings imperial power, and since
+she cherishes in her bosom the body of the Prince of the Apostles, she
+ought of right to appoint the Prince of the whole earth[230].' The
+crown was therefore too sacred to be conferred by any one but the
+supreme Pontiff, or in any city less august than the ancient capital.
+Had it become hereditary in any family, Lothar I's, for instance, or
+Otto's, this feeling might have worn off; as it was, each successive
+transfer, to Guido, to Otto, to Henry II, to Conrad the Salic,
+strengthened it. The force of custom, tradition, precedent, is
+incalculable when checked neither by written rules nor free
+discussion. What sheer assertion will do is shewn by the success of a
+forgery so gross as the Isidorian decretals. No arguments are needed
+to discredit the alleged decree of Pope Benedict VIII[231], which
+prohibited the German prince from taking the name or office of Emperor
+till approved and consecrated by the pontiff, but a doctrine so
+favourable to papal pretensions was sure not to want advocacy; Hadrian
+IV proclaims it in the broadest terms, and through the efforts of the
+clergy and the spell of reverence in the Teutonic princes, it passed
+into an unquestioned belief. That none ventured to use the title till
+the Pope conferred it, made it seem in some manner to depend on his
+will, enabled him to exact conditions from every candidate, and gave a
+colour to his pretended suzerainty. Since by feudal theory every
+honour and estate is held from some superior, and since the divine
+commission has been without doubt issued directly to the Pope, must
+not the whole earth be his fief, and he the lord paramount, to whom
+even the Emperor is a vassal? This argument, which derived
+considerable plausibility from the rivalry between the Emperor and
+other monarchs, as compared with the universal and undisputed[232]
+authority of the Pope, was a favourite with the high sacerdotal party:
+first distinctly advanced by Hadrian IV, when he set up the
+picture[233] representing Lothar's homage, which had so irritated the
+followers of Barbarossa, though it had already been hinted at in
+Gregory VII's gift of the crown to Rudolf of Suabia, with the line,--
+
+ 'Petra dedit Petro, Petrus diadema Rudolfo.'
+
+Nor was it only by putting him at the pontiff's mercy that this
+dependence of the imperial name on a coronation in the city injured
+the German sovereign[234]. With strange inconsistency it was not
+pretended that the Emperor's rights were any narrower before he
+received the rite: he could summon synods, confirm papal elections,
+exercise jurisdiction over the citizens: his claim of the crown itself
+could not, at least till the times of the Gregorys and the Innocents,
+be positively denied. For no one thought of contesting the right of
+the German nation to the Empire, or the authority of the electoral
+princes, strangers though they were, to give Rome and Italy a master.
+The republican followers of Arnold of Brescia might murmur, but they
+could not dispute the truth of the proud lines in which the poet who
+sang the glories of Barbarossa[235], describes the result of the
+conquest of Charles the Great:--
+
+ 'Ex quo Romanum nostra virtute redemptum
+ Hostibus expulsis, ad nos iustissimus ordo
+ Transtulit imperium, Romani gloria regni
+ Nos penes est. Quemcunque sibi Germania regem
+ Praeficit, hunc dives summisso vertice Roma
+ Suscipit, et verso Tiberim regit ordine Rhenus.'
+
+But the real strength of the Teutonic kingdom was wasted in the
+pursuit of a glittering toy: once in his reign each Emperor undertook
+a long and dangerous expedition, and dissipated in an inglorious and
+ever to be repeated strife the forces that might have achieved
+conquest elsewhere, or made him feared and obeyed at home.
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Holy Empire.']
+
+At this epoch appears another title, of which more must be said. To
+the accustomed 'Roman Empire' Frederick Barbarossa adds the epithet of
+'Holy.' Of its earlier origin, under Conrad II (the Salic), which some
+have supposed[236], there is no documentary trace, though there is
+also no proof to the contrary[237]. So far as is known it occurs first
+in the famous Privilege of Austria, granted by Frederick in the fourth
+year of his reign, the second of his empire, 'terram Austriae quae
+clypeus et cor sacri imperii esse dinoscitur[238]:' then afterwards,
+in other manifestos of his reign; for example, in a letter to Isaac
+Angelus of Byzantium[239], and in the summons to the princes to help
+him against Milan: 'Quia ... urbis et orbis gubernacula tenemus ...
+sacro imperio et divae reipublicae consulere debemus[240];' where the
+second phrase is a synonym explanatory of the first. Used occasionally
+by Henry VI and Frederick II, it is more frequent under their
+successors, William, Richard, Rudolf, till after Charles IV's time it
+becomes habitual, for the last few centuries indispensable. Regarding
+the origin of so singular a title many theories have been advanced.
+Some declared it a perpetuation of the court style of Rome and
+Byzantium, which attached sanctity to the person of the monarch: thus
+David Blondel, contending for the honour of France, calls it a mere
+epithet of the Emperor, applied by confusion to his government[241].
+Others saw in it a religious meaning, referring to Daniel's prophecy,
+or to the fact that the Empire was contemporary with Christianity, or
+to Christ's birth under it[242]. Strong churchmen derived it from the
+dependence of the imperial crown on the Pope. There were not wanting
+persons to maintain that it meant nothing more than great or splendid.
+We need not, however, be in any great doubt as to its true meaning and
+purport. The ascription of sacredness to the person, the palace, the
+letters, and so forth, of the sovereign, so common in the later ages
+of Rome, had been partly retained in the German court. Liudprand calls
+Otto 'imperator sanctissimus[243].' Still this sanctity, which the
+Greeks above all others lavished on their princes, is something
+personal, is nothing more than the divinity that always hedges a king.
+Far more intimate and peculiar was the relation of the revived Roman
+Empire to the church and religion. As has been said already, it was
+neither more nor less than the visible Church, seen on its secular
+side, the Christian society organized as a state under a form divinely
+appointed, and therefore the name 'Holy Roman Empire' was the needful
+and rightful counterpart to that of 'Holy Catholic Church.' Such had
+long been the belief, and so the title might have had its origin as
+far back as the tenth or ninth century, might even have emanated from
+Charles himself. Alcuin in one of his letters uses the phrase
+'imperium Christianum.' But there was a further reason for its
+introduction at this particular epoch. Ever since Hildebrand had
+claimed for the priesthood exclusive sanctity and supreme
+jurisdiction, the papal party had not ceased to speak of the civil
+power as being, compared with that of their own chief, merely secular,
+earthly, profane. It may be conjectured that to meet this reproach, no
+less injurious than insulting, Frederick or his advisers began to use
+in public documents the expression 'Holy Empire;' thereby wishing to
+assert the divine institution and religious duties of the office he
+held. Previous Emperors had called themselves 'Catholici,'
+'Christiani,' 'ecclesiae defensores[244];' now their State itself is
+consecrated an earthly theocracy. 'Deus Romanum imperium adversus
+schisma ecclesiae praeparavit[245],' writes Frederick to the English
+Henry II. The theory was one which the best and greatest Emperors,
+Charles, Otto the Great, Henry III, had most striven to carry out; it
+continued to be zealously upheld when it had long ceased to be
+practicable. In the proclamations of mediaeval kings there is a
+constant dwelling on their Divine commission. Power in an age of
+violence sought to justify while it enforced its commands, to make
+brute force less brutal by appeals to a higher sanction. This is seen
+nowhere more than in the style of the German sovereigns: they delight
+in the phrases 'maiestas sacrosancta[246],' 'imperator divina
+ordinante providentia,' 'divina pietate,' 'per misericordiam Dei;'
+many of which were preserved till, like those used now by other
+European kings, like our own 'Defender of the Faith,' they had become
+at last more grotesque than solemn. The Emperor Joseph II, at the end
+of the eighteenth century, was 'Advocate of the Christian Church,'
+'Vicar of Christ,' 'Imperial head of the faithful,' 'Leader of the
+Christian army,' 'Protector of Palestine, of general councils, of the
+Catholic faith[247].'
+
+The title, if it added little to the power, yet certainly seems to
+have increased the dignity of the Empire, and by consequence the
+jealousy of other states, of France especially. This did not, however,
+go so far as to prevent its recognition by the Pope and the French
+king[248], and after the sixteenth century it would have been a breach
+of diplomatic courtesy to omit it. Nor have imitators been
+wanting[249]: witness such titles as 'Most Christian king,' 'Catholic
+king,' 'Defender of the Faith[250].'
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[201] 'Pruzzi,' says the biographer of St. Adalbert, 'quorum Deus est
+venter et avaritia iuncta cum morte.'--_M. G. H._ t. iv.
+
+It is curious that this non-Teutonic people should have given their
+name to the great German kingdom of the present.
+
+[202] Conring, _De Finibus Imperii_. It is hardly necessary to observe
+that the connection of Hungary with the Hapsburgs is of comparatively
+recent origin, and of a purely dynastic nature. The position of the
+archdukes of Austria as kings of Hungary had nothing to do legally
+with the fact that many of them were also chosen Emperors, although
+practically their possession of the imperial crown had greatly aided
+them in grasping and retaining the thrones of Hungary and Bohemia.
+
+[203] Cf. Pfeffel, _Abrege Chronologique_.
+
+[204] Letter of Frederick I to Otto of Freising, prefixed to the
+latter's History. This king is also called Sweyn.
+
+[205] See Appendix, Note B.
+
+[206] Albertus Stadensis apud Conringium, _De Finibus Imperii_.
+
+[207] There is an allusion to this in the poems of the Cid. Arthur
+Duck, _De Usu et Authoritate Iuris Civilis_, quotes the view of some
+among the older jurists, that Spain having been, as far as the Romans
+were concerned, a _res derelicta_, recovered by the Spaniards
+themselves from the Moors, and thus acquired by _occupatio_, ought not
+to be subject to the Emperors.
+
+[208] One of the greatest of English kings appears performing an act
+of courtesy to the Emperor which was probably construed into an
+acknowledgment of his own inferior position. Describing the Roman
+coronation of the Emperor Conrad II, Wippo (c. 16) tells us 'His ita
+peractis in duorum regum praesentia Ruodolfi regis Burgundiae et
+Chnutonis regis Anglorum divino officio finito imperator duorum regum
+medius ad cubiculum suum honorifice ductus est.'
+
+[209] Letter in Otto Fris. i.: 'Nobis submittuntur Francia et
+Hispania, Anglia et Dania.'
+
+[210] Letter in Radewic says, 'Regnum nostrum vobis exponimus....
+Vobis imperandi cedat auctoritas, nobis non deerit voluntas
+obsequendi.'
+
+[211] The alleged instances of homage by the Scots to the Saxon and
+early Norman kings are almost all complicated in some such way. They
+had once held also the earldom of Huntingdon from the English crown,
+and some have supposed (but on no sufficient grounds) that homage was
+also done by them for Lothian.
+
+[212] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii.
+
+[213] Edward refused upon the ground that he was '_rex inunctus_.'
+
+[214] Sigismund had shortly before given great offence in France by
+dubbing knights.
+
+[215] Sigismund answered, 'Nihil se contra superioritatem regis
+praetexere.'
+
+[216] Selden, _Titles of Honour_, part i. chap. ii. Nevertheless,
+notaries in Scotland, as elsewhere, continued for a long time to style
+themselves 'Ego M. auctoritate imperiali (or papali) notarius.'
+
+[217] It is not necessary to prove this letter to have been the
+composition of Frederick or his ministers. If it be (as it doubtless
+is) contemporary, it is equally to the purpose as an evidence of the
+feelings and ideas of the age. As a reviewer of a former edition of
+this book has questioned its authenticity, I may mention that it is to
+be found not only in Hoveden, but also in the 'Itinerarium regis
+Ricardi,' in Ralph de Diceto, and in the 'Chronicon Terrae Sanctae.'
+[See Mr. Stubbs' edition of Hoveden, vol. ii. p. 356.]
+
+[218] Liutprand, _Legatio Constantinopolitana_. Nicephorus says, 'Vis
+maius scandalum quam quod se imperatorem vocat.'
+
+[219] Otto of Freising, i.
+
+[220] 'Isaachius a Deo constitutus Imperator, sacratissimus,
+excellentissimus, potentissimus, moderator Romanorum, Angelus totius
+orbis, heres coronae magni Constantini, dilecto fratri imperii sui,
+maximo principi Alemanniae.' A remarkable speech of Frederick's to the
+envoys of Isaac, who had addressed a letter to him as 'Rex Alemaniae'
+is preserved by Ansbert (_Historia de Expeditione Friderici
+Imperatoris_):--'Dominus Imperator divina se illustrante gratia
+ulterius dissimulare non valens temerarium fastum regis (_sc._
+Graecorum) et usurpantem vocabulum falsi imperatoris Romanorum, haec
+inter caetera exorsus est:--"Omnibus qui sanae mentis sunt constat, quia
+unus est Monarchus Imperator Romanorum, sicut et unus est pater
+universitatis, pontifex videlicet Romanus; ideoque cum ego Romani
+imperii sceptrum plusquam per annos XXX absque omnium regum vel
+principum contradictione tranquille tenuerim et in Romana urbe a summo
+pontifice imperiali benedictione unctus sim et sublimatus, quia
+denique Monarchiam praedecessores mei imperatores Romanorum plusquam
+per CCCC annos etiam gloriose transmiserint, utpote a Constantinopolitana
+urbe ad pristinam sedem imperii, caput orbis Romam, acclamatione
+Romanorum et principum imperii, auctoritate quoque summi pontificis et
+S. catholicae ecclesiae translatam, propter tardum et infructuosum
+Constantinopolitani imperatoris auxilium contra tyrannos ecclesiae,
+mirandum est admodum cur frater meus dominus vester Constantinopolitanus
+imperator usurpet inefficax sibi idem vocabulum et glorietur stulte
+alieno sibi prorsus honore, cum liquido noverit me et nomine dici et
+re esse Fridericum Romanorum imperatorem semper Augustum."'
+
+Isaac was so far moved by Frederick's indignation that in his next
+letter he addressed him as 'generosissimum imperatorem Alemaniae,' and
+in a third thus:--
+
+'Isaakius in Christo fidelis divinitus coronatus, sublimis, potens,
+excelsus, haeres coronae magni Constantini et Moderator Romeon Angelus
+nobilissimo Imperatori antiquae Romae, regi Alemaniae et dilecto fratri
+imperii sui, salutem,' &c., &c. (Ansbert, _ut supra_.)
+
+[221] Baronius, ad ann.
+
+[222] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[223] Godefr. Viterb., _Pantheon_, in Mur., _S. R. I._, tom. vii.
+
+[224] Doenniges, _Deutsches Staatsrecht_, thinks that the crown of
+Italy, neglected by the Ottos, and taken by Henry II, was a
+recognition of the separate nationality of Italy. But Otto I seems to
+have been crowned king of Italy, and Muratori (_Ant. It._ Dissert.
+iii.) believes that Otto II and Otto III were likewise.
+
+[225] See Appendix, note A.
+
+[226] Some add a fifth crown, of Germany (making that of Aachen
+Frankish), which they say belonged to Regensburg--Marquardus Freherus.
+
+[227] 'Dy erste ist tho Aken: dar kronet men mit der Yseren Krone, so
+is he Konig over alle Dudesche Ryke. Dy andere tho Meylan, de is
+Sulvern, so is he Here der Walen. Dy druedde is tho Rome; dy is guldin,
+so is he Keyser over alle dy Werlt.'--Gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_,
+quoted by Pfeffinger. Similarly Peter de Andlo.
+
+[228] Cf. Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu imperii Romani_. One would expect
+some ingenious allegorizer to have discovered that the crown of
+Burgundy must be, and therefore is, of copper or bronze, making the
+series complete, like the four ages of men in Hesiod. But I have not
+been able to find any such.
+
+[229] Hence the numbers attached to the names of the Emperors are
+often different in German and Italian writers, the latter not
+reckoning Henry the Fowler nor Conrad I. So Henry III (of Germany)
+calls himself 'Imperator Henricus Secundus;' and all distinguish the
+years of their _regnum_ from those of the _imperium_. Cardinal
+Baronius will not call Henry V anything but Henry III, not recognizing
+Henry IV's coronation, because it was performed by an antipope.
+
+[230] Life of S. Adalbert (written at Rome early in the eleventh
+century, probably by a brother of the monastery of SS. Boniface and
+Alexius) in Pertz, _M. G. H._ iv.
+
+[231] Given by Glaber Rudolphus. It is on the face of it a most
+impudent forgery: 'Ne quisquam audacter Romani Imperii sceptrum
+praepostere gestare princeps appetat neve Imperator dici aut esse
+valeat nisi quem Papa Romanus morum probitate aptum elegerit, eique
+commiserit insigne imperiale.'
+
+[232] Universal and undisputed in the West, which, for practical
+purposes, meant the world. The denial of the supreme jurisdiction of
+Peter's chair by the eastern churches affected very slightly the
+belief of Latin Christendom, just as the existence of a rival emperor
+at Constantinople with at least as good a legal title as the Teutonic
+Caesar, was readily forgotten or ignored by the German and Italian
+subjects of the latter.
+
+[233] Odious especially for the inscription,--
+
+ 'Rex venit ante fores nullo prius urbis honore;
+ Post homo fit Papae, sumit quo dante coronam.'--Radewic.
+
+[234] Mediaeval history is full of instances of the superstitious
+veneration attached to the rite of coronation (made by the Church
+almost a sacrament), and to the special places where, or even utensils
+with which it was performed. Everyone knows the importance in France
+of Rheims and its sacred _ampulla_; so the Scottish king must be
+crowned at Scone, an old seat of Pictish royalty--Robert Bruce risked
+a great deal to receive his crown there; so no Hungarian coronation
+was valid unless made with the crown of St. Stephen; the possession
+whereof is still accounted so valuable by the Austrian court.
+
+Great importance seems to have been attached to the imperial globe
+(Reichsapfel) which the Pope delivered to the Emperor at his
+coronation.
+
+[235] Whether the poem which passes under the name of Gunther
+Ligurinus be his work or that of some scholar in a later age is for
+the present purpose indifferent.
+
+[236] Zedler, _Universal Lexicon_, s. v. _Reich_.
+
+[237] It does not occur before Frederick I's time in any of the
+documents printed by Pertz; and this is the date which Boeclerus also
+assigns in his treatise, _De Sacro Imperio Romano_, vindicating the
+terms 'sacrum' and 'Romanum' against the aspersions of Blondel.
+
+[238] Pertz, _M. G. H._, tom. iv. (legum ii.)
+
+[239] Ibid. iv.
+
+[240] Radewic. _ap._ Pertz.
+
+[241] Blondellus adv. Chiffletium. Most of these theories are stated
+by Boeclerus. Jordanes (_Chronica_) says, 'Sacri imperii quod non est
+dubium sancti Spiritus ordinatione, secundum qualitatem ipsam et
+exigentiam meritorum humanorum disponi.'
+
+[242] Marquard Freher's notes to Peter de Andlo, book i. chap. vii.
+
+[243] So in the song on the capture of the Emperor Lewis II by
+Adalgisus of Benevento, we find the words, 'Ludhuicum comprenderunt
+sancto, pio, Augusto.' (Quoted by Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt
+Rom im Mittelalter_, iii. p. 185.)
+
+[244] Goldast, _Constitutiones_.
+
+[245] Pertz, _M. G. H._, legg. ii.
+
+[246] 'Apostolic majesty' was the proper title of the king of Hungary.
+The Austrian court has recently revived it.
+
+[247] Moser, _Roemische Kayser_.
+
+[248] Urban IV used the title in 1259: Francis I (of France) calls the
+Empire 'sacrosanctum.'
+
+[249] Cf. 'Holy Russia.'
+
+[250] It is almost superfluous to observe that the beginning of the
+title 'Holy' has nothing to do with the beginning of the Empire
+itself. Essentially and substantially, the Holy Roman Empire was, as
+has been shewn already, the creation of Charles the Great. Looking at
+it more technically, as the monarchy, not of the whole West, like that
+of Charles, but of Germany and Italy, with a claim, which was never
+more than a claim, to universal sovereignty, its beginning is fixed by
+most of the German writers, whose practice has been followed in the
+text, at the coronation of Otto the Great. But the title was at least
+one, and probably two centuries later.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+FALL OF THE HOHENSTAUFEN.
+
+
+In the three preceding chapters the Holy Empire has been described in
+what is not only the most brilliant but the most momentous period of
+its history; the period of its rivalry with the Popedom for the chief
+place in Christendom. For it was mainly through their relations with
+the spiritual power, by their friendship and protection at first, no
+less than by their subsequent hostility, that the Teutonic Emperors
+influenced the development of European politics. The reform of the
+Roman Church which went on during the reigns of Otto I and his
+successors down to Henry III, and which was chiefly due to the efforts
+of those monarchs, was the true beginning of the grand period of the
+Middle Ages, the first of that long series of movements, changes, and
+creations in the ecclesiastical system of Europe which was, so to
+speak, the master current of history, secular as well as religious,
+during the centuries which followed. The first result of Henry III's
+purification of the Papacy was seen in Hildebrand's attempt to subject
+all jurisdiction to that of his own chair, and in the long struggle of
+the Investitures, which brought out into clear light the opposing
+pretensions of the temporal and spiritual powers. Although destined in
+the end to bear far other fruit, the immediate effect of this struggle
+was to evoke in all classes an intense religious feeling; and, in
+opening up new fields of ambition to the hierarchy, to stimulate
+wonderfully their power of political organization. It was this impulse
+that gave birth to the Crusades, and that enabled the Popes, stepping
+forth as the rightful leaders of a religious war, to bend it to serve
+their own ends: it was thus too that they struck the alliance--strange
+as such an alliance seems now--with the rebellious cities of Lombardy,
+and proclaimed themselves the protectors of municipal freedom. But the
+third and crowning triumph of the Holy See was reserved for the
+thirteenth century. In the foundation of the two great orders of
+ecclesiastical knighthood, the all-powerful all-pervading Dominicans
+and Franciscans, the religious fervour of the Middle Ages culminated:
+in the overthrow of the only power which could pretend to vie with her
+in antiquity, in sanctity, in universality, the Papacy saw herself
+exalted to rule alone over the kings of the earth. Of that overthrow,
+following with terrible suddenness on the days of strength and glory
+which we have just been witnessing, this chapter has now to speak.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VI, 1190-1197.]
+
+[Sidenote: Philip, 1198-1208.]
+
+[Sidenote: Innocent III and Otto IV.]
+
+[Sidenote: Otto IV, 1208 (1198)-1212.]
+
+It happened strangely enough that just while their ruin was preparing,
+the house of Swabia gained over their ecclesiastical foes what seemed
+likely to prove an advantage of the first moment. The son and
+successor of Barbarossa was Henry VI, a man who had inherited all his
+father's harshness with none of his father's generosity. By his
+marriage with Constance, the heiress of the Norman kings, he had
+become master of Naples and Sicily. Emboldened by the possession of
+what had been hitherto the stronghold of his predecessors' bitterest
+enemies, and able to threaten the Pope from south as well as north,
+Henry conceived a scheme which might have wonderfully changed the
+history of Germany and Italy. He proposed to the Teutonic magnates to
+lighten their burdens by uniting these newly-acquired countries to the
+Empire, to turn their feudal lands into allodial, and to make no
+further demands for money on the clergy, on condition that they should
+pronounce the crown hereditary in his family. Results of the highest
+importance would have followed this change, which Henry advocated by
+setting forth the perils of interregna, and which he doubtless meant
+to be but part of an entirely new system of polity. Already so strong
+in Germany, and with an absolute command of their new kingdom, the
+Hohenstaufen might have dispensed with the renounced feudal services,
+and built up a firm centralized system, like that which was already
+beginning to develope itself in France. First, however, the Saxon
+princes, then some ecclesiastics headed by Conrad of Mentz, opposed
+the scheme; the pontiff retracted his consent, and Henry had to
+content himself with getting his infant son Frederick the Second
+chosen king of the Romans. On Henry's untimely death the election was
+set aside, and the contest which followed between Otto of Brunswick
+and Philip of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry the Sixth, gave the
+Popedom, now guided by the genius of Innocent the Third, an
+opportunity of extending its sway at the expense of its antagonist.
+The Pope moved heaven and earth on behalf of Otto, whose family had
+been the constant rivals of the Hohenstaufen, and who was himself
+willing to promise all that Innocent required; but Philip's personal
+merits and the vast possessions of his house gave him while he lived
+the ascendancy in Germany. His death by the hand of an assassin, while
+it seemed to vindicate the Pope's choice, left the Swabian party
+without a head, and the Papal nominee was soon recognized over the
+whole Empire. But Otto IV became less submissive as he felt his throne
+more secure. If he was a Guelf by birth, his acts in Italy, whither he
+had gone to receive the imperial crown, were those of a Ghibeline,
+anxious to reclaim the rights he had but just forsworn. The Roman
+Church at last deposed and excommunicated her ungrateful son, and
+Innocent rejoiced in a second successful assertion of pontifical
+supremacy, when Otto was dethroned by the youthful Frederick the
+Second, whom a tragic irony sent into the field of politics as the
+champion of the Holy See, whose hatred was to embitter his life and
+extinguish his house.
+
+[Sidenote: Frederick the Second, 1212-1250.]
+
+Upon the events of that terrific strife, for which Emperor and Pope
+girded themselves up for the last time, the narrative of Frederick the
+Second's career, with its romantic adventures, its sad picture of
+marvellous powers lost on an age not ripe for them, blasted as by a
+curse in the moment of victory, it is not necessary, were it even
+possible, here to enlarge. That conflict did indeed determine the
+fortunes of the German kingdom no less than of the republics of Italy,
+but it was upon Italian ground that it was fought out and it is to
+Italian history that its details belong. So too of Frederick himself.
+Out of the long array of the Germanic successors of Charles, he is,
+with Otto III, the only one who comes before us with a genius and a
+frame of character that are not those of a Northern or a Teuton[251].
+There dwelt in him, it is true, all the energy and knightly valour of
+his father Henry and his grandfather Barbarossa. But along with these,
+and changing their direction, were other gifts, inherited perhaps from
+his Italian mother and fostered by his education among the
+orange-groves of Palermo--a love of luxury and beauty, an intellect
+refined, subtle, philosophical. Through the mist of calumny and fable
+it is but dimly that the truth of the man can be discerned, and the
+outlines that appear serve to quicken rather than appease the
+curiosity with which we regard one of the most extraordinary
+personages in history. A sensualist, yet also a warrior and a
+politician; a profound lawgiver and an impassioned poet; in his youth
+fired by crusading fervour, in later life persecuting heretics while
+himself accused of blasphemy and unbelief; of winning manners and
+ardently beloved by his followers, but with the stain of more than one
+cruel deed upon his name, he was the marvel of his own generation, and
+succeeding ages looked back with awe, not unmingled with pity, upon
+the inscrutable figure of the last Emperor who had braved all the
+terrors of the Church and died beneath her ban, the last who had ruled
+from the sands of the ocean to the shores of the Sicilian sea. But
+while they pitied they condemned. The undying hatred of the Papacy
+threw round his memory a lurid light; him and him alone of all the
+imperial line, Dante, the worshipper of the Empire, must perforce
+deliver to the flames of hell[252].
+
+[Sidenote: Struggle of Frederick with the Papacy.]
+
+Placed as the Empire was, it was scarcely possible for its head not to
+be involved in war with the constantly aggressive Popedom--aggressive
+in her claims of territorial dominion in Italy as well as of
+ecclesiastical jurisdiction throughout the world. But it was
+Frederick's peculiar misfortune to have given the Popes a hold over
+him which they well knew how to use. In a moment of youthful
+enthusiasm he had taken the cross from the hands of an eloquent monk,
+and his delay to fulfil the vow was branded as impious neglect.
+Excommunicated by Gregory IX for not going to Palestine, he went, and
+was excommunicated for going: having concluded an advantageous peace,
+he sailed for Italy, and was a third time excommunicated for
+returning. To Pope Gregory he was at last after a fashion reconciled,
+but with the accession of Innocent IV the flame burst out afresh. Upon
+the special pretexts which kindled the strife it is not worth while to
+descant: the real causes were always the same, and could only be
+removed by the submission of one or other combatant. Chief among them
+was Frederick's possession of Sicily. Now were seen the fruits which
+Barbarossa had stored up for his house when he gained for Henry his
+son the hand of the Norman heiress. Naples and Sicily had been for
+some two hundred years recognized as a fief of the Holy See, and the
+Pope, who felt himself in danger while encircled by the powers of his
+rival, was determined to use his advantage to the full and make it the
+means of extinguishing imperial authority throughout Italy. But
+although the struggle was far more of a territorial and political one
+than that of the previous century had been, it reopened every former
+source of strife, and passed into a contest between the civil and the
+spiritual potentate. The old war-cries of Henry and Hildebrand, of
+Barbarossa and Alexander, roused again the unquenchable hatred of
+Italian factions: the pontiff asserted the transference of the Empire
+as a fief, and declared that the power of Peter, symbolized by the two
+keys, was temporal as well as spiritual: the Emperor appealed to law,
+to the indelible rights of Caesar; and denounced his foe as the
+antichrist of the New Testament, since it was God's second vicar whom
+he was resisting. The one scoffed at anathema, upbraided the avarice
+of the Church, and treated her soldiery, the friars, with a severity
+not seldom ferocious. The other solemnly deposed a rebellious and
+heretical prince, offered the imperial crown to Robert of France, to
+the heir of Denmark, to Haco the Norse king; succeeded at last in
+raising up rivals in Henry of Thuringia and William of Holland. Yet
+throughout it is less the Teutonic Emperor who is attacked than the
+Sicilian king, the unbeliever and friend of Mohammedans, the
+hereditary enemy of the Church, the assailant of Lombard independence,
+whose success must leave the Papacy defenceless. And as it was from
+the Sicilian kingdom that the strife chiefly arose, so was the
+possession of the Sicilian kingdom a source rather of weakness than of
+strength, for it distracted Frederick's forces and put him in the
+false position of a liegeman resisting his lawful suzerain. Truly, as
+the Greek proverb says, the gifts of foes are no gifts, and bring no
+profit with them. The Norman kings were more terrible in their death
+than in their life: they had sometimes baffled the Teutonic Emperor;
+their heritage destroyed him.
+
+[Sidenote: Conrad IV, 1250-1254.]
+
+With Frederick fell the Empire. From the ruin that overwhelmed the
+greatest of its houses it emerged, living indeed, and destined to a
+long life, but so shattered, crippled, and degraded, that it could
+never more be to Europe and to Germany what it once had been. In the
+last act of the tragedy were joined the enemy who had now blighted its
+strength and the rival who was destined to insult its weakness and at
+last blot out its name. The murder of Frederick's grandson Conradin--a
+hero whose youth and whose chivalry might have moved the pity of any
+other foe--was approved, if not suggested, by Pope Clement; it was
+done by the minions of Charles of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy lost to the Empire.]
+
+The Lombard league had successfully resisted Frederick's armies and
+the more dangerous Ghibeline nobles: their strong walls and swarming
+population made defeats in the open field hardly felt; and now that
+South Italy too had passed away from a German line--first to an
+Angevin, afterwards to an Aragonese dynasty--it was plain that the
+peninsula was irretrievably lost to the Emperors. Why, however, should
+they not still be strong beyond the Alps? was their position worse
+than that of England when Normandy and Aquitaine no longer obeyed a
+Plantagenet? The force that had enabled them to rule so widely would
+be all the greater in a narrower sphere.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of imperial power in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Great Interregnum]
+
+[Sidenote: Double election, of Richard of England and Alfonso of
+Castile.]
+
+[Sidenote: State of Germany during the Interregnum.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf of Hapsburg, 1272-1292.]
+
+So indeed it might once have been, but now it was too late. The German
+kingdom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman Empire. To be
+universal sovereign Germany had sacrificed her own political
+existence. The necessity which their projects in Italy and disputes
+with the Pope laid the Emperors under of purchasing by concessions the
+support of their own princes, the ease with which in their absence the
+magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the monarch returning found
+in resuming the privileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and
+set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy See held out, these
+were the causes whose steady action laid the foundation of that
+territorial independence which rose into a stable fabric at the era of
+the Great Interregnum[253]. Frederick II had by two Pragmatic
+Sanctions, A.D. 1220 and 1232, granted, or rather confirmed, rights
+already customary, such as to give the bishops and nobles legal
+sovereignty in their own towns and territories, except when the
+Emperor should be present; and thus his direct jurisdiction became
+restricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities immediately
+dependent on the crown. With so much less to do, an Emperor became
+altogether a less necessary personage; and hence the seven magnates of
+the realm, now by law or custom sole electors, were in no haste to
+fill up the place of Conrad IV, whom the supporters of his father
+Frederick had acknowledged. William of Holland was in the field, but
+rejected by the Swabian party: on his death a new election was called
+for, and at last set on foot. The archbishop of Cologne advised his
+brethren to choose some one rich enough to support the dignity, not
+strong enough to be feared by the electors: both requisites met in the
+Plantagenet Richard, earl of Cornwall, brother of the English Henry
+III. He received three, eventually four votes, came to Germany, and
+was crowned at Aachen. But three of the electors, finding that his
+bribe to them was lower than to the others, seceded in disgust, and
+chose Alfonso X of Castile[254], who, shrewder than his competitor,
+continued to watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splendours of his
+title while troubling himself about it no further than to issue now
+and then a proclamation. Meantime the condition of Germany was
+frightful. The new Didius Julianus, the chosen of princes baser than
+the praetorians whom they copied, had neither the character nor the
+outward power and resources to make himself respected. Every floodgate
+of anarchy was opened: prelates and barons extended their domains by
+war: robber-knights infested the highways and the rivers: the misery
+of the weak, the tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as had
+not been seen for centuries. Things were even worse than under the
+Saxon and Franconian Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then been
+in some measure controlled by their dukes were now, after the
+extinction of the great houses, left without any feudal superior. Only
+in the cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of the Rhine had
+already leagued themselves for mutual defence, and maintained a
+struggle in the interests of commerce and order against universal
+brigandage. At last, when Richard had been some time dead, it was felt
+that such things could not go on for ever: with no public law, and no
+courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment of legal government, was
+the only resource. The Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved
+the weakness of his enemy, found the disorganization of Germany
+beginning to tell upon his revenues, and threatened that if the
+electors did not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged, they chose,
+in A.D. 1272, Rudolf, count of Hapsburg, founder of the house of
+Austria[255].
+
+[Sidenote: Change in the position of the Empire.]
+
+From this point there begins a new era. We have seen the Roman Empire
+revived in A.D. 800, by a prince whose vast dominions gave ground to
+his claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in A.D. 962, on the
+narrower but firmer basis of the German kingdom. We have seen Otto the
+Great and his successors during the three following centuries, a line
+of monarchs of unrivalled vigour and abilities, strain every nerve to
+make good the pretensions of their office against the rebels in Italy
+and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts had now failed signally
+and hopelessly. Each successive Emperor had entered the strife with
+resources scantier than his predecessors, each had been more
+decisively vanquished by the Pope, the cities, and the princes. The
+Roman Empire might, and, so far as its practical utility was
+concerned, ought now to have been suffered to expire; nor could it
+have ended more gloriously than with the last of the Hohenstaufen.
+That it did not so expire, but lived on six hundred years more, till
+it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly more venerable than
+ridiculous--till, as Voltaire said, all that could be said about it
+was that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire--was owing
+partly indeed to the belief, still unshaken, that it was a necessary
+part of the world's order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
+this time indissoluble, with the German kingdom. The Germans had
+confounded the two characters of their sovereign so long, and had
+grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a dignity whose
+possession appeared to exalt them above the other peoples of Europe,
+that it was now too late for them to separate the local from the
+universal monarch. If a German king was to be maintained at all, he
+must be Roman Emperor; and a German king there must still be. Deeply,
+nay, mortally wounded as the event proved his power to have been by
+the disasters of the Empire to which it had been linked, the time was
+by no means come for its extinction. In the unsettled state of
+society, and the conflict of innumerable petty potentates, no force
+save feudalism was able to hold society together; and its efficacy for
+that purpose depended, as the anarchy of the recent interregnum
+shewed, upon the presence of the recognized feudal head.
+
+[Sidenote: Decline of the regal power in Germany as compared with
+France and England.]
+
+That head, however, was no longer what he had been. The relative
+position of Germany and France was now exactly the reverse of that
+which they had occupied two centuries earlier. Rudolf was as
+conspicuously a weaker sovereign than Philip III of France, as the
+Franconian Emperor Henry III had been stronger than the Capetian
+Philip I. In every other state of Europe the tendency of events had
+been to centralize the administration and increase the power of the
+monarch, even in England not to diminish it: in Germany alone had
+political union become weaker, and the independence of the princes
+more confirmed. The causes of this change are not far to seek. They
+all resolve themselves into this one, that the German king attempted
+too much at once. The rulers of France, where manners were less rude
+than in the other Transalpine lands, and where the Third Estate rose
+into power more quickly, had reduced one by one the great feudataries
+by whom the first Capetians had been scarcely recognized. The English
+kings had annexed Wales, Cumbria, and part of Ireland, had obtained a
+prerogative great if not uncontrolled, and exercised no doubtful sway
+through every corner of their country. Both had won their successes by
+the concentration on that single object of their whole personal
+activity, and by the skilful use of every device whereby their feudal
+rights, personal, judicial, and legislative, could be applied to
+fetter the vassal. Meantime the German monarch, whose utmost efforts
+it would have needed to tame his fierce barons and maintain order
+through wide territories occupied by races unlike in dialect and
+customs, had been struggling with the Lombard cities and the Normans
+of South Italy, and had been for full two centuries the object of the
+unrelenting enmity of the Roman pontiff. And in this latter contest,
+by which more than by any other the fate of the Empire was decided, he
+fought under disadvantages far greater than his brethren in England
+and France. William the Conqueror had defied Hildebrand, William Rufus
+had resisted Anselm; but the Emperors Henry the Fourth and Barbarossa
+had to cope with prelates who were Hildebrand and Anselm in one; the
+spiritual heads of Christendom as well as the primates of their
+special realm, the Empire. And thus, while the ecclesiastics of
+Germany were a body more formidable from their possessions than those
+of any other European country, and enjoying far larger privileges, the
+Emperor could not, or could with far less effect, win them over by
+invoking against the Pope that national feeling which made the cry of
+Gallican liberties so welcome even to the clergy of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Papacy and the Empire.]
+
+After repeated defeats, each more crushing than the last, the imperial
+power, so far from being able to look down on the papal, could not
+even maintain itself on an equal footing. Against no pontiff since
+Gregory VII had the monarch's right to name or confirm a pope,
+undisputed in the days of the Ottos and of Henry III, been made good.
+It was the turn of the Emperor to repel a similar claim of the Holy
+See to the function of reviewing his own election, examining into his
+merits, and rejecting him if unsound, that is to say, impatient of
+priestly tyranny. A letter of Innocent III, who was the first to make
+this demand in terms, was inserted by Gregory IX in his digest of the
+Canon Law, the inexhaustible armoury of the churchman, and continued
+to be quoted thence by every canonist till the end of the sixteenth
+century[256]. It was not difficult to find grounds on which to base
+such a doctrine. Gregory VII deduced it with characteristic boldness
+from the power of the keys, and the superiority over all other
+dignities which must needs appertain to the Pope as arbiter of eternal
+weal or woe. Others took their stand on the analogy of clerical
+ordination, and urged that since the Pope in consecrating the Emperor
+gave him a title to the obedience of all Christian men, he must have
+himself the right of approving or rejecting the candidate according to
+his merits. Others again, appealing to the Old Testament, shewed how
+Samuel discarded Saul and anointed David in his room, and argued that
+the Pope now must have powers at least equal to those of the Hebrew
+prophets. But the ascendancy of the doctrine dates from the time of
+Pope Innocent III, whose ingenuity discovered for it an historical
+basis. It was by the favour of the Pope, he declared, that the Empire
+was taken away from the Greeks and given to the Germans in the person
+of Charles[257], and the authority which Leo then exercised as God's
+representative must abide thenceforth and for ever in his successors,
+who can therefore at any time recall the gift, and bestow it on a
+person or a nation more worthy than its present holders. This is the
+famous theory of the Translation of the Empire, which plays so large a
+part in controversy down till the seventeenth century[258], a theory
+with plausibility enough to make it generally successful, yet one
+which to an impartial eye appears far removed from the truth of the
+facts[259]. Leo III did not suppose, any more than did Charles
+himself, that it was by his sole pontifical authority that the crown
+was given to the Frank; nor do we find such a notion put forward by
+any of his successors down to the twelfth century. Gregory VII in
+particular, in a remarkable letter dilating on his prerogative,
+appeals to the substitution by papal interference of Pipin for the
+last Merovingian king, and even goes back to cite the case of
+Theodosius humbling himself before St. Ambrose, but says never a word
+about this 'translatio,' excellently as it would have served his
+purpose.
+
+Sound or unsound, however, these arguments did their work, for they
+were urged skilfully and boldly, and none denied that it was by the
+Pope alone that the crown could be lawfully imposed[260]. In some
+instances the rights claimed were actually made good. Thus Innocent
+III withstood Philip and overthrew Otto IV; thus another haughty
+priest commanded the electors to choose the Landgrave of Thuringia
+(A.D. 1246), and was by some of them obeyed; thus Gregory X compelled
+the recognition of Rudolf. The further pretensions of the Popes to the
+vicariate of the Empire during interregna the Germans never
+admitted[261]. Still their place was now generally felt to be higher
+than that of the monarch, and their control over the three spiritual
+electors and the whole body of the clergy was far more effective than
+his. A spark of national feeling was at length kindled by the
+exactions and shameless subservience to France of the papal court at
+Avignon[262]; and the infant democracy of industry and intelligence
+represented by the cities and by the English Franciscan Occam,
+supported Lewis IV in his conflict with John XXII, till even the
+princes who had risen by the help of the Pope were obliged to oppose
+him. The same sentiment dictated the reforms of Constance, but the
+imperial power which might have floated onwards and higher on the
+turning tide of popular opinion lacked men equal to the occasion: the
+Hapsburg Frederick the Third, timid and superstitious, abased himself
+before the Romish court, and his house has generally adhered to the
+alliance then struck.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[251] I quote from the Liber Augustalis printed among Petrarch's works
+the following curious description of Frederick: 'Fuit armorum
+strenuus, linguarum peritus, rigorosus, luxuriosus, epicurus, nihil
+curans vel credens nisi temporale: fuit malleus Romanae ecclesiae.'
+
+As Otto III had been called 'mirabilia mundi,' so Frederick II is
+often spoken of in his own time as 'stupor mundi Fridericus.'
+
+[252] 'Qua entro e lo secondo Federico.'--_Inferno_, canto x.
+
+[253] The interregnum is by some reckoned as the two years before
+Richard's election; by others, as the whole period from the death of
+Frederick II or that of his son Conrad IV till Rudolf's accession in
+1273.
+
+[254] Surnamed, from his scientific tastes, 'the Wise.'
+
+[255] Hapsburg is a castle in the Aargau on the banks of the Aar, and
+near the line of railway from Olten to Zuerich, from a point on which a
+glimpse of it may be had. 'Within the ancient walls of Vindonissa,'
+says Gibbon, 'the castle of Hapsburg, the abbey of Koenigsfeld, and the
+town of Bruck have successively arisen. The philosophic traveller may
+compare the monuments of Roman conquests, of feudal or Austrian
+tyranny, of monkish superstition, and of industrious freedom. If he be
+truly a philosopher, he will applaud the merit and happiness of his
+own time.'
+
+[256] _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_: 'Ius et authoritas examinandi personam electam in regem
+et promovendam ad imperium, ad nos spectat, qui eum inungimus,
+consecramus, et coronamus.'
+
+[257] 'Illis principibus,' writes Innocent, 'ius et potestatem
+eligendi regem [Romanorum] in imperatorem postmodum promovendum
+recognoscimus, ad quos de iure ac antiqua consuetudine noscitur
+pertinere, praesertim quum ad eos ius et potestas huiusmodi ab
+apostolica sede pervenerit, quae Romanum imperium in persona magnifici
+Caroli a Graecis transtulit in Germanos.'--Decr. Greg. i. 6, cap. 34,
+_Venerabilem_.
+
+[258] Its influence, however, as Doellinger (_Das Kaiserthum Karls des
+Grossen und seiner Nachfolger_) remarks, first became great when this
+letter, some forty or fifty years after Innocent wrote it, was
+inserted in the digest of the canon law.
+
+[259] Vid. supra, pp. 52-58.
+
+[260] Upon this so-called 'Translation of the Empire,' many books
+remain to us: many more have probably perished. A good although far
+from impartial summary of the controversy may be found in Vagedes, _De
+Ludibriis Aulae Romanae in transferendo Imperio Romano_.
+
+[261] 'Vacante imperio Romano, cum in illo ad saecularem iudicem
+nequeat haberi recursus, ad summum pontificem, cui in persona B. Petri
+terreni simul et coelestis imperii iura Deus ipse commisit, imperii
+praedicti iurisdictio regimen et dispositio devolvitur.'--Bull _Si
+fratrum_ (of John XXI, in A.D. 1316), in _Bullar. Rom._ So again:
+'Attendentes quod Imperii Romani regimen cura et administratio tempore
+quo illud vacare contingit ad nos pertinet, sicut dignoscitur
+pertinere.' So Boniface VIII, refusing to recognize Albert I, because
+he was ugly and one-eyed ('est homo monoculus et vultu sordido, non
+potest esse Imperator'), and had taken a wife from the serpent brood
+of Frederick II ('de sanguine viperali Friderici'), declared himself
+Vicar of the Empire, and assumed the crown and sword of Constantine.
+
+[262] Avignon was not yet in the territory of France: it lay within
+the bounds of the kingdom of Arles. But the French power was nearer
+than that of the Emperor; and pontiffs many of them French by
+extraction sympathized, as was natural, with princes of their own
+race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE GERMANIC CONSTITUTION: THE SEVEN ELECTORS.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Territorial Sovereignty of the Princes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Adolf, 1292-1298.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert I, 1298-1308.]
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, 1308-1314.]
+
+[Sidenote: Lewis IV, 1314-1347.]
+
+The reign of Frederick the Second was not less fatal to the domestic
+power of the German king than to the European supremacy of the
+Emperor. His two Pragmatic Sanctions had conferred rights that made
+the feudal aristocracy almost independent, and the long anarchy of the
+Interregnum had enabled them not only to use but to extend and fortify
+their power. Rudolf of Hapsburg had striven, not wholly in vain, to
+coerce their insolence, but the contest between his son Albert and
+Adolf of Nassau which followed his death, the short and troubled reign
+of Albert himself, the absence of Henry the Seventh in Italy, the
+civil war of Lewis of Bavaria and Frederick duke of Austria, rival
+claimants of the imperial throne, the difficulties in which Lewis, the
+successful competitor, found himself involved with the Pope--all these
+circumstances tended more and more to narrow the influence of the
+crown and complete the emancipation of the turbulent nobles. They now
+became virtually supreme in their own domains, enjoying full
+jurisdiction, certain appeals excepted, the right of legislation,
+privileges of coining money, of levying tolls and taxes: some were
+without even a feudal bond to remind them of their allegiance. The
+numbers of the immediate nobility--those who held directly of the
+crown--had increased prodigiously by the extinction of the dukedoms of
+Saxony, Franconia, and Swabia: along the Rhine the lord of a single
+tower was usually a sovereign prince. The petty tyrants whose boast it
+was that they owed fealty only to God and the Emperor, shewed
+themselves in practice equally regardless of both powers. Pre-eminent
+were the three great houses of Austria, Bavaria, and Luxemburg, this
+last having acquired Bohemia, A.D. 1309; next came the electors,
+already considered collectively more important than the Emperor, and
+forming for themselves the first considerable principalities.
+Brandenburg and the Rhenish Palatinate are strong independent states
+before the end of this period: Bohemia and the three archbishoprics
+almost from its beginning.
+
+[Sidenote: Policy of the Emperors.]
+
+The chief object of the magnates was to keep the monarch in his
+present state of helplessness. Till the expenses which the crown
+entailed were found ruinous to its wearer, their practice was to
+confer it on some petty prince, such as were Rudolf and Adolf of
+Nassau and Gunther of Schwartzburg, seeking when they could to keep it
+from settling in one family. They bound the newly-elected to respect
+all their present immunities, including those which they had just
+extorted as the price of their votes; they checked all his attempts to
+recover lost lands or rights: they ventured at last to depose their
+anointed head, Wenzel of Bohemia. Thus fettered, the Emperor sought
+only to make the most of his short tenure, using his position to
+aggrandize his family and raise money by the sale of crown estates and
+privileges. His individual action and personal relation to the subject
+was replaced by a merely legal and formal one: he represented order
+and legitimate ownership, and so far was still necessary to the
+political system. But progresses through the country were abandoned:
+unlike his predecessors, who had resigned their patrimony when they
+assumed the sceptre, he lived mostly in his own states, often without
+the Empire's bounds. Frederick III never entered it for twenty-seven
+years.
+
+[Sidenote: Power of the cities.]
+
+[Sidenote: Financial distress.]
+
+How thoroughly the national character of the office was gone is shewn
+by the repeated attempts to bestow it on foreign potentates, who could
+not fill the place of a German king of the good old vigorous type. Not
+to speak of Richard and Alfonso, Charles of Valois was proposed
+against Henry VII, Edward III of England actually elected against
+Charles IV (his parliament forbade him to accept), George Podiebrad,
+king of Bohemia, against Frederick III. Sigismund was virtually a
+Hungarian king. The Emperor's only hope would have been in the support
+of the cities. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they had
+increased wonderfully in population, wealth, and boldness: the
+Hanseatic confederacy was the mightiest power of the North, and cowed
+the Scandinavian kings: the towns of Swabia and the Rhine formed great
+commercial leagues, maintained regular wars against the
+counter-associations of the nobility, and seemed at one time, by an
+alliance with the Swiss, on the point of turning West Germany into a
+federation of free municipalities. Feudalism, however, was still too
+strong; the cavalry of the nobles was irresistible in the field, and
+the thoughtless Wenzel let slip a golden opportunity of repairing the
+losses of two centuries. After all, the Empire was perhaps past
+redemption, for one fatal ailment paralyzed all its efforts. The
+Empire was poor. The crown lands, which had suffered heavily under
+Frederick II, were further usurped during the confusion that followed;
+till at last, through the reckless prodigality of sovereigns who
+sought only their immediate interest, little was left of the vast and
+fertile domains along the Rhine from which the Saxon and Franconian
+Emperors had drawn the chief part of their revenue. Regalian rights,
+the second fiscal resource, had fared no better--tolls, customs,
+mines, rights of coining, of harbouring Jews, and so forth, were
+either seized or granted away: even the advowsons of churches had been
+sold or mortgaged; and the imperial treasury depended mainly on an
+inglorious traffic in honours and exemptions. Things were so bad under
+Rudolf that the electors refused to make his son Albert king of the
+Romans, declaring that, while Rudolf lived, the public revenue which
+with difficulty supported one monarch, could much less maintain two at
+the same time[263]. Sigismund told his Diet, 'Nihil esse imperio
+spoliatius, nihil egentius, adeo ut qui sibi ex Germaniae principibus
+successurus esset, qui praeter patrimonium nihil aliud habuerit, apud
+eum non imperium sed potius servitium sit futurum[264].' Patritius,
+the secretary of Frederick III, declared that the revenues of the
+Empire scarcely covered the expenses of its ambassadors[265]. Poverty
+such as these expressions point to, a poverty which became greater
+after each election, not only involved the failure of the attempts
+which were sometimes made to recover usurped rights[266], but put
+every project of reform within or war without at the mercy of a
+jealous Diet. The three orders of which that Diet consisted, electors,
+princes, and cities, were mutually hostile, and by consequence
+selfish; their niggardly grants did no more than keep the Empire from
+dying of inanition.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles IV (A.D. 1347-1378), and his electoral
+constitution.]
+
+The changes thus briefly described were in progress when Charles the
+Fourth, king of Bohemia, son of that blind king John of Bohemia who
+fell at Cressy, and grandson of the Emperor Henry VII, was chosen to
+ascend the throne. His skilful and consistent policy aimed at settling
+what he perhaps despaired of reforming, and the famous instrument
+which, under the name of the Golden Bull, became the corner-stone of
+the Germanic constitution, confessed and legalized the independence of
+the electors and the powerlessness of the crown. The most conspicuous
+defect of the existing system was the uncertainty of the elections,
+followed as they usually were by a civil war. It was this which
+Charles set himself to redress.
+
+[Sidenote: German kingdom not originally elective.]
+
+The kingdoms founded on the ruins of the Roman Empire by the Teutonic
+invaders presented in their original form a rude combination of the
+elective with the hereditary principle. One family in each tribe had,
+as the offspring of the gods, an indefeasible claim to rule, but from
+among the members of such a family the warriors were free to choose
+the bravest or the most popular as king[267]. That the German crown
+came to be purely elective, while in France, Castile, Aragon, England,
+and most other European states, the principle of strict hereditary
+succession established itself, was due to the failure of heirs male in
+three successive dynasties; to the restless ambition of the nobles,
+who, since they were not, like the French, strong enough to disregard
+the royal power, did their best to weaken it; to the intrigues of the
+churchmen, zealous for a method of appointment prescribed by their own
+law and observed in capitular elections; to the wish of the Popes to
+gain an opening for their own influence and make effective the veto
+which they claimed; above all, to the conception of the imperial
+office as one too holy to be, in the same manner as the regal,
+transmissible by blood. Had the German, like other feudal kingdoms,
+remained merely local, feudal, and national, it would without doubt
+have ended by becoming a hereditary monarchy. Transformed as it was by
+the Roman Empire, this could not be. The headship of the human race
+being, like the Papacy, the common inheritance of all mankind, could
+not be confined to any family, nor pass like a private estate by the
+ordinary rules of descent.
+
+[Sidenote: Electoral body in primitive times.]
+
+The right to choose the war-chief belonged, in the earliest ages, to
+the whole body of freemen. Their suffrage, which must have been very
+irregularly exercised, became by degrees vested in their leaders, but
+the assent of the multitude, although ensured already, was needed to
+complete the ceremony. It was thus that Henry the Fowler, and St.
+Henry, and Conrad the Franconian duke were chosen[268]. Though even
+tradition might have commemorated what extant records place beyond a
+doubt, it was commonly believed, till the end of the sixteenth
+century, that the elective constitution had been established, and the
+privilege of voting confined to seven persons, by a decree of Gregory
+V and Otto III, which a famous jurist describes as 'lex a pontifice de
+imperatorum comitiis lata, ne ius eligendi penes populum Romanum in
+posterum esset[269].' St. Thomas says, 'Election ceased from the times
+of Charles the Great to those of Otto III, when Pope Gregory V
+established that of the seven princes, which will last as long as the
+holy Roman Church, who ranks above all other powers, shall have judged
+expedient for Christ's faithful people[270].' Since it tended to exalt
+the papal power, this fiction was accepted, no doubt honestly
+accepted, and spread abroad by the clergy. And indeed, like so many
+other fictions, it had a sort of foundation in fact. The death of Otto
+III, the fourth of a line of monarchs among whom son had regularly
+succeeded to father, threw back the crown into the gift of the nation,
+and was no doubt one of the chief causes why it did not in the end
+become hereditary[271].
+
+[Sidenote: Encroachments of the great nobles.]
+
+Thus, under the Saxon and Franconian sovereigns, the throne was
+theoretically elective, the assent of the chiefs and their followers
+being required, though little more likely to be refused than it was to
+an English or a French king; practically hereditary, since both of
+these dynasties succeeded in occupying it for four generations, the
+father procuring the son's election during his own lifetime. And so it
+might well have continued, had the right of choice been retained by
+the whole body of the aristocracy. But at the election of Lothar II,
+A.D. 1125, we find a certain small number of magnates exercising the
+so-called right of praetaxation; that is to say, choosing alone the
+future monarch, and then submitting him to the rest for their
+approval. A supreme electoral college, once formed, had both the will
+and the power to retain the crown in their own gift, and still further
+exclude their inferiors from participation. So before the end of the
+Hohenstaufen dynasty, two great changes had passed upon the ancient
+constitution. It had become a fundamental doctrine that the Germanic
+throne, unlike the thrones of other countries, was purely
+elective[272]: nor could the influence and the liberal offers of Henry
+VI prevail on the princes to abandon what they rightly judged the
+keystone of their powers. And at the same time the right of
+praetaxation had ripened into an exclusive privilege of election,
+vested in a small body[273]: the assent of the rest of the nobility
+being at first assumed, finally altogether dispensed with. On the
+double choice of Richard and Alfonso, A.D. 1264, the only question was
+as to the majority of votes in the electoral college: neither then nor
+afterwards was there a word of the rights of the other princes, counts
+and barons, important as their voices had been two centuries earlier.
+
+[Sidenote: The Seven Electors.]
+
+[Sidenote: Golden Bull of Charles IV, A.D. 1356.]
+
+The origin of that college is a matter somewhat intricate and obscure.
+It is mentioned A.D. 1152, and in somewhat clearer terms in 1198, as a
+distinct body; but without anything to shew who composed it. First in
+A.D. 1265 does a letter of Pope Urban IV say that by immemorial custom
+the right of choosing the Roman king belonged to seven persons, the
+seven who had just divided their votes on Richard of Cornwall and
+Alfonso of Castile. Of these seven, three, the archbishops of Mentz,
+Treves, and Cologne, pastors of the richest Transalpine sees,
+represented the German church: the other four ought, according to the
+ancient constitution, to have been the dukes of the four nations,
+Franks, Swabians, Saxons, Bavarians, to whom had also belonged the
+four great offices of the imperial household. But of these dukedoms
+the two first named were now extinct, and their place and power in the
+state, as well as the household offices they had held, had descended
+upon two principalities of more recent origin, those, namely, of the
+Palatinate of the Rhine and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. The Saxon
+duke, though with greatly narrowed dominions, retained his vote and
+office of arch-marshal, and the claim of his Bavarian compeer would
+have been equally indisputable had it not so happened that both he and
+the Palsgrave of the Rhine were members of the great house of
+Wittelsbach. That one family should hold two votes out of seven seemed
+so dangerous to the state that it was made a ground of objection to
+the Bavarian duke, and gave an opening to the pretensions of the king
+of Bohemia, who, though not properly a Teutonic prince[274], might on
+the score of rank and power assert himself the equal of any one of the
+electors. The dispute between these rival claimants, as well as all
+the rules and requisites of the election, were settled by Charles the
+Fourth in the Golden Bull, thenceforward a fundamental law of the
+Empire. He decided in favour of Bohemia, of which he was then king;
+fixed Frankfort as the place of election; named the archbishop of
+Mentz convener of the electoral college; gave to Bohemia the first, to
+the Count Palatine the second place among the secular electors. A
+majority of votes was in all cases to be decisive. As to each
+electorate there was attached a great office, it was supposed that
+this was the title by which the vote was possessed; though it was in
+truth rather an effect than a cause. The three prelates were
+archchancellors of Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, and Italy respectively:
+Bohemia cupbearer, the Palsgrave seneschal, Saxony marshal, and
+Brandenburg chamberlain[275].
+
+[Sidenote: Eighth Electorate.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ninth Electorate.]
+
+These arrangements, under which disputed elections became far less
+frequent, remained undisturbed till A.D. 1618, when on the breaking
+out of the Thirty Years' War the Emperor Ferdinand II by an
+unwarranted stretch of prerogative deprived the Palsgrave Frederick
+(king of Bohemia, and husband of Elizabeth, the daughter of James I of
+England) of his electoral vote, and transferred it to his own
+partisan, Maximilian of Bavaria. At the peace of Westphalia the
+Palsgrave was reinstated as an eighth elector, Bavaria retaining her
+place. The sacred number having been once broken through, less scruple
+was felt in making further changes. In A.D. 1692, the Emperor Leopold
+I conferred a ninth electorate on the house of Brunswick Lueneburg,
+which was then in possession of the duchy of Hanover, and succeeded to
+the throne of Great Britain in 1714; and in A.D. 1708, the assent of
+the Diet thereto was obtained. It was in this way that English kings
+came to vote at the election of a Roman Emperor.
+
+It is not a little curious that the only potentate who still continues
+to entitle himself Elector[276] should be one who never did (and of
+course never can now) join in electing an Emperor, having been under
+the arrangements of the old Empire a simple Landgrave. In A.D. 1803,
+Napoleon, among other sweeping changes in the Germanic constitution,
+procured the extinction of the electorates of Cologne and Treves,
+annexing their territories to France, and gave the title of Elector,
+as the highest after that of king, to the duke of Wuertemburg, the
+Margrave of Baden, the Landgrave of Hessen-Cassel, and the archbishop
+of Salzburg. Three years afterwards the Empire itself ended, and the
+title became meaningless.
+
+As the Germanic Empire is the most conspicuous example of a monarchy
+not hereditary that the world has ever seen, it may not be amiss to
+consider for a moment what light its history throws upon the character
+of elective monarchy in general, a contrivance which has always had,
+and will probably always continue to have, seductions for a certain
+class of political theorists.
+
+[Sidenote: Objects of an elective monarchy: how far attained in
+Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Choice of the fittest.]
+
+First of all then it deserves to be noticed how difficult, one might
+almost say impossible, it was found to maintain in practice the
+elective principle. In point of law, the imperial throne was from the
+tenth century to the nineteenth absolutely open to any orthodox
+Christian candidate. But as a matter of fact, the competition was
+confined to a few very powerful families, and there was always a
+strong tendency for the crown to become hereditary in some one of
+these. Thus the Franconian Emperors held it from A.D. 1024 till 1125,
+the Hohenstaufen, themselves the heirs of the Franconians, for a
+century or more; the house of Luxemburg (kings of Bohemia) enjoyed it
+through three successive reigns, and when in the fifteenth century it
+fell into the tenacious grasp of the Hapsburgs, they managed to retain
+it thenceforth (with but one trifling interruption) till it vanished
+out of nature altogether. Therefore the chief benefit which the scheme
+of elective sovereignty seems to promise, that of putting the fittest
+man in the highest place, was but seldom attained, and attained even
+then rather by good fortune than design.
+
+[Sidenote: Restraint of the sovereign.]
+
+No such objection can be brought against the second ground on which an
+elective system has sometimes been advocated, its operation in
+moderating the power of the crown, for this was attained in the
+fullest and most ruinous measure. We are reminded of the man in the
+fable, who opened a sluice to water his garden, and saw his house
+swept away by the furious torrent. The power of the crown was not
+moderated but destroyed. Each successful candidate was forced to
+purchase his title by the sacrifice of rights which had belonged to
+his predecessors, and must repeat the same shameful policy later in
+his reign to procure the election of his son. Feeling at the same time
+that his family could not make sure of keeping the throne, he treated
+it as a life-tenant is apt to treat his estate, seeking only to make
+out of it the largest present profit. And the electors, aware of the
+strength of their position, presumed upon it and abused it to assert
+an independence such as the nobles of other countries could never have
+aspired to.
+
+[Sidenote: Recognition of the popular will.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conception of the electoral function.]
+
+Modern political speculation supposes the method of appointing a ruler
+by the votes of his subjects, as opposed to the system of hereditary
+succession, to be an assertion by the people of their own will as the
+ultimate fountain of authority, an acknowledgment by the prince that
+he is no more than their minister and deputy. To the theory of the
+Holy Empire nothing could be more repugnant. This will best appear
+when the aspect of the system of election at different epochs in its
+history is compared with the corresponding changes in the composition
+of the electoral body which have been described as in progress from
+the ninth to the fourteenth century. In very early times, the tribe
+chose a war chief, who was, even if he belonged to the most noble
+family, no more than the first among his peers, with a power
+circumscribed by the will of his subjects. Several ages later, in the
+tenth and eleventh centuries, the right of choice had passed into the
+hands of the magnates, and the people were only asked to assent. In
+the same measure had the relation of prince and subject taken a new
+aspect. We must not expect to find, in such rude times, any very clear
+apprehension of the technical quality of the process, and the throne
+had indeed become for a season so nearly hereditary that the election
+was often a mere matter of form. But it seems to have been regarded,
+not as a delegation of authority by the nobles and people, with a
+power of resumption implied, but rather as their subjection of
+themselves to the monarch who enjoys, as of his own right, a wide and
+ill-defined prerogative. In yet later times, when, as has been shewn
+above, the assembly of the chieftains and the applauding shout of the
+host had been superseded by the secret conclave of the seven electoral
+princes, the strict legal view of election became fully established,
+and no one was supposed to have any title to the crown except what a
+majority of votes might confer upon him. Meantime, however, the
+conception of the imperial office itself had been thoroughly
+penetrated by religious ideas, and the fact that the sovereign did
+not, like other princes, reign by hereditary right, but by the choice
+of certain persons, was supposed to be an enhancement and consecration
+of his dignity. The electors, to draw what may seem a subtle, but is
+nevertheless a very real distinction, selected, but did not create.
+They only named the person who was to receive what it was not theirs
+to give. God, say the mediaeval writers, not deigning to interfere
+visibly in the affairs of this world, has willed that these seven
+princes of Germany should discharge the function which once belonged
+to the senate and people of Rome, that of choosing his earthly viceroy
+in matters temporal. But it is immediately from Himself that the
+authority of this viceroy comes, and men can have no relation towards
+him except that of obedience. It was in this period, therefore, when
+the Emperor was in practice the mere nominee of the electors, that the
+belief in this divine right stood highest, to the complete exclusion
+of the mutual responsibility of feudalism, and still more of any
+notion of a devolution of authority from the sovereign people.
+
+[Sidenote: General results of Charles IV's policy.]
+
+Peace and order appeared to be promoted by the institutions of Charles
+IV, which removed one fruitful cause of civil war. But these seven
+electoral princes acquired, with their extended privileges, a marked
+and dangerous predominance in Germany. They were to enjoy full
+regalian rights in their territories[277]; causes were not to be
+evoked from their courts, save when justice should have been denied:
+their consent was necessary to all public acts of consequence. Their
+persons were held to be sacred, and the seven mystic luminaries of the
+Holy Empire, typified by the seven lamps of the Apocalypse, soon
+gained much of the Emperor's hold on popular reverence, as well as
+that actual power which he lacked. To Charles, who viewed the German
+Empire much as Rudolf had viewed the Roman, this result came not
+unforeseen. He saw in his office a means of serving personal ends, and
+to them, while appearing to exalt by elaborate ceremonies its ideal
+dignity, he deliberately sacrificed what real strength was left. The
+object which he sought steadily through life was the prosperity of the
+Bohemian kingdom, and the advancement of his own house. In the Golden
+Bull, whose seal bears the legend,--
+
+ 'Roma caput mundi regit orbis frena rotundi[278],'
+
+there is not a word of Rome or of Italy. To Germany he was indirectly
+a benefactor, by the foundation of the University of Prague, the
+mother of all her schools: otherwise her bane. He legalized anarchy,
+and called it a constitution. The sums expended in obtaining the
+ratification of the Golden Bull, in procuring the election of his son
+Wenzel, in aggrandizing Bohemia at the expense of Germany, had been
+amassed by keeping a market in which honours and exemptions, with what
+lands the crown retained, were put up openly to be bid for. In Italy
+the Ghibelines saw, with shame and rage, their chief hasten to Rome
+with a scanty retinue, and return from it as swiftly, at the mandate
+of an Avignonese Pope, halting on his route only to traffic away the
+last rights of his Empire. The Guelf might cease to hate a power he
+could now despise.
+
+Thus, alike at home and abroad, the German king had become practically
+powerless by the loss of his feudal privileges, and saw the authority
+that had once been his parcelled out among a crowd of greedy and
+tyrannical nobles. Meantime how had it fared with the rights which he
+claimed by virtue of the imperial crown?
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[263] Quoted by Moser, _Roemische Kayser_, from _Chron. Hirsang._:
+'Regni vires temporum iniuria nimium contritae vix uni alendo regi
+sufficerent, tantum abesse ut sumptus in duos reges ferre queant.'
+
+[264] At Rupert's death, under whom the mischief had increased
+greatly, there were, we are told, many bishops better off than the
+Emperor.
+
+[265] 'Proventus Imperii ita minimi sunt ut legationibus vix
+suppetant.'--Quoted by Moser.
+
+[266] Albert I tried in vain to wrest the tolls of the Rhine from the
+grasp of the Rhenish electors.
+
+[267] The AEthelings of the line of Cerdic, among the West Saxons, and
+the Bavarian Agilolfings, may thus be compared with the Achaemenids of
+Persia or the heroic houses of early Greece.
+
+[268] Wippo, describing the election of Conrad the Franconian, says,
+'Inter confinia Moguntiae et Wormatiae convenerunt cuncti primates et,
+ut ita dicam, vires et viscera regni.' So Bruno says that Henry IV was
+elected by the '_populus_.' So Gunther Ligurinus of Frederick I's
+election:--
+
+ 'Acturi sacrae de successione coronae
+ Conveniunt proceres, totius viscera regni.'
+
+So Amandus, secretary of Frederick Barbarossa, in describing his
+election, says, 'Multi illustres heroes ex Lombardia, Tuscia, Ianuensi
+et aliis Italiae dominiis, ac maior et potior pars principum ex
+Transalpino regno.'--Quoted by Mur. _Antiq._ Diss. iii. And see many
+other authorities to the same effect, collected by Pfeffinger,
+_Vitriarius illustratus_.
+
+[269] Alciatus, _De Formula Romani Imperii_. He adds that the Gauls
+and Italians were incensed at the preference shewn to Germany. So too
+Radulfus de Columna.
+
+[270] Quoted by Gewoldus, _De Septemviratu Sacri Imperii Romani_,
+himself a violent advocate of Gregory's decree, though living as late
+as the days of Ferdinand II. As late as A.D. 1648 we find Pope
+Innocent X maintaining that the sacred number _Seven_ of the electors
+was 'apostolica auctoritate olim praefinitus.' Bull _Zelo domus_ in
+_Bullar. Rom._
+
+[271] Sometimes we hear of a decree made by Pope Sergius IV and his
+cardinals (of course equally fabulous with Otto's). So John Villani,
+iv. 2.
+
+[272] In 1152 we read, 'Id iuris Romani Imperii apex habere dicitur ut
+non per sanguinis propaginem sed per principum electionem reges
+creentur.'--Otto Fris. Gulielmus Brito, writing not much later, says
+(quoted by Freher),--
+
+ 'Est etenim talis dynastia Theutonicorum
+ Ut nullus regnet super illos, ni prius illum
+ Eligat unanimis cleri populique voluntas.'
+
+[273] Innocent III, during the contest between Philip and Otto IV,
+speaks of 'principes ad quos principaliter spectat regis Romani
+electio.'
+
+[274] 'Rex Bohemiae non eligit, quia non est Teutonicus,' says a writer
+early in the fourteenth century.
+
+[275] The names and offices of the seven are concisely given in these
+lines, which appear in the treatise of Marsilius of Padua, _De Imperio
+Romano_:--
+
+ 'Moguntinensis, Trevirensis, Coloniensis,
+ Quilibet Imperii sit Cancellarius horum;
+ Et Palatinus dapifer, Dux portitor ensis,
+ Marchio praepositus camerae, pincerna Bohemus,
+ Hi statuunt dominum cunctis per saecula summum.'
+
+It is worth while to place beside this the first stanza of Schiller's
+ballad, _Der Graf von Hapsburg_, in which the coronation feast of
+Rudolf is described:--
+
+ 'Zu Aachen in seiner Kaiserpracht
+ Im alterthuemlichen Saale,
+ Sass Koenig Rudolphs heilige Macht
+ Beim festlichen Kroenungsmahle.
+ Die Speisen trug der Pfalzgraf des Rheins,
+ Es schenkte der Boehme des perlenden Weins,
+ Und alle die Waehler, die Sieben,
+ Wie der Sterne Chor um die Sonne sich stellt,
+ Umstanden geschaeftig den Herrscher der Welt,
+ Die Wuerde des Amtes zu ueben.'
+
+It is a poetical licence, however (as Schiller himself admits), to
+bring the Bohemian there, for King Ottocar was far away at home,
+mortified at his own rejection, and already meditating war.
+
+[276] The electoral prince (Kurfuerst) of Hessen-Cassel. His retention
+of the title has this advantage, that it enables the Germans readily
+to distinguish electoral Hesse (Kur-Hessen) from the Grand Duchy
+(Hessen-Darmstadt) and the landgraviate (Hessen Homburg). [Since the
+above was written (in 1865) this last relic of the electoral system
+has passed away, the Elector of Hessen having been dethroned in 1866,
+and his territories (to the great satisfaction of the inhabitants,
+whom he had worried by a long course of petty tyrannies) annexed to
+the Prussian kingdom, along with Hanover, Nassau, and the free city of
+Frankfort. Count Bismarck, as he raises his master nearer and nearer
+to the position of a Germanic Emperor, destroys one by one the
+historical memorials of that elder Empire which people had learned to
+associate with the Austrian house.]
+
+[277] Goethe, whose imagination was wonderfully attracted by the
+splendours of the old Empire, has given in the second part of _Faust_
+a sort of fancy sketch of the origin of the great offices and the
+territorial independence of the German princes. Two lines express
+concisely the fiscal rights granted by the Emperor to the electors:--
+
+ 'Dann Steuer Zins und Beed, Lehn und Geleit und Zoll,
+ Berg-, Salz- und Muenz-regal euch angehoeren soll.'
+
+[278] This line is said to be as old as the time of Otto III.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE EMPIRE AS AN INTERNATIONAL POWER.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Theory of the Roman Empire in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+centuries.]
+
+That the Roman Empire survived the seemingly mortal wound it had
+received at the era of the Great Interregnum, and continued to put
+forth pretensions which no one was likely to make good where the
+Hohenstaufen had failed, has been attributed to its identification
+with the German kingdom, in which some life was still left. But this
+was far from being the only cause which saved it from extinction. It
+had not ceased to be upheld in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
+by the same singular theory which had in the ninth and tenth been
+strong enough to re-establish it in the West. The character of that
+theory was indeed somewhat changed, for if not positively less
+religious, it was less exclusively so. In the days of Charles and
+Otto, the Empire, in so far as it was anything more than a tradition
+from times gone by, rested solely upon the belief that with the
+visible Church there must be coextensive a single Christian state
+under one head and governor. But now that the Emperor's headship had
+been repudiated by the Pope, and his interference in matters of
+religion denounced as a repetition of the sin of Uzziah; now that the
+memory of mutual injuries had kindled an unquenchable hatred between
+the champions of the ecclesiastical and those of the civil power, it
+was natural that the latter, while they urged, fervently as ever, the
+divine sanction given to the imperial office, should at the same time
+be led to seek some further basis whereon to establish its claims.
+What that basis was, and how they were guided to it, will best appear
+when a word or two has been said on the nature of the change that had
+passed on Europe in the course of the three preceding centuries, and
+the progress of the human mind during the same period.
+
+[Sidenote: Revival of learning and literature, A.D. 1100-1400.]
+
+Such has been the accumulated wealth of literature, and so rapid the
+advances of science among us since the close of the Middle Ages, that
+it is not now possible by any effort fully to enter into the feelings
+with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in
+them their only possession. It is indeed true that modern art and
+literature and philosophy have been produced by the working of new
+minds upon old materials: that in thought, as in nature, we see no new
+creation. But with us the old has been transformed and overlaid by the
+new till its origin is forgotten: to them ancient books were the only
+standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the only stimulus to
+reflection. Hence it was that the most learned man was in those days
+esteemed the greatest: hence the creative energy of an age was exactly
+proportioned to its knowledge of and its reverence for the written
+monuments of those that had gone before. For until they can look
+forward, men must look back: till they should have reached the level
+of the old civilization, the nations of mediaeval Europe must continue
+to live upon its memories. Over them, as over us, the common dream of
+all mankind had power; but to them, as to the ancient world, that
+golden age which seems now to glimmer on the horizon of the future was
+shrouded in the clouds of the past. It is to the fifteenth and
+sixteenth centuries that we are accustomed to assign that new birth of
+the human spirit--if it ought not rather to be called a renewal of its
+strength and quickening of its sluggish life--with which the modern
+time begins. And the date is well chosen, for it was then first that
+the transcendently powerful influence of Greek literature began to
+work upon the world. But it must not be forgotten that for a long time
+previous there had been in progress a great revival of learning, and
+still more of zeal for learning, which being caused by and directed
+towards the literature and institutions of Rome, might fitly be called
+the Roman Renaissance. The twelfth century saw this revival begin with
+that passionate study of the legislation of Justinian, whose influence
+on the doctrines of imperial prerogative has been noticed already. The
+thirteenth witnessed the rapid spread of the scholastic philosophy, a
+body of systems most alien, both in subject and manner, to anything
+that had arisen among the ancients, yet one to whose development Greek
+metaphysics and the theology of the Latin fathers had largely
+contributed, and the spirit of whose reasonings was far more free than
+the presumed orthodoxy of its conclusions suffered to appear. In the
+fourteenth century there arose in Italy the first great masters of
+painting and song; and the literature of the new languages, springing
+into the fulness of life in the Divina Commedia, adorned not long
+after by the names of Petrarch and Chaucer, assumed at once its place
+as a great and ever-growing power in the affairs of men.
+
+[Sidenote: Growing freedom of spirit.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of thought upon the arrangements of society.]
+
+Now, along with the literary revival, partly caused by, partly causing
+it, there had been also a wonderful stirring and uprising in the mind
+of Europe. The yoke of church authority still pressed heavily on the
+souls of men; yet some had been found to shake it off, and many more
+murmured in secret. The tendency was one which shewed itself in
+various and sometimes apparently opposite directions. The revolt of
+the Albigenses, the spread of the Cathari and other so-called
+heretics, the excitement created by the writings of Wickliffe and
+Huss, witnessed to the fearlessness wherewith it could assail the
+dominant theology. It was present, however skilfully disguised, among
+those scholastic doctors who busied themselves with proving by natural
+reason the dogmas of the Church: for the power which can forge fetters
+can also break them. It took a form more dangerous because of a more
+direct application to facts, in the attacks, so often repeated from
+Arnold of Brescia downwards, upon the wealth and corruptions of the
+clergy, and above all of the papal court. For the agitation was not
+merely speculative. There was beginning to be a direct and rational
+interest in life, a power of applying thought to practical ends, which
+had not been seen before. Man's life among his fellows was no longer a
+mere wild beast struggle; man's soul no more, as it had been, the
+victim of ungoverned passion, whether it was awed by supernatural
+terrors or captivated by examples of surpassing holiness. Manners were
+still rude, and governments unsettled; but society was learning to
+organize itself upon fixed principles; to recognize, however faintly,
+the value of order, industry, equality; to adapt means to ends, and
+conceive of the common good as the proper end of its own existence. In
+a word, Politics had begun to exist, and with them there had appeared
+the first of a class of persons whom friends and enemies may both,
+though with different meanings, call ideal politicians; men who,
+however various have been the doctrines they have held, however
+impracticable many of the plans they have advanced, have been
+nevertheless alike in their devotion to the highest interests of
+humanity, and have frequently been derided as theorists in their own
+age to be honoured as the prophets and teachers of the next.
+
+[Sidenote: Separation of the peoples of Europe into hostile kingdoms:
+consequent need of an international power.]
+
+Now it was towards the Roman Empire that the hopes and sympathies of
+these political speculators as well as of the jurists and poets of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were constantly directed. The cause
+may be gathered from the circumstances of the time. The most
+remarkable event in the history of the last three hundred years had
+been the formation of nationalities, each distinguished by a peculiar
+language and character, and by steadily increasing differences of
+habits and institutions. And as upon this national basis there had
+been in most cases established strong monarchies, Europe was broken up
+into disconnected bodies, and the cherished scheme of a united
+Christian state appeared less likely than ever to be realized. Nor was
+this all. Sometimes through race-hatred, more often by the jealousy
+and ambition of their sovereigns, these countries were constantly
+involved in war with one another, violating on a larger scale and with
+more destructive results than in time past the peace of the religious
+community; while each of them was at the same time torn within by
+frequent insurrections, and desolated by long and bloody civil wars.
+The new nationalities were too fully formed to allow the hope that by
+their extinction a remedy might be applied to these evils. They had
+grown up in spite of the Empire and the Church, and were not likely to
+yield in their strength what they had won in their weakness. But it
+still appeared possible to soften, if not to overcome, their
+antagonism. What might not be looked for from the erection of a
+presiding power common to all Europe, a power which, while it should
+oversee the internal concerns of each country, not dethroning the
+king, but treating him as an hereditary viceroy, should be more
+especially charged to prevent strife between kingdoms, and to maintain
+the public order of Europe by being not only the fountain of
+international law, but also the judge in its causes and the enforcer
+of its sentences?
+
+[Sidenote: The Popes as international Judges.]
+
+To such a position had the Popes aspired. They were indeed excellently
+fitted for it by the respect which the sacredness of their office
+commanded; by their control of the tremendous weapons of
+excommunication and interdict; above all, by their exemption from
+those narrowing influences of place, or blood, or personal interest,
+which it would be their chiefest duty to resist in others. And there
+had been pontiffs whose fearlessness and justice were worthy of their
+exalted office, and whose interference was gratefully remembered by
+those who found no other helpers. Nevertheless, judging the Papacy by
+its conduct as a whole, it had been tried and found wanting. Even when
+its throne stood firmest and its purposes were most pure, one motive
+had always biassed its decisions--a partiality to the most submissive.
+During the greater part of the fourteenth century it was at Avignon
+the willing tool of France: in the pursuit of a temporal principality
+it had mingled in and been contaminated by the unhallowed politics of
+Italy; its supreme council, the college of cardinals, was distracted
+by the intrigues of two bitterly hostile factions. And while the power
+of the Popes had declined steadily, though silently, since the days of
+Boniface the Eighth, the insolence of the great prelates and the vices
+of the inferior clergy had provoked throughout Western Christendom a
+reaction against the pretensions of all sacerdotal authority. As there
+is no theory at first sight more attractive than that which entrusts
+all government to a supreme spiritual power, which, knowing what is
+best for man, shall lead him to his true good by appealing to the
+highest principles of his nature, so there is no disappointment more
+bitter than that of those who find that the holiest office may be
+polluted by the lusts and passions of its holder; that craft and
+hypocrisy lead while fanaticism follows; that here too, as in so much
+else, the corruption of the best is worst. Some such disappointment
+there was in Europe now, and with it a certain disposition to look
+with favour on the secular power: a wish to escape from the unhealthy
+atmosphere of clerical despotism to the rule of positive law, harsher,
+it might be, yet surely less corrupting. Espousing the cause of the
+Roman Empire as the chief opponent of priestly claims, this tendency
+found it, with shrunken territory and diminished resources, fitter in
+some respects for the office of an international judge and mediator
+than it had been as a great national power. For though far less widely
+active, it was losing that local character which was fast gathering
+round the Papacy. With feudal rights no longer enforcible, and
+removed, except in his patrimonial lands, from direct contact with the
+subject, the Emperor was not, as heretofore, conspicuously a German
+and a feudal king, and occupied an ideal position far less marred by
+the incongruous accidents of birth and training, of national and
+dynastic interests.
+
+[Sidenote: Duties attributed to the Empire by the developed theory.]
+
+[Sidenote: Divine right of the Emperor.]
+
+To that position three cardinal duties were attached. He who held it
+must typify spiritual unity, must preserve peace, must be a fountain
+of that by which alone among imperfect men peace is preserved and
+restored, law and justice. The first of these three objects was sought
+not only on religious grounds, but also from that longing for a wider
+brotherhood of humanity towards which, ever since the barrier between
+Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, was broken down, the aspirations
+of the higher minds of the world have been constantly directed. Placed
+in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one
+body, reminding them of their common faith, their common blood, their
+common interest in each other's welfare. And he was therefore above
+all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the representative of
+the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and to redress the
+injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each other; to punish
+offenders against the public order of Christendom; to maintain through
+the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and
+quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither
+arts nor letters, nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and
+flourish. The mediaeval Empire was in its essence what the modern
+despotisms that mimic it profess themselves: the Empire was
+peace[279]: the oldest and noblest title of its head was 'Imperator
+pacificus[280].' And that he might be the peacemaker, he must be the
+expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment,
+positive law; chief legislator and supreme judge of appeal, like his
+predecessor the compiler of the Corpus Iuris, the one and only source
+of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and
+administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, Lord
+of the world; not that its soil belongs to him in the same sense in
+which the soil of France or England belongs to their respective kings:
+he is the steward of Him who has received the heathen for his
+possession and the uttermost parts of the earth for his inheritance.
+It is, therefore, by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired
+not by force but by legitimate devolution from those whom God himself
+had set up, is visibly expressed upon earth. To find an external and
+positive basis for that idea is a problem which it has at all times
+been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing
+to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by
+reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire historically how
+its existing arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt to represent
+human government as an emanation from divine: a view from which all
+the similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine
+right which have prevailed in later times are borrowed. As has been
+said already, there is not a trace of the notion that the Emperor
+reigns by an hereditary right of his own or by the will of the people,
+for such a theory would have seemed to the men of the middle ages an
+absurd and wicked perversion of the true order. Nor do his powers come
+to him from those who choose him, but from God, who uses the electoral
+princes as mere instruments of nomination. Having such an origin, his
+rights exist irrespective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary
+abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them. Boniface the
+Eighth[281] reminds the king of France, and imperialist lawyers till
+the seventeenth century repeated the claim, that he, like other
+princes, is of right and must ever remain subject to the Roman
+Emperor. And the sovereigns of Europe long continued to address the
+Emperor in language, and yield to him a precedence, which admitted the
+inferiority of their own position[282].
+
+There was in this theory nothing that was absurd, though much that was
+impracticable. The ideas on which it rested are still unapproached in
+grandeur and simplicity, still as far in advance of the average
+thought of Europe, and as unlikely to find men or nations fit to apply
+them, as when they were promulgated five hundred years ago. The
+practical evil which the establishment of such a universal monarchy
+was intended to meet, that of wars and hardly less ruinous
+preparations for war between the states of Europe, remains what it was
+then. The remedy which mediaeval theory proposed has been in some
+measure applied by the construction and reception of international
+law; the greater difficulty of erecting a tribunal to arbitrate and
+decide, with the power of enforcing its decisions, is as far from a
+solution as ever.
+
+[Sidenote: Roman Empire why an international power.]
+
+It is easy to see how it was to the Roman Emperor, and to him only,
+that the duties and privileges above mentioned could be attributed.
+Being Roman, he was of no nation, and therefore fittest to judge
+between contending states, and appease the animosities of race. His
+was the imperial tongue of Rome, not only the vehicle of religion and
+law, but also, since no other was understood everywhere in Europe, the
+necessary medium of diplomatic intercourse. As there was no Church but
+the Holy Roman Church, and he its temporal head, it was by him that
+the communion of the saints in its outward form, its secular side, was
+represented, and to his keeping that the sanctity of peace must be
+entrusted. As direct heir of those who from Julius to Justinian had
+shaped the existing law of Europe[283], he was, so to speak, legality
+personified[284]; the only sovereign on earth who, being possessed of
+power by an unimpeachable title, could by his grant confer upon others
+rights equally valid. And as he claimed to perpetuate the greatest
+political system the world had known, a system which still moves the
+wonder of those who see before their eyes empires as much wider than
+the Roman as they are less symmetrical, and whose vast and complex
+machinery far surpassed anything the fourteenth century possessed or
+could hope to establish, it was not strange that he and his government
+(assuming them to be what they were entitled to be) should be taken as
+the ideal of a perfect monarch and a perfect state.
+
+[Sidenote: Illustrations.]
+
+[Sidenote: Right of creating Kings.]
+
+Of the many applications and illustrations of these doctrines which
+mediaeval documents furnish, it will suffice to adduce two or three. No
+imperial privilege was prized more highly than the power of creating
+kings, for there was none which raised the Emperor so much above them.
+In this, as in other international concerns, the Pope soon began to
+claim a jurisdiction, at first concurrent, then separate and
+independent. But the older and more reasonable view assigned it, as
+flowing from the possession of supreme secular authority, to the
+Emperor; and it was from him that the rulers of Burgundy, Bohemia,
+Hungary, perhaps Poland and Denmark, received the regal title[285].
+The prerogative was his in the same manner in which that of conferring
+titles is still held to belong to the sovereign in every modern
+kingdom. And so when Charles the Bold, last duke of French Burgundy,
+proposed to consolidate his wide dominions into a kingdom, it was from
+Frederick III that he sought permission to do so. The Emperor,
+however, was greedy and suspicious, the Duke uncompliant; and when
+Frederick found that terms could not be arranged between them, he
+stole away suddenly, and left Charles to carry back, with
+ill-concealed mortification, the crown and sceptre which he had
+brought ready-made to the place of interview.
+
+[Sidenote: Chivalry.]
+
+In the same manner, as representing what was common to and valid
+throughout all Europe, nobility, and more particularly knighthood,
+centred in the Empire. The great Orders of Chivalry were international
+institutions, whose members, having consecrated themselves a military
+priesthood, had no longer any country of their own, and could
+therefore be subject to no one save the Emperor and the Pope. For
+knighthood was constructed on the analogy of priesthood, and knights
+were conceived of as being to the world in its secular aspect exactly
+what priests, and more especially the monastic orders, were to it in
+its religious aspect: to the one body was given the sword of the
+flesh, to the other the sword of the spirit; each was universal, each
+had its autocratic head[286]. Singularly, too, were these notions
+brought into harmony with the feudal polity. Caesar was lord paramount
+of the world: its countries great fiefs whose kings were his tenants
+in chief, the suitors of his court, owing to him homage, fealty, and
+military service against the infidel.
+
+[Sidenote: Persons eligible as Emperors.]
+
+One illustration more of the way in which the empire was held to be
+something of and for all mankind, cannot be omitted. Although from the
+practical union of the imperial with the German throne none but
+Germans were chosen to fill it[287], it remained in point of law
+absolutely free from all restrictions of country or birth. In an age
+of the most intense aristocratic exclusiveness, the highest office in
+the world was the only secular one open to all Christians. The old
+writers, after debating at length the qualifications that are or may
+be desirable in an Emperor, and relating how in pagan times Gauls and
+Spaniards, Moors and Pannonians, were thought worthy of the purple,
+decide that two things, and no more, are required of the candidate for
+Empire: he must be free-born, and he must be orthodox[288].
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the new learning.]
+
+[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Empire's rights and functions never
+carried out in fact.]
+
+It is not without a certain surprise that we see those who were
+engaged in the study of ancient letters, or felt indirectly their
+stimulus, embrace so fervently the cause of the Roman Empire. Still
+more difficult is it to estimate the respective influence exerted by
+each of the three revivals which it has been attempted to distinguish.
+The spirit of the ancient world by which the men who led these
+movements fancied themselves animated, was in truth a pagan, or at
+least a strongly secular spirit, in many respects inconsistent with
+the associations which had now gathered round the imperial office. And
+this hostility did not fail to shew itself when at the beginning of
+the sixteenth century, in the fulness of the Renaissance, a direct and
+for the time irresistible sway was exercised by the art and literature
+of Greece, when the mythology of Euripides and Ovid supplanted that
+which had fired the imagination of Dante and peopled the visions of
+St. Francis; when men forsook the image of the saint in the cathedral
+for the statue of the nymph in the garden; when the uncouth jargon of
+scholastic theology was equally distasteful to the scholars who formed
+their style upon Cicero and the philosophers who drew their
+inspiration from Plato. That meanwhile the admirers of antiquity did
+ally themselves with the defenders of the Empire, was due partly
+indeed to the false notions that were entertained regarding the early
+Caesars, yet still more to the common hostility of both sects to the
+Papacy. It was as successor of old Rome, and by virtue of her
+traditions, that the Holy See had established so wide a dominion; yet
+no sooner did Arnold of Brescia and his republicans arise, claiming
+liberty in the name of the ancient constitution of the republic, than
+they found in the Popes their bitterest foes, and turned for help to
+the secular monarch against the clergy. With similar aversion did the
+Romish court view the revived study of the ancient jurisprudence, so
+soon as it became, in the hands of the school of Bologna and
+afterwards of the jurists of France, a power able to assert its
+independence and resist ecclesiastical pretensions. In the ninth
+century, Pope Nicholas the First had himself judged in the famous case
+of Teutberga, wife of Lothar, according to the civil law: in the
+thirteenth, his successors[289] forbade its study, and the canonists
+strove to expel it from Europe[290]. And as the current of educated
+opinion among the laity was beginning, however imperceptibly at first,
+to set against sacerdotal tyranny, it followed that the Empire would
+find sympathy in any effort it could make to regain its lost position.
+Thus the Emperors became, or might have become had they seen the
+greatness of the opportunity and been strong enough to improve it, the
+exponents and guides of the political movement, the pioneers, in part
+at least, of the Reformation. But the revival came too late to arrest,
+if not to adorn, the decline of their office. The growth of a national
+sentiment in the several countries of Europe, which had already gone
+too far to be arrested, and was urged on by forces far stronger than
+the theories of Catholic unity which opposed it, imprinted on the
+resistance to papal usurpation, and even on the instincts of political
+freedom, that form of narrowly local patriotism which they still
+retain. It can hardly be said that upon any occasion, except the
+gathering of the council of Constance by Sigismund, did the Emperor
+appear filling a truly international place. For the most part he
+exerted in the politics of Europe no influence greater than that of
+other princes. In actual resources he stood below the kings of France
+and England, far below his vassals the Visconti of Milan[291]. Yet
+this helplessness, such was men's faith or their timidity, and such
+their unwillingness to make prejudice bend to facts, did not prevent
+his dignity from being extolled in the most sonorous language by
+writers whose imaginations were enthralled by the halo of traditional
+glory which surrounded it.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the men of letters.]
+
+We are thus brought back to ask, What was the connection between
+imperialism and the literary revival?
+
+[Sidenote: Petrarch.]
+
+To moderns who think of the Roman Empire as the heathen persecuting
+power, it is strange to find it depicted as the model of a Christian
+commonwealth. It is stranger still that the study of antiquity should
+have made men advocates of arbitrary power. Democratic Athens,
+oligarchic Rome, suggest to us Pericles and Brutus: the moderns who
+have striven to catch their spirit have been men like Algernon Sidney,
+and Vergniaud, and Shelley. The explanation is the same in both
+cases[292]. The ancient world was known to the earlier middle ages by
+tradition, freshest for what was latest, and by the authors of the
+Empire. Both presented to them the picture of a mighty despotism and a
+civilization brilliant far beyond their own. Writings of the fourth
+and fifth centuries, unfamiliar to us, were to them authorities as
+high as Tacitus or Livy; yet Virgil and Horace too had sung the
+praises of the first and wisest of the Emperors. To the enthusiasts of
+poetry and law, Rome meant universal monarchy[293]; to those of
+religion, her name called up the undimmed radiance of the Church under
+Sylvester and Constantine. Petrarch, the apostle of the dawning
+Renaissance, is excited by the least attempt to revive even the shadow
+of imperial greatness: as he had hailed Rienzi, he welcomes Charles IV
+into Italy, and execrates his departure. The following passage is
+taken from his letter to the Roman people asking them to receive back
+Rienzi:--'When was there ever such peace, such tranquillity, such
+justice, such honour paid to virtue, such rewards distributed to the
+good and punishments to the bad, when was ever the state so wisely
+guided, as in the time when the world had obtained one head, and that
+head Rome; the very time wherein God deigned to be born of a virgin
+and dwell upon earth. To every single body there has been given a
+head; the whole world therefore also, which is called by the poet a
+great body, ought to be content with one temporal head. For every
+two-headed animal is monstrous; how much more horrible and hideous a
+portent must be a creature with a thousand different heads, biting and
+fighting against one another! If, however, it is necessary that there
+be more heads than one, it is nevertheless evident that there ought to
+be one to restrain all and preside over all, that so the peace of the
+whole body may abide unshaken. Assuredly both in heaven and in earth
+the sovereignty of one has always been best.'
+
+[Sidenote: Dante.]
+
+His passion for the heroism of Roman conquest and the ordered peace to
+which it brought the world, is the centre of Dante's political hopes:
+he is no more an exiled Ghibeline, but a patriot whose fervid
+imagination sees a nation arise regenerate at the touch of its
+rightful lord. Italy, the spoil of so many Teutonic conquerors, is the
+garden of the Empire which Henry is to redeem: Rome the mourning
+widow, whom Albert is denounced for neglecting[294]. Passing through
+purgatory, the poet sees Rudolf of Hapsburg seated gloomily apart,
+mourning his sin in that he left unhealed the wounds of Italy[295]. In
+the deepest pit of hell's ninth circle lies Lucifer, huge,
+three-headed; in each mouth a sinner whom he crunches between his
+teeth, in one mouth Iscariot the traitor to Christ, in the others the
+two traitors to the first Emperor of Rome, Brutus and Cassius[296]. To
+multiply illustrations from other parts of the poem would be an
+endless task; for the idea is ever present in Dante's mind, and
+displays itself in a hundred unexpected forms. Virgil himself is
+selected to be the guide of the pilgrim through hell and purgatory,
+not so much as being the great poet of antiquity, as because he 'was
+born under Julius and lived beneath the good Augustus;' because he was
+divinely charged to sing of the Empire's earliest and brightest
+glories. Strange, that the shame of one age should be the glory of
+another. For Virgil's melancholy panegyrics upon the destroyer of the
+republic are no more like Dante's appeals to the coming saviour of
+Italy than is Caesar Octavianus to Henry count of Luxemburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Jurists.]
+
+The visionary zeal of the man of letters was seconded by the more
+sober devotion of the lawyer. Conqueror, theologian, and jurist,
+Justinian is a hero greater than either Julius or Constantine, for his
+enduring work bears him witness. Absolutism was the civilian's
+creed[297]: the phrases 'legibus solutus,' 'lex regia,' whatever else
+tended in the same direction, were taken to express the prerogative of
+him whose official style of Augustus, as well as the vernacular name
+of 'Kaiser,' designated the legitimate successor of the compiler of
+the Corpus Juris. Since it was upon that legitimacy that his claim to
+be the fountain of law rested, no pains were spared to seek out and
+observe every custom and precedent by which old Rome seemed to be
+connected with her representative.
+
+[Sidenote: Imitations of old Rome.]
+
+Of the many instances that might be collected, it would be tedious to
+enumerate more than a few. The offices of the imperial household,
+instituted by Constantine the Great, were attached to the noblest
+families of Germany. The Emperor and Empress, before their coronation
+at Rome, were lodged in the chambers called those of Augustus and
+Livia[298]; a bare sword was borne before them by the praetorian
+prefect; their processions were adorned by the standards, eagles,
+wolves and dragons, which had figured in the train of Hadrian or
+Theodosius[299]. The constant title of the Emperor himself, according
+to the style introduced by Probus, was 'semper Augustus,' or
+'perpetuus Augustus,' which erring etymology translated 'at all times
+increaser of the Empire[300].' Edicts issued by a Franconian or
+Swabian sovereign were inserted as Novels[301] in the Corpus Juris, in
+the latest editions of which custom still allows them a place. The
+_pontificatus maximus_ of his pagan predecessors was supposed to be
+preserved by the admission of each Emperor as a canon of St. Peter's
+at Rome and St. Mary's at Aachen[302]. Sometimes we even find him
+talking of his consulship[303]. Annalists invariably number the place
+of each sovereign from Augustus downwards[304]. The notion of an
+uninterrupted succession, which moves the stranger's wondering smile
+as he sees ranged round the magnificent Golden Hall of Augsburg the
+portraits of the Caesars, laurelled, helmeted, and periwigged, from
+Julius the conqueror of Gaul to Joseph the partitioner of Poland, was
+to those generations not an article of faith only because its denial
+was inconceivable.
+
+[Sidenote: Reverence for ancient forms and phrases in the Middle
+Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of the idea of change or progress.]
+
+And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call it, which
+gathers round the Empire, is but one instance, though the most
+striking, of that eager wish to cling to the old forms, use the old
+phrases, and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of
+mediaeval Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions,
+as when a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, _Tribu moti
+sunt_, or talks of the 'senate and people of the Franks,' when he
+means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked
+warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on
+Roman precedents; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a
+different source, represented the old _collegia_; villenage was the
+offspring of the system of _coloni_ under the later Empire. Even in
+remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns, and stamped
+their coins with Roman devices; called themselves 'Basileis' and
+'Augusti[305].' Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her
+most lasting boon to the conquered, municipal self-government; those
+of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others
+who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zuerich and Augsburg, could trace back
+their institutions to the _coloniae_ and _municipia_ of the first
+centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Nuernberg[306] the traveller
+still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words 'Senatus
+populusque Norimbergensis,' and is borne in thought from the quiet
+provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages:
+thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater prototype. For, in
+truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages,
+men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as
+they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay
+between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to
+look back. We who are centuries removed can see that there had passed
+a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature,
+and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is
+to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive
+basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless
+varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each
+generation felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that
+perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed from year to
+year; while the few who had learning enough to study antiquity through
+its contemporary records, were prevented by the utter want of
+criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing
+how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they
+admired. There is nothing more modern than the critical spirit which
+dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in
+another; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and
+judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit
+was, before the last century or two, wholly foreign to art as well as
+to metaphysics. The converse and the parallel of the fashion of
+calling mediaeval offices by Roman names, and supposing them therefore
+the same, is to be found in those old German pictures of the siege of
+Carthage or the battle between Porus and Alexander, where in the
+foreground two armies of knights, mailed and mounted, are charging
+each other like Crusaders, lance, in rest, while behind, through the
+smoke of cannon, loom out the Gothic spires and towers of the
+beleaguered city. And thus, when we remember that the notion of
+progress and development, and of change as the necessary condition
+thereof, was unwelcome or unknown in mediaeval times, we may better
+understand, though we do not cease to wonder, how men, never doubting
+that the political system of antiquity had descended to them, modified
+indeed, yet in substance the same, should have believed that the
+Frank, the Saxon, and the Swabian ruled all Europe by a right which
+seems to us not less fantastic than that fabled charter whereby
+Alexander the Great[307] bequeathed his empire to the Slavic race for
+the love of Roxolana.
+
+It is a part of that perpetual contradiction of which the history of
+the Middle Ages is full, that this belief had hardly any influence on
+practical politics. The more abjectly helpless the Emperor becomes, so
+much the more sonorous is the language in which the dignity of his
+crown is described. His power, we are told, is eternal, the provinces
+having resumed their allegiance after the barbarian irruptions[308];
+it is incapable of diminution or injury: exemptions and grants by him,
+so far as they tend to limit his own prerogative, are invalid[309]:
+all Christendom is still of right subject to him, though it may
+contumaciously refuse obedience[310]. The sovereigns of Europe are
+solemnly warned that they are resisting the power ordained of
+God[311]. No laws can bind the Emperor, though he may choose to live
+according to them: no court can judge him, though he may condescend to
+be sued in his own: none may presume to arraign the conduct or
+question the motives of him who is answerable only to God[312]. So
+writes AEneas Sylvius, while Frederick the Third, chased from his
+capital by the Hungarians, is wandering from convent to convent, an
+imperial beggar; while the princes, whom his subserviency to the Pope
+has driven into rebellion, are offering the imperial crown to
+Podiebrad the Bohemian king.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VII, A.D. 1308-1313.]
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Henry VII.]
+
+But the career of Henry the Seventh in Italy is the most remarkable
+illustration of the Emperor's position: and imperialist doctrines are
+set forth most strikingly in the treatise which the greatest spirit of
+the age wrote to herald the advent of that hero, the _De Monarchia_ of
+Dante[313]. Rudolf, Adolf of Nassau, Albert of Hapsburg, none of them
+crossed the Alps or attempted to aid the Italian Ghibelines who
+battled away in the name of their throne. Concerned only to restore
+order and aggrandize his house, and thinking apparently that nothing
+more was to be made of the imperial crown, Rudolf was content never to
+receive it, and purchased the Pope's goodwill by surrendering his
+jurisdiction in the capital, and his claims over the bequest of the
+Countess Matilda. Henry the Luxemburger ventured on a bolder course;
+urged perhaps only by his lofty and chivalrous spirit, perhaps in
+despair at effecting anything with his slender resources against the
+princes of Germany. Crossing from his Burgundian dominions with a
+scanty following of knights, and descending from the Cenis upon Turin,
+he found his prerogative higher in men's belief after sixty years of
+neglect than it had stood under the last Hohenstaufen. The cities of
+Lombardy opened their gates; Milan decreed a vast subsidy; Guelf and
+Ghibeline exiles alike were restored, and imperial vicars appointed
+everywhere: supported by the Avignonese pontiff, who dreaded the
+restless ambition of his French neighbour, king Philip IV, Henry had
+the interdict of the Church as well as the ban of the Empire at his
+command. But the illusion of success vanished as soon as men,
+recovering from their first impression, began to be again governed by
+their ordinary passions and interests, and not by an imaginative
+reverence for the glories of the past. Tumults and revolts broke out
+in Lombardy; at Rome the king of Naples held St. Peter's, and the
+coronation must take place in St. John Lateran, on the southern bank
+of the Tiber. The hostility of the Guelfic league, headed by the
+Florentines, Guelfs even against the Pope, obliged Henry to depart
+from his impartial and republican policy, and to purchase the aid of
+the Ghibeline chiefs by granting them the government of cities. With
+few troops, and encompassed by enemies, the heroic Emperor sustained
+an unequal struggle for a year longer, till, in A.D. 1313, he sank
+beneath the fevers of the deadly Tuscan summer. His German followers
+believed, nor has history wholly rejected the tale, that poison was
+given him by a Dominican monk, in sacramental wine.
+
+[Sidenote: Later Emperors in Italy.]
+
+Others after him descended from the Alps, but they came, like Lewis
+the Fourth, Rupert, Sigismund, at the behest of a faction, which found
+them useful tools for a time, then flung them away in scorn; or like
+Charles the Fourth and Frederick the Third, as the humble minions of a
+French or Italian priest. With Henry the Seventh ends the history of
+the Empire in Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a
+prophecy. A sketch of its argument will convey a notion of the
+feelings with which the noblest Ghibelines fought, as well as of the
+spirit in which the Middle Age was accustomed to handle such subjects.
+
+[Sidenote: Dante's feelings and theories.]
+
+Weary of the endless strife of princes and cities, of the factions
+within every city against each other, seeing municipal freedom, the
+only mitigation of turbulence, vanish with the rise of domestic
+tyrants, Dante raises a passionate cry for some power to still the
+tempest, not to quench liberty or supersede local self-government, but
+to correct and moderate them, to restore unity and peace to hapless
+Italy. His reasoning is throughout closely syllogistic: he is
+alternately the jurist, the theologian, the scholastic metaphysician:
+the poet of the Divina Commedia is betrayed only by the compressed
+energy of diction, by his clear vision of the unseen, rarely by a
+glowing metaphor.
+
+[Sidenote: The 'De Monarchia.']
+
+Monarchy is first proved to be the true and rightful form of
+government. Men's objects are best attained during universal peace:
+this is possible only under a monarch. And as he is the image of the
+Divine unity, so man is through him made one, and brought most near to
+God. There must, in every system of forces, be a 'primum mobile;' to
+be perfect, every organization must have a centre, into which all is
+gathered, by which all is controlled[314]. Justice is best secured by
+a supreme arbiter of disputes, himself unsolicited by ambition, since
+his dominion is already bounded only by ocean. Man is best and
+happiest when he is most free; to be free is to exist for one's own
+sake. To this grandest end does the monarch and he alone guide us;
+other forms of government are perverted[315], and exist for the
+benefit of some class; he seeks the good of all alike, being to that
+very end appointed[316].
+
+Abstract arguments are then confirmed from history. Since the world
+began there has been but one period of perfect peace, and but one of
+perfect monarchy, that, namely, which existed at our Lord's birth,
+under the sceptre of Augustus; since then the heathen have raged, and
+the kings of the earth have stood up; they have set themselves against
+their Lord, and his anointed the Roman prince[317]. The universal
+dominion, the need for which has been thus established, is then proved
+to belong to the Romans. Justice is the will of God, a will to exalt
+Rome shewn through her whole history[318]. Her virtues deserved
+honour: Virgil is quoted to prove those of AEneas, who by descent and
+marriage was the heir of three continents: of Asia through Assaracus
+and Creusa; of Africa by Electra (mother of Dardanus and daughter of
+Atlas) and Dido; of Europe by Dardanus and Lavinia. God's favour was
+approved in the fall of the shields to Numa, in the miraculous
+deliverance of the capital from the Gauls, in the hailstorm after
+Cannae. Justice is also the advantage of the state: that advantage was
+the constant object of the virtuous Cincinnatus, and the other heroes
+of the republic. They conquered the world for its own good, and
+therefore justly, as Cicero attests[319]; so that their sway was not
+so much 'imperium' as 'patrocinium orbis terrarum.' Nature herself,
+the fountain of all right, had, by their geographical position and by
+the gift of a genius so vigorous, marked them out for universal
+dominion:--
+
+ 'Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera,
+ Credo equidem: vivos ducent de marmore vultus;
+ Orabunt causas melius, coelique meatus
+ Describent radio, et surgentia sidera dicent:
+ Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento;
+ Hae tibi erunt artes; pacisque imponere morem,
+ Parcere subiectis, et debellare superbos.'
+
+Finally, the right of war asserted, Christ's birth, and death under
+Pilate, ratified their government. For Christian doctrine requires
+that the procurator should have been a lawful judge[320], which he was
+not unless Tiberius was a lawful Emperor.
+
+The relations of the imperial and papal power are then examined, and
+the passages of Scripture (tradition being rejected), to which the
+advocates of the Papacy appeal, are elaborately explained away. The
+argument from the sun and moon[321] does not hold, since both lights
+existed before man's creation, and at a time when, as still sinless,
+he needed no controlling powers. Else _accidentia_ would have preceded
+_propria_ in creation. The moon, too, does not receive her being nor
+all her light from the sun, but so much only as makes her more
+effective. So there is no reason why the temporal should not be aided
+in a corresponding measure by the spiritual authority. This difficult
+text disposed of, others fall more easily; Levi and Judah, Samuel and
+Saul, the incense and gold offered by the Magi[322]; the two swords,
+the power of binding and loosing given to Peter. Constantine's
+donation was illegal: no single Emperor nor Pope can disturb the
+everlasting foundations of their respective thrones: the one had no
+right to bestow, nor the other to receive, such a gift. Leo the Third
+gave the Empire to Charles wrongfully: '_usurpatio iuris non facit
+ius_.' It is alleged that all things of one kind are reducible to one
+individual, and so all men to the Pope. But Emperor and Pope differ in
+kind, and so far as they are men, are reducible only to God, on whom
+the Empire immediately depends; for it existed before Peter's see, and
+was recognized by Paul when he appealed to Caesar. The temporal power
+of the Papacy can have been given neither by natural law, nor divine
+ordinance, nor universal consent: nay, it is against its own Form and
+Essence, the life of Christ, who said, 'My kingdom is not of this
+world.'
+
+Man's nature is twofold, corruptible and incorruptible: he has
+therefore two ends, active virtue on earth, and the enjoyment of the
+sight of God hereafter; the one to be attained by practice conformed
+to the precepts of philosophy, the other by the theological virtues.
+Hence two guides are needed, the pontiff and the Emperor, the latter
+of whom, in order that he may direct mankind in accordance with the
+teachings of philosophy to temporal blessedness, must preserve
+universal peace in the world. Thus are the two powers equally ordained
+of God, and the Emperor, though supreme in all that pertains to the
+secular world, is in some things dependent on the pontiff, since
+earthly happiness is subordinate to eternal. 'Let Caesar, therefore,
+shew towards Peter the reverence wherewith a firstborn son honours his
+father, that, being illumined by the light of his paternal favour, he
+may the more excellently shine forth upon the whole world, to the rule
+of which he has been appointed by Him alone who is of all things, both
+spiritual and temporal, the King and Governor.' So ends the treatise.
+
+Dante's arguments are not stranger than his omissions. No suspicion is
+breathed against Constantine's donation; no proof is adduced, for no
+doubt is felt, that the Empire of Henry the Seventh is the legitimate
+continuation of that which had been swayed by Augustus and Justinian.
+Yet Henry was a German, sprung from Rome's barbarian foes, the elected
+of those who had neither part nor share in Italy and her capital.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[279] See esp. AEgidi, _Der Fuerstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_,
+and the passages by him quoted.
+
+[280] The archbishop of Mentz addresses Conrad II on his election
+thus: 'Deus quum a te multa requirat tum hoc potissimum desiderat ut
+facias iudicium et iustitiam et pacem patriae quae respicit ad te, ut
+sis defensor ecclesiarum et clericorum, tutor viduarum et
+orphanorum.'--Wippo, Vita Chuonradi, c. 3, _ap._ Pertz. So Pope Urban
+IV writes to Richard: 'Ut consternatis Imperii Romani inimicis, in
+pacis pulchritudine sedeat populus Christianus et requie opulenta
+quiescat.' Compare also the 'Edictum de crimine laesae maiestatis'
+issued by Henry VII in Italy: 'Ad reprimenda multorum facinora qui
+ruptis totius debitae fidelitatis habenis adversus Romanum imperium, in
+cuius tranquillitate totius orbis regularitas requiescit, hostili
+animo armati conentur nedum humana, verum etiam divina praecepta,
+quibus iubetur quod omnis anima Romanorum principi sit subiecta,
+scelestissimis facinoribus et rebellionibus demoliri,' &c.--Pertz, _M.
+G. H._, legg. ii. p. 544.
+
+See also a curious passage in the Life of St. Adalbert, describing the
+beginning of the reign at Rome of the Emperor Otto III, and his cousin
+and nominee Pope Gregory V: 'Laetantur cum primatibus minores
+civitatis: cum afflicto paupere exultant agmina viduarum, quia novus
+imperator dat iura populis; dat iura novus papa.'
+
+[281] 'Imperator est monarcha omnium regum et principum terrenorum ...
+nec insurgat superbia Gallicorum quae dicat quod non recognoscit
+superiorem, mentiuntur, quia de iure sunt et esse debent sub rege
+Romanorum et Imperatore.'--Speech of Boniface VIII. It is curious to
+compare with this the words addressed nearly five centuries earlier by
+Pope John VIII to Lewis, king of Bavaria: 'Si sumpseritis Romanum
+imperium, omnia regna vobis subiecta existent.'
+
+[282] So Alfonso, king of Naples, writes to Frederick III: 'Nos reges
+omnes debemus reverentiam Imperatori, tanquam summo regi, qui est
+Caput et Dux regum.'--Quoted by Pfeffinger, _Vitriarius illustratus_,
+i. 379. And Francis I (of France), speaking of a proposed combined
+expedition against the Turks, says, 'Caesari nihilominus principem ea
+in expeditione locum non gravarer ex officio cedere.'--For a long time
+no European sovereign save the Emperor ventured to use the title of
+'Majesty.' The imperial chancery conceded it in 1633 to the kings of
+England and Sweden; in 1641 to the king of France.--Zedler, _Universal
+Lexicon_, _s. v._ Majestaet.
+
+[283] For with the progress of society and the growth of commerce the
+old feudal customs were through the greater part of Western Europe,
+and especially in Germany, either giving way to or being remodelled
+and supplemented by the civil law.
+
+[284] 'Imperator est animata lex in terris.'--Quoted by Von Raumer, v.
+81.
+
+[285] Thus we are told of the Emperor Charles the Bald, when he
+confirmed the election of Boso, king of Burgundy and Provence, 'Dedit
+Bosoni Provinciam (_sc._ Carolus Calvus), et corona in vertice capitis
+imposita, eum regem appellari iussit, ut more priscorum imperatorum
+regibus videretur dominari.'--_Regin. Chron._ Frederick II made his
+son Enzio (that famous Enzio whose romantic history every one who has
+seen Bologna will remember) king of Sardinia, and also erected the
+duchy of Austria into a kingdom, although for some reason the title
+seems never to have been used; and Lewis IV gave to Humbert of
+Dauphine the title of King of Vienne, A.D. 1336.
+
+[286] It is probably for this reason that the _Ordo Romanus_ directs
+the Emperor and Empress to be crowned (in St. Peter's) at the altar of
+St. Maurice, the patron saint of knighthood.
+
+[287] See especially Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad Auream Bullam_;
+and Augustinus Stenchus, _De Imperio Romano_; quoted by Marquard
+Freher. It was keenly debated, while Charles V and Francis I (of
+France) were rival candidates, whether any one but a German was
+eligible. By birth Charles was either a Spaniard or a Fleming; but
+this difficulty his partisans avoided by holding that he had been,
+according to the civil law, _in potestate_ of Maximilian his
+grandfather. However, to say nothing of the Guidos and Berengars of
+earlier days, the examples of Richard and Alfonso are conclusive as to
+the eligibility of others than Germans. Edward III of England was, as
+has been said, actually elected; Henry VIII was a candidate. And
+attempts were frequently made to elect the kings of France.
+
+[288] The mediaeval practice seems to have been that which still
+prevails in the Roman Catholic Church--to presume the doctrinal
+orthodoxy and external conformity of every citizen, whether lay or
+clerical, until the contrary be proved. Of course when heresy was rife
+it went hard with suspected men, unless they could either clear
+themselves or submit to recant. But no one was required to pledge
+himself beforehand, as a qualification for any office, to certain
+doctrines. And thus, important as an Emperor's orthodoxy was, he does
+not appear to have been subjected to any test, although the Pope
+pretended to the right of catechizing him in the faith and rejecting
+him if unsound. In the _Ordo Romanus_ we find a long series of
+questions which the Pontiff was to administer, but it does not appear,
+and is in the highest degree unlikely, that such a programme was ever
+carried out.
+
+The charge of heresy was one of the weapons used with most effect
+against Frederick II.
+
+[289] Honorius II in 1229 forbade it to be studied or taught in the
+University of Paris. Innocent IV published some years later a still
+more sweeping prohibition.
+
+[290] See Von Savigny, _History of Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol.
+iii. pp. 81, 341-347.
+
+[291] Charles the Bold of Burgundy was a potentate incomparably
+stronger than the Emperor Frederick III from whom he sought the regal
+title.
+
+[292] Cf. Sismondi, _Republiques Italiennes_, iv. chap. xxvii.
+
+[293] See Dante, _Paradiso_, canto vi.
+
+[294]
+
+ 'Vieni a veder la tua Roma, che piange
+ Vedova, sola, e di e notte chiama:
+ "Cesare mio, perche non m' accompagne?"'
+ _Purgatorio_, canto vi.
+
+[295] _Purgatorio_, canto vii.
+
+[296] _Inferno_, canto xxxiv.
+
+[297] Not that the doctors of the civil law were necessarily political
+partisans of the Emperors. Savigny says that there were on the
+contrary more Guelfs than Ghibelines among the jurists of
+Bologna.--_Roman Law in the Middle Ages_, vol. iii. p. 80.
+
+[298] Cf. Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, vol. ii. (of Otto and
+Adelheid). The _Ordo Romanus_ talks of a 'Camera Iuliae' in the Lateran
+palace, reserved for the Empress.
+
+[299] See notes to _Chron. Casin._ in Muratori, _S. R. I._ iv. 515.
+
+[300] Zu aller Zeiten Mehrer des Reichs.
+
+[301] _Novellae Constitutiones_.
+
+[302] Marquard Freher. The question whether the seven electors vote as
+_singuli_ or as a _collegium_, is solved by shewing that they have
+stepped into the place of the senate and people of Rome, whose duty it
+was to choose the Emperor, though (it is naively added) the soldiers
+sometimes usurped it.--Peter de Andlo, _De Imperio Romano_.
+
+[303] Thus Charles, in a capitulary added to a revised edition of the
+Lombard law issued in A.D. 801, says, 'Anno consulatus nostri primo.'
+So Otto III calls himself 'Consul Senatus populique Romani.'
+
+[304] Francis II, the last Emperor, was one hundred and twentieth from
+Augustus. Some chroniclers call Otto the Great Otto II, counting in
+Salvius Otho, the successor of Galba.
+
+[305] See p. 45 and note to p. 143.
+
+[306] Nuernberg herself was not of Roman foundation. But this makes the
+imitation all the more curious. The fashion even passed from the
+cities to rural communities like some of the Swiss cantons. Thus we
+find 'Senatus populusque Uronensis.'
+
+[307] See Palgrave, _Normandy and England_, i. p. 379.
+
+[308] AEneas Sylvius, _De Ortu et Authoritate Imperii Romani_.
+
+[309] Thus some civilians held Constantine's Donation null; but the
+canonists, we are told, were clear as to its legality.
+
+[310] 'Et idem dico de istis aliis regibus et principibus, qui negant
+se esse subditos regi Romanorum, ut rex Franciae, Angliae, et similes.
+Si enim fatentur ipsum esse Dominum universalem, licet ab illo
+universali domino se subtrahant ex privilegio vel ex praescriptione vel
+consimili, non ergo desunt esse cives Romani, per ea quae dicta sunt.
+Et per hoc omnes gentes quae obediunt S. matri ecclesiae sunt de populo
+Romano. Et forte si quis diceret dominum Imperatorem non esse dominum
+et monarcham totius orbis, esset haereticus, quia diceret contra
+determinationem ecclesiae et textum S. evangelii, dum dicit, "Exivit
+edictum a Caesare Augusto ut describeretur universus orbis." Ita et
+recognovit Christus Imperatorem ut dominum.'--Bartolus, _Commentary on
+the Pandects_, xlviii. i. 24; _De Captivis et postliminio reversis_.
+
+[311] Peter de Andlo, _multis locis_ (see esp. cap. viii.), and other
+writings of the time. Cf. Dante's letter to Henry VII: 'Romanorum
+potestas nec metis Italiae nec tricornis Siciliae margine coarctatur.
+Nam etsi vim passa in angustum gubernacula sua contraxit undique,
+tamen de inviolabili iure fluctus Amphitritis attingens vix ab inutili
+unda Oceani se circumcingi dignatur. Scriptum est enim
+
+ "Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
+ Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris."'
+
+So Fr. Zoannetus, in the sixteenth century, declares it to be a mortal
+sin to resist the Empire, as the power ordained of God.
+
+[312] AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini (afterwards Pope Pius II), _De Ortu et
+Authoritate Imperii Romani_. Cf. Gerlach Buxtorff, _Dissertatio ad
+Auream Bullam_.
+
+[313] It has hitherto been the common opinion that the _De Monarchia_
+was written in the view of Henry's expedition. But latterly weighty
+reasons have been advanced for believing that its date must be placed
+some years later.
+
+[314] Suggesting the celestial hierarchies of Dionysius the
+Areopagite.
+
+[315] Quoting Aristotle's _Politics_.
+
+[316] 'Non enim cives propter consules nec gens propter regem, sed e
+converso consules propter cives, rex propter gentem.'
+
+[317] 'Reges et principes in hoc unico concordantes, ut adversentur
+Domino suo et uncto suo Romano Principi,' having quoted 'Quare
+fremuerunt gentes.'
+
+[318] Especially in the opportune death of Alexander the Great.
+
+[319] Cic., _De Off._, ii. 'Ita ut illud patrocinium orbis terrarum
+potius quam imperium poterat nominari.'
+
+[320] 'Si Pilati imperium non de iure fuit, peccatum in Christo non
+fuit adeo punitum.'
+
+[321] There is a curious seal of the Emperor Otto IV (figured in J. M.
+Heineccius, _De veteribus Germanorum atque aliarum nationum
+sigillis_), on which the sun and moon are represented over the head of
+the Emperor. Heineccius says he cannot explain it, but there seems to
+be no reason why we should not take the device as typifying the accord
+of the spiritual and temporal powers which was brought about at the
+accession of Otto, the Guelfic leader, and the favoured candidate of
+Pope Innocent III.
+
+The analogy between the lights of heaven and the princes of earth is
+one which mediaeval writers are very fond of. It seems to have
+originated with Gregory VII.
+
+[322] Typifying the spiritual and temporal powers. Dante meets this by
+distinguishing the homage paid to Christ from that which his Vicar can
+rightfully demand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE CITY OF ROME IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
+
+
+'It is related,' says Sozomen in the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical
+History, 'that when Alaric was hastening against Rome, a holy monk of
+Italy admonished him to spare the city, and not to make himself the
+cause of such fearful ills. But Alaric answered, "It is not of my own
+will that I do this; there is One who forces me on, and will not let
+me rest, bidding me spoil Rome[323]."'
+
+Towards the close of the tenth century the Bohemian Woitech, famous in
+after legend as St. Adalbert, forsook his bishopric of Prague to
+journey into Italy, and settled himself in the Roman monastery of
+Sant' Alessio. After some few years passed there in religious
+solitude, he was summoned back to resume the duties of his see, and
+laboured for awhile among his half-savage countrymen. Soon, however,
+the old longing came over him: he resought his cell upon the brow of
+the Aventine, and there, wandering among the ancient shrines, and
+taking on himself the menial offices of the convent, he abode happily
+for a space. At length the reproaches of his metropolitan, the
+archbishop of Mentz, and the express commands of Pope Gregory the
+Fifth, drove him back over the Alps, and he set off in the train of
+Otto the Third, lamenting, says his biographer, that he should no more
+enjoy his beloved quiet in the mother of martyrs, the home of the
+Apostles, golden Rome. A few months later he died a martyr among the
+pagan Lithuanians of the Baltic[324].
+
+Nearly four hundred years later, and nine hundred after the time of
+Alaric, Francis Petrarch writes thus to his friend John Colonna:--
+
+'Thinkest thou not that I long to see that city to which there has
+never been any like nor ever shall be; which even an enemy called a
+city of kings; of whose people it hath been written, "Great is the
+valour of the Roman people, great and terrible their name;" concerning
+whose unexampled glory and incomparable empire, which was, and is, and
+is to be, divine prophets have sung; where are the tombs of the
+apostles and martyrs and the bodies of so many thousands of the saints
+of Christ[325]?'
+
+It was the same irresistible impulse that drew the warrior, the monk,
+and the scholar towards the mystical city which was to mediaeval Europe
+more than Delphi had been to the Greek or Mecca to the Islamite, the
+Jerusalem of Christianity, the city which had once ruled the earth,
+and now ruled the world of disembodied spirits[326]. For there was
+then, as there is now, something in Rome to attract men of every
+class. The devout pilgrim came to pray at the shrine of the Prince of
+the Apostles, too happy if he could carry back to his monastery in the
+forests of Saxony or by the bleak Atlantic shore the bone of some holy
+martyr; the lover of learning and poetry dreamed of Virgil and Cicero
+among the shattered columns of the Forum; the Germanic kings, in spite
+of pestilence, treachery and seditions, came with their hosts to seek
+in the ancient capital of the world the fountain of temporal dominion.
+Nor has the spell yet wholly lost its power. To half the Christian
+nations Rome is the metropolis of religion, to all the metropolis of
+art. In her streets, and hers alone among the cities of the world, may
+every form of human speech be heard: she is more glorious in her decay
+and desolation than the stateliest seats of modern power.
+
+But while men thought thus of Rome, what was Rome herself?
+
+The modern traveller, after his first few days in Rome, when he has
+looked out upon the Campagna from the summit of St. Peter's, paced the
+chilly corridors of the Vatican, and mused under the echoing dome of
+the Pantheon, when he has passed in review the monuments of regal and
+republican and papal Rome, begins to seek for some relics of the
+twelve hundred years that lie between Constantine and Pope Julius the
+Second. 'Where,' he asks, 'is the Rome of the Middle Ages, the Rome of
+Alberic and Hildebrand and Rienzi? the Rome which dug the graves of so
+many Teutonic hosts; whither the pilgrims flocked; whence came the
+commands at which kings bowed? Where are the memorials of the
+brightest age of Christian architecture, the age which reared Cologne
+and Rheims and Westminster, which gave to Italy the cathedrals of
+Tuscany and the wave-washed palaces of Venice?'
+
+To this question there is no answer. Rome, the mother of the arts, has
+scarcely a building to commemorate those times, for to her they were
+times of turmoil and misery, times in which the shame of the present
+was embittered by recollections of a brighter past. Nevertheless a
+minute scrutiny may still discover, hidden in dark corners or
+disguised under an unbecoming modern dress, much that carries us back
+to the mediaeval town, and helps us to realize its social and political
+condition. Therefore a brief notice of the state of Rome during the
+Middle Ages, with especial reference to those monuments which the
+visitor may still examine for himself, may not be without its use, and
+is at any rate no unfitting pendant to an account of the institution
+which drew from the city its name and its magnificent pretensions.
+Moreover, as will appear more fully in the sequel, the history of the
+Roman people is an instructive illustration of the influence of those
+ideas upon which the Empire itself rested, as well in their weakness
+as in their strength[327].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the rapid decay of the city.]
+
+It is not from her capture by Alaric, nor even from the more
+destructive ravages of the Vandal Genseric, that the material and
+social ruin of Rome must be dated, but rather from the repeated sieges
+which she sustained in the war of Belisarius with the Ostrogoths. This
+struggle however, long and exhausting as it was, would not have proved
+so fatal had the previous condition of the city been sound and
+healthy. Her wealth and population in the middle of the fifth century
+were probably little inferior to what they had been in the most
+prosperous days of the imperial government. But this wealth was
+entirely gathered into the hands of a small and effeminate
+aristocracy. The crowd that filled her streets was composed partly of
+poor and idle freemen, unaccustomed to arms and debarred from
+political rights; partly of a far more numerous herd of slaves,
+gathered from all parts of the world, and morally even lower than
+their masters. There was no middle class, and no system of municipal
+institutions, for although the senate and consuls with many of the
+lesser magistracies continued to exist, they had for centuries enjoyed
+no effective power, and were nowise fitted to lead and rule the
+people. Hence it was that when the Gothic war and the subsequent
+inroads of the Lombards had reduced the great families to beggary, the
+framework of society dissolved and could not be replaced. In a state
+rotten to the core there was no vital force left for reconstruction.
+The old forms of political activity had been too long dead to be
+recalled to life: the people wanted the moral force to produce new
+ones, and all the authority that could be said to exist in the midst
+of anarchy tended to centre itself in the chief of the new religious
+society.
+
+[Sidenote: Peculiarities in the position of Rome.]
+
+So far Rome's condition was like that of the other great towns of
+Italy and Gaul. But in two points her case differed from theirs, and
+to these the difference of her after fortunes may be traced. Her
+bishop had no temporal potentate to overshadow his dignity or check
+his ambition, for the vicar of the Eastern court lived far away at
+Ravenna, and seldom interfered except to ratify a papal election or
+punish a more than commonly outrageous sedition. Her population
+received an all but imperceptible infusion of that Teutonic blood and
+those Teutonic customs by whose stern discipline the inhabitants of
+northern Italy were in the end renovated. Everywhere the old
+institutions had perished of decay: in Rome alone there was nothing
+except the ecclesiastical system out of which new ones could arise.
+Her condition was therefore the most pitiable in which a community can
+find itself, one of struggle without purpose or progress. The citizens
+were divided into three orders: the military class, including what was
+left of the ancient aristocracy; the clergy, a host of priests, monks
+and nuns, attached to the countless churches and convents; and the
+people or _plebs_, as they are called, a poverty-stricken rabble
+without trade, without industry, without any municipal organization to
+bind them together. Of these two latter classes the Pope was the
+natural leader, the first was divided into factions headed by some
+three or four of the great families, whose quarrels kept the town in
+incessant bloodshed. The internal history of Rome from the sixth to
+the twelfth century is an obscure and tedious record of the contest of
+these factions with each other, and of the aristocracy as a whole with
+the slowly growing power of the Church.
+
+[Sidenote: Her condition in the ninth and tenth centuries.]
+
+The revolt of the Romans from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East,
+followed as it was by the reception of the Franks as patricians and
+emperors, is an event of the highest importance in the history of
+Italy and of the popedom. In the domestic constitution of Rome it made
+little change. With the instinct of a profound genius, Charles the
+Great saw that Rome, though it might be ostensibly the capital, could
+not be the real centre of his dominions. He continued to reside in
+Germany, and did not even build a palace at Rome. For a time the awe
+of his power, the presence of his _missus_ or lieutenant, and the
+occasional visits of his successors Lothar and Lewis II to the city,
+repressed her internal disorders. But after the death of the prince
+last named, and still more after the dissolution of the Carolingian
+Empire itself, Rome relapsed into a state of profligacy and barbarism
+to which, even in that age, Europe supplied no parallel, a barbarism
+which had inherited all the vices of civilization without any of its
+virtues. The papal office in particular seems to have lost its
+religious character, as it had certainly lost all claim to moral
+purity. For more than a century the chief priest of Christendom was no
+more than a tool of some ferocious faction among the nobles. Criminal
+means had raised him to the throne; violence, sometimes going the
+length of mutilation or murder, deprived him of it. The marvel is, a
+marvel in which papal historians have not unnaturally discovered a
+miracle, that after sinking so low, the Papacy should ever have risen
+again. Its rescue and exaltation to the pinnacle of glory was
+accomplished not by the Romans but by the efforts of the Transalpine
+Church, aiding and prompting the Saxon and Franconian Emperors. Yet
+even the religious reform did not abate intestine turmoil, and it was
+not till the twelfth century that a new spirit began to work in
+politics, which ennobled if it could not heal the sufferings of the
+Roman people.
+
+[Sidenote: Growth of a republican feeling: hostility to the Popes.]
+
+[Sidenote: Arnold of Brescia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Short-sighted policy of the Emperors.]
+
+Ever since the time of Alberic their pride had revolted against the
+haughty behaviour of the Teutonic emperors. From still earlier times
+they had been jealous of sacerdotal authority, and now watched with
+alarm the rapid extension of its influence. The events of the twelfth
+century gave these feelings a definite direction. It was the time of
+the struggle of the Investitures, in which Hildebrand and his
+disciples had been striving to draw all the things of this world as
+well as of the next into their grasp. It was the era of the revived
+study of Roman law, by which alone the extravagant pretensions of the
+decretalists could be resisted. The Lombard and Tuscan towns had
+become flourishing municipalities, independent of their bishops, and
+at open war with their Emperor. While all these things were stirring
+the minds of the Romans, Arnold of Brescia came preaching reform,
+denouncing the corrupt life of the clergy, not perhaps, like some
+others of the so-called schismatics of his time, denying the need of a
+sacerdotal order, but at any rate urging its restriction to purely
+spiritual duties. On the minds of the Romans such teaching fell like
+the spark upon dry grass; they threw off the yoke of the Pope[328],
+drove out the imperial prefect, reconstituted the senate and the
+equestrian order, appointed consuls, struck their own coins, and
+professed to treat the German Emperors as their nominees and
+dependants. To have successfully imitated the republican constitution
+of the cities of northern Italy would have been much, but with this
+they were not content. Knowing in a vague ignorant way that there had
+been a Roman republic before there was a Roman empire, they fed their
+vanity with visions of a renewal of all their ancient forms, and saw
+in fancy their senate and people sitting again upon the Seven Hills
+and ruling over the kings of the earth. Stepping, as it were, into the
+arena where Pope and Emperor were contending for the headship of the
+world, they rejected the one as a priest, and declaring the other to
+be only their creature, they claimed as theirs the true and lawful
+inheritance of the world-dominion which their ancestors had won.
+Antiquity was in one sense on their side, and to us now it seems less
+strange that the Roman people should aspire to rule the earth than
+that a German barbarian should rule it in their name. But practically
+the scheme was absurd, and could not maintain itself against any
+serious opposition. As a modern historian aptly expresses it, 'they
+were setting up ruins:' they might as well have raised the broken
+columns that strewed their Forum and hoped to rear out of them a
+strong and stately temple. The reverence which the men of the Middle
+Ages felt for Rome was given altogether to the name and to the place,
+nowise to the people. As for power, they had none: so far from holding
+Italy in subjection, they could scarcely maintain themselves against
+the hostility of Tusculum. But it would have been well worth the while
+of the Teutonic Emperors to have made the Romans their allies, and
+bridled by their help the temporal ambition of the Popes. The offer
+was actually made to them, first to Conrad the Third, who seems to
+have taken no notice of it; and afterwards, as has been already
+stated, to Frederick the First, who repelled in the most contumelious
+fashion the envoys of the senate. Hating and fearing the Pope, he
+always respected him: towards the Romans he felt all the contempt of a
+feudal king for burghers, and of a German warrior for Italians. At the
+demand of Pope Hadrian, whose foresight thought no heresy so dangerous
+as one which threatened the authority of the clergy, Arnold of Brescia
+was seized by the imperial prefect, put to death, and his ashes cast
+into the Tiber, lest the people should treasure them up as relics. But
+the martyrdom of their leader did not quench the hopes of his
+followers. The republican constitution continued to exist, and rose
+from time to time, during the weakness or the absence of the Popes,
+into a brief and fitful activity[329]. Once awakened, the idea,
+seductive at once to the imagination of the scholar and the vanity of
+the Roman citizen, could not wholly disappear, and two centuries after
+Arnold's time it found a more brilliant if less disinterested exponent
+in the tribune Nicholas Rienzi.
+
+[Sidenote: Character and career of the tribune Rienzi.]
+
+The career of this singular personage is misunderstood by those who
+suppose him to have been possessed of profound political insight, a
+republican on modern principles. He was indeed, despite his
+overweening conceit, and what seems to us his charlatanry, both a
+patriot and a man of genius, in temperament a poet, filled with
+soaring ideas. But those ideas, although dressed out in gaudier
+colours by his lively fancy, were after all only the old ones,
+memories of the long-faded glories of the heathen republic, and a
+series of scornful contrasts levelled at her present oppressors, both
+of them shewing no vista of future peace except through the revival of
+those ancient names to which there were no things to correspond. It
+was by declaiming on old texts and displaying old monuments that the
+tribune enlisted the support of the Roman populace, not by any appeal
+to democratic principles; and the whole of his acts and plans, though
+they astonished men by their boldness, do not seem to have been
+regarded as novel or impracticable[330]. In the breasts of men like
+Petrarch, who loved Rome even more than they hated her people, the
+enthusiasm of Rienzi found a sympathetic echo: others scorned and
+denounced him as an upstart, a demagogue, and a rebel. Both friends
+and enemies seem to have comprehended and regarded as natural his
+feelings and designs, which were altogether those of his age. Being,
+however, a mere matter of imagination, not of reason, having no
+anchor, so to speak, in realities, no true relation to the world as it
+then stood, these schemes of republican revival were as transient and
+unstable as they were quick of growth and gay of colour. As the
+authority of the Popes became consolidated, and free municipalities
+disappeared elsewhere throughout Italy, the dream of a renovated Rome
+at length withered up and fell and died. Its last struggle was made in
+the conspiracy of Stephen Porcaro, in the time of Pope Nicholas the
+Fifth; and from that time onward there was no question of the
+supremacy of the bishop within his holy city.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the struggle for independence.]
+
+It is never without a certain regret that we watch the disappearance
+of a belief, however illusive, around which the love and reverence for
+mankind once clung. But this illusion need be the less regretted that
+it had only the feeblest influence for good on the state of mediaeval
+Rome. During the three centuries that lie between Arnold of Brescia
+and Porcaro, the disorders of Rome were hardly less violent than they
+had been in the Dark Ages, and to all appearance worse than those of
+any other European city. There was a want not only of fixed authority,
+but of those elements of social stability which the other cities of
+Italy possessed. In the greater republics of Lombardy and Tuscany the
+bulk of the population were artizans, hard working orderly people;
+while above them stood a prosperous middle class, engaged mostly in
+commerce, and having in their system of trade-guilds an organization
+both firm and flexible. It was by foreign trade that Genoa, Venice,
+and Pisa became great, as it was the wealth acquired by manufacturing
+industry that enabled Milan and Florence to overcome and incorporate
+the territorial aristocracies which surrounded them.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal condition of the city.]
+
+[Sidenote: The people.]
+
+[Sidenote: The nobility.]
+
+[Sidenote: The bishop.]
+
+Rome possessed neither source of riches. She was ill-placed for trade;
+having no market she produced no goods to be disposed of, and the
+unhealthiness which long neglect had brought upon her Campagna made
+its fertility unavailable. Already she stood as she stands now, lonely
+and isolated, a desert at her very gates. As there was no industry, so
+there was nothing that deserved to be called a citizen class. The
+people were a mere rabble, prompt to follow the demagogue who
+flattered their vanity, prompter still to desert him in the hour of
+danger. Superstition was with them a matter of national pride, but
+they lived too near sacred things to feel much reverence for them:
+they ill-treated the Pope and fleeced the pilgrims who crowded to
+their shrines: they were probably the only community in Europe who
+sent no recruit to the armies of the Cross. Priests, monks, and all
+the nondescript hangers on of an ecclesiastical court formed a large
+part of the population; while of the rest many were supported in a
+state of half mendicancy by the countless religious foundations,
+themselves enriched by the gifts or the plunder of Latin Christendom.
+The noble families were numerous, powerful, ferocious; they were
+surrounded by bands of unruly retainers, and waged a constant war
+against each other from their castles in the adjoining country or in
+the streets of the city itself. Had things been left to take their
+natural course, one of these families, the Colonna, for instance, or
+the Orsini, would probably have ended by overcoming its rivals, and
+have established, as was the case in the republics of Romagna and
+Tuscany, a 'signoria' or local tyranny, like those which had once
+prevailed in the cities of Greece. But the presence of the sacerdotal
+power, as it had hindered the growth of feudalism, so also it stood in
+the way of such a development as this, and in so far aggravated the
+confusion of the city. Although the Pope was not as yet recognized as
+legitimate sovereign, he was not only the most considerable person in
+Rome, but the only one whose authority had anything of an official
+character. But the reign of each pontiff was short; he had no military
+force, he was frequently absent from his see. He was, moreover, very
+often a member of one of the great families, and, as such, no better
+than a faction leader at home, while venerated by the rest of Europe
+as the universal priest.
+
+[Sidenote: The Emperor.]
+
+[Sidenote: Visits of the Emperors to Rome.]
+
+It remains only to speak of the person who should have been to Rome
+what the national king was to the cities of France, or England, or
+Germany, that is to say, of the Emperor. As has been said already, his
+power was a mere chimera, chiefly important as furnishing a pretext to
+the Colonna and other Ghibeline chieftains for their opposition to the
+papal party. Even his abstract rights were matter of controversy. The
+Popes, whose predecessors had been content to govern as the
+lieutenants of Charles and Otto, now maintained that Rome as a
+spiritual city could not be subject to any temporal jurisdiction, and
+that she was therefore no part of the Roman Empire, though at the same
+time its capital. Not only, it was urged, had Constantine yielded up
+Rome to Sylvester and his successors, Lothar the Saxon had at his
+coronation formally renounced his sovereignty by doing homage to the
+pontiff and receiving the crown as his vassal. The Popes felt then as
+they feel now, that their dignity and influence would suffer if they
+should even appear to admit in their place of residence the
+jurisdiction of a civil potentate, and although they could not secure
+their own authority, they were at least able to exclude any other.
+Hence it was that they were so uneasy whenever an Emperor came to them
+to be crowned, that they raised up difficulties in his path, and
+endeavoured to be rid of him as soon as possible. And here something
+must be said of the programme, as one may call it, of these imperial
+visits to Rome, and of the marks of their presence which the Germans
+left behind them, remembering always that after the time of Frederick
+the Second it was rather the exception than the rule for an Emperor to
+be crowned in his capital at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Their approach.]
+
+The traveller who enters Rome now, if he comes, as he most commonly
+does, by way of Civita Vecchia, slips in by the railway before he is
+aware, is huddled into a vehicle at the terminus, and set down at his
+hotel in the middle of the modern town before he has seen anything at
+all. If he comes overland from Tuscany along the bleak road that
+passes near Veii and crosses the Milvian bridge, he has indeed from
+the slopes of the Ciminian range a splendid prospect of the sea-like
+Campagna, girdled in by glittering hills, but of the city he sees no
+sign, save the pinnacle of St. Peter's, until he is within the walls.
+Far otherwise was it in the Middle Ages. Then travellers of every
+grade, from the humble pilgrim to the new-made archbishop who came in
+the pomp of a lengthy train to receive from the Pope the pallium of
+his office, approached from the north or north-east side; following a
+track along the hilly ground on the Tuscan side of the Tiber until
+they halted on the brow of Monte Mario[331]--the Mount of Joy--and saw
+the city of their solemnities lie spread before them, from the great
+pile of the Lateran far away upon the Coelian hill, to the basilica of
+St. Peter's at their feet. They saw it not, as now, a sea of billowy
+cupolas, but a mass of low red-roofed houses, varied by tall brick
+towers, and at rarer intervals by masses of ancient ruin, then larger
+far than now; while over all rose those two monuments of the best of
+the heathen Emperors, monuments that still look down, serenely
+changeless, on the armies of new nations and the festivals of a new
+religion--the columns of Marcus Aurelius and Trajan.
+
+[Sidenote: Their entrance.]
+
+[Sidenote: Hostility of Pope and people to the Germans.]
+
+From Monte Mario the Teutonic host descended, when they had paid their
+orisons, into the Neronian field, the piece of flat land that lies
+outside the gate of St. Angelo. Here it was the custom for the elders
+of the Romans to meet the elected Emperor, present their charters for
+confirmation, and receive his oath to preserve their good
+customs[332]. Then a procession was formed: the priests and monks, who
+had come out with hymns to greet the Emperor, led the way; the knights
+and soldiers of Rome, such as they were, came next; then the monarch,
+followed by a long array of Transalpine chivalry. Passing into the
+city they advanced to St. Peter's, where the Pope, surrounded by his
+clergy, stood on the great staircase of the basilica to welcome and
+bless the Roman king. On the next day came the coronation, with
+ceremonies too elaborate for description[333], ceremonies which, we
+may well believe, were seldom duly completed. Far more usual were
+other rites, of which the book of ritual makes no mention, unless they
+are to be counted among the 'good customs of the Romans;' the clang of
+war bells, the battle cry of German and Italian combatants. The Pope,
+when he could not keep the Emperor from entering Rome, required him to
+leave the bulk of his host without the walls, and if foiled in this,
+sought his safety in raising up plots and seditions against his too
+powerful friend. The Roman people, on the other hand, violent as they
+often were against the Pope, felt nevertheless a sort of national
+pride in him. Very different were their feelings towards the Teutonic
+chieftain, who came from a far land to receive in their city, yet
+without thanking them for it, the ensign of a power which the prowess
+of their forefathers had won. Despoiled of their ancient right to
+choose the universal bishop, they clung all the more desperately to
+the belief that it was they who chose the universal prince; and were
+mortified afresh when each successive sovereign contemptuously scouted
+their claims, and paraded before their eyes his rude barbarian
+cavalry. Thus it was that a Roman sedition was the all but invariable
+accompaniment of a Roman coronation. The three revolts against Otto
+the Great have been already described. His grandson Otto the Third, in
+spite of his passionate fondness for the city, was met by the same
+faithlessness and hatred, and departed at last in despair at the
+failure of his attempts at conciliation[334]. A century afterwards
+Henry the Fifth's coronation produced violent tumults, which ended in
+his seizing the Pope and cardinals in St. Peter's, and keeping them
+prisoners till they submitted to his terms. Remembering this, Pope
+Hadrian the Fourth would fain have forced the troops of Frederick
+Barbarossa to remain without the walls, but the rapidity of their
+movements disconcerted his plans and anticipated the resistance of the
+Roman populace. Having established himself in the Leonine city[335],
+Frederick barricaded the bridge over the Tiber, and was duly crowned
+in St. Peter's. But the rite was scarcely finished when the Romans,
+who had assembled in arms on the Capitol, dashed over the bridge, fell
+upon the Germans, and were with difficulty repulsed by the personal
+efforts of Frederick. Into the city he did not venture to pursue them,
+nor was he at any period of his reign able to make himself master of
+the whole of it. Finding themselves similarly baffled, his successors
+at last accepted their position, and were content to take the crown on
+the Pope's conditions and depart without further question.
+
+[Sidenote: Memorials of the Germanic Emperors in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Third.]
+
+Coming so seldom and remaining for so short a time, it is not
+wonderful that the Teutonic Emperors should, in the seven centuries
+from Charles the Great to Charles the Fifth, have left fewer marks of
+their presence in Rome than Titus or Hadrian alone have done; fewer
+and less considerable even than those which tradition attributes to
+those whom it calls Servius Tullius and the elder Tarquin. Those
+monuments which do exist are just sufficient to make the absence of
+all others more conspicuous. The most important dates from the time of
+Otto the Third, the only Emperor who attempted to make Rome his
+permanent residence. Of the palace, probably nothing more than a
+tower, which he built on the Aventine, no trace has been discovered;
+but the church, founded by him to receive the ashes of his friend the
+martyred St. Adalbert, may still be seen upon the island in the Tiber.
+Having received from Benevento relics supposed to be those of
+Bartholomew the Apostle[336], it became dedicated to that saint, and
+is now the church of San Bartolommeo in Isola, whose quaintly
+picturesque bell-tower of red brick, now grey with extreme age, looks
+out from among the orange trees of a convent garden over the
+swift-eddying yellow waters of the Tiber.
+
+[Sidenote: Of Otto the Second.]
+
+[Sidenote: Of Frederick the Second.]
+
+Otto the Second, son of Otto the Great, died at Rome, and lies buried
+in the crypt of St. Peter's, the only Emperor who has found a
+resting-place among the graves of the Popes[337]. His tomb is not far
+from that of his nephew Pope Gregory the Fifth: it is a plain one of
+roughly chiselled marble. The lid of the superb porphyry sarcophagus
+in which he lay for a time now serves as the great font of St.
+Peter's, and may be seen in the baptismal chapel, on the left of the
+entrance of the church, not far from the tombs of the Stuarts. Last of
+all must be mentioned a curious relic of the Emperor Frederick the
+Second, the prince whom of all others one would least expect to see
+honoured in the city of his foes. It is an inscription in the palace
+of the Conservators upon the Capitoline hill, built into the wall of
+the great staircase, and relates the victory of Frederick's army over
+the Milanese, and the capture of the carroccio[338] of the rebel city,
+which he sends as a trophy to his faithful Romans. These are all or
+nearly all the traces of her Teutonic lords that Rome has preserved
+till now. Pictures indeed there are in abundance, from the mosaic of
+the Scala Santa at the Lateran[339] and the curious frescoes in the
+church of Santi Quattro Incoronati[340], down to the paintings of the
+Sistine antechapel and the Stanze of Raphael in the Vatican, where the
+triumphs of the Popedom over all its foes are set forth with matchless
+art and equally matchless unveracity. But these are mostly long
+subsequent to the events they describe, and these all the world knows.
+
+Associations of the highest interest would have attached to the
+churches in which the imperial coronation was performed--a ceremony
+which, whether we regard the dignity of the performers or the
+splendour of the adjuncts, was probably the most imposing that modern
+Europe has known. But old St. Peter's disappeared in the end of the
+fifteenth century, not long after the last Roman coronation, that of
+Frederick the Third, while the basilica of St. John Lateran, in which
+Lothar the Saxon and Henry the Seventh were crowned, has been so
+wofully modernized that we can hardly figure it to ourselves as the
+same building[341].
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the want of mediaeval monuments in Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Barbarism of the aristocracy.]
+
+Bearing in mind what was the social condition of Rome during the
+middle ages, it becomes easier to understand the architectural
+barrenness which at first excites the visitor's surprise. Rome had no
+temporal sovereign, and there were therefore only two classes who
+could build at all, the nobles and the clergy. Of these, the former
+had seldom the wealth, and never the taste, which would have enabled
+them to construct palaces graceful as the Venetian or massively grand
+as the Florentine and Genoese. Moreover, the constant practice of
+domestic war made defence the first object of a house, beauty and
+convenience the second. The nobility, therefore, either adapted
+ancient edifices to their purpose or built out of their materials
+those huge square towers of brick, a few of which still frown over the
+narrow streets in the older parts of Rome. We may judge of their
+number from the statement that the senator Brancaleone destroyed one
+hundred and forty of them. With perhaps no more than one exception,
+that of the so-called House of Rienzi, these towers are the only
+domestic buildings in the city older than the middle of the fifteenth
+century. The vast palaces to which strangers now flock for the sake of
+the picture galleries they contain, have been most of them erected in
+the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, some even later. Among the
+earliest is that Palazzo Cenci[342], whose gloomy low-browed arch so
+powerfully affected the imagination of Shelley.
+
+[Sidenote: Ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy.]
+
+It was no want of wealth that hampered the architectural efforts of
+the clergy, for vast revenues flowed in upon them from every corner of
+Christendom. A good deal was actually spent upon the erection or
+repairs of churches and convents, although with a less liberal hand
+than that of such great Transalpine prelates as Hugh of Lincoln or
+Conrad of Cologne. But the Popes always needed money for their
+projects of ambition, and in times when disorder or corruption were at
+their height the work of building stopped altogether. Thus it was that
+after the time of the Carolingians scarcely a church was erected until
+the beginning of the twelfth century, when the reforms of Hildebrand
+had breathed new zeal into the priesthood. The Babylonish captivity of
+Avignon, as it was called, with the great schism of the West that
+followed upon it, was the cause of a second similar intermission,
+which lasted nearly a century and a half.
+
+[Sidenote: Tendency of the Roman builders to adhere to the ancient
+manner.]
+
+[Sidenote: Absence of Gothic in Rome.]
+
+At every time, however, even when his work went on most briskly, the
+labours of the Roman architect took the direction of restoring and
+readorning old churches rather than of erecting new ones. While the
+Transalpine countries, except in a few favoured spots, such as
+Provence and part of the Rhineland, remained during several ages with
+few and rudely built stone churches, Rome possessed, as the
+inheritance of the earlier Christian centuries, a profusion of houses
+of worship, some of them still unsurpassed in splendour, and far more
+than adequate to the needs of her diminished population. In repairing
+these from time to time, their original form and style of work were
+usually as far as possible preserved, while in constructing new ones,
+the abundance of models beautiful in themselves and hallowed as well
+by antiquity as by religious feeling, enthralled the invention of the
+workman, bound him down to be at best a faithful imitator, and forbade
+him to deviate at pleasure from the old established manner. Thus it
+befel that while his brethren throughout the rest of Europe were
+passing by successive steps from the old Roman and Byzantine styles to
+Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Gothic, the Roman architect
+scarcely departed from the plan and arrangements of the primitive
+basilica. This is one chief reason why there is so little of Gothic
+work in Rome, so little even of Romanesque like that of Pisa. What
+there is appears chiefly in the pointed window, more rarely in the
+arch, seldom or never in spire or tower or column. Only one of the
+existing churches of Rome is Gothic throughout, and that, the
+Dominican church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, was built by foreign
+monks. In some of the other churches, and especially in the cloisters
+of the convents, instances may be observed of the same style: in
+others slight traces, by accident or design almost obliterated[343].
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction and alteration of the old buildings:]
+
+[Sidenote: By invaders.]
+
+[Sidenote: By the Romans of the Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: By modern restorers of churches.]
+
+The mention of obliteration suggests a third cause of the comparative
+want of mediaeval buildings in the city--the constant depredations and
+changes of which she has been the subject. Ever since the time of
+Constantine Rome has been a city of destruction, and Christians have
+vied with pagans, citizens with enemies, in urging on the fatal work.
+Her siege and capture by Robert Guiscard[344], the ally of Hildebrand
+against Henry the Fourth, was far more ruinous than the attacks of the
+Goths or Vandals: and itself yields in atrocity to the sack of Rome in
+A.D. 1526 by the soldiers of the Catholic king and most pious Emperor
+Charles the Fifth[345]. Since the days of the first barbarian
+invasions the Romans have gone on building with materials taken from
+the ancient temples, theatres, law-courts, baths and villas, stripping
+them of their gorgeous casings of marble, pulling down their walls for
+the sake of the blocks of travertine, setting up their own hovels on
+the top or in the midst of these majestic piles. Thus it has been with
+the memorials of paganism: a somewhat different cause has contributed
+to the disappearance of the mediaeval churches. What pillage, or
+fanaticism, or the wanton lust of destruction did in the one case, the
+ostentatious zeal of modern times has done in the other. The era of
+the final establishment of the Popes as temporal sovereigns of the
+city, is also that of the supremacy of the Renaissance style in
+architecture. After the time of Nicholas the Fifth, the pontiff
+against whom, it will be remembered, the spirit of municipal freedom
+made its last struggle in the conspiracy of Porcaro, nothing was built
+in Gothic, and the prevailing enthusiasm for the antique produced a
+corresponding dislike to everything mediaeval, a dislike conspicuous in
+men like Julius the Second and Leo the Tenth, from whom the grandeur
+of modern Rome may be said to begin. Not long after their time the
+great religious movement of the sixteenth century, while triumphing in
+the north of Europe, was in the south met and overcome by a
+counter-reformation in the bosom of the old church herself, and the
+construction or restoration of ecclesiastical buildings became again
+the passion of the devout[346]. No employment, whether it be called an
+amusement or a duty, could have been better suited to the court and
+aristocracy of Rome. They were indolent; wealthy, and fond of
+displaying their wealth; full of good taste, and anxious, especially
+when advancing years had chased away youth's pleasures, to be full of
+good works also. Popes and cardinals and the heads of the great
+families vied with one another in building new churches and restoring
+or enlarging those they found till little of the old was left; raising
+over them huge cupolas, substituting massive pilasters for the
+single-shafted columns, adorning the interior with a profusion of rare
+marbles, of carving and gilding, of frescoes and altar-pieces by the
+best masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. None but a
+bigoted mediaevalist can refuse to acknowledge the warmth of tone, the
+repose, the stateliness, of the churches of modern Rome; but even in
+the midst of admiration the sated eye turns away from the wealth of
+ponderous ornament, and we long for the clear pure colour, the simple
+yet grand proportions that give a charm to the buildings of an earlier
+age.
+
+[Sidenote: Existing relics of the Dark and Middle Ages.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Mosaics.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Bell-towers.]
+
+Few of the ancient churches have escaped untouched; many have been
+altogether rebuilt. There are also some, however, in which the
+modernizers of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries have spared two
+features of the old structure, its round apse or tribune and its
+bell-tower. The apse has its interior usually covered with mosaics,
+exceedingly interesting, both from the ideas they express and as the
+only monuments of pictorial art that remain to us from the Dark Ages.
+To speak of them, however, as they deserve to be spoken of, would
+involve a digression for which there is no space here. The campanile
+or bell-tower is a quaint little square brick tower, of no great
+height, usually standing detached from the church, and having in its
+topmost, sometimes also in its other upper stories, several arcade
+windows, divided by tiny marble pillars[347]. What with these
+campaniles, then far more numerous than they are now, and with the
+huge brick fortresses of the nobles, towers must have held in the
+landscape of the mediaeval city very much the part which domes do now.
+Although less imposing, they were probably more picturesque, the
+rather as in the earlier part of the Middle Ages the houses and
+churches, which are now mostly crowded together on the flat of the
+Campus Martius, were scattered over the heights and slopes of the
+Coelian, Aventine, and Esquiline hills[348]. Modern Rome lies chiefly
+on the opposite or north-eastern side of the Capitol, and the change
+from the old to the new site of the city, which can hardly be said to
+have distinctly begun before the destruction of the south-western part
+of the town by Robert Guiscard, was not completed until the sixteenth
+century. In A.D. 1536 the Capitol was rebuilt by Michael Angelo, in
+anticipation of the entry of Charles the Fifth, upon foundations that
+had been laid by the first Tarquin; and the palace of the Senator, the
+greatest municipal edifice of Rome, which had hitherto looked towards
+the Forum and the Coliseum, was made to front in the direction of St.
+Peter's and the modern town.
+
+[Sidenote: Changed aspect of the city of Rome.]
+
+[Sidenote: Analogy between her architecture and her civil and
+ecclesiastical constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Preservation of an antique character in both.]
+
+The Rome of to-day is no more like the city of Rienzi than she is to
+the city of Trajan; just as the Roman church of the nineteenth century
+differs profoundly, however she may strive to disguise it, from the
+church of Hildebrand. But among all their changes, both church and
+city have kept themselves wonderfully free from the intrusion of
+foreign, at least of Teutonic, elements, and have faithfully preserved
+at all times something of an old Roman character. Latin Christianity
+inherited from the imperial system of old that firmly knit yet
+flexible organization, which was one of the grand secrets of its
+power: the great men whom mediaeval Rome gave to or trained up for the
+Papacy were, like their progenitors, administrators, legislators,
+statesmen; seldom enthusiasts themselves, but perfectly understanding
+how to use and guide the enthusiasm of others--of the French and
+German crusaders, of men like Francis of Assisi and Dominic and
+Ignatius. Between Catholicism in Italy and Catholicism in Germany or
+England there was always, as there is still, a very perceptible
+difference. So also, if the analogy be not too fanciful, was it with
+Rome the city. Socially she seemed always drifting towards feudalism;
+yet she never fell into its grasp. Materially, her architecture was at
+one time considerably influenced by Gothic forms, yet Gothic never
+became, as in the rest of Europe, the dominant style. It approached
+Rome late, and departed from her early, so that we scarcely notice its
+presence, and seem to pass almost without a break from the old
+Romanesque[349] to the Graeco-Roman of the Renaissance. Thus regarded,
+the history of the city, both in her political state and in her
+buildings, is seen to be intimately connected with that of the Holy
+Empire itself. The Empire in its title and its pretensions expressed
+the idea of the permanence of the institutions of the ancient world;
+Rome the city had, in externals at least, carefully preserved their
+traditions: the names of her magistracies, the character of her
+buildings, all spoke of antiquity, and gave it a strange and shadowy
+life in the midst of new races and new forms of faith.
+
+[Sidenote: Relation of the City and the Empire.]
+
+In its essence the Empire rested on the feeling of the unity of
+mankind; it was the perpetuation of the Roman dominion by which the
+old nationalities had been destroyed, with the addition of the
+Christian element which had created a new nationality that was also
+universal. By the extension of her citizenship to all her subjects
+heathen Rome had become the common home, and, figuratively, even the
+local dwelling-place of the civilized races of man. By the theology of
+the time Christian Rome had been made the mystical type of humanity,
+the one flock of the faithful scattered over the whole earth, the holy
+city whither, as to the temple on Moriah, all the Israel of God should
+come up to worship. She was not merely an image of the mighty world,
+she was the mighty world itself in miniature. The pastor of her local
+church is also the universal bishop; the seven suffragans who
+consecrate him are the overseers of petty sees in Ostia, Antium, and
+the like, towns lying close round Rome: the cardinal priests and
+deacons who join these seven in electing him derive their title to be
+princes of the Church, the supreme spiritual council of the Christian
+world, from the incumbency of a parochial cure within the precincts of
+the city. Similarly, her ruler, the Emperor, is ruler of mankind; he
+is chosen by the acclamations of her people[350]: he can be lawfully
+crowned nowhere but in one of her basilicas. She is, like Jerusalem of
+old, the mother of us all.
+
+[Sidenote: Extinction of the Florentine republic, A.D. 1530.]
+
+There is yet another way in which the record of the domestic contests
+of Rome throws light upon the history of the Empire. From the eleventh
+century to the fifteenth her citizens ceased not to demand in the name
+of the old republic their freedom from the tyranny of the nobles and
+the Pope, and their right to rule over the world at large. These
+efforts--selfish and fantastic we may call them, yet men like Petrarch
+did not disdain to them their sympathy--issued from the same theories
+and were directed to the same ends as those which inspired Otto the
+Third and Frederick Barbarossa and Dante himself. They witness to the
+same incapacity to form any ideal for the future except a revival of
+the past; the same belief that one universal state is both desirable
+and possible, but possible only through the means of Rome: the same
+refusal to admit that a right which has once existed can ever be
+extinguished. In the days of the Renaissance these notions were
+passing silently away: the succeeding century brought with it
+misfortunes that broke the spirit of the nation. Italy was the
+battle-field of Europe: her wealth became the prey of a rapacious
+soldiery: the last and greatest of her republics was enslaved by an
+unfeeling Emperor, and handed over as the pledge of amity to a selfish
+Medicean Pope. When the hope of independence had been lost, the people
+turned away from politics to live for art and literature, and found,
+before many generations had passed, how little such exclusive devotion
+could compensate for the departure of freedom, and a national spirit,
+and the activity of civic life. A century after the golden days of
+Ariosto and Raphael, Italian literature had become frigid and
+affected, while Italian art was dying of mannerism.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the modern Italians towards Rome.]
+
+At length, after long ages of sloth, the stagnant waters were
+troubled. The Romans, who had lived in listless contentment under the
+paternal sway of the Popes, received new ideas from the advent of the
+revolutionary armies of France, and have found the Papal system, since
+its re-establishment fifty years ago as a modern bureaucratic
+despotism, far less tolerable than it was of yore. Our own days have
+seen the name of Rome become again a rallying-cry for the patriots of
+Italy, but in a sense most unlike the old one. The contemporaries of
+Arnold and Rienzi desired freedom only as a step to universal
+domination: their descendants, more wisely, yet not more from
+patriotism than from a pardonable civic pride, seek only to be the
+capital of the Italian kingdom. Dante prayed for a monarchy of the
+world, a reign of peace and Christian brotherhood: those who invoke
+his name as the earliest prophet of their creed strive after an idea
+that never crossed his mind--the national union of Italy[351].
+
+Plain common-sense politicians in other countries do not understand
+this passion for Rome as a capital, and think it their duty to lecture
+the Italians on their flightiness. The latter do not themselves
+pretend that the shores of the Tiber are a suitable site for a
+capital: Rome is lonely, unhealthy, and in a bad strategical position;
+she has no particular facilities for trade: her people, with some fine
+qualities, are less orderly and industrious than the Tuscans or the
+Piedmontese. Nevertheless all Italy cries with one voice for Rome,
+firmly believing that national life can never thrill with a strong and
+steady pulsation till the ancient capital has become the nation's
+heart. They feel that it is owing to Rome--Rome pagan as well as
+Christian--that they once played so grand a part in the drama of
+European history, and that they have now been able to attain that
+fervid sentiment of unity which has brought them at last together
+under one government. Whether they are right, whether if right they
+are likely to be successful, need not be inquired here. But it
+deserves to be noted that this enthusiasm for a famous name--for it is
+nothing more--is substantially the same feeling as that which created
+and hallowed the Holy Empire of the Middle Ages. The events of the
+last few years on both sides of the Atlantic have proved that men are
+not now, any more than they ever were, chiefly governed by
+calculations of material profit and loss. Sentiments, fancies,
+theories, have not lost their power; the spirit of poetry has not
+wholly passed away from politics. And strange as seems to us the
+worship paid to the name of mediaeval Rome by those who saw the sins
+and the misery of her people, it can hardly have been an intenser
+feeling than is the imaginative reverence wherewith the Italians of
+to-day look on the city whence, as from a fountain, all the streams of
+their national life have sprung, and in which, as in an ocean, they
+are all again to mingle.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[323] Hist. Eccl. l. ix. c. 6: [Greek: ton de phanai, hos ouch hekon
+tade epicheirei, alla tis synechos enochlon auton biazetai, kai
+epitattei ten Rhomen porthein.]
+
+[324] See the two Lives of St. Adalbert in Pertz, _M. G. H._, iv.,
+evidently compiled soon after his death.
+
+[325] Another letter of Petrarch's to John Colonna, written
+immediately after his arrival in the city, deserves to be quoted, it
+is so like what a stranger would now write off after his first day in
+Rome:--'In praesens nihil est quod inchoare ausim, miraculo rerum
+tantarum et stuporis mole obrutus ... praesentia vero, mirum dictu,
+nihil imminuit sed auxit omnia: vere maior fuit Roma maioresque sunt
+reliquiae quam rebar: iam non orbem ab hac urbe domitum sed tam sero
+domitum miror. Vale.'
+
+[326] The idea of the continuance of the sway of Rome under a new
+character is one which mediaeval writers delight to illustrate. In
+Appendix, Note D, there is quoted as a specimen a poem upon Rome, by
+Hildebert (bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours),
+written in the beginning of the twelfth century.
+
+[327] In writing this chapter I have derived much assistance from the
+admirable work of Ferdinand Gregorovius, _Geschichte der Stadt Rom im
+Mittelalter_. Unfortunately no English translation of it exists; but I
+am informed by the author that one is likely ere long to appear.
+
+[328] Republican forms of some sort had existed before Arnold's
+arrival, but we hear the name of no other leader mentioned; and
+doubtless it was by him chiefly that the spirit of hostility to the
+clerical power was infused into the minds of the Romans.
+
+[329] The series of papal coins is interrupted (with one or two slight
+exceptions) from A.D. 984 (not long after the time of Alberic) to A.D.
+1304. In their place we meet with various coins struck by the
+municipal authorities, some of which bear on the obverse the head of
+the Apostle Peter, with the legend Roman. Pricipe: on the reverse the
+head of the Apostle Paul, legend, Senat. Popul. Q. R. Gregorovius, _ut
+supra_.
+
+[330] Rienzi called himself Augustus as well as tribune; 'tribuno
+Augusto de Roma.' (He pretended, or his friends pretended for him--it
+was at any rate believed--that he was an illegitimate son of the
+Emperor Henry the Seventh.) He cited, on his appointment, the Pope and
+cardinals to appear before the people of Rome and give an account of
+their conduct; and after them the Emperor. 'Ancora citao lo Bavaro
+(Lewis the Fourth). Puoi citao li elettori de lo imperio in Alemagna,
+e disse "Voglio vedere che rascione haco nella elettione," che
+trovasse scritto che passato alcuno tempo la elettione recadeva a li
+Romani.'--_Vita di Cola di Rienzi_, c. xxvi (written by a
+contemporary). I give the spelling as it stands in Muratori's edition.
+
+[331] The Germans called this hill, which is the highest in or near
+Rome, conspicuous from a beautiful group of stone-pines upon its brow,
+Mons Gaudii; the origin of the Italian name, Monte Mario, is not
+known, unless it be, as some think, a corruption of Mons Malus.
+
+It was on this hill that Otto the Third hanged Crescentius and his
+followers.
+
+[332] I quote this from the _Ordo Romanus_ as it stands in Muratori's
+third Dissertation in the _Antiquitates Italiae medii aevi_.
+
+[333] Great stress was laid on one part of the procedure,--the holding
+by the Emperor of the Pope's stirrup for him to mount, and the leading
+of his palfrey for some distance. Frederick Barbarossa's omission of
+this mark of respect when Pope Hadrian IV met him on his way to Rome,
+had nearly caused a breach between the two potentates, Hadrian
+absolutely refusing the kiss of peace until Frederick should have gone
+through the form, which he was at last forced to do in a somewhat
+ignominious way.
+
+[334] A remarkable speech of expostulation made by Otto III to the
+Roman people (after one of their revolts) from the tower of his house
+on the Aventine has been preserved to us. It begins thus: 'Vosne estis
+mei Romani? Propter vos quidem meam patriam, propinquos quoque
+reliqui; amore vestro Saxones et cunctos Theotiscos, sanguinem meum,
+proieci; vos in remotas partes imperii nostri adduxi, quo patres
+vestri cum orbem ditione premerent numquam pedem posuerunt; scilicet
+ut nomen vestrum et gloriam ad fines usque dilatarem; vos filios
+adoptavi: vos cunctis praetuli.'--_Vita S. Bernwardi_; in Pertz, _M. G.
+H._, t. iv.
+
+(It is from this form 'Theotiscus' that the Italian 'Tedesco' seems to
+have been derived.)
+
+[335] The Leonine city, so called from Pope Leo IV, lay between the
+Vatican and St. Peter's and the river.
+
+[336] It would seem that Otto was deceived, and that in reality they
+are the bones of St. Paulinus of Nola.
+
+[337] The only other of the Teutonic Emperors buried in Italy were, so
+far as I know, Lewis the Second (whose tomb, with an inscription
+commemorating his exploits, is built into the wall of the north aisle
+of the famous church of S. Ambrose at Milan), Henry the Sixth and
+Frederick the Second, who lie at Palermo, Conrad IV, buried at Foggia,
+and Henry the Seventh, whose sarcophagus may be seen in the Campo
+Santo of Pisa, a city always conspicuous for her zeal on the imperial
+side.
+
+Six Emperors lie buried at Speyer, three or four at Prague, two at
+Aachen, two at Bamberg, one at Innsbruck, one at Magdeburg, one at
+Quedlinburg, two at Munich, and most of the later ones at Vienna.
+
+[338] See note 198, p. 178.
+
+[339] See p. 117.
+
+[340] These highly curious frescoes are in the chapel of St. Sylvester
+attached to the very ancient church of Quattro Santi on the Coelian
+hill, and are supposed to have been executed in the time of Pope
+Innocent III. They represent scenes in the life of the Saint, more
+particularly the making of the famous donation to him by Constantine,
+who submissively holds the bridle of his palfrey.
+
+[341] The last imperial coronation, that of Charles the Fifth, took
+place in the church of St. Petronius at Bologna, Pope Clement VII
+being unwilling to receive Charles in Rome. It is a grand church, but
+the choir, where the ceremony took place, seems to have been
+'restored,' that is to say modernized, since Charles' time.
+
+[342] The name of Cenci is a very old one at Rome: it is supposed to
+be an abbreviation of Crescentius. We hear in the eleventh century of
+a certain Cencius, who on one occasion made Gregory VII prisoner.
+
+[343] Thus in the church of San Lorenzo without the walls there are
+several pointed windows, now bricked up; and similar ones may be seen
+in the church of Ara Coeli on the summit of the Capitol. So in the apse
+of St. John Lateran there are three or four windows of Gothic form:
+and in its cloister, as well as in that of St. Paul without the walls,
+a great deal of beautiful Lombard work. The elegant porch of the
+church of Sant' Antonio Abate is Lombard. In the apse of the church of
+San Giovanni e Paolo on the Coelian hill there is an external arcade
+exactly like those of the Duomo at Pisa. Nor are these the only
+instances.
+
+The ruined chapel attached to the fortress of the Caetani family--the
+family to which Boniface the Eighth belonged, and whose head is now
+the first of the Roman nobility--is a pretty little building, more
+like northern Gothic than anything within the walls of Rome. It stands
+upon the Appian Way, opposite the tomb of Caecilia Metella, which the
+Caetani used as a stronghold.
+
+[344] A good deal of the mischief done by Robert Guiscard, from which
+the parts of the city lying beyond the Coliseum towards the river and
+St. John Lateran never recovered, is attributed to the Saracenic
+troops in his service. Saracen pirates are said to have once before
+sacked Rome. Genseric was not a heathen, but he was a furious Arian,
+which, as far as respect to the churches of the orthodox went, was
+nearly the same thing. He is supposed to have carried off the
+seven-branched candlestick and other vessels of the Temple, which
+Titus had brought from Jerusalem to Rome.
+
+[345] We are told that one cause of the ferocity of the German part of
+the army of Charles was their anger at the ruinous condition of the
+imperial palace.
+
+[346] Under the influence, partly of this anti-pagan spirit, partly of
+his own restless vanity, partly of a passion to be doing something,
+Pope Sixtus the Fifth did a great deal of mischief in the way of
+destroying or spoiling the monuments of antiquity.
+
+[347] These campaniles are generally supposed to date from the ninth
+and tenth centuries. I am informed, however, by Mr. J. H. Parker, of
+Oxford, whose antiquarian skill is well known, that he is led to
+believe by an examination of their mouldings that few or none, unless
+it be that of San Prassede, are older than the twelfth century.
+
+This of course applies only to the existing buildings. The type of
+tower may be, and indeed no doubt is, older.
+
+Somewhat similar towers may be observed in many parts of the Italian
+Alps, especially in the wonderful mountain land north of Venice, where
+such towers are of all dates from the eleventh or twelfth down to the
+nineteenth century, the ancient type having in these remote valleys
+been adhered to because the builder had no other models before him. In
+the valley of Cimolais I have seen such a campanile in course of
+erection, precisely similar to others in the neighbouring villages
+some eight centuries old.
+
+The very curious round towers of Ravenna, some four or five of which
+are still standing, seem to have originally had similar windows,
+though these have been all, or nearly all, stopped up. The Roman
+towers are all square.
+
+[348] The Palatine hill seems to have been then, as it is for the most
+part now, a waste of stupendous ruins. In the great imperial palace
+upon its northern and eastern sides was the residence of an official
+of the Eastern court in the beginning of the eighth century. In the
+time of Charles, some seventy years later, this palace was no longer
+habitable.
+
+[349] Such as we see it in the later and lesser churches of basilica
+form.
+
+[350] It was thus that most of the earlier Teutonic Emperors, and
+notably Charles and Otto, professed to have obtained the crown;
+although practically it was partly a matter of conquest and partly of
+private arrangement with the Pope. In later times, the seven Germanic
+princes were recognized as the legally qualified electoral body, but
+their appearance on the stage was a result of the confusion of the
+German kingdom with the Roman Empire, and in strictness they had
+nothing to do with the Roman crown at all. The right to bestow it
+could only--on principle--belong to some Roman authority, and those
+who felt the difficulty were driven to suppose a formal cession of
+their privilege by the Roman people to the seven electors. See p. 227
+_supra_: and cf. Matthew Villani (iv. 77), 'Il popolo Romano, non da
+se, ma la chiesa per lui, concedette la elezione degli Imperadori a
+sette principi della Magna.'
+
+[351] That which Dante, Arnold of Brescia, and the rest really have in
+common with the modern Italian 'party of movement' is their hostility
+to the temporal power of the Popes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE RENAISSANCE: CHANGE IN THE CHARACTER OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Wenzel, 1378-1400.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rupert, 1400-1410.]
+
+[Sidenote: Sigismund, 1410-1438.]
+
+[Sidenote: Council of Constance.]
+
+In Frederick the Third's reign the Empire sank to its lowest point. It
+had shot forth a fitful gleam under Sigismund, who in convoking and
+presiding over the council of Constance had revived one of the highest
+functions of his predecessors. The precedents of the first great
+oecumenical councils, and especially of the council of Nicaea, had
+established the principle that it belonged to the Emperor, even more
+properly than to the Pope, to convoke ecclesiastical assemblies from
+the whole Christian world[352]. The tenet commended itself to the
+reforming party in the church, headed by Gerson, the chancellor of
+Paris, whose aim it was, while making no changes in matters of faith,
+to correct the abuses which had grown up in discipline and government,
+and limit the power of the Popes by exalting the authority of general
+councils, to whom there was now attributed an immunity from error
+superior even to that which resided in the successor of Peter. And
+although it was only the sacerdotal body, not the whole Christian
+people, who were thus made the exponents of the universal religious
+consciousness, the doctrine was nevertheless a foreshadowing of that
+fuller freedom which was soon to follow. The existence of the Holy
+Empire and the existence of general councils were, as has been already
+remarked, necessary parts of one and the same theory[353], and it was
+therefore more than a coincidence that the last occasion on which the
+whole of Latin Christendom met to deliberate and act as a single
+commonwealth[354] was also the last on which that commonwealth's
+lawful temporal head appeared in the exercise of his international
+functions. Never afterwards was he, in the eyes of Europe, anything
+more than a German monarch.
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness of Germany as compared with the other states of
+Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Albert II. 1438-1440. Frederick III. 1440-1493.]
+
+It might seem doubtful whether he would long remain a monarch at all.
+When in A.D. 1493 the calamitous reign of Frederick the Third ended,
+it was impossible for the princes to see with unconcern the condition
+into which their selfishness and turbulence had brought the Empire.
+The time was indeed critical. Hitherto the Germans had been protected
+rather by the weakness of their enemies than by their own strength.
+From France there had been little to fear while the English menaced
+her on one side and the Burgundian dukes on the other: from England
+still less while she was torn by the strife of York and Lancaster. But
+now throughout Western Europe the power of the feudal oligarchies was
+broken; and its chief countries were being, by the establishment of
+fixed rules of succession and the absorption of the smaller into the
+larger principalities, rapidly built up into compact and aggressive
+military monarchies. Thus Spain became a great state by the union of
+Castile and Aragon, and the conquest of the Moors of Granada. Thus in
+England there arose the popular despotism of the Tudors. Thus France,
+enlarged and consolidated under Lewis the Eleventh and his successors,
+began to acquire that predominant influence on the politics of Europe
+which her commanding geographical position, the martial spirit of her
+people, and, it must be added, the unscrupulous ambition of her
+rulers, have secured to her in every succeeding century. Meantime
+there had appeared in the far East a foe still more terrible. The
+capture of Constantinople gave Turks a firm hold on Europe, and
+inspired them with the hope of effecting in the fifteenth century what
+Abderrahman and his Saracens had so nearly effected in the eighth--of
+establishing the faith of Islam through all the provinces that obeyed
+the Western as well as the Eastern Caesars. The navies of the Ottoman
+Sultans swept the Mediterranean; their well-appointed armies pierced
+Hungary and threatened Vienna.
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+Nor was it only that formidable enemies had arisen without: the
+frontiers of Germany herself were exposed by the loss of those
+adjoining territories which had formerly owned allegiance to the
+Emperors. Poland, once tributary, had shaken off the yoke at the
+interregnum, and had recently wrested Prussia and Lusatz from the
+Teutonic knights. Bohemia, where German culture had struck deeper
+roots, remained a member of the Empire; but the privileges she had
+obtained from Charles the Fourth, and the subsequent acquisition of
+Silesia and Moravia, made her virtually independent. The restless
+Hungarians avenged their former vassalage to Germany by frequent
+inroads on her eastern border.
+
+[Sidenote: Italy.]
+
+Imperial power in Italy ended with the life of Henry the Seventh.
+Rupert did indeed cross the Alps, but it was as the hireling of
+Florence; Frederick the Third received the Lombard crown, but it no
+longer conveyed the slightest power. In the beginning of the
+fourteenth century Dante still hopes the renovation of his country
+from the action of the Teutonic Emperors. Some fifty years later
+Matthew Villani sees clearly that they do not and cannot reign to any
+purpose south of the Alps[355]. Nevertheless the phantom of imperial
+authority lingers on for a time. It is put forward by the Ghibeline
+tyrants of the cities to justify their attacks on their Guelfic
+neighbours: even resolute republicans like the Florentines do not yet
+venture altogether to reject it, however unwilling to permit its
+exercise. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the names of
+Guelf and Ghibeline had ceased to have any sense or meaning; the Pope
+was no longer the protector nor the Emperor the assailant of municipal
+freedom, for municipal freedom itself had well-nigh disappeared. But
+the old war-cries of the Church and the Empire were still repeated as
+they had been three centuries before, and the rival principles that
+had once enlisted the noblest spirits of Italy on one or other side
+had now sunk into a pretext for wars of aggrandizement or of mere
+unmeaning hate. That which had been remarked long before in Greece was
+seen to be true here; the spirit of faction outlived the cause of
+faction, and became itself the new and prolific source of a useless,
+endless strife.
+
+[Sidenote: Burgundy.]
+
+After Frederick the Third no Emperor was crowned in Rome, and almost
+the only trace of that connection between Germany and Italy to
+maintain which so much had been risked and lost, was to be found in
+the obstinate belief of the Hapsburg Emperors, that their own claims,
+though often purely dynastic and personal, could be enforced by an
+appeal to the imperial rights of their predecessors. Because
+Barbarossa had overrun Lombardy with a Transalpine host they fancied
+themselves entitled to demand duchies for themselves and their
+relatives, and to entangle the Empire in wars wherein no interest but
+their own was involved.
+
+The kingdom of Arles, if it had never added much strength to the
+Empire, had been useful as an outwork against France. And thus its
+loss--Dauphine passing over, partly in A.D. 1350, finally in 1457,
+Provence in 1486--proved a serious calamity, for it brought the French
+nearer to Switzerland, and opened to them a tempting passage into
+Italy. The Emperors did not for a time expressly renounce their feudal
+suzerainty over these lands, but if it was hard to enforce a feudal
+claim over a rebellious landgrave in Germany, how much harder to
+control a vassal who was also the mightiest king in Europe.
+
+On the north-west frontier, the fall in A.D. 1477 of the great
+principality which the dukes of French Burgundy were building up, was
+seen with pleasure by the Rhinelanders whom Charles the last duke had
+incessantly alarmed. But the only effect of its fall was to leave
+France and Germany directly confronting each other, and it was soon
+seen that the balance of strength lay on the side of the less numerous
+but better organized and more active nation.
+
+[Sidenote: Switzerland.]
+
+Switzerland, too, could no longer be considered a part of the Germanic
+realm. The revolt of the Forest Cantons, in A.D. 1313, was against the
+oppressions practised in the name of Albert count of Hapsburg, rather
+than against the legitimate authority of Albert the Emperor. But
+although several subsequent sovereigns, and among them conspicuously
+Henry the Seventh and Sigismund, favoured the Swiss liberties, yet
+while the antipathy between the Confederates and the territorial
+nobility gave a peculiar direction to their policy, the accession of
+new cantons to their body, and their brilliant success against Charles
+the Bold in A.D. 1477, made them proud of a separate national
+existence, and not unwilling to cast themselves loose from the
+stranded hulk of the Empire. Maximilian tried to reconquer them, but
+after a furious struggle, in which the valleys of Western Tyrol were
+repeatedly laid waste by the peasants of the Engadin, he was forced to
+give way, and in A.D. 1500 recognized them by treaty as practically
+independent. Not, however, till the peace of Westphalia, in A.D. 1648,
+was the Swiss Confederation in the eye of public law a sovereign
+state, and even after that date some of the towns continued to stamp
+their coins with the double eagle of the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Internal weakness.]
+
+If those losses of territory were serious, far more serious was the
+plight in which Germany herself lay. The country had now become not so
+much an empire as an aggregate of very many small states, governed by
+sovereigns who would neither remain at peace with each other nor
+combine against a foreign enemy, under the nominal presidency of an
+Emperor who had little lawful authority, and could not exert what he
+had[356].
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the theory of the Empire as an international
+power upon the Germanic constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Emperor in Germany, compared with that of
+his predecessors in Europe.]
+
+There was another cause, besides those palpable and obvious ones
+already enumerated, to which this state of things must be ascribed.
+That cause is to be found in the theory which regarded the Empire as
+an international power, supreme among Christian states. From the day
+when Otto the Great was crowned at Rome, the characters of German king
+and Roman Emperor were united in one person, and it has been shewn how
+that union tended more and more to become a fusion. If the two
+offices, in their nature and origin so dissimilar, had been held by
+different persons, the Roman Empire would most probably have soon
+disappeared, while the German kingdom grew into a robust national
+monarchy. Their connection gave a longer life to the one and a feebler
+life to the other, while at the same time it transformed both. So long
+as Germany was only one of the many countries that bowed beneath their
+sceptre it was possible for the Emperors, though we need not suppose
+they troubled themselves with speculations on the matter, to
+distinguish their imperial authority, as international and more than
+half religious, from their royal, which was, or was meant to be,
+exclusively local and feudal. But when within the narrowed bounds of
+Germany these international functions had ceased to have any meaning,
+when the rulers of England, Spain, France, Denmark, Hungary, Poland,
+Italy, Burgundy, had in succession repudiated their control, and the
+Lord of the World found himself obeyed by none but his own people, he
+would not sink from being lord of the world into a simple Teutonic
+king, but continued to play in the more contracted theatre the part
+which had belonged to him in the wider. Thus did Germany instead of
+Europe become the sphere of his international jurisdiction; and her
+electors and princes, originally mere vassals, no greater than a Count
+of Champagne in France, or an Earl of Chester in England, stepped into
+the place which it had been meant that the several monarchs of
+Christendom should fill. If the power of their head had been what it
+was in the eleventh century, the additional dignity so assigned to
+them might have signified very little. But coming in to confirm and
+justify the liberties already won, this theory of their relation to
+the sovereign had a great though at the time scarcely perceptible
+influence in changing the German Empire, as we may now begin to call
+it, from a state into a sort of confederation or body of states,
+united indeed for some of the purposes of government, but separate and
+independent for others more important. Thus, and that in its
+ecclesiastical as well as its civil organization, Germany became a
+miniature of Christendom[357]. The Pope, though he retained the wider
+sway which his rival had lost, was in an especial manner the head of
+the German clergy, as the Emperor was of the laity: the three Rhenish
+prelates sat in the supreme college beside the four temporal electors:
+the nobility of prince-bishops and abbots was as essential a part of
+the constitution and as influential in the deliberations of the Diet
+as were the dukes, counts, and margraves of the Empire. The
+world-embracing Christian state was to have been governed by a
+hierarchy of spiritual pastors, whose graduated ranks of authority
+should exactly correspond with those of the temporal magistracy, who
+were to be like them endowed with worldly wealth and power, and to
+enjoy a jurisdiction co-ordinate although distinct. This system, which
+it was in vain attempted to establish in Europe during the eleventh
+and twelfth centuries, was in its main features that which prevailed
+in the Germanic Empire from the fourteenth century onwards. And
+conformably to the analogy which may be traced between the position of
+the archdukes of Austria in Germany and the place which the four Saxon
+and the two first Franconian Emperors had held in Europe, both being
+recognized as leaders and presidents in all that concerned the common
+interest, in the one case of the Christian, in the other of the whole
+German people, while neither of them had any power of direct
+government in the territories of local kings and lords; so the plan by
+which those who chose Maximilian emperor sought to strengthen their
+national monarchy was in substance that which the Popes had followed
+when they conferred the crown of the world on Charles and Otto. The
+pontiffs then, like the electors now, finding that they could not give
+with the title the power which its functions demanded, were driven to
+the expedient of selecting for the office persons whose private
+resources enabled them to sustain it with dignity. The first Frankish
+and the first Saxon Emperors were chosen because they were already the
+mightiest potentates in Europe; Maximilian because he was the
+strongest of the German princes. The parallel may be carried one step
+further. Just as under Otto and his successors the Roman Empire was
+Teutonized, so now under the Hapsburg dynasty, from whose hands the
+sceptre departed only once thenceforth, the Teutonic Empire tends more
+and more to lose itself in an Austrian monarchy.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginning of the Hapsburg influence in Germany.]
+
+Of that monarchy and of the power of the house of Hapsburg, Maximilian
+was, even more than Rudolph his ancestor, the founder[358]. Uniting in
+his person those wide domains through Germany which had been dispersed
+among the collateral branches of his house, and claiming by his
+marriage with Mary of Burgundy most of the territories of Charles the
+Bold, he was a prince greater than any who had sat on the Teutonic
+throne since the death of Frederick the Second. But it was as archduke
+of Austria, count of Tyrol, duke of Styria and Carinthia, feudal
+superior of lands, in Swabia, Alsace, and Switzerland, that he was
+great, not as Roman Emperor. For just as from him the Austrian
+monarchy begins, so with him the Holy Empire in its old meaning ends.
+That strange system of doctrines, half religious half political, which
+had supported it for so many ages, was growing obsolete, and the
+theory which had wrought such changes on Germany and Europe, passed
+ere long so completely from remembrance that we can now do no more
+than call up a faint and wavering image of what it must once have
+been.
+
+[Sidenote: Character of the epoch of Maximilian.]
+
+[Sidenote: The discovery of America.]
+
+For it is not only in imperial history that the accession of
+Maximilian is a landmark. That time--a time of change and movement in
+every part of human life, a time when printing had become common, and
+books were no longer confined to the clergy, when drilled troops were
+replacing the feudal militia, when the use of gunpowder was changing
+the face of war--was especially marked by one event, to which the
+history of the world offers no parallel before or since, the discovery
+of America. The cloud which from the beginning of things had hung
+thick and dark round the borders of civilization was suddenly lifted:
+the feeling of mysterious awe with which men had regarded the firm
+plain of earth and her encircling ocean ever since the days of Homer,
+vanished when astronomers and geographers taught them that she was an
+insignificant globe, which, so far from being the centre of the
+universe, was itself swept round in the motion of one of the least of
+its countless systems. The notions that had hitherto prevailed
+regarding the life of man and his relations to nature and the
+supernatural, were rudely shaken by the knowledge that was soon gained
+of tribes in every stage of culture and living under every variety of
+condition, who had developed apart from all the influences of the
+Eastern hemisphere. In A.D. 1453 the capture of Constantinople and
+extinction of the Eastern Empire had dealt a fatal blow to the
+prestige of tradition and an immemorial name: in A.D. 1492 there was
+disclosed a world whither the eagles of all-conquering Rome had never
+winged their flight. No one could now have repeated the arguments of
+the _De Monarchia_.
+
+[Sidenote: The Renaissance.]
+
+Another movement, too, widely different, but even more momentous, was
+beginning to spread from Italy beyond the Alps. Since the barbarian
+tribes settled in the Roman provinces, no change had come to pass in
+Europe at all comparable to that which followed the diffusion of the
+new learning in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Enchanted by
+the beauty of the ancient models of art and poetry, more particularly
+those of the Greeks, men came to regard with aversion and contempt all
+that had been done or produced from the days of Trajan to those of
+Pope Nicholas the Fifth. The Latin style of the writers who lived
+after Tacitus was debased: the architecture of the Middle Ages was
+barbarous: the scholastic philosophy was an odious and unmeaning
+jargon: Aristotle himself, Greek though he was, Aristotle who had been
+for three centuries more than a prophet or an apostle, was hurled from
+his throne, because his name was associated with the dismal quarrels
+of Scotists and Thomists. That spirit, whether we call it analytical
+or sceptical, or earthly, or simply secular, for it is more or less
+all of these--the spirit which was the exact antithesis of mediaeval
+mysticism, had swept in and carried men away, with all the force of a
+pent-up torrent. People were content to gratify their tastes and their
+senses, caring little for worship, and still less for doctrine: their
+hopes and ideas were no longer such as had made their forefathers
+crusaders or ascetics: their imagination was possessed by associations
+far different from those which had inspired Dante: they did not revolt
+against the church, but they had no enthusiasm for her, and they had
+enthusiasm for whatever was fresh and graceful and intelligible. From
+all that was old and solemn, or that seemed to savour of feudalism or
+monkery, they turned away, too indifferent to be hostile. And so, in
+the midst of the Renaissance, so, under the consciousness that former
+things were passing from the earth, and a new order opening, so, with
+the other beliefs and memories of the Middle Age, the shadowy rights
+of the Roman Empire melted away in the fuller modern light. Here and
+there a jurist muttered that no neglect could destroy its universal
+supremacy, or a priest declaimed to listless hearers on its duty to
+protect the Holy See; but to Germany it had become an ancient device
+for holding together the discordant members of her body, to its
+possessors an engine for extending the power of the house of Hapsburg.
+
+[Sidenote: Empire henceforth German.]
+
+Henceforth, therefore, we must look upon the Holy Roman Empire as lost
+in the German; and after a few faint attempts to resuscitate
+old-fashioned claims, nothing remains to indicate its origin save a
+sounding title and a precedence among the states of Europe. It was not
+that the Renaissance exerted any direct political influence either
+against the Empire or for it; men were too busy upon statues and coins
+and manuscripts to care what befel Popes or Emperors. It acted rather
+by silently withdrawing the whole system of doctrines upon which the
+Empire had rested, and thus leaving it, since it had previously no
+support but that of opinion, without any support at all.
+
+[Sidenote: Attempts to reform the Germanic Constitution.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the failure of the projects of reform.]
+
+During Maximilian's eventful reign several efforts were made to
+construct a new constitution, but it is to German, rather than to
+imperial history that they properly belong. Here, indeed, the history
+of the Holy Empire might close, did not the title unchanged beckon us
+on, and were it not that the events of these later centuries may in
+their causes be traced back to times when the name of Roman was not
+wholly a mockery. It may be enough to remark that while the
+preservation of peace and the better administration of justice were in
+some measure attained by the Public Peace and Imperial Chamber,
+established in A.D. 1495, schemes still more important failed through
+the bad constitution of the Diet, and the unconquerable jealousy of
+the Emperor and the Estates. Maximilian refused to have his
+prerogative, indefinite though weak, restricted by the appointment of
+an administrative council[359], and when the Estates extorted it from
+him, did his best to ensure its failure. In the Diet, which consisted
+of three colleges, electors, princes, and cities, the lower nobility
+and knights of the Empire were unrepresented, and resented every
+decree that affected their position, refusing to pay taxes in voting
+which they had no voice. The interests of the princes and the cities
+were often irreconcilable, while the strength of the crown would not
+have been sufficient to make its adhesion to the latter of any effect.
+The policy of conciliating the commons, which Sigismund had tried,
+succeeding Emperors seldom cared to repeat, content to gain their
+point by raising factions among the territorial magnates, and so to
+stave off the unwelcome demand for reform. After many earnest attempts
+to establish a representative system, such as might resist the
+tendency to local independence and cure the evils of separate
+administration, the hope so often baffled died away. Forces were too
+nearly balanced: the sovereign could not extend his personal control,
+nor could the reforming party limit him by a strong council of
+government, for such a measure would have equally trenched on the
+independence of the states. So ended the first great effort for German
+unity, interesting from its bearing on the events and aspirations of
+our own day; interesting, too, as giving the most convincing proof of
+the decline of the imperial office. For the projects of reform did not
+propose to effect their objects by restoring to Maximilian the
+authority his predecessors had once enjoyed, but by setting up a body
+which would resemble far more nearly the senate of a federal state
+than the administrative council which surrounds a monarch. The
+existing system developed itself further: relieved from external
+pressure, the princes became more despotic in their own territories:
+distinct codes were framed, and new systems of administration
+introduced: the insurgent peasantry were crushed down with more
+confident harshness. Already had leagues of princes and cities been
+formed[360] (that of Swabia was one of the strongest forces in
+Germany, and often the monarch's firmest support); now alliances begin
+to be contracted with foreign powers, and receive a direction of
+formidable import from the rivalry which the pretensions on Naples and
+Milan of Charles the Eighth and Lewis the Twelfth of France kindled
+between their house and the Austrian. It was no slight gain to have
+friends in the heart of the enemy's country, such as French intrigue
+found in the Elector Palatine and the count of Wuertemberg.
+
+[Sidenote: Germanic nationality.]
+
+[Sidenote: Change of Titles.]
+
+[Sidenote: The title 'Imperator Electus.']
+
+Nevertheless this was also the era of the first conscious feeling of
+German nationality, as distinct from imperial. Driven in on all hands,
+with Italy and the Slavic lands and Burgundy hopelessly lost,
+Teutschland learnt to separate itself from Welschland[361]. The Empire
+became the representative of a narrower but more practicable national
+union. It is not a mere coincidence that at this date there appear
+several notable changes of style. 'Nationis Teutonicae' (Teutscher
+Nation) is added to the simple 'sacrum imperium Romanum.' The title of
+'Imperator electus,' which Maximilian obtains leave from Pope Julius
+the Second to assume, when the Venetians prevent him from reaching his
+capital, marks the severance of Germany from Rome. No subsequent
+Emperor received his crown in the ancient capital (Charles the Fifth
+was indeed crowned by the Pope's hands, but the ceremony took place at
+Bologna, and was therefore of at least questionable validity); each
+assumed after his German coronation[362] the title of Emperor
+Elect[363], and employed this in all documents issued in his name. But
+the word 'elect' being omitted when he was addressed by others, partly
+from motives of courtesy, partly because the old rules regarding the
+Roman coronation were forgotten, or remembered only by antiquaries, he
+was never called, even when formality was required, anything but
+Emperor. The substantial import of another title now first introduced
+is the same. Before Otto the First, the Teutonic king had called
+himself either 'rex' alone, or 'Francorum orientalium rex,' or
+'Francorum atque Saxonum rex:' after A.D. 962, all lesser dignities
+had been merged in the 'Romanorum Imperator[364].' To this Maximilian
+appended 'Germaniae rex,' or, adding Frederick the Second's
+bequest[365], 'Koenig in Germanien und Jerusalem.' It has been thought
+that from a mixture of the title King of Germany, and that of Emperor,
+has been formed the phrase 'German Emperor,' or less correctly,
+'Emperor of Germany[366].' But more probably the terms 'German
+Emperor' and 'Emperor of Germany' are nothing but convenient
+corruptions of the technical description of the Germanic
+sovereign[367].
+
+That the Empire was thus sinking into a merely German power cannot be
+doubted. But it was only natural that those who lived at the time
+should not discern the tendency of events. Again and again did the
+restless and sanguine Maximilian propose the recovery of Burgundy and
+Italy,--his last scheme was to adjust the relations of Papacy and
+Empire by becoming Pope himself: nor were successive Diets less
+zealous to check private war, still the scandal of Germany, to set
+right the gear of the imperial chamber, to make the imperial officials
+permanent, and their administration uniform throughout the country.
+But while they talked the heavens darkened, and the flood came and
+destroyed them all.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[352] See Dean Stanley's _Lectures on the History of the Eastern
+Church_, Lecture II.
+
+[353] It is not without interest to observe that the council of Basel
+shewed signs of reciprocating imperial care by claiming those very
+rights over the Empire to which the Popes were accustomed to pretend.
+
+[354] The councils of Basel and Florence were not recognized from
+first to last by all Europe, as was the council of Constance. When the
+assembly of Trent met, the great religious schism had already made a
+general council, in the true sense of the word, impossible.
+
+[355] 'E pero venendo gl'imperadori della Magna col supremo titolo, e
+volendo col senno e colla forza della Magna reggiere gli Italiani, non
+lo fanno e non lo possono fare.'--M. Villani, iv. 77.
+
+Matthew Villani's etymology of the two great faction names of Italy is
+worth quoting, as a fair sample of the skill of mediaevals in such
+matters:--'La Italia tutta e divisa mistamente in due parti, l'una che
+seguita ne' fatti del mondo la santa chiesa--e questi son dinominati
+Guelfi; cioe, guardatori di fe. E l'altra parte seguitano lo 'mperio o
+fedele o enfedele che sia delle cose del mondo a santa chiesa. E
+chiamansi Ghibellini, quasi guida belli; cioe, guidatori di
+battaglie.'
+
+[356] 'Nam quamvis Imperatorem et regem et dominum vestrum esse
+fateamini, precario tamen ille imperare videtur: nulla ei potentia
+est; tantum ei paretis quantum vultis, vultis autem minimum.'--AEneas
+Sylvius to the princes of Germany, quoted by Hippolytus a Lapide.
+
+[357] See AEgidi, _Der Fuerstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_; a book
+which throws more light than any other with which I am acquainted on
+the inner nature of the Empire.
+
+[358] The two immediately preceding Emperors, Albert II (1438-1439)
+and Frederick III, father of Maximilian (1439-1493), had been
+Hapsburgs. It is nevertheless from Maximilian that the ascendancy of
+that family must be dated.
+
+[359] Reichsregiment.
+
+[360] Wenzel had encouraged the leagues of the cities, and incurred
+thereby the hatred of the nobles.
+
+[361] The Germans, like our own ancestors, called foreign, _i. e._
+non-Teutonic nations, Welsh. Yet apparently not all such nations, but
+only those which they in some way associated with the Roman Empire,
+the Cymry of Roman Britain, the Romanized Kelts of Gaul, the Italians,
+the Roumans or Wallachs of Transylvania and the Principalities. It
+does not appear that either the Magyars or any Slavonic people were
+called by any form of the name Welsh.
+
+[362] The German crown was received at Aachen, the ancient Frankish
+capital, where may still be seen, in the gallery of the basilica, the
+marble throne on which the Emperors from the days of Charles to those
+of Ferdinand I were crowned. It was upon this chair that Otto III had
+found the body of Charles seated, when he opened his tomb in A.D.
+1001. After Ferdinand I, the coronation as well as the election took
+place at Frankfort. An account of the ceremony may be found in
+Goethe's _Wahrheit und Dichtung_. Aachen, though it remained and
+indeed is still a German town, lay in too remote a corner of the
+country to be a convenient capital, and was moreover in dangerous
+proximity to the West Franks, as stubborn old Germans continue to call
+them. As early as A.D. 1353 we find bishop Leopold of Bamberg
+complaining that the French had arrogated to themselves the honours of
+the Frankish name, and called themselves 'reges Franciae,' instead of
+'reges Franciae occidentalis.'--Lupoldus Bebenburgensis, apud
+Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[363] Erwaehlter Kaiser. See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[364] Romanorum rex (after Henry II) till the coronation at Rome.
+
+[365] But the Emperor was only one of many claimants to this kingdom;
+they multiplied as the prospect of regaining it died away.
+
+[366] The latter does not occur, even in English books, till
+comparatively recent times. English writers of the seventeenth century
+always call him 'The Emperor,' pure and simple, just as they
+invariably say 'the French king.' But the phrase 'Empereur d'Almayne'
+may be found in very early French writers.
+
+[367] See Moser, _Roemische Kayser_; Goldast's and other collections of
+imperial edicts and proclamations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE REFORMATION AND ITS EFFECTS UPON THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Reformation falls to be mentioned here, of course not as a
+religious movement, but as the cause of political changes, which still
+further rent the Empire, and struck at the root of the theory by which
+it had been created and upheld. Luther completed the work of
+Hildebrand. Hitherto it had seemed not impossible to strengthen the
+German state into a monarchy, compact if not despotic; the very Diet
+of Worms, where the monk of Wittenberg proclaimed to an astonished
+church and Emperor that the day of spiritual tyranny was past, had
+framed and presented a fresh scheme for the construction of a central
+council of government. The great religious schism put an end to all
+such hopes, for it became a source of political disunion far more
+serious and permanent than any that had existed before, and it taught
+the two factions into which Germany was henceforth divided to regard
+each other with feelings more bitter than those of hostile nations.
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Charles V (1519-1558).]
+
+The breach came at the most unfortunate time possible. After an
+election, more memorable than any preceding, an election in which
+Francis the First of France and Henry the Eighth of England had been
+his competitors, a prince had just ascended the imperial throne who
+united dominions vaster than any Europe had seen since the days of his
+great namesake. Spain and Naples, Flanders, and other parts of the
+Burgundian lands, as well as large regions in Eastern Germany, obeyed
+Charles: he drew inexhaustible revenues from a new empire beyond the
+Atlantic. Such a power, directed by a mind more resolute and profound
+than that of Maximilian his grandfather, might have well been able,
+despite the stringency of his coronation engagements[368], and the
+watchfulness of the electors[369], to override their usurped
+privileges, and make himself practically as well as officially the
+head of the nation. Charles the Fifth, though from the coldness of his
+manner[370] and his Flemish speech never a favourite among the
+Germans, was in point of fact far stronger than Maximilian or any
+other Emperor who had reigned for three centuries. In Italy he
+succeeded, after long struggles with the Pope and the French, in
+rendering himself supreme: England he knew how to lead, by flattering
+Henry and cajoling Wolsey: from no state but France had he serious
+opposition to fear. To this strength his imperial dignity was indeed a
+mere accident: its sources were the infantry of Spain, the looms of
+Flanders, the sierras of Peru. But the conquest once achieved, might
+could lose itself in right; and as an earlier Charles had veiled the
+terror of the Frankish sword under the mask of Roman election, so
+might his successor sway a hundred provinces with the sole name of
+Roman Emperor, and transmit to his race a dominion as wide and more
+enduring.
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of Charles towards the religious movement.]
+
+One is tempted to speculate as to what might have happened had Charles
+espoused the reforming cause. His reverence for the Pope's person is
+sufficiently seen in the sack of Rome and the captivity of Clement;
+the traditions of his office might have led him to tread in the steps
+of the Henrys and the Fredericks, into which even the timid Lewis the
+Fourth and the unstable Sigismund had sometimes ventured; the
+awakening zeal of the German people, exasperated by the exactions of
+the Romish court, would have strengthened his hands, and enabled him,
+while moderating the excesses of change, to fix his throne on the deep
+foundations of national love. It may well be doubted--Englishmen at
+least have reason for the doubt--whether the Reformation would not
+have lost as much as it could have gained by being entangled in the
+meshes of royal patronage. But, setting aside Charles's personal
+leaning to the old faith, and forgetting that he was king of the most
+bigoted race of Europe, his position as Emperor made him almost
+perforce the Pope's ally. The Empire had been called into being by
+Rome, had vaunted the protection of the Apostolic See as its highest
+earthly privilege, had latterly been wont, especially in Hapsburg
+hands, to lean on the papacy for support. Itself founded entirely on
+prescription and the traditions of immemorial reverence, how could it
+abandon the cause which the longest prescription and the most solemn
+authority had combined to consecrate? With the German clergy, despite
+occasional quarrels, it had been on better terms than with the lay
+aristocracy; their heads had been the chief ministers of the crown;
+the advocacies of their abbeys were the last source of imperial
+revenue to disappear. To turn against them now, when furiously
+assailed by heretics; to abrogate claims hallowed by antiquity and a
+hundred laws, would be to pronounce its own sentence, and the fall of
+the eternal city's spiritual dominion must involve the fall of what
+still professed to be her temporal. Charles would have been glad to
+see some abuses corrected; but a broad line of policy was called for,
+and he cast in his lot with the Catholics[371].
+
+[Sidenote: Ultimate failure of the repressive policy of Charles.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand I, 1558-1564.]
+
+[Sidenote: Maximilian II, 1564-1576.]
+
+[Sidenote: Destruction of the Germanic state-system.]
+
+Of many momentous results only a few need be noticed here. The
+reconstruction of the old imperial system, upon the basis of Hapsburg
+power, proved in the end impossible. Yet for some years it had seemed
+actually accomplished. When the Smalkaldic league had been dissolved
+and its leaders captured, the whole country lay prostrate before
+Charles. He overawed the Diet at Augsburg by the Spanish soldiery: he
+forced formularies of doctrine upon the vanquished Protestants: he set
+up and pulled down whom he would throughout Germany, amid the muttered
+discontent of his own partisans. Then, as in the beginning of the year
+1552, he lay at Innsbruck, fondly dreaming that his work was done,
+waiting the spring weather to cross to Trent, where the Catholic
+fathers had again met to settle the world's faith for it, news was
+suddenly brought that North Germany was in arms, and that the revolted
+Maurice of Saxony had seized Donauwerth, and was hurrying through the
+Bavarian Alps to surprise his sovereign. Charles rose and fled
+southwards over the snows of the Brenner, then eastwards, under the
+blood-red cliffs of dolomite that wall in the Pusterthal, far away
+into the valleys of Carinthia: the council of Trent broke up in
+consternation: Europe saw and the Emperor acknowledged that in his
+fancied triumph over the spirit of revolution he had done no more than
+block up for the moment an irresistible torrent. When this last effort
+to produce religious uniformity by violence had failed as hopelessly
+as the previous devices of holding discussions of doctrine and calling
+a general council, a sort of armistice was agreed to in 1554, which
+lasted in mutual fear and suspicion for more than sixty years. Four
+years after this disappointment of the hopes and projects which had
+occupied his busy life, Charles, weighed down by cares and with the
+shadow of coming death already upon him, resigned the sovereignty of
+Spain and the Indies, of Flanders and Naples, into the hands of his
+son Philip the Second; while the imperial sceptre passed to his
+brother Ferdinand, who had been some time before chosen King of the
+Romans. Ferdinand was content to leave things much as he found them,
+and the amiable Maximilian II, who succeeded him, though personally
+well inclined to the Protestants, found himself fettered by his
+position and his allies, and could do little or nothing to quench the
+flame of religious and political hatred. Germany remained divided into
+two omnipresent factions, and so further than ever from harmonious
+action, or a tightening of the long-loosened bond of feudal
+allegiance. The states of either creed being gathered into a league,
+there could no longer be a recognized centre of authority for judicial
+or administrative purposes. Least of all could a centre be sought in
+the Emperor, the leader of the papal party, the suspected foe of every
+Protestant. Too closely watched to do anything of his own authority,
+too much committed to one party to be accepted as a mediator by the
+other, he was driven to attain his own objects by falling in with the
+schemes and furthering the selfish ends of his adherents, by becoming
+the accomplice or the tool of the Jesuits. The Lutheran princes
+addressed themselves to reduce a power of which they had still an
+over-sensitive dread, and found when they exacted from each successive
+sovereign engagements more stringent than his predecessor's, that in
+this, and this alone, their Catholic brethren were not unwilling to
+join them. Thus obliged to strip himself one by one of the ancient
+privileges of his crown, the Emperor came to have little influence on
+the government except that which his intrigues might exercise. Nay, it
+became almost impossible to maintain a government at all. For when the
+Reformers found themselves outvoted at the Diet, they declared that in
+matters of religion a majority ought not to bind a minority. As the
+measures were few which did not admit of being reduced to this
+category, for whatever benefited the Emperor or any other Catholic
+prince injured the Protestants, nothing could be done save by the
+assent of two bitterly hostile factions. Thus scarce anything was
+done; and even the courts of justice were stopped by the disputes that
+attended the appointment of every judge or assessor.
+
+[Sidenote: Alliance of the Protestants with France.]
+
+In the foreign politics of Germany another result followed. Inferior
+in military force and organization, the Protestant princes at first
+provided for their safety by forming leagues among themselves. The
+device was an old one, and had been employed by the monarch himself
+before now, in despair at the effete and cumbrous forms of the
+imperial system. Soon they began to look beyond the Vosges, and found
+that France, burning heretics at home, was only too happy to smile on
+free opinions elsewhere. The alliance was easily struck; Henry the
+Second assumed in 1552 the title of 'Protector of the Germanic
+liberties,' and a pretext for interference was never wanting in
+future.
+
+[Sidenote: The Reformation spirit, and its influence upon the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Effect of the Reformation on the doctrines regarding the
+Visible Church.]
+
+These were some of the visible political consequences of the great
+religious schism of the sixteenth century. But beyond and above them
+there was a change far more momentous than any of its immediate
+results. There is perhaps no event in history which has been represented
+in so great a variety of lights as the Reformation. It has been called
+a revolt of the laity against the clergy, or of the Teutonic races
+against the Italians, or of the kingdoms of Europe against the
+universal monarchy of the Popes. Some have seen in it only a burst of
+long-repressed anger at the luxury of the prelates and the manifold
+abuses of the ecclesiastical system; others a renewal of the youth of
+the church by a return to primitive forms of doctrine. All these
+indeed to some extent it was; but it was also something more profound,
+and fraught with mightier consequences than any of them. It was in its
+essence the assertion of the principle of individuality--that is to
+say, of true spiritual freedom. Hitherto the personal consciousness
+had been a faint and broken reflection of the universal; obedience had
+been held the first of religious duties; truth had been conceived as a
+something external and positive, which the priesthood who were its
+stewards were to communicate to the passive layman, and whose saving
+virtue lay not in its being felt and known by him to be truth, but in
+a purely formal and unreasoning acceptance. The great principles which
+mediaeval Christianity still cherished were obscured by the limited,
+rigid, almost sensuous forms which had been forced on them in times of
+ignorance and barbarism. That which was in its nature abstract, had
+been able to survive only by taking a concrete expression. The
+universal consciousness became the Visible Church: the Visible Church
+hardened into a government and degenerated into a hierarchy. Holiness
+of heart and life was sought by outward works, by penances and
+pilgrimages, by gifts to the poor and to the clergy, wherein there
+dwelt often little enough of a charitable mind. The presence of divine
+truth among men was symbolized under one aspect by the existence on
+earth of an infallible Vicar of God, the Pope; under another, by the
+reception of the present Deity in the sacrifice of the mass; in a
+third, by the doctrine that the priest's power to remit sins and
+administer the sacraments depended upon a transmission of miraculous
+gifts which can hardly be called other than physical. All this system
+of doctrine, which might, but for the position of the church as a
+worldly and therefore obstructive power, have expanded, renewed, and
+purified itself during the four centuries that had elapsed since its
+completion[372], and thus remained in harmony with the growing
+intelligence of mankind, was suddenly rent in pieces by the convulsion
+of the Reformation, and flung away by the more religious and more
+progressive peoples of Europe. That which was external and concrete,
+was in all things to be superseded by that which was inward and
+spiritual. It was proclaimed that the individual spirit, while it
+continued to mirror itself in the world-spirit, had nevertheless an
+independent existence as a centre of self-issuing force, and was to be
+in all things active rather than passive. Truth was no longer to be
+truth to the soul until it should have been by the soul recognized,
+and in some measure even created; but when so recognized and felt, it
+is able under the form of faith to transcend outward works and to
+transform the dogmas of the understanding; it becomes the living
+principle within each man's breast, infinite itself, and expressing
+itself infinitely through his thoughts and acts. He who as a spiritual
+being was delivered from the priest, and brought into direct relation
+with the Divinity, needed not, as heretofore, to be enrolled a member
+of a visible congregation of his fellows, that he might live a pure
+and useful life among them. Thus by the Reformation the Visible Church
+as well as the priesthood lost that paramount importance which had
+hitherto belonged to it, and sank from being the depositary of all
+religious tradition, the source and centre of religious life, the
+arbiter of eternal happiness or misery, into a mere association of
+Christian men, for the expression of mutual sympathy and the better
+attainment of certain common ends. Like those other doctrines which
+were now assailed by the Reformation, this mediaeval view of the nature
+of the Visible Church had been naturally, and so, it may be said,
+necessarily developed between the third and the twelfth century, and
+must therefore have represented the thoughts and satisfied the wants
+of those times. By the Visible Church the flickering lamp of knowledge
+and literary culture, as well as of religion, had been fed and tended
+through the long night of the Dark Ages. But, like the whole
+theological fabric of which it formed a part, it was now hard and
+unfruitful, identified with its own worst abuses, capable apparently
+of no further development, and unable to satisfy minds which in
+growing stronger had grown more conscious of their strength. Before
+the awakened zeal of the northern nations it stood a cold and lifeless
+system, whose organization as a hierarchy checked the free activity of
+thought, whose bestowal of worldly power and wealth on spiritual
+pastors drew them away from their proper duties, and which by
+maintaining alongside of the civil magistracy a co-ordinate and rival
+government, maintained also that separation of the spiritual element
+in man from the secular, which had been so complete and so pernicious
+during the Middle Ages, which debases life, and severs religion from
+morality.
+
+[Sidenote: Consequent effect upon the Empire.]
+
+The Reformation, it may be said, was a religious movement: and it is
+the Empire, not the Church, that we have here to consider. The
+distinction is only apparent. The Holy Empire is but another name for
+the Visible Church. It has been shewn already how mediaeval theory
+constructed the State on the model of the Church; how the Roman Empire
+was the shadow of the Popedom--designed to rule men's bodies as the
+pontiff ruled their souls. Both alike claimed obedience on the ground
+that Truth is One, and that where there is One faith there must be One
+government[373]. And, therefore, since it was this very principle of
+Formal Unity that the Reformation overthrew, it became a revolt
+against despotism of every kind; it erected the standard of civil as
+well as of religious liberty, since both of them are needed, though
+needed in a different measure, for the worthy development of the
+individual spirit. The Empire had never been conspicuously the
+antagonist of popular freedom, and was, even under Charles the Fifth,
+far less formidable to the commonalty than were the petty princes of
+Germany. But submission, and submission on the ground of indefeasible
+transmitted right, upon the ground of Catholic traditions and the duty
+of the Christian magistrate to suffer heresy and schism as little as
+the parallel sins of treason and rebellion, had been its constant
+claim and watchword. Since the days of Julius Caesar it had passed
+through many phases, but in none of them had it ever been a
+constitutional monarchy, pledged to the recognition of popular rights.
+And hence the indirect tendency of the Reformation to narrow the
+province of government and exalt the privileges of the subject was as
+plainly adverse to the Empire as the Protestant claim of the right of
+private judgment was to the pretensions of the Papacy and the
+priesthood.
+
+[Sidenote: Immediate influence of the Reformation on political and
+religious liberty.]
+
+[Sidenote: Conduct of the Protestant States.]
+
+The remark must not be omitted in passing, how much less than might
+have been expected the religious movement did at first actually effect
+in the way of promoting either political progress or freedom of
+conscience. The habits of centuries were not to be unlearnt in a few
+years, and it was natural that ideas struggling into existence and
+activity should work erringly and imperfectly for a time. By a few
+inflammable minds liberty was carried into antinomianism, and produced
+the wildest excesses of life and doctrine. Several fantastic sects
+arose, refusing to conform to the ordinary rules without which human
+society could not subsist. But these commotions neither spread widely
+nor lasted long. Far more pervading and more remarkable was the other
+error, if that can be called an error which was the almost unavoidable
+result of the circumstances of the time. The principles which had led
+the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church, should have
+taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from
+the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with
+the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have
+enforced that agreement by civil penalties; for faith, upon their own
+shewing, had no value save when it was freely given. A church which
+does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of
+the truth may possibly be with its adversaries: a church which permits
+or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation has no right
+first to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not
+convinced. But whether it was that men only half saw what they had
+done, or that finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they
+welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give, the result was that
+religion, or rather religious creeds, began to be involved with
+politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the
+greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or
+more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy
+continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost
+every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself
+with the state, and maintained the despotic system of the Middle Ages,
+while it forsook the grounds on which that system had been based. It
+was thus that there arose National Churches, which were to be to the
+several countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to
+the world at large; churches, that is to say, each of which was to be
+co-extensive with its respective state, was to enjoy landed wealth and
+exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive
+powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of
+theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest,
+for they could not, like the old church, point to the historical
+transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any
+one man or body of men an infallible organ of divine truth; they could
+not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it
+may be worth, '_Securus iudicat orbis terrarum_.' But in practice
+these difficulties were soon got over, for the dominant party in each
+state, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it
+was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to
+nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England,
+or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland,
+imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the
+practices of mediaeval intolerance without their justification.
+Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible Catholic
+and Apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practised by those
+who were not catholic, who were no more apostolic than their
+neighbours, and who had just revolted from the most ancient and
+venerable authority in the name of rights which they now denied to
+others. If union with the visible church by participation in a
+material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be
+held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of
+heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be
+possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external
+forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly. Therefore the
+intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than
+those practised by the Roman Catholics, was also far less defensible;
+for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives
+of political expediency, or, more often, the mere headstrong passion
+of a ruler or a faction to silence the expressions of any opinions but
+their own. To enlarge upon this theme, did space permit it, would not
+be to digress from the proper subject of this narrative. For the
+Empire, as has been said more than once already, was far less an
+institution than a theory or doctrine. And hence it is not too much to
+say, that the ideas which have but recently ceased to prevail
+regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uniformity in doctrine
+and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which
+that doctrine established between the Roman Church and the Roman
+Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an Empire Church itself.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Reformation on the name and associations
+of the Empire.]
+
+Two of the ways in which the Reformation affected the Empire have been
+now described: its immediate political results, and its far more
+profound doctrinal importance, as implanting new ideas regarding the
+nature of freedom and the province of government. A third, though
+apparently almost superficial, cannot be omitted. Its name and its
+traditions, little as they retained of their former magic power, were
+still such as to excite the antipathy of the German reformers. The
+form which the doctrine of the supreme importance of one faith and one
+body of the faithful had taken was the dominion of the ancient capital
+of the world through her spiritual head, the Roman bishop, and her
+temporal head, the Emperor. As the names of Roman and Christian had
+been once convertible, so long afterwards were those of Roman and
+Catholic. The Reformation, separating into its parts what had hitherto
+been one conception, attacked Romanism but not Catholicity, and formed
+religious communities which, while continuing to call themselves
+Christian, repudiated the form with which Christianity had been so
+long identified in the West. As the Empire was founded upon the
+assumption that the limits of Church and State are exactly
+co-extensive, a change which withdrew half of its subjects from the
+one body while they remained members of the other, transformed it
+utterly, destroyed the meaning and value of its old arrangements, and
+forced the Emperor into a strange and incongruous position. To his
+Protestant subjects he was merely the head of the administration, to
+the Catholics he was also the Defender and Advocate of their church.
+Thus from being chief of the whole state he became the chief of a
+party within it, the Corpus Catholicorum, as opposed to the Corpus
+Evangelicorum; he lost what had been hitherto his most holy claim to
+the obedience of the subject; the awakened feeling of German
+nationality was driven into hostility to an institution whose title
+and history bound it to the centre of foreign tyranny. After exulting
+for seven centuries in the heritage of Roman rule, the Teutonic
+nations cherished again the feelings with which their ancestors had
+resisted Julius Caesar and Germanicus. Two mutually repugnant systems
+could not exist side by side without striving to destroy one another.
+The instincts of theological sympathy overcame the duties of political
+allegiance, and men who were subjects both of the Empire and of their
+local prince, gave all their loyalty to him who espoused their
+doctrines and protected their worship. For in North Germany, princes
+as well as people were mostly Lutheran: in the southern and especially
+the south-eastern lands, where the magnates held to the old faith,
+Protestants were scarcely to be found except in the free cities. The
+same causes which injured the Emperor's position in Germany swept away
+the last semblance of his authority through other countries. In the
+great struggle which followed, the Protestants of England and France,
+of Holland and Sweden, thought of him only as the ally of Spain, of
+the Vatican, of the Jesuits; and he of whom it had been believed a
+century before that by nothing but his existence was the coming of
+Antichrist on earth delayed, was in the eyes of the northern divines
+either Antichrist himself or Antichrist's foremost champion. The
+earthquake that opened a chasm in Germany was felt through Europe; its
+states and peoples marshalled themselves under two hostile banners,
+and with the Empire's expiring power vanished that united Christendom
+it had been created to lead[374].
+
+[Sidenote: Troubles of Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rudolf II, 1576-1612.]
+
+[Sidenote: Matthias, 1612-1619.]
+
+Some of the effects thus sketched began to shew themselves as early as
+that famous Diet of Worms, from Luther's appearance at which, in A.D.
+1521, we may date the beginning of the Reformation. But just as the
+end of the religious conflict in England can hardly be placed earlier
+than the Revolution of 1688, nor in France than the Revocation of the
+Edict of Nantes in 1685, so it was not till after more than a century
+of doubtful strife that the new order of things was fully and finally
+established in Germany. The arrangements of Augsburg, like most
+treaties on the basis of _uti possidetis_, were no better than a
+hollow truce, satisfying no one, and consciously made to be broken.
+The church lands which Protestants had seized, and Jesuit confessors
+urged the Catholic princes to reclaim, furnished an unceasing ground
+of quarrel: neither party yet knew the strength of its antagonists
+sufficiently to abstain from insulting or persecuting their modes of
+worship, and the smouldering hate of half a century was kindled by the
+troubles of Bohemia into the Thirty Years' War.
+
+[Sidenote: Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand II, A.D. 1619-37.]
+
+[Sidenote: Plans of Ferdinand II.]
+
+[Sidenote: Gustavus Adolphus.]
+
+[Sidenote: Ferdinand III, 1637-1658.]
+
+[Sidenote: The peace of Westphalia.]
+
+The imperial sceptre had now passed from the indolent and vacillating
+Rudolf II (1576-1612), the corrupt and reckless policy of whose
+ministers had done much to exasperate the already suspicious minds of
+the Protestants, into the firmer grasp of Ferdinand the Second[375].
+Jealous, bigoted, implacable, skilful in forming and concealing his
+plans, resolute to obstinacy in carrying them out in action, the house
+of Hapsburg could have had no abler and no more unpopular leader in
+their second attempt to turn the German Empire into an Austrian
+military monarchy. They seemed for a time as near to the
+accomplishment of the project as Charles the Fifth had been. Leagued
+with Spain, backed by the Catholics of Germany, served by such a
+leader as Wallenstein, Ferdinand proposed nothing less than the
+extension of the Empire to its old limits, and the recovery of his
+crown's full prerogative over all its vassals. Denmark and Holland
+were to be attacked by sea and land: Italy to be reconquered with the
+help of Spain: Maximilian of Bavaria and Wallenstein to be rewarded
+with principalities in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. The latter general
+was all but master of Northern Germany when the successful resistance
+of Stralsund turned the wavering balance of the war. Soon after (A.D.
+1630), Gustavus Adolphus crossed the Baltic, and saved Europe from an
+impending reign of the Jesuits. Ferdinand's high-handed proceedings
+had already alarmed even the Catholic princes. Of his own authority he
+had put the Elector Palatine and other magnates to the ban of the
+Empire: he had transferred an electoral vote to Bavaria; had treated
+the districts overrun by his generals as spoil of war, to be portioned
+out at his pleasure; had unsettled all possession by requiring the
+restitution of church property occupied since A.D. 1555. The
+Protestants were helpless; the Catholics, though they complained of
+the flagrant illegality of such conduct, did not dare to oppose it:
+the rescue of Germany was the work of the Swedish king. In four
+campaigns he destroyed the armies and the prestige of the Emperor;
+devastated his lands, emptied his treasury, and left him at last so
+enfeebled that no subsequent successes could make him again
+formidable. Such, nevertheless, was the selfishness and apathy of the
+Protestant princes, divided by the mutual jealousy of the Lutheran and
+the Calvinist party--some, like the Saxon elector, most inglorious of
+his inglorious house, bribed by the cunning Austrian; others afraid to
+stir lest a reverse should expose them unprotected to his
+vengeance--that the issue of the long protracted contest would have
+gone against them but for the interference of France. It was the
+leading principle of Richelieu's policy to depress the house of
+Hapsburg and keep Germany disunited: hence he fostered Protestantism
+abroad while trampling it down at home. The triumph he did not live to
+see was sealed in A.D. 1648, on the utter exhaustion of all the
+combatants, and the treaties of Muenster and Osnabrueck were
+thenceforward the basis of the Germanic constitution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[368] The so-called 'Wahlcapitulation.'
+
+[369] The electors long refused to elect Charles, dreading his great
+hereditary power, and were at last induced to do so only by their
+overmastering fear of the Turks.
+
+[370] Nearly all the Hapsburgs seem to have wanted that sort of genial
+heartiness which, apt as it is to be stifled by education in the
+purple, has nevertheless been possessed by several other royal lines,
+greatly contributing to their vitality; as for instance by more than
+one prince of the houses of Brunswick and Hohenzollern.
+
+[371] See this brought out with great force in the very interesting
+work of Padre Tosti, _Prolegomeni alla Storia Universale della
+Chiesa_, from which I quote one passage, which bears directly on the
+matter in hand: 'Il grido della riforma clericale aveva un eco
+terribile in tutta la compagnia civile dei popoli: essa percuoteva le
+cime del laicale potere, e rimbalzava per tutta la gerarchia sociale.
+Se l'imperadore Sigismondo nel concilio di Costanza non avesse
+fiutate queste consequenze nella eresia di Hus e di Girolamo di Praga,
+forse non avrebbe con tanto zelo mandati alle fiamme que' novatori.
+Rotto da Lutero il vincolo di suggezione al Papa ed ai preti in fatti
+di religione, avvenne che anche quello che sommetteva il vassallo al
+barone, il barone al imperadore si allentasse. Il popolo con la Bibbia
+in mano era prete, vescovo, e papa; e se prima contristato della
+prepotenza di chi gli soprastava, ricorreva al successore di San
+Pietro, ora ricorreva a se stesso, avendogli commesse Fra Martino le
+chiavi del regno dei Cieli.'--vol. ii. pp. 398, 9.
+
+[372] It was not till the end of the eleventh century that
+transubstantiation was definitely established as a dogma.
+
+[373] See the passages quoted in note 113, p. 98; and note 132, p. 110.
+
+[374] Henry VIII of England when he rebelled against the Pope called
+himself King of Ireland (his predecessors had used only the title
+'Dominus Hiberniae') without asking the Emperor's permission, in order
+to shew that he repudiated the temporal as well as the spiritual
+dominion of Rome.
+
+So the Statute of Appeals is careful to deny and reject the authority
+of 'other foreign potentates,' meaning, no doubt, the Emperor as well
+as the Pope.
+
+[375] Matthias, brother of Rudolf II, reigned from 1612 till 1619.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA: LAST STAGE IN THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is the first, and, with the exception perhaps
+of the Treaties of Vienna in 1815, the most important of those
+attempts to reconstruct by diplomacy the European states-system which
+have played so large a part in modern history. It is important,
+however, not as marking the introduction of new principles, but as
+winding up the struggle which had convulsed Germany since the revolt
+of Luther, sealing its results, and closing definitively the period of
+the Reformation. Although the causes of disunion which the religious
+movement called into being had now been at work for more than a
+hundred years, their effects were not fully seen till it became
+necessary to establish a system which should represent the altered
+relations of the German states. It may thus be said of this famous
+peace, as of the other so-called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
+Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a condition of things
+already in existence, but which by being legalized acquired new
+importance. To all parties alike the result of the Thirty Years' War
+was thoroughly unsatisfactory: to the Protestants, who had lost
+Bohemia, and still were obliged to hold an inferior place in the
+electoral college and in the Diet: to the Catholics, who were forced
+to permit the exercise of heretical worship, and leave the church
+lands in the grasp of sacrilegious spoilers: to the princes, who could
+not throw off the burden of imperial supremacy: to the Emperor, who
+could turn that supremacy to no practical account. No other conclusion
+was possible to a contest in which every one had been vanquished and
+no one victorious; which had ceased because while the reasons for war
+continued the means of war had failed. Nevertheless, the substantial
+advantage remained with the German princes, for they gained the formal
+recognition of that territorial independence whose origin may be
+placed as far back as the days of Frederick the Second, and the
+maturity of which had been hastened by the events of the last
+preceding century. It was, indeed, not only recognized but justified
+as rightful and necessary. For while the political situation, to use a
+current phrase, had changed within the last two hundred years, the
+eyes with which men regarded it had changed still more. Never by their
+fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once by the Popes or Lombard
+republicans in the heat of their strife with the Franconian and
+Swabian Caesars, had the Emperors been reproached as mere German kings,
+or their claim to be the lawful heirs of Rome denied. The Protestant
+jurists of the sixteenth or rather of the seventeenth century were the
+first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretended lordship of the
+world, and declare their Empire to be nothing more than a German
+monarchy, in dealing with which no superstitious reverence need
+prevent its subjects from making the best terms they could for
+themselves, and controlling a sovereign whose religious predilections
+made him the friend of their enemies.
+
+[Sidenote: The treatise of Hippolytus a Lapide.]
+
+[Sidenote: Rights of the Emperor and the Diet, as settled in A.D.
+1648.]
+
+It is very instructive to turn suddenly from Dante or Peter de Andlo
+to a book published shortly before A.D. 1648, under the name of
+Hippolytus a Lapide[376], and notice the matter-of-fact way, the
+almost contemptuous spirit in which, disregarding the traditional
+glories of the Empire, he comments on its actual condition and
+prospects. Hippolytus, the pseudonym which the jurist Chemnitz
+assumed, urges with violence almost superfluous, that the Germanic
+constitution must be treated entirely as a native growth: that the
+'lex regia' (so much discussed and so often misunderstood) and the
+whole system of Justinianean absolutism which the Emperor had used so
+dexterously, were in their applications to Germany not merely
+incongruous but positively absurd. With eminent learning, Chemnitz
+examines the early history of the Empire, draws from the unceasing
+contests of the monarch with the nobility the unexpected moral that
+the power of the former has been always dangerous, and is now more
+dangerous than ever, and then launches out into a long invective
+against the policy of the Hapsburgs, an invective which the ambition
+and harshness of the late Emperor made only too plausible. The one
+real remedy for the evils that menace Germany he states
+concisely--'domus Austriacae extirpatio:' but, failing this, he would
+have the Emperor's prerogative restricted in every way, and provide
+means for resisting or dethroning him. It was by these views, which
+seem to have made a profound impression in Germany, that the states,
+or rather France and Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the
+negotiations of Osnabrueck and Muenster. By extorting a full recognition
+of the sovereignty of all the princes, Catholics and Protestants
+alike, in their respective territories, they bound the Emperor from
+any direct interference with the administration, either in particular
+districts or throughout the Empire. All affairs of public importance,
+including the rights of making war or peace, of levying contributions,
+raising troops, building fortresses, passing or interpreting laws,
+were henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the Diet. The
+Aulic Council, which had been sometimes the engine of imperial
+oppression, and always of imperial intrigue, was so restricted as to
+be harmless for the future. The 'reservata' of the Emperor were
+confined to the rights of granting titles and confirming tolls. In
+matters of religion, an exact though not perfectly reciprocal equality
+was established between the two chief ecclesiastical bodies, and the
+right of 'Itio in partes,' that is to say, of deciding questions in
+which religion was involved by amicable negotiations between the
+Protestant and Catholic states, instead of by a majority of votes in
+the Diet, was definitely conceded. Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
+declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or any Catholic
+prelate. Thus the last link which bound Germany to Rome was snapped,
+the last of the principles by virtue of which the Empire had existed
+was abandoned. For the Empire now contained and recognized as its
+members persons who formed a visible body at open war with the Holy
+Roman Church; and its constitution admitted schismatics to a full
+share in all those civil rights which, according to the doctrines of
+the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed by no one who was out of the
+communion of the Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was
+therefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of Rome, and of the theory
+of Church and State with which the name of Rome was associated. And in
+this light was it regarded by Pope Innocent the Tenth, who commanded
+his legate to protest against it, and subsequently declared it void by
+the bull 'Zelo domus Dei[377].'
+
+[Sidenote: Loss of imperial territories.]
+
+The transference of power within the Empire, from its head to its
+members, was a small matter compared with the losses which the Empire
+suffered as a whole. The real gainers by the treaties of Westphalia
+were those who had borne the brunt of the battle against Ferdinand the
+Second and his son. To France were ceded Brisac, the Austrian part of
+Alsace, and the lands of the three bishoprics in Lorraine--Metz, Toul,
+and Verdun, which her armies had seized in A.D. 1552: to Sweden,
+northern Pomerania, Bremen, and Verden. There was, however, this
+difference between the position of the two, that whereas Sweden became
+a member of the German Diet for what she received (as the king of
+Holland was, until 1866-7, a member for Dutch Luxemburg, and as the
+kings of Denmark, up till the accession of the present sovereign, were
+for Holstein), the acquisitions of France were delivered over to her
+in full sovereignty, and for ever severed from the Germanic body. And
+as it was by their aid that the liberties of the Protestants had been
+won, these two states obtained at the same time what was more valuable
+than territorial accessions--the right of interfering at imperial
+elections, and generally whenever the provisions of the treaties of
+Osnabrueck and Muenster, which they had guaranteed, might be supposed to
+be endangered. The bounds of the Empire were further narrowed by the
+final separation of two countries, once integral parts of Germany, and
+up to this time legally members of her body. Holland and Switzerland
+were, in A.D. 1648, declared independent.
+
+[Sidenote: Germany after the Peace.]
+
+[Sidenote: Number of petty independent states: effects of such a
+system on Germany.]
+
+The Peace of Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less clearly
+marked than the coronation of Otto the Great, or the death of
+Frederick the Second. As from the days of Maximilian it had borne a
+mixed or transitional character, well expressed by the name
+Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in everything but title purely
+and solely a German Empire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an
+Empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of the loosest sort. For
+it had no common treasury, no efficient common tribunals[378], no
+means of coercing a refractory member[379]; its states were of
+different religions, were governed according to different forms, were
+administered judicially and financially without any regard to each
+other. The traveller in Central Germany now is amused to find, every
+hour or two, by the change in the soldiers' uniforms, and the colour
+of the stripes on the railway fences, that he has passed out of one
+and into another of its miniature kingdoms. Much more surprised and
+embarrassed would he have been a century ago, when, instead of the
+present thirty-two there were three hundred petty principalities
+between the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws, its own
+courts (in which the ceremonious pomp of Versailles was faintly
+reproduced), its little armies, its separate coinage, its tolls and
+custom-houses on the frontier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
+officials, presided over by a prime minister who was generally the
+unworthy favourite of his prince and the pensioner of some foreign
+court. This vicious system, which paralyzed the trade, the literature,
+and the political thought of Germany, had been forming itself for some
+time, but did not become fully established until the Peace of
+Westphalia, by emancipating the princes from imperial control, had
+made them despots in their own territories. The impoverishment of the
+inferior nobility and the decline of the commercial cities caused by a
+war that had lasted a whole generation, removed every counterpoise to
+the power of the electors and princes, and made absolutism supreme
+just where absolutism wants all its justification, in states too small
+to have any public opinion, states in which everything depends on the
+monarch, and the monarch depends on his favourites. After A.D. 1648
+the provincial estates or parliaments became obsolete in most of these
+principalities, and powerless in the rest. Germany was forced to drink
+to its very dregs the cup of feudalism, feudalism from which all the
+feelings that once ennobled it had departed.
+
+[Sidenote: Feudalism in France, England, Germany.]
+
+It is instructive to compare the results of the system of feudality in
+the three chief countries of modern Europe. In France, the feudal head
+absorbed all the powers of the state, and left to the aristocracy only
+a few privileges, odious indeed, but politically worthless. In
+England, the mediaeval system expanded into a constitutional monarchy,
+where the oligarchy was still strong, but the commons had won the full
+recognition of equal civil rights. In Germany, everything was taken
+from the sovereign, and nothing given to the people; the
+representatives of those who had been fief-holders of the first and
+second rank before the Great Interregnum were now independent
+potentates; and what had been once a monarchy was now an aristocratic
+federation. The Diet, originally an assembly of magnates meeting from
+time to time like our early English Parliaments, became in A.D. 1654 a
+permanent body, at which the electors, princes, and cities were
+represented by their envoys. In other words, it was now not a national
+council, but an international congress of diplomatists.
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the continuance of the Empire.]
+
+Where the sacrifice of imperial, or rather federal, rights to state
+rights was so complete, we may wonder that the farce of an Empire
+should have been retained at all. A mere German Empire would probably
+have perished; but the Teutonic people could not bring itself to
+abandon the venerable heritage of Rome. Moreover, the Germans were of
+all European peoples the most slow-moving and long-suffering; and as,
+if the Empire had fallen, something must have been erected in its
+place, they preferred to work on with the clumsy machine so long as it
+would work at all. Properly speaking, it has no history after this;
+and the history of the particular states of Germany which takes its
+place is one of the dreariest chapters in the annals of mankind. It
+would be hard to find, from the Peace of Westphalia to the French
+Revolution, a single grand character or a single noble enterprise; a
+single sacrifice made to great public interests, a single instance in
+which the welfare of nations was preferred to the selfish passions of
+their princes. The military history of those times will always be read
+with interest; but free and progressive countries have a history of
+peace not less rich and varied than that of war; and when we ask for
+an account of the political life of Germany in the eighteenth century,
+we hear nothing but the scandals of buzzing courts, and the wrangling
+of diplomatists at never-ending congresses.
+
+[Sidenote: The Empire and the Balance of power.]
+
+Useless and helpless as the Empire had become, it was not without its
+importance to the neighbouring countries, with whose fortunes it had
+been linked by the Peace of Westphalia. It was the pivot on which the
+political system of Europe was to revolve: the scales, so to speak,
+which marked the equipoise of power that had become the grand object
+of the policy of all states. This modern caricature of the plan by
+which the theorists of the fourteenth century had proposed to keep the
+world at peace, used means less noble and attained its end no better
+than theirs had done. No one will deny that it was and is desirable to
+prevent a universal monarchy in Europe. But it may be asked whether a
+system can be considered successful which allowed Frederick of Prussia
+to seize Silesia, which did not check the aggressions of Russia and
+France upon their neighbours, which was for ever bartering and
+exchanging lands in every part of Europe without thought of the
+inhabitants, which permitted and has never been able to redress that
+greatest of public misfortunes, the partitionment of Poland. And if it
+be said that bad as things have been under this system, they would
+have been worse without it, it is hard to refrain from asking whether
+any evils could have been greater than those which the people of
+Europe have suffered through constant wars with each other, and
+through the withdrawal, even in time of peace, of so large a part of
+their population from useful labour to be wasted in maintaining a
+standing army.
+
+[Sidenote: Position of the Empire in Europe.]
+
+[Sidenote: Weakness and stagnation of Germany.]
+
+The result of the extended relations in which Germany now found
+herself to Europe, with two foreign kings never wanting an occasion,
+one of them never the wish, to interfere, was that a spark from her
+set the Continent ablaze, while flames kindled elsewhere were sure to
+spread hither. Matters grew worse as her princes inherited or created
+so many thrones abroad. The Duke of Holstein acquired Denmark, the
+Count Palatine Sweden, the Elector of Saxony Poland, the Elector of
+Hanover England, the Archduke of Austria Hungary and Bohemia, while
+the Elector (originally Margrave) of Brandenburg obtained, on the
+strength of non-imperial territories to the north-eastward which had
+come into his hands, the style and title of King of Prussia. Thus the
+Empire seemed again about to embrace Europe; but in a sense far
+different from that which those words would have expressed under
+Charles and Otto. Its history for a century and a half is a dismal
+list of losses and disgraces. The chief external danger was from
+French influence, for a time supreme, always menacing. For though
+Lewis the Fourteenth, on whom, in A.D. 1658, half the electoral
+college wished to confer the imperial crown, was before the end of his
+life an object of intense hatred, officially entitled 'Hereditary
+enemy of the Holy Empire[380],' France had nevertheless a strong party
+among the princes always at her beck. The Rhenish and Bavarian
+electors were her favourite tools. The '_reunions_' begun in A.D.
+1680, a pleasant euphemism for robbery in time of peace, added
+Strasburg and other places in Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comte to
+the monarchy of Lewis, and brought him nearer the heart of the Empire;
+his ambition and cruelty were witnessed to by repeated wars, and by
+the devastation of the Rhine countries; the ultimate though
+short-lived triumph of his policy was attained when Marshal Belleisle
+dictated the election of Charles VII in A.D. 1742. In the Turkish
+wars, when the princes left Vienna to be saved by the Polish Sobieski,
+the Empire's weakness appeared in a still more pitiable light. There
+was, indeed, a complete loss of hope and interest in the old system.
+The princes had been so long accustomed to consider themselves the
+natural foes of a central government, that a request made by it was
+sure to be disregarded; they aped in their petty courts the pomp and
+etiquette of Vienna or Paris, grumbling that they should be required
+to garrison the great frontier fortresses which alone protected them
+from an encroaching neighbour. The Free Cities had never recovered the
+famines and sieges of the Thirty Years' War: Hanseatic greatness had
+waned, and the southern towns had sunk into languid oligarchies. All
+the vigour of the people in a somewhat stagnant age either found its
+sphere in rising states like the Prussia of Frederick the Great, or
+turned away from politics altogether into other channels. The Diet had
+become contemptible from the slowness with which it moved, and its
+tedious squabbles on matters the most frivolous. Many sittings were
+consumed in the discussion of a question regarding the time of keeping
+Easter, more ridiculous than that which had distracted the Western
+churches in the seventh century, the Protestants refusing to reckon by
+the reformed calendar because it was the work of a Pope. Collective
+action through the old organs was confessed impossible, when the
+common object of defence against France was sought by forming a league
+under the Emperor's presidency, and when at European congresses the
+Empire was not represented at all[381]. No change could come from the
+Emperor, whom the capitulation of A.D. 1658 deposed _ipso facto_ if he
+violated its provisions. As Dohm[382] said, to keep him from doing
+harm, he was kept from doing anything.
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold I, 1658-1705.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph I, 1705-1711.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VI, 1711-1742.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Hapsburg Emperors and their policy.]
+
+[Sidenote: Causes of the long retention of the throne by Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: Charles VII, 1742-1745.]
+
+[Sidenote: Francis I, 1745-1765.]
+
+[Sidenote: Seven Years' War.]
+
+[Sidenote: Joseph II, 1765-1790.]
+
+[Sidenote: Leopold II, 1790-1792. Last phase of the Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Diet.]
+
+Yet little was lost by his inactivity, for what could have been hoped
+from his action? From the election of Albert the Second, A.D. 1437, to
+the death of Charles the Sixth, A.D. 1742, the sceptre had remained in
+the hands of one family. So far from being fit subjects for
+undistinguishing invective, the Hapsburg Emperors may be contrasted
+favourably with the contemporary dynasties of France, Spain, or
+England. Their policy, viewed as a whole from the days of Rudolf
+downwards, had been neither conspicuously tyrannical, nor faltering,
+nor dishonest. But it had been always selfish. Entrusted with an
+office which might, if there be any power in those memories of the
+past to which the champions of hereditary monarchy so constantly
+appeal, have stirred their sluggish souls with some enthusiasm for the
+heroes on whose throne they sat, some wish to advance the glory and
+the happiness of Germany, they had cared for nothing, sought nothing,
+used the Empire as an instrument for nothing but the attainment of
+their own personal or dynastic ends. Placed on the eastern verge of
+Germany, the Hapsburgs had added to their ancient lands in Austria
+proper and Tyrol, non-German territories far more extensive, and had
+thus become the chiefs of a separate and independent state. They
+endeavoured to reconcile its interests with the interests of the
+Empire, so long as it seemed possible to recover part of the old
+imperial prerogative. But when such hopes were dashed by the defeats
+of the Thirty Years' War, they hesitated no longer between an elective
+crown and the rule of their hereditary states, and comported
+themselves thenceforth in European politics not as the representatives
+of Germany, but as heads of the great Austrian monarchy. There would
+have been nothing culpable in this had they not at the same time
+continued to entangle Germany in wars with which she had no concern:
+to waste her strength in tedious combats with the Turks, or plunge her
+into a new struggle with France, not to defend her frontiers or
+recover the lands she had lost, but that some scion of the house of
+Hapsburg might reign in Spain or Italy. Watching the whole course of
+their foreign policy, marking how in A.D. 1736 they had bartered away
+Lorraine for Tuscany, a German for a non-German territory, and seeing
+how at home they opposed every scheme of reform which could in the
+least degree trench upon their own prerogative, how they strove to
+obstruct the imperial chamber lest it should interfere with their own
+Aulic council, men were driven to separate the body of the Empire from
+the imperial office and its possessors[383], and when plans for
+reinvigorating the one failed, to leave the others to their fate.
+Still the old line clung to the crown with that Hapsburg gripe which
+has almost passed into a proverb. Odious as Austria was, no one could
+despise her, or fancy it easy to shake her commanding position in
+Europe. Her alliances were fortunate: her designs were steadily
+pursued: her dismembered territories always returned to her. Though
+the throne continued strictly elective, it was impossible not to be
+influenced by long prescription. Projects were repeatedly formed to
+set the Hapsburgs aside by electing a prince of some other line[384],
+or by passing a law that there should never be more than two, or four,
+successive Emperors of the same house. France[385] ever and anon
+renewed her warnings to the electors, that their freedom was passing
+from them, and the sceptre becoming hereditary in one haughty family.
+But it was felt that a change would be difficult and disagreeable, and
+that the heavy expense and scanty revenues of the Empire required to
+be supported by larger patrimonial domains than most German princes
+possessed. The heads of states like Prussia and Hanover, states whose
+size and wealth would have made them suitable candidates, were
+Protestants, and so excluded both by the connexion of the imperial
+office with the Church, and by the majority of Roman Catholics in the
+electoral college[386], who, however jealous they might be of Austria,
+were led both by habit and sympathy to rally round her in moments of
+peril. The one occasion on which these considerations were disregarded
+shewed their force. On the extinction of the male line of Hapsburg in
+the person of Charles the Sixth, the intrigues of the French envoy,
+Marshal Belleisle, procured the election of Charles Albert of Bavaria,
+who stood first among the Catholic princes. His reign was a succession
+of misfortunes and ignominies. Driven from Munich by the Austrians,
+the head of the Holy Empire lived in Frankfort on the bounty of
+France, cursed by the country on which his ambition had brought the
+miseries of a protracted war[387]. The choice in 1745 of Duke Francis
+of Lorraine, husband of the archduchess of Austria and queen of
+Hungary, Maria Theresa, was meant to restore the crown to the only
+power capable of wearing it with dignity: in Joseph the Second, her
+son, it again rested on the brow of a Hapsburg[388]. In the war of the
+Austrian succession, which followed on the death of Charles the Sixth,
+the Empire as a body took no part; in the Seven Years' War its whole
+might broke in vain against one resolute member. Under Frederick the
+Great Prussia approved herself at least a match for France and Austria
+leagued against her, and the semblance of unity which the predominance
+of a single power had hitherto given to the Empire was replaced by the
+avowed rivalry of two military monarchies. The Emperor Joseph the
+Second, a sort of philosopher-king, than whom few have more narrowly
+missed greatness, made a desperate effort to set things right,
+striving to restore the disordered finances, to purge and vivify the
+Imperial Chamber. Nay, he renounced the intolerant policy of his
+ancestors, quarrelled with the Pope[389], and presumed to visit Rome,
+whose streets heard once more the shout that had been silent for three
+centuries, 'Evviva il nostro imperatore! Siete a casa vostra: siete il
+padrone[390].' But his indiscreet haste was met by a sullen
+resistance, and he died disappointed in plans for which the time was
+not yet ripe, leaving no result save the league of princes which
+Frederick the Great had formed to oppose his designs on Bavaria. His
+successor, Leopold the Second, abandoned the projected reforms, and a
+calm, the calm before the hurricane, settled down again upon Germany.
+The existence of the Empire was almost forgotten by its subjects:
+there was nothing to remind them of it but a feudal investiture now
+and then at Vienna (real feudal rights were obsolete[391]); a
+concourse of solemn old lawyers at Wetzlar puzzling over interminable
+suits[392]; and some thirty diplomatists at Regensburg[393], the
+relics of that Imperial Diet where once a hero-king, a Frederick or a
+Henry, enthroned amid mitred prelates and steel-clad barons, had
+issued laws for every tribe from the Mediterranean to the Baltic[394].
+The solemn triflings of this so-called 'Diet of Deputation' have
+probably never been equalled elsewhere[395]. Questions of precedence
+and title, questions whether the envoys of princes should have chairs
+of red cloth like those of the electors, or only of the less
+honourable green, whether they should be served on gold or on silver,
+how many hawthorn boughs should be hung up before the door of each on
+May-day; these, and such as these, it was their chief employment not
+to settle but to discuss. The pedantic formalism of old Germany passed
+that of Spaniards or Turks; it had now crushed under a mountain of
+rubbish whatever meaning or force its old institutions had contained.
+It is the penalty of greatness that its form should outlive its
+substance: that gilding and trappings should remain when that which
+they were meant to deck and clothe has departed. So our sloth or our
+timidity, not seeing that whatever is false must be also bad,
+maintains in being what once was good long after it has become
+helpless and hopeless: so now at the close of the eighteenth century,
+strings of sounding titles were all that was left of the Empire which
+Charles had founded, and Frederick adorned, and Dante sung.
+
+[Sidenote: Feelings of the German people.]
+
+The German mind, just beginning to put forth the blossoms of its
+wondrous literature, turned away in disgust from the spectacle of
+ceremonious imbecility more than Byzantine. National feeling seemed
+gone from princes and people alike. Lessing, who did more than any one
+else to create the German literary spirit, says, 'Of the love of
+country I have no conception: it appears to me at best a heroic
+weakness which I am right glad to be without[396].' The Emperor Joseph
+II writes to his brother of France: 'You must know that the
+annihilation of German nationality is a necessary leading principle of
+my policy[397].' There were nevertheless persons who saw how fatal
+such a system was, lying like a nightmare on the people's soul.
+Speaking of the union of princes formed by Frederick of Prussia to
+preserve the existing condition of things, Johannes von Mueller
+writes[398]: 'If the German Union serves for nothing better than to
+maintain the _status quo_, it is against the eternal order of God, by
+which neither the physical nor the moral world remains for a moment in
+the _status quo_, but all is life and motion and progress. To exist
+without law or justice, without security from arbitrary imposts,
+doubtful whether we can preserve from day to day our honours, our
+liberties, our rights, our lives, helpless before superior force,
+without a beneficial connexion between our states, without a national
+spirit at all, this is the _status quo_ of our nation. And it was this
+that the Union was meant to confirm. If it be this and nothing more,
+then bethink you how when Israel saw that Rehoboam would not hearken,
+the people gave answer to the king and spake, "What portion have we in
+David, or what inheritance in the son of Jesse? to your tents, O
+Israel: David, see to thine own house." See then to your own houses,
+ye princes.'
+
+Nevertheless, though the Empire stood like a corpse brought forth from
+some Egyptian sepulchre, ready to crumble at a touch, there seemed no
+reason why it should not stand so for centuries more. Fate was kind,
+and slew it in the light.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[376] _De Ratione Status in Imperio nostro Romano-Germanico_.
+
+[377] Even then the Roman pontiffs had lapsed into that scolding,
+anile tone (so unlike the fiery brevity of Hildebrand, or the stern
+precision of Innocent III) which is now seldom absent from their
+public utterances. Pope Innocent the Tenth pronounces the provisions
+of the treaty, 'ipso iure nulla, irrita, invalida, iniqua, iniusta,
+damnata, reprobata, inania, viribusque et effectu vacua, omnino
+fuisse, esse, et perpetuo fore.' In spite of which they were observed.
+
+This bull may be found in vol. xvii. of the _Bullarium_. It bears date
+Nov. 20th, A.D. 1648.
+
+[378] The Imperial Chamber (Kammergericht) continued, with frequent
+and long interruptions, to sit while the Empire lasted. But its
+slowness and formality passed that of any other legal body the world
+has yet seen, and it had no power to enforce its sentences. The Aulic
+council was little more efficient, and was generally disliked as the
+tool of imperial intrigue.
+
+[379] The 'matricula' specifying the quota of each state to the
+imperial army could not be any longer employed.
+
+[380] _Erbfeind des heiligen Reichs._
+
+[381] Only the envoys of the several states were present at Utrecht in
+1713.
+
+[382] Quoted by Ludwig Hauesser, _Deutsche Geschichte_.
+
+[383] The distinction is well expressed by the German 'Reich' and
+'Kaiserthum,' to which we have unfortunately no terms to correspond.
+
+[384] So the Elector of Saxony proposed in 1532 that Albert II,
+Frederick III, and Maximilian having been all of one house, Charles
+V's successor should be chosen from some other.--Moser, _Roemische
+Kayser_. See the various attempts of France in Moser. The coronation
+engagements (Wahlcapitulation) of every Emperor bound him not to
+attempt to make the throne hereditary in his family.
+
+[385] In 1658 France offered to subsidize the Elector of Bavaria if he
+would become Emperor.
+
+[386] Whether an Evangelical was eligible for the office of Emperor
+was a question often debated, but never actually raised by the
+candidature of any but a Roman Catholic prince. The 'exacta aequalitas'
+conceded by the Peace of Westphalia might appear to include so
+important a privilege. But when we consider that the peculiar relation
+in which the Emperor stood to the Holy Roman Church was one which no
+heretic could hold, and that the coronation oaths could not have been
+taken by, nor the coronation ceremonies (among which was a sort of
+ordination) performed upon a Protestant, the conclusion must be
+unfavourable to the claims of any but a Catholic.
+
+[387]
+
+ 'The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
+ Tries the dread summits of Caesarian power.
+ With unexpected legions bursts away,
+ And sees defenceless realms receive his sway....
+ The baffled prince in honour's flattering bloom
+ Of hasty greatness finds the fatal doom;
+ His foes' derision and his subjects' blame,
+ And steals to death from anguish and from shame.'
+ JOHNSON, _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
+
+[388] The following nine reasons for the long continuance of the
+Empire in the House of Hapsburg are given by Pfeffinger (_Vitriarius
+Illustratus_), writing early in the eighteenth century:--
+
+ 1. The great power of Austria.
+
+ 2. Her wealth, now that the Empire was so poor.
+
+ 3. The majority of Catholics among the electors.
+
+ 4. Her fortunate matrimonial alliances.
+
+ 5. Her moderation.
+
+ 6. The memory of benefits conferred by her.
+
+ 7. The example of evils that had followed a departure from
+ the blood of former Caesars.
+
+ 8. The fear of the confusion that would ensue if she were
+ deprived of the crown.
+
+ 9. Her own eagerness to have it.
+
+[389] The Pope undertook a journey to Vienna to mollify Joseph, and
+met with a sufficiently cold reception. When he saw the famous
+minister Kaunitz and gave him his hand to kiss, Kaunitz took it and
+shook it.
+
+[390] 'You are in your own house: be the master.'
+
+[391] Joseph II was foiled in his attempt to assert them.
+
+[392] Goethe spent some time in studying law at Wetzlar among those
+who practised in the Kammergericht.
+
+[393] Cf. Puetter, _Historical Developement of the Political
+Constitution of the German Empire_, vol. iii.
+
+[394] Frederick the Great said of the Diet, 'Es ist ein Schattenbild,
+eine Versammlung aus Publizisten die mehr mit Formalien als mit Sachen
+sich beschaeftigen, und, wie Hofhunde, den Mond anbellen.'
+
+[395] Cf. Hauesser, _Deutsche Geschichte_; Introduction.
+
+[396] Quoted by Hauesser.
+
+[397] Rotteck and Welcker, _Staats Lexikon_, s. v. 'Deutsches Reich.'
+
+[398] _Deutschlands Erwartungen vom Fuerstenbunde_, quoted in the
+_Staats Lexikon_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+FALL OF THE EMPIRE.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Francis II, 1792-1806.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon, Emperor of the West.]
+
+[Sidenote: Belief of Napoleon that he was the successor of
+Charlemagne.]
+
+[Sidenote: Attitude of the Papacy towards Napoleon.]
+
+Goethe has described the uneasiness with which, in the days of his
+childhood, the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the
+Roman Hall covered with the portraits of Emperor after Emperor, till
+space was left for few, at last for one[399]. In A.D. 1792 Francis the
+Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled.
+Three years before there had arisen on the western horizon a little
+cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with
+storms of ruin. There was a prophecy[400], dating from the first days
+of the Empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin,
+and wickedness rife in the world, a second Frankish Charles should
+rise as Emperor to purge and heal, to bring back peace and purify
+religion. If this was not exactly the mission of the new ruler of the
+West Franks, he was at least anxious to tread in the steps and revive
+the glories of the hero whose crown he professed to have inherited. It
+were a task superfluously easy to shew how delusive is that minute
+historical parallel of which every Parisian was full in A.D. 1804, the
+parallel between the heir of a long line of fierce Teutonic
+chieftains, whose vigorous genius had seized what it could of the
+monkish learning of the eighth century, and the son of the Corsican
+lawyer, with all the brilliance of a Frenchman and all the resolute
+profundity of an Italian, reared in, yet only half believing, the
+ideas of the Encyclopaedists, swept up into the seat of absolute power
+by the whirlwind of a revolution. Alcuin and Talleyrand are not more
+unlike than are their masters. But though in the characters and temper
+of the men there is little resemblance, though their Empires agree in
+this only, and hardly even in this, that both were founded on
+conquest, there is nevertheless a sort of grand historical similarity
+between their positions. Both were the leaders of fiery and warlike
+nations, the one still untamed as the creatures of their native woods,
+the other drunk with revolutionary fury. Both aspired to found, and
+seemed for a time to have succeeded in founding, universal monarchies.
+Both were gifted with a strong and susceptible imagination, which if
+it sometimes overbore their judgment, was yet one of the truest and
+highest elements of their greatness. As the one looked back to the
+kings under the Jewish theocracy and the Emperors of Christian Rome,
+so the other thought to model himself after Caesar and Charlemagne.
+For, useful as was the fancied precedent of the title and career of
+the great Carolingian to a chief determined to be king, yet unable to
+be king after the fashion of the Bourbons, and seductive as was such a
+connexion to the imaginative vanity of the French people, it was no
+studied purpose or simulating art that led Napoleon to remind his
+subjects so frequently of the hero he claimed to represent. No one who
+reads the records of his life can doubt that he believed, as fully as
+he believed anything, that the same destiny which had made France the
+centre of the modern world had also appointed him to sit on the throne
+and carry out the projects of Charles the Frank, to rule all Europe
+from Paris, as the Caesars had ruled it from Rome[401]. It was in this
+belief that he went to the ancient capital of the Frankish Emperors to
+receive there the Austrian recognition of his imperial title: that he
+talked of 'revendicating' Catalonia and Aragon, because they had
+formed a part of the Carolingian realm, though they had never obeyed
+the descendants of Hugh Capet: that he undertook a journey to
+Nimeguen, where he had ordered the ancient palace to be restored, and
+inscribed on its walls his name below that of Charles: that he
+summoned the Pope to attend his coronation as Stephen had come ten
+centuries before to instal Pipin in the throne of the last
+Merovingian[402]. The same desire to be regarded as lawful Emperor of
+the West shewed itself in his assumption of the Lombard crown at
+Milan; in the words of the decree by which he annexed Rome to the
+Empire, revoking 'the donations which my predecessors, the French
+Emperors, have made[403];' in the title 'King of Rome,' which he
+bestowed on his ill-fated son, in imitation of the German 'King of the
+Romans[404].' We are even told that it was at one time his intention
+to eject the Hapsburgs, and be chosen Roman Emperor in their stead.
+Had this been done, the analogy would have been complete between the
+position which the French ruler held to Austria now, and that in which
+Charles and Otto had stood to the feeble Caesars of Byzantium. It was
+curious to see the head of the Roman church turning away from his
+ancient ally to the reviving power of France--France, where the
+Goddess of Reason had been worshipped eight years before--just as he
+had sought the help of the first Carolingians against his Lombard
+enemies[405]. The difference was indeed great between the feelings
+wherewith Pius the Seventh addressed his 'very dear son in Christ,'
+and those that had pervaded the intercourse of Pope Hadrian the First
+with the son of Pipin; just as the contrast is strange between the
+principles that shaped Napoleon's policy and the vision of a theocracy
+that had floated before the mind of Charles. Neither comparison is
+much to the advantage of the modern; but Pius might be pardoned for
+catching at any help in his distress, and Napoleon found that the
+protectorship of the church strengthened his position in France, and
+gave him dignity in the eyes of Christendom[406].
+
+[Sidenote: The French Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Napoleon in Germany.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Confederation of the Rhine.]
+
+[Sidenote: Abdication of the Emperor Francis II.]
+
+[Sidenote: End of the Empire.]
+
+A swift succession of triumphs had left only one thing still
+preventing the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as sovereign
+of Western Europe, and that one was the existence of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new title
+when he began to mark a distinction between 'la France' and 'l'Empire
+Francaise.' France had, since A.D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine, and,
+by the annexation of Piedmont, had overstepped the Alps; the French
+Empire included, besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of dependent
+states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and many German principalities,
+the allies of France in the same sense in which the 'socii populi
+Romani' were allies of Rome[407]. When the last of Pitt's coalitions
+had been destroyed at Austerlitz, and Austria had made her submission
+by the peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his hour was come.
+He had now overcome two Emperors, those of Austria and Russia,
+claiming to represent the old and the new Rome respectively, and had
+in eighteen months created more kings than the occupants of the
+Germanic throne in as many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
+sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the sole inheritance of
+that Western Empire, of which the titles and ceremonies of his court
+presented a grotesque imitation[408]. The task was an easy one after
+what had been already accomplished. Previous wars and treaties had so
+redistributed the territories and changed the constitution of the
+Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to exist in anything but
+name. In French history Napoleon appears as the restorer of peace, the
+rebuilder of the shattered edifice of social order: the author of a
+code and an administrative system which the Bourbons who dethroned him
+were glad to preserve. Abroad he was the true child of the Revolution,
+and conquered only to destroy. It was his mission--a mission more
+beneficent in its result than in its means[409]--to break up in
+Germany and Italy the abominable system of petty states, to reawaken
+the spirit of the people, to sweep away the relics of an effete
+feudalism, and leave the ground clear for the growth of newer and
+better forms of political life. Since A.D. 1797, when Austria at Campo
+Formio perfidiously exchanged the Netherlands for Venetia, the work of
+destruction had gone on apace. All the German sovereigns west of the
+Rhine had been dispossessed, and their territories incorporated with
+France, while the rest of the country had been revolutionized by the
+arrangements of the peace of Luneville and the 'Indemnities,' dictated
+by the French to the Diet in February 1803. New kingdoms were erected,
+electorates created and extinguished, the lesser princes mediatized,
+the free cities occupied by troops and bestowed on some neighbouring
+potentate. More than any other change, the secularization of the
+dominions of the prince-bishops and abbots proclaimed the fall of the
+old constitution, whose principles had required the existence of a
+spiritual alongside of the temporal aristocracy. The Emperor Francis,
+partly foreboding the events that were at hand, partly in order to
+meet Napoleon's assumption of the imperial name by depriving that name
+of its peculiar meaning, began in A.D. 1805 to style himself
+'Hereditary Emperor of Austria,' while retaining at the same time his
+former title[410]. The next act of the drama was one in which we may
+more readily pardon the ambition of a foreign conqueror than the
+traitorous selfishness of the German princes, who broke every tie of
+ancient friendship and duty to grovel at his throne. By the Act of the
+Confederation[411] of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 12th, 1806,
+Bavaria, Wuertemberg, Baden, and several other states, sixteen in all,
+withdrew from the body and repudiated the laws of the Empire, while on
+August 1st the French envoy at Regensburg announced to the Diet that
+his master, who had consented to become Protector of the Confederate
+princes, no longer recognized the existence of the Empire. Francis the
+Second resolved at once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
+declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the imperial dignity.
+His deed states that finding it impossible, in the altered state of
+things, to fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitulation, he
+considers as dissolved the bonds which attached him to the Germanic
+body, releases from their allegiance the states who formed it, and
+retires to the government of his hereditary dominions under the title
+of 'Emperor of Austria[412].' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
+(_Deutsches Reich_) is employed. But it was the crown of Augustus, of
+Constantine, of Charles, of Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid
+down, and a new era in the world's history was marked by the fall of
+its most venerable institution. One thousand and six years after Leo
+the Pope had crowned the Frankish king, eighteen hundred and
+fifty-eight years after Caesar had conquered at Pharsalia, the Holy
+Roman Empire came to its end.
+
+[Sidenote: Congress of Vienna.]
+
+There was a time when this event would have been thought a sign that
+the last days of the world were at hand. But in the whirl of change
+that had bewildered men since A.D. 1789, it passed almost unnoticed.
+No one could yet fancy how things would end, or what sort of a new
+order would at last shape itself out of chaos. When Napoleon's
+universal monarchy had dissolved, and old landmarks shewed themselves
+again above the receding waters, it was commonly supposed that the
+Empire would be re-established on its former footing[413]. Such was
+indeed the wish of many states, and among them of Hanover,
+representing Great Britain[414]. Though a simple revival of the old
+Romano-Germanic Empire was plainly out of the question, it still
+appeared to them that Germany would be best off under the presidency
+of a single head, entrusted with the ancient office of maintaining
+peace among the members of the confederation. But the new kingdoms,
+Bavaria especially, were unwilling to admit a superior; Prussia,
+elated at the glory she had won in the war of independence, would have
+disputed the crown with Austria; Austria herself cared little to
+resume an office shorn of much of its dignity, with duties to perform
+and no resources to enable her to discharge them. Use was therefore
+made of an expression in the Peace of Paris which spoke of uniting
+Germany by a federative bond[415], and the Congress of Vienna was
+decided by the wishes of Austria to establish a Confederation. Thus
+was brought about the present German federal constitution, which is
+itself confessed, by the attempts so often made to reform it, to be a
+mere temporary expedient, oppressive in the hands of the strong, and
+useless for the protection of the weak. Of late years, one school of
+liberal politicians, justly indignant at their betrayal by the princes
+after the enthusiastic uprising of A.D. 1814, has aspired to the
+restoration of the Empire, either as an hereditary kingdom in the
+Prussian or some other family, or in a more republican fashion under a
+head elected by the people[416]. The obstacles in the way of such
+plans are evidently very great; but even were the horizon more clear
+than it is, this would not be the place from which to scan it[417].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[399] _Wahrheit und Dichtung_, book i. The Roemer Saal is still one of
+the sights of Frankfort. The portraits, however, which one now sees in
+it, seem to be all or nearly all of them modern; and few have any
+merit as works of art.
+
+[400] _Jordanis Chronica_, ap. Schardium, _Sylloge Tractatuum_.
+
+[401] In an address by Napoleon to the Senate in 1804, bearing date
+10th Frimaire (1st Dec.), are the words, 'Mes descendans conserveront
+longtemps ce trone, le premier de l'univers.' Answering a deputation
+from the department of the Lippe, Aug. 8th, 1811, 'La Providence, qui
+a voulu que je retablisse le trone de Charlemagne, vous a fait
+naturellement rentrer, avec la Hollande et les villes anseatiques,
+dans le sein de l'Empire.'--_Oeuvres de Napoleon_, tom. v. p. 521.
+
+'Pour le Pape, je suis Charlemagne, parce que, comme Charlemagne, je
+reunis la couronne de France a celle des Lombards, et que mon Empire
+confine avec l'Orient.' (Quoted by Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii.
+417.)
+
+'Votre Saintete est souveraine de Rome, mais j'en suis l'Empereur.'
+(Letter of Napoleon to Pope Pius, Feb. 13th, 1806. Lanfrey.)
+
+'Dites bien,' says Napoleon to Cardinal Fesch, 'que je suis
+Charlemagne, leur Empereur [of the Papal Court] que je dois etre
+traite de meme. Je fais connaitre au Pape mes intentions en peu de
+mots, s'il n'y acquiesce pas, je le reduirai a la meme condition qu'il
+etait avant Charlemagne.' (Lanfrey, _Vie de Napoleon_, iii. 420.)
+
+[402] Napoleon said on one occasion, 'Je n'ai pas succede a Louis
+Quatorze, mais a Charlemagne.'--Bourrienne, _Vie de Napoleon_, iv. In
+1804, shortly before he was crowned, he had the imperial insignia of
+Charles brought from the old Frankish capital, and exhibited them in a
+jeweller's shop in Paris, along with those which had just been made
+for his own coronation;--(Bourrienne, _ut supra_.) Somewhat in the
+same spirit in which he displayed the Bayeux tapestry, in order to
+incite his subjects to the conquest of England.
+
+[403] 'Je n'ai pu concilier ces grands interets (of political order
+and the spiritual authority of the Pope) qu'en annulant les donations
+des Empereurs Francais, mes predecesseurs, et en reunissant les etats
+romains a la France.'--Proclamation issued in 1809: _Oeuvres_, iv.
+
+[404] See Appendix, Note C.
+
+[405] Pope Pius VII wrote to the First Consul, 'Carissime in Christo
+Fili noster ... tam perspecta sunt nobis tuae voluntatis studia erga
+nos, ut _quotiescunque_ ope aliqua in rebus nostris indigemus, eam a
+te fidenter petere non dubitare debeamus.'--Quoted by AEgidi.
+
+[406] Let us place side by side the letters of Hadrian to Charles in
+the _Codex Carolinus_, and the following preamble to the Concordat of
+A.D. 1801, between the First Consul and the Pope (which I quote from
+the _Bullarium Romanum_), and mark the changes of a thousand years.
+
+'Gubernium reipublicae [Gallicae] recognoscit religionem Catholicam
+Apostolicam Romanam eam esse religionem quam longe maxima pars civium
+Gallicae reipublicae profitetur.
+
+'Summus pontifex pari modo recognoscit eandem religionem maximam
+utilitatem maximumque decus percepisse et hoc quoque tempore
+praestolari ex catholico cultu in Gallia constituto, necnon ex
+peculiari eius professione quam faciunt reipublicae consules.'
+
+[407] Cf. Heeren, _Political System_, vol. iii. 273.
+
+[408] He had arch-chancellors, arch-treasurers, and so forth. The
+Legion of Honour, which was thought important enough to be mentioned
+in the coronation oath, was meant to be something like the mediaeval
+orders of knighthood: whose connexion with the Empire has already been
+mentioned.
+
+[409] Napoleon's feelings towards Germany may be gathered from the
+phrase he once used, 'Il faut depayser l'Allemagne.'
+
+[410] Thus in documents issued by the Emperor during these two years
+he is styled 'Roman Emperor Elect, Hereditary Emperor of Austria'
+(erwaehlter Roemischer Kaiser, Erbkaiser von Oesterreich).
+
+[411] This Act of Confederation of the Rhine (Rheinbund) is printed in
+Koch's _Traites_ (continued by Schoell), vol. viii., and Meyer's
+_Corpus Iuris Confoederationis Germanicae_, vol. i. It has every
+appearance of being a translation from the French, and was no doubt
+originally drawn up in that language. Napoleon is called in one place
+'Der naemliche Monarch, dessen Absichten sich stets mit den wahren
+Interessen Deutschlands uebereinstimmend gezeigt haben.' The phrase
+'Roman Empire' does not occur: we hear only of the 'German Empire,'
+'body of German states' (Staatskoerper), and so forth. This
+Confederation of the Rhine was eventually joined by every German State
+except Austria, Prussia, Electoral Hesse, and Brunswick.
+
+[412] _Histoire des Traites_, vol. viii. The original may be found in
+Meyer's _Corpus Iuris Confoederationis Germanicae_, vol. i. p. 70. It is
+a document in no way remarkable, except from the ludicrous resemblance
+which its language suggests to the circular in which a tradesman,
+announcing the dissolution of an old partnership, solicits, and hopes
+by close attention to merit, a continuance of his customers' patronage
+to his business, which will henceforth be carried on under the name
+of, &c., &c.
+
+[413] Koch (Schoell), _Histoire des Traites_, vol. xi. p. 257, sqq.;
+Hauesser, _Deutsche Geschichte_, vol. iv.
+
+[414] Great Britain had refused in 1806 to recognize the dissolution
+of the Empire. And it may indeed be maintained that in point of law
+the Empire was never extinguished at all, but lives on as a
+disembodied spirit to this day. For it is clear that, technically
+speaking, the abdication of a sovereign can destroy only his own
+rights, and does not dissolve the state over which he presides.
+
+[415] 'Les etats d'Allemagne seront independans et unis par un lien
+federatif.'--_Histoire des Traites_, xi. p. 257.
+
+[416] The late king of Prussia was actually elected Emperor by the
+revolutionary Diet at Frankfort in 1848. He refused the crown.
+
+[417] [Since the above was written (in A.D. 1865) sudden and momentous
+changes have been effected in Germany by the war of 1866; the Prussian
+kingdom has been enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hessen-Cassel,
+Nassau, and Frankfort; the establishment of the North German
+Confederation has brought all the states north of the Main under
+Prussian control; while even the potentates of the south have
+virtually accepted the hegemony of the house of Hohenzollern. It was
+the author's intention to have added here a chapter examining these
+changes by the light of the past history of Germany and the Empire,
+and tracing out the causes to which the success of Prussia is to be
+ascribed. But at this moment (July 15th, 1870) the French Emperor
+declares war against Prussia, and there rises to meet the challenge an
+united German people,--united for the time, at least, by the folly of
+the enemy who has so long plotted for and profited by its disunion.
+Whatever the result of the struggle may be, it is almost certain to
+alter still further the internal constitution of Germany; and there is
+therefore little use in discussing the existing system, and tracing
+the progress hitherto of a development which, if not suddenly
+arrested, is likely to be greatly accelerated by the events which we
+see passing.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+[Sidenote: General summary.]
+
+[Sidenote: Perpetuation of the name of Rome.]
+
+After the attempts already made to examine separately each of the
+phases of the Empire, little need be said, in conclusion, upon its
+nature and results in general. A general character can hardly help
+being either vague or false. For the aspects which the Empire took are
+as many and as various as the ages and conditions of society during
+which it continued to exist. Among the exhausted peoples around the
+Mediterranean, whose national feeling had died out, whose faith was
+extinct or turned to superstition, whose thought and art was a faint
+imitation of the Greek, there arises a huge despotism, first of a
+city, then of an administrative system, which presses with equal
+weight on all its subjects, and becomes to them a religion as well as
+a government. Just when the mass is at length dissolving, the tribes
+of the North come down, too rude to maintain the institutions they
+found subsisting, too few to introduce their own, and a weltering
+confusion follows, till the strong hand of the first Frankish Emperor
+raises the fallen image and bids the nations bow down to it once more.
+Under him it is for some brief space a theocracy; under his German
+successors the first of feudal kingdoms, the centre of European
+chivalry. As feudalism wanes, it is again transformed, and after
+promising for a time to become an hereditary Hapsburg monarchy, sinks
+at last into the presidency, not more dignified than powerless, of an
+international league. To us moderns, a perpetuation under conditions
+so diverse of the same name and the same pretensions, appears at first
+sight absurd, a phantom too vain to impress the most superstitious
+mind. Closer examination will correct such a notion. No power was ever
+based on foundations so sure and deep as those which Rome laid during
+three centuries of conquest and four of undisturbed dominion. If her
+empire had been an hereditary or local kingdom, it might have fallen
+with the extinction of the royal line, the conquest of the tribe, the
+destruction of the city to which it was attached. But it was not so
+limited. It was imperishable because it was universal; and when its
+power had ceased, it was remembered with awe and love by the races
+whose separate existence it had destroyed, because it had spared the
+weak while it smote down the strong; because it had granted equal
+rights to all, and closed against none of its subjects the path of
+honourable ambition. When the military power of the conquering city
+had departed, her sway over the world of thought began: by her the
+theories of the Greeks had been reduced to practice; by her the new
+religion had been embraced and organized; her language, her theology,
+her laws, her architecture made their way where the eagles of war had
+never flown, and with the spread of civilization have found new homes
+on the Ganges and the Mississippi.
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel instances.]
+
+[Sidenote: Claims to represent the Roman Empire.]
+
+[Sidenote: Austria.]
+
+[Sidenote: France.]
+
+[Sidenote: Russia.]
+
+[Sidenote: Greece.]
+
+[Sidenote: The Turks.]
+
+Nor is such a claim of government prolonged under changed conditions
+by any means a singular phenomenon. Titles sum up the political
+history of nations, and are as often causes as effects: if not
+insignificant now, how much less so in ages of ignorance and unreason.
+It would be an instructive, if it were not a tedious task, to examine
+the many pretensions that are still put forward to represent the
+Empire of Rome, all of them baseless, none of them effectless. Austria
+clings to a name which seems to give her a sort of precedence in
+Europe, and was wont, while she held Lombardy, to justify her position
+there by invoking the feudal rights of the Hohenstaufen. With no more
+legal right than the prince of Reuss or the landgrave of Homburg might
+pretend to, she has assumed the arms and devices of the old Empire,
+and being almost the youngest of European monarchies, is respected as
+the oldest and most conservative. Bonapartean France, as the
+self-appointed heir of the Carolingians, grasped for a time the
+sceptre of the West, and still aspires to hold the balance of European
+politics, and be recognized as the leader and patron of the so-called
+Latin races on both sides of the Atlantic[418]. Professing the creed
+of Byzantium, Russia claims the crown of the Byzantine Caesars, and
+trusts that the capital which prophecy has promised for a thousand
+years will not be long withheld. The doctrine of Panslavism, under an
+imperial head of the whole Eastern church, has become a formidable
+engine of aggression in the hands of a crafty and warlike despotism.
+Another testimony to the enduring influence of old political
+combinations is supplied by the eagerness with which modern Hellas has
+embraced the notion of gathering all the Greek races into a revived
+Empire of the East, with its capital on the Bosphorus. Nay, the
+intruding Ottoman himself, different in faith as well as in blood, has
+more than once declared himself the representative of the Eastern
+Caesars, whose dominion he extinguished. Solyman the Magnificent
+assumed the name of Emperor, and refused it to Charles the Fifth: his
+successors were long preceded through the streets of Constantinople by
+twelve officers, bearing straws aloft, a faint semblance of the
+consular fasces that had escorted a Quinctius or a Fabius through the
+Roman forum. Yet in no one of these cases has there been that apparent
+legality of title which the shouts of the people and the benediction
+of the pontiff conveyed to Charles and Otto[419].
+
+[Sidenote: Parallel of the Papacy.]
+
+These examples, however, are minor parallels: the complement and
+illustration of the history of the Empire is to be found in that of
+the Holy See. The Papacy, whose spiritual power was itself the
+offspring of Rome's temporal dominion, evoked the phantom of her
+parent, used it, obeyed it, rebelled and overthrew it, in its old age
+once more embraced it, till in its downfall she has heard the knell of
+her own approaching doom[420].
+
+Both Papacy and Empire rose in an age when the human spirit was
+utterly prostrated before authority and tradition, when the exercise
+of private judgment was impossible to most and sinful to all. Those
+who believed the miracles recorded in the _Acta Sanctorum_, and did
+not question the Isidorian decretals, might well recognize as ordained
+of God the twofold authority of Rome, founded, as it seemed to be, on
+so many texts of Scripture, and confirmed by five centuries of
+undisputed possession.
+
+Both sanctioned and satisfied the passion of the Middle Ages for
+unity. Ferocity, violence, disorder, were the conspicuous evils of
+that time: hence all the aspirations of the good were for something
+which, breaking the force of passion and increasing the force of
+sympathy, should teach the stubborn wills to sacrifice themselves in
+the view of a common purpose. To those men, moreover, unable to rise
+above the sensuous, not seeing the true connexion or the true
+difference of the spiritual and the secular, the idea of the Visible
+Church was full of awful meaning. Solitary thought was helpless, and
+strove to lose itself in the aggregate, since it could not create for
+itself that which was universal. The schism that severed a man from
+the congregation of the faithful on earth was hardly less dreadful
+than the heresy which excluded him from the company of the blessed in
+heaven. He who kept not his appointed place in the ranks of the church
+militant had no right to swell the rejoicing anthems of the church
+triumphant. Here, as in so many other cases, the continued use of
+traditional language seems to have prevented us from seeing how great
+is the difference between our own times and those in which the phrases
+we repeat were first used, and used in full sincerity. Whether the
+world is better or worse for the change which has passed upon its
+feelings in these matters is another question: all that it is
+necessary to note here is that the change is a profound and pervading
+one. Obedience, almost the first of mediaeval virtues, is now often
+spoken of as if it were fit only for slaves or fools. Instead of
+praising, men are wont to condemn the submission of the individual
+will, the surrender of the individual belief, to the will or the
+belief of the community. Some persons declare variety of opinion to be
+a positive good. The great mass have certainly no longing for an
+abstract unity of faith. They have no horror of schism. They do not,
+cannot, understand the intense fascination which the idea of one
+all-pervading church exercised upon their mediaeval forefathers. A life
+in the church, for the church, through the church; a life which she
+blessed in mass at morning and sent to peaceful rest by the vesper
+hymn; a life which she supported by the constantly recurring stimulus
+of the sacraments, relieving it by confession, purifying it by
+penance, admonishing it by the presentation of visible objects for
+contemplation and worship,--this was the life which they of the Middle
+Ages conceived of as the rightful life for man; it was the actual life
+of many, the ideal of all. The unseen world was so unceasingly pointed
+to, and its dependence on the seen so intensely felt, that the barrier
+between the two seemed to disappear. The church was not merely the
+portal to heaven; it was heaven anticipated; it was already
+self-gathered and complete. In one sentence from a famous mediaeval
+document may be found a key to much which seems strangest to us in the
+feelings of the Middle Ages: 'The church is dearer to God than heaven.
+For the church does not exist for the sake of heaven, but conversely,
+heaven for the sake of the church[421].'
+
+Again, both Empire and Papacy rested on opinion rather than on
+physical force, and when the struggle of the eleventh century came,
+the Empire fell, because its rival's hold over the souls of men was
+firmer, more direct, enforced by penalties more terrible than the
+death of the body. The ecclesiastical body under Alexander and
+Innocent was animated by a loftier spirit and more wholly devoted to a
+single aim than the knights and nobles who followed the banner of the
+Swabian Caesars. Its allegiance was undivided; it comprehended the
+principles for which it fought: they trembled at even while they
+resisted the spiritual power.
+
+[Sidenote: Papacy and Empire compared as perpetuations of a name.]
+
+Both sprang from what might be called the accident of name. The power
+of the great Latin patriarchate was a Form: the ghost, it has been
+said, of the older Empire, favoured in its growth by circumstances,
+but really vital because capable of wonderful adaptation to the
+character and wants of the time. So too, though far less perfectly,
+was the Empire. Its Form was the tradition of the universal rule of
+Rome; it met the needs of successive centuries by civilizing barbarous
+peoples, by maintaining unity in confusion and disorganization, by
+controlling brute violence through the sanctions of a higher power, by
+being made the keystone of a gigantic feudal arch, by assuming in its
+old age the presidency of a European confederation. And the history of
+both, as it shews the power of ancient names and forms, shews also
+within what limits such a perpetuation is possible, and how it
+sometimes deceives men, by preserving the shadow while it loses the
+substance. This perpetuation itself, what is it but the expression of
+the belief of mankind, a belief incessantly corrected yet never
+weakened, that their old institutions do and may continue to subsist
+unchanged, that what has served their fathers will do well enough for
+them, that it is possible to make a system perfect and abide in it for
+ever? Of all political instincts this is perhaps the strongest; often
+useful, often grossly abused, but never so natural and so fitting as
+when it leads men who feel themselves inferior to their predecessors,
+to save what they can from the wreck of a civilization higher than
+their own. It was thus that both Papacy and Empire were maintained by
+the generations who had no type of greatness and wisdom save that
+which they associated with the name of Rome. And therefore it is that
+no examples shew so convincingly how hopeless are all such attempts to
+preserve in life a system which arose out of ideas and under
+conditions that have passed away. Though it never could have existed
+save as a prolongation, though it was and remained through the Middle
+Ages an anachronism, the Empire of the tenth century had little in
+common with the Empire of the second. Much more was the Papacy, though
+it too hankered after the forms and titles of antiquity, in reality a
+new creation. And in the same proportion as it was new, and
+represented the spirit not of a past age but of its own, was it a
+power stronger and more enduring than the Empire. More enduring,
+because younger, and so in fuller harmony with the feelings of its
+contemporaries: stronger, because at the head of the great
+ecclesiastical body, in and through which, rather than through secular
+life, all the intelligence and political activity of the Middle Ages
+sought its expression. The famous simile of Gregory the Seventh is
+that which best describes the Empire and the Popedom. They were indeed
+the 'two lights in the firmament of the militant church,' the lights
+which illumined and ruled the world all through the Middle Ages. And
+as moonlight is to sunlight, so was the Empire to the Papacy. The rays
+of the one were borrowed, feeble, often interrupted: the other shone
+with an unquenchable brilliance that was all her own.
+
+[Sidenote: In what sense was the Empire Roman?]
+
+The Empire, it has just been said, was never truly mediaeval. Was it
+then Roman in anything but name? and was that name anything better
+than a piece of fantastic antiquarianism? It is easy to draw a
+comparison between the Antonines and the Ottos which should shew
+nothing but unlikeness. What the Empire was in the second century
+every one knows. In the tenth it was a feudal monarchy, resting on a
+strong territorial oligarchy. Its chiefs were barbarians, the sons of
+those who had destroyed Varus and baffled Germanicus, sometimes unable
+even to use the tongue of Rome. Its powers were limited. It could
+scarcely be said to have a regular organization at all, whether
+judicial or administrative. It was consecrated to the defence, nay, it
+existed by virtue of the religion which Trajan and Marcus had
+persecuted. Nevertheless, when the contrast has been stated in the
+strongest terms, there will remain points of resemblance. The
+thoroughly Roman idea of universal denationalization survived, and
+drew with it that of a certain equality among all free subjects. It
+has been remarked already, that the world's highest dignity was for
+many centuries the only civil office to which any free-born Christian
+was legally eligible. And there was also, during the earlier ages,
+that indomitable vigour which might have made Trajan or Severus seek
+their true successors among the woods of Germany rather than in the
+palaces of Byzantium, where every office and name and custom had
+floated down from the court of Constantine in a stream of unbroken
+legitimacy. The ceremonies of Henry the Seventh's coronation would
+have been strange indeed to Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus Augustus;
+but how much nobler, how much more Roman in force and truth than the
+childish and unmeaning forms with which a Palaeologus was installed! It
+was not in purple buskins that the dignity of the Luxemburger
+lay[422]. To such a boast the Germanic Empire had long ere its death
+lost right: it had lived on, when honour and nature bade it die: it
+had become what the Empire of the Moguls was, and that of the Ottomans
+is now, a curious relic of antiquity, over which the imaginative might
+muse, but which the mass of men would push aside with impatient
+contempt. But institutions, like men, should be judged by their prime.
+
+[Sidenote: 'Imperialism:' Roman, French, and mediaeval.]
+
+[Sidenote: Political character of the Teutonic and Gallic races.]
+
+The comparison of the old Roman Empire with its Germanic
+representative raises a question which has been a good deal canvassed
+of late years. That wonderful system which Julius Caesar and his subtle
+nephew erected upon the ruins of the republican constitution of Rome
+has been made the type of a certain form of government and of a
+certain set of social as well as political arrangements, to which, or
+rather to the theory whereof they are a part, there has been given the
+name of Imperialism. The sacrifice of the individual to the mass, the
+concentration of all legislative and judicial powers in the person of
+the sovereign, the centralization of the administrative system, the
+maintenance of order by a large military force, the substitution of
+the influence of public opinion for the control of representative
+assemblies, are commonly taken, whether rightly or wrongly, to
+characterize that theory. Its enemies cannot deny that it has before
+now given and may again give to nations a sudden and violent access of
+aggressive energy; that it has often achieved the glory (whatever that
+may be) of war and conquest; that it has a better title to respect in
+the ease with which it may be made, as it was by the Flavian and
+Antonine Caesars of old, and at the beginning of this century by
+Napoleon in France, the instrument of comprehensive reforms in law and
+government. The parallel between the Roman world under the Caesars and
+the French people now is indeed less perfect than those who dilate
+upon it fancy. That equalizing despotism which was a good to a medley
+of tribes, the force of whose national life had spent itself and left
+them languid, yet restless, with all the evils of isolation and none
+of its advantages, is not necessarily a good to a country already the
+strongest and most united in Europe, a country where the
+administration is only too perfect, and the pressure of social
+uniformity only too strong. But whether it be a good or an evil, no
+one can doubt that France represents, and has always represented, the
+imperialist spirit of Rome far more truly than those whom the Middle
+Ages recognized as the legitimate heirs of her name and dominion. In
+the political character of the French people, whether it be the result
+of the five centuries of Roman rule in Gaul, or rather due to the
+original instincts of the Gallic race, is to be found their claim, a
+claim better founded than any which Napoleon put forward, to be the
+Romans[423] of the modern world. The tendency of the Teuton was and is
+to the independence of the individual life, to the mutual repulsion,
+if the phrase may be permitted, of the social atoms, as contrasted
+with Keltic and so-called Romanic peoples, among which the unit is
+more completely absorbed in the mass, who live possessed by a common
+idea which they are driven to realize in the concrete. Teutonic states
+have been little more successful than their neighbours in the
+establishment of free constitutions. Their assemblies meet, and vote,
+and are dissolved, and nothing comes of it: their citizens endure
+without greatly resenting outrages that would raise the more excitable
+French or Italians in revolt. But, whatever may have been the form of
+government, the body of the people have in Germany always enjoyed a
+freedom of thought which has made them comparatively careless of
+politics; and the absolutism of the Elbe is at this day no more like
+that of the Seine than a revolution at Dresden is to a revolution at
+Paris. The rule of the Hohenstaufen had nothing either of the good or
+the evil of the imperialism which Tacitus painted, or of that which
+the panegyrists of the present system in France paint in colours
+somewhat different from his.
+
+[Sidenote: Essential principles of the mediaeval Empire.]
+
+There was, nevertheless, such a thing as mediaeval imperialism, a
+theory of the nature of the state and the best form of government,
+which has been described once already, and need not be described
+again. It is enough to say, that from three leading principles all its
+properties may be derived. The first and the least essential was the
+existence of the state as a monarchy. The second was the exact
+coincidence of the state's limits, and the perfect harmony of its
+workings with the limits and the workings of the church. The third was
+its universality. These three were vital. Forms of political
+organization, the presence or absence of constitutional checks, the
+degree of liberty enjoyed by the subject, the rights conceded to local
+authorities, all these were matters of secondary importance. But
+although there brooded over all the shadow of a despotism, it was a
+despotism not of the sword but of law; a despotism not chilling and
+blighting, but one which, in Germany at least, looked with favour on
+municipal freedom, and everywhere did its best for learning, for
+religion, for intelligence; a despotism not hereditary, but one which
+constantly maintained in theory the principle that he should rule who
+was found the fittest. To praise or to decry the Empire as a despotic
+power is to misunderstand it altogether. We need not, because an
+unbounded prerogative was useful in ages of turbulence, advocate it
+now; nor need we, with Sismondi, blame the Frankish conqueror because
+he granted no 'constitutional charter' to all the nations that obeyed
+him. Like the Papacy, the Empire expressed the political ideas of a
+time, and not of all time: like the Papacy, it decayed when those
+ideas changed; when men became more capable of rational liberty; when
+thought grew stronger, and the spiritual nature shook itself more free
+from the bonds of sense.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Holy Empire on Germany.]
+
+The influence of the Empire upon Germany is a subject too wide to be
+more than glanced at here. There is much to make it appear altogether
+unfortunate. For many generations the flower of Teutonic chivalry
+crossed the Alps to perish by the sword of the Lombards, or the
+deadlier fevers of Rome. Italy terribly avenged the wrongs she
+suffered. Those who destroyed the national existence of another people
+forfeited their own: the German kingdom, crushed beneath the weight of
+the Roman Empire, could never recover strength enough to form a
+compact and united monarchy, such as arose elsewhere in Europe: the
+race whom their neighbours had feared and obeyed till the fourteenth
+century saw themselves, down even to our own day, the prey of
+intestine feuds and their country the battlefield of Europe. Spoiled
+and insulted by a neighbour restlessly aggressive and superior in all
+the arts of success, they came to regard France as the persecuted
+Slave regards them. The want of national union and political liberty
+from which Germany has suffered, and to some extent suffers still,
+cannot be attributed to the differences of her races; for, conspicuous
+as that difference was in the days of Otto the Great, it was no
+greater than in France, where intruding Franks, Goths, Burgundians,
+and Northmen were mingled with primitive Kelts and Basques; not so
+great as in Spain, or Italy, or Britain. Rather is it due to the
+decline of the central government, which was induced by its strife
+with the Popedom, its endless Italian wars, and the passion for
+universal dominion which made it the assailant of all the neighbouring
+countries. The absence or the weakness of the monarch enabled his
+feudal vassals to establish petty despotisms, debarring the nation
+from united political action, and greatly retarding the emancipation
+of the commons. Thus, while the princes became shamelessly selfish,
+justifying their resistance to the throne as the defence of their own
+liberty--liberty to oppress the subject--and ready on the least
+occasion to throw themselves into the arms of France, the body of the
+people were deprived of all political training, and have found the
+lack of such experience impede their efforts to this day.
+
+For these misfortunes, however, there has not been wanting some
+compensation. The inheritance of the Roman Empire made the Germans the
+ruling race of Europe, and the brilliance of that glorious dawn can
+never fade entirely from their name. A peaceful people now, peaceful
+in sentiment even now when they have become a great military power,
+submissive to paternal government, and given to the quiet enjoyments
+of art, music, and meditation, they delight themselves with memories
+of the time when their conquering chivalry was the terror of the Gaul
+and the Slave, the Lombard and the Saracen. The national life received
+a keen stimulus from the sense of exaltation which victory brought,
+and from the intercourse with countries where the old civilization had
+not wholly perished. It was this connexion with Italy that raised the
+German lands out of barbarism, and did for them the work which Roman
+conquest had performed in Gaul, Spain, and Britain. From the Empire
+flowed all the richness of their mediaeval life and literature: it
+first awoke in them a consciousness of national existence; its history
+has inspired and served as material to their poetry; to many ardent
+politicians the splendours of the past have become the beacon of the
+future[424]. There is a bright side even to their political disunion.
+When they complain that they are not a nation, and sigh for the
+harmony of feeling and singleness of aim which their great rival
+displays, the example of the Greeks may comfort them. To the variety
+which so many small governments have produced may be partly attributed
+the breadth of development in German thought and literature, by virtue
+of which it transcends the French hardly less than the Greek surpassed
+the Roman. Paris no doubt is great, but a country may lose as well as
+gain by the predominance of a single city; and Germany need not mourn
+that she alone among modern states has not and never has had a
+capital.
+
+[Sidenote: Austria as heir of the Holy Empire.]
+
+The merits of the old Empire were not long since the subject of a
+brisk controversy among several German professors of history[425]. The
+spokesmen of the Austrian or Roman Catholic party, a party which ten
+years ago was not less powerful in some of the minor South German
+States than in Vienna, claimed for the Hapsburg monarchy the honour of
+being the legitimate representative of the mediaeval Empire, and
+declared that only by again accepting Hapsburg leadership could
+Germany win back the glory and the strength that once were hers. The
+North German liberals ironically applauded the comparison. 'Yes,' they
+replied, 'your Austrian Empire, as it calls itself, is the true
+daughter of the old despotism: not less tyrannical, not less
+aggressive, not less retrograde; like its progenitor, the friend of
+priests, the enemy of free thought, the trampler upon the national
+feeling of the peoples that obey it. It is you whose selfish and
+anti-national policy blasts the hope of German unity now, as Otto and
+Frederick blasted it long ago by their schemes of foreign conquest.
+The dream of Empire has been our bane from first to last.' It is
+possible, one may hope, to escape the alternative of admiring the
+Austrian Empire or denouncing the Holy Roman. Austria has indeed, in
+some things, but too faithfully reproduced the policy of the Saxon and
+Swabian Caesars. Like her, they oppressed and insulted the Italian
+people: but it was in the defence of rights which the Italians
+themselves admitted. Like her, they lusted after a dominion over the
+races on their borders, but that dominion was to them a means of
+spreading civilization and religion in savage countries, not of
+pampering upon their revenues a hated court and aristocracy. Like her,
+they strove to maintain a strong government at home, but they did it
+when a strong government was the first of political blessings. Like
+her, they gathered and maintained vast armies; but those armies were
+composed of knights and barons who lived for war alone, not of
+peasants torn away from useful labour and condemned to the cruel task
+of perpetuating their own bondage by crushing the aspirations of
+another nationality. They sinned grievously, no doubt, but they sinned
+in the dim twilight of a half-barbarous age, not in the noonday blaze
+of modern civilization. The enthusiasm for mediaeval faith and
+simplicity which was so fervid some years ago has run its course, and
+is not likely soon to revive. He who reads the history of the Middle
+Ages will not deny that its heroes, even the best of them, were in
+some respects little better than savages. But when he approaches more
+recent times, and sees how, during the last three hundred years, kings
+have dealt with their subjects and with each other, he will forget the
+ferocity of the Middle Ages, in horror at the heartlessness, the
+treachery, the injustice all the more odious because it sometimes
+wears the mask of legality, which disgraces the annals of the military
+monarchies of Europe. With regard, however, to the pretensions of
+modern Austria, the truth is that this dispute about the worth of the
+old system has no bearing upon them at all. The day of imperial
+greatness was already past when Rudolf the first Hapsburg reached the
+throne; while during what may be called the Austrian period, from
+Maximilian to Francis II, the Holy Empire was to Germany a mere clog
+and incumbrance, which the unhappy nation bore because she knew not
+how to rid herself of it. The Germans are welcome to appeal to the old
+Empire to prove that they were once a united people. Nor is there any
+harm in their comparing the politics of the twelfth century with those
+of the nineteenth, although to argue from the one to the other seems
+to betray a want of historical judgment. But the one thing which is
+wholly absurd is to make Francis Joseph of Austria the successor of
+Frederick of Hohenstaufen, and justify the most sordid and ungenial of
+modern despotisms by the example of the mirror of mediaeval chivalry,
+the noblest creation of mediaeval thought.
+
+[Sidenote: Bearing of the Empire upon the progress of European
+civilization.]
+
+[Sidenote: Influence upon modern jurisprudence.]
+
+We are not yet far enough from the Empire to comprehend or state
+rightly its bearing on European progress. The mountain lies behind us,
+but miles must be traversed before we can take in at a glance its
+peaks and slopes and buttresses, picture its form, and conjecture its
+height. Of the perpetuation among the peoples of the West of the arts
+and literature of Rome it was both an effect and a cause, a cause only
+less powerful than the church. It would be endless to shew in how many
+ways it affected the political institutions of the Middle Ages, and
+through them of the whole civilized world. Most of the attributes of
+modern royalty, to take the most obvious instance, belonged originally
+and properly to the Emperor, and were borrowed from him by other
+monarchs. The once famous doctrine of divine right had the same
+origin. To the existence of the Empire is chiefly to be ascribed the
+prevalence of Roman law through Europe, and its practical importance
+in our own days. For while in Southern France and Central Italy, where
+the subject population greatly outnumbered their conquerors, the old
+system would have in any case survived, it cannot be doubted that in
+Germany, as in England, a body of customary Teutonic law would have
+grown up, had it not been for the notion that since the German monarch
+was the legitimate successor of Justinian, the Corpus Juris must be
+binding on all his subjects. This strange idea was received with a
+faith so unhesitating that even the aristocracy, who naturally
+disliked a system which the Emperors and the cities favoured, could
+not but admit its validity, and before the end of the Middle Ages
+Roman law prevailed through all Germany[426]. When it is considered
+how great are the services which German writers have rendered and
+continue to render to the study of scientific jurisprudence, this
+result will appear far from insignificant. But another of still wider
+import followed. When by the Peace of Westphalia a crowd of petty
+principalities were recognized as practically independent states, the
+need of a code to regulate their intercourse became pressing. That
+code Grotius and his successors formed out of what was then the
+private law of Germany, which thus became the foundation whereon the
+system of international jurisprudence has been built up during the
+last two centuries. That system is, indeed, entirely a German
+creation, and could have arisen in no country where the law of Rome
+had not been the fountain of legal ideas and the groundwork of
+positive codes. In Germany, too, was it first carried out in practice,
+and that with a success which is the best, some might say the only,
+title of the later Empire to the grateful remembrance of mankind.
+Under its protecting shade small princedoms and free cities lived
+unmolested beside states like Saxony and Bavaria; each member of the
+Germanic body feeling that the rights of the weakest of his brethren
+were also his own.
+
+[Sidenote: Influence of the Empire upon the history of the Church.]
+
+[Sidenote: Nature of the question at issue between the Emperors and
+the Popes.]
+
+The most important chapter in the history of the Empire is that which
+describes its relation to the Church and the Papacy. Of the
+ecclesiastical power it was alternately the champion and the enemy. In
+the ninth and tenth centuries the Emperors extended the dominion of
+Peter's chair: in the tenth and eleventh they rescued it from an abyss
+of guilt and shame to be the instrument of their own downfall. The
+struggle which Gregory the Seventh began, although it was political
+rather than religious, awoke in the Teutonic nations a hostility to
+the pretensions of the Romish court. That struggle ended, with the
+death of the last Hohenstaufen, in the victory of the priesthood, a
+victory whose abuse by the insolent and greedy pontiffs of the
+fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it more ruinous than a defeat.
+The anger which had long smouldered in the breasts of the northern
+nations of Europe burst out in the sixteenth with a violence which
+alarmed those whom it had hitherto defended, and made the Emperors
+once more the allies of the Popedom, and the partners of its declining
+fortunes. But the nature of that alliance and of the hostility which
+had preceded it must not be misunderstood. It is a natural, but not
+the less a serious error to suppose, as modern writers often seem to
+do, that the pretensions of the Empire and the Popedom were mutually
+exclusive; that each claimed all the rights, spiritual and secular, of
+a universal monarch. So far was this from being the case, that we find
+mediaeval writers and statesmen, even Emperors and Popes themselves,
+expressly recognizing a divinely appointed duality of government--two
+potentates, each supreme in the sphere of his own activity, Peter in
+things eternal, Caesar in things temporal. The relative position of the
+two does indeed in course of time undergo a signal alteration. In the
+days of Charles, the barbarous age of modern Europe, when men were and
+could not but be governed chiefly by physical force, the Emperor was
+practically, if not theoretically, the grander figure. Four centuries
+later, in the era of Pope Innocent the Third, when the power of ideas
+had grown stronger in the world, and was able to resist or to bend to
+its service the arms and the wealth of men, we see the balance
+inclined the other way. Spiritual authority is conceived of as being
+of a nature so high and holy that it must inspire and guide the civil
+administration. But it is not proposed to supplant that administration
+nor to degrade its head: the great struggle of the eleventh and two
+following centuries does not aim at the annihilation of one or other
+power, but turns solely upon the character of their connexion.
+Hildebrand, the typical representative of the Popedom, requires the
+obedience of the Emperor on the ground of his own personal
+responsibility for the souls of their common subjects: he demands, not
+that the functions of temporal government shall be directly committed
+to himself, but that they shall be exercised in conformity with the
+will of God, whereof he is the exponent. The imperialist party had no
+means of meeting this argument, for they could not deny the spiritual
+supremacy of the Pope, nor the transcendant importance of eternal
+salvation. They could therefore only protest that the Emperor, being
+also divinely appointed, was directly answerable to God, and remind
+the Pope that his kingdom was not of this world. There was in truth no
+way out of the difficulty, for it was caused by the attempt to sever
+things that admit of no severance, life in the soul and life in the
+world, life for the future and life in the present. What it is most
+pertinent to remark is that neither combatant pushed his theory to
+extremities, since he felt that his adversary's title rested on the
+same foundations as his own. The strife was keenest at the time when
+the whole world believed fervently in both powers; the alliance came
+when faith had forsaken the one and grown cold towards the other; from
+the Reformation onwards Empire and Popedom fought no longer for
+supremacy, but for existence. One is fallen already, the other shakes
+with every blast.
+
+[Sidenote: Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.]
+
+Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less
+momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward
+dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the
+Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the
+formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the
+concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious
+state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire.
+Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the
+connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and
+the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it
+took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually
+rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by
+it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness,
+and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier
+civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight
+upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that
+mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not
+the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman
+Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so
+by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a
+brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose
+sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
+
+[Sidenote: Principles adverse to the Empire.]
+
+As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic
+Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of
+which their forerunners of the elder Rome had triumphed,--those of
+Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles
+were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the
+emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary,
+Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism,
+menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded,
+after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in
+Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent
+principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few
+military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal
+kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on
+physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the
+hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than
+necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to
+crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free
+towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere
+of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the
+necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the
+same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld
+from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial
+absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual
+tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the
+proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the
+liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning
+the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet,
+should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
+
+[Sidenote: Change marked by its fall.]
+
+[Sidenote: Relations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.]
+
+Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changed the face of
+Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of
+every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old
+forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the
+most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the
+Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has
+been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest
+province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so
+long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom
+Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the
+possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the
+Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since
+Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of
+the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has
+now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize,
+with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy--efforts
+confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all
+but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general
+reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may
+be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent
+intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the
+character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant
+prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common
+interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the
+history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who
+studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible
+for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to
+repeat in modern Europe the part of ancient Rome: to gather into one
+vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more
+and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great
+measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that
+the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler
+than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after
+summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his
+treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Caesar found it
+the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless
+abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste,
+and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world,
+and even Caesar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The
+blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet
+with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a
+tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical
+night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations
+in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher
+aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Caesar had sprung
+up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national
+individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great
+founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second
+founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The
+work of the mediaeval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered,
+while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to
+replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them
+within the pale of civilization. It preserved the arts and literature
+of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its
+subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose
+watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national
+hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth.
+And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a
+centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable
+of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to
+that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above
+law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it
+is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what
+has been the tendency of events since A.D. 1789, and who remember how
+many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half
+redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of
+nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect
+form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is
+after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did
+not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions
+of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire
+gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to
+those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its
+existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian
+theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it
+perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and
+the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
+
+[Sidenote: Difficulties arising from the nature of the subject.]
+
+This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost
+inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from its extent but from its
+profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue
+we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of
+expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least
+possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single
+institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries--whose
+outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly
+changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the
+difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to
+explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as
+it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which
+we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a
+heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able
+to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts
+and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who
+see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition,
+planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from
+entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political
+philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth,
+analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures
+the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of
+tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the
+Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is
+impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but
+that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by
+men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations
+are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we
+should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Caesar
+when he laid the foundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when
+he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when
+they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding
+generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than
+we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is
+mediaeval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and
+understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much
+as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things
+less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the
+horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey
+onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it
+can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was
+gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[418] See Louis Napoleon's letter to General Forey, explaining the
+object of the expedition to Mexico.
+
+[419] One may also compare the retention of the office of consul at
+Rome till the time of Justinian: indeed it even survived his formal
+abolition. The relinquishment of the title 'King of Great Britain,
+France, and Ireland,' seriously distressed many excellent persons.
+
+[420] I speak, of course, of the Papacy as an autocratic power
+claiming a more than spiritual authority.
+
+[421] 'Ipsa enim ecclesia charior Deo est quam coelum. Non enim propter
+coelum ecclesia, sed e converso propter ecclesiam coelum.' From the
+tract entitled 'A Letter of the four Universities to Wenzel and Urban
+VIII,' quoted in an earlier chapter.
+
+[422] Von Raumer, _Geschichte der Hohenstaufen_, v.
+
+[423] Meaning thereby not the citizens of Rome in her republican days,
+but the Italo-Hellenic subjects of the Roman Empire.
+
+[424] Take, among many instances, those of the preface to Giesebrecht,
+_Die Deutsche Kaiserzeit_; and Rotteck and Welcker's _Staats Lexikon_.
+The German newspapers are indeed sufficient illustration.
+
+[425] See especially Von Sybel, _Die Deutsche Nation und das
+Kaiserreich_; and the answers of Ficker and Von Wydenbrugk.
+
+[426] Modified of course by the canon law, and not superseding the
+feudal law of land.
+
+[427] Mommsen, _Roemische Geschichte_, iii. _sub. fin._
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+NOTE A.
+
+ON THE BURGUNDIES.
+
+It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its
+application at different times to different districts, has caused, and
+continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may,
+therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of
+those applications. Without going into the minutiae of the subject, the
+following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most
+frequently to be met with:--
+
+I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (_regnum Burgundionum_), founded
+A.D. 406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone,
+from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half
+of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis in A.D. 534.
+
+II. The kingdom of Burgundy (_regnum Burgundiae_), mentioned
+occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality,
+confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of
+the older kingdom last named.
+
+III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (_regnum Provinciae seu
+Burgundiae_)--also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy--was founded by Boso in A.D. 877, and included
+Provence, Dauphine, the southern part of Savoy, and the country
+between the Saone and the Jura.
+
+IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (_regnum Iurense_, _Burgundia
+Transiurensis_), founded by Rudolf in A.D. 888, recognized in the same
+year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and
+all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
+
+V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (_regnum Burgundiae_, _regnum
+Arelatense_), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, in A.D.
+937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in
+1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by
+bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II
+(the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the
+thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now
+(since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss
+portion of it.
+
+VI. The Lesser Duchy (_Burgundia Minor_), (Klein Burgund),
+corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the
+Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV) _minus_
+the parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears
+from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the
+thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire till A.D. 1648,
+though practically independent long before that date.
+
+VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comte),
+(Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of
+Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the
+Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a
+fief of the Empire. The French dukes of Burgundy were invested with it
+in A.D. 1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
+
+VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western
+Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It
+was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned
+after the thirteenth century.
+
+IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division
+of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the
+Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the
+Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary,
+daughter of Charles the Bold.
+
+X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most
+northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a
+fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the
+Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles
+the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure
+history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in
+the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois
+historian, to the _Archiv fuer Schweizer Geschichte_. See also an
+admirable article in the _National Review_ for October 1860, entitled
+'The Franks and the Gauls.'
+
+
+NOTE B.
+
+ON THE RELATIONS TO THE EMPIRE OF THE KINGDOM OF DENMARK, AND THE
+DUCHIES OF SCHLESWIG AND HOLSTEIN.
+
+The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the
+Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great
+Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up
+with two questions properly quite distinct,--the first, as to the
+relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish
+crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish
+kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,--it has
+borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and
+interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half.
+Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as
+follows:--
+
+I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish
+Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their
+independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the
+Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and
+Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of
+Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time
+Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the
+treaty of A.D. 1865, a member of the German Confederation for
+Holstein.
+
+II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as
+Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana
+(Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum (wherein lay the town of
+Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great
+conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the
+southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire,
+erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad
+II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his
+suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time
+the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since
+the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined,
+and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to
+sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
+
+III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at
+this day of the North German Bund.
+
+
+NOTE C.
+
+ON CERTAIN IMPERIAL TITLES AND CEREMONIES.
+
+This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more
+than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use;
+for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time
+to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some
+clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of
+title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is
+very far from being a barren or a dull one.
+
+I. TITLES OF EMPERORS. Charles the Great styled himself 'Carolus
+serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator,
+Romanum (_or_ Romanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam
+Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
+
+Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply
+'Imperator Augustus.' Sometimes 'rex Francorum et Langobardorum' was
+added[428].
+
+Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
+
+A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome, 'rex,' or 'rex
+Francorum Orientalium,' or 'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;' after it,
+simply 'Imperator Augustus.' Otto III is usually said to have
+introduced the form 'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,' but some
+authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
+
+Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor
+till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion
+which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the
+sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown,
+began to call themselves 'reges Romanorum.' The title did not,
+however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose
+proclamations it occurs constantly.
+
+From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice
+was for the monarch to be called 'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,' till
+his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it, 'Romanorum Imperator
+semper Augustus.'
+
+In A.D. 1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the
+Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call
+himself 'Imperator electus' (erwaehlter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I
+(brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately
+upon their German coronation, and it was till A.D. 1806 their strict
+legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in
+proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was
+however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was
+addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice
+he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
+
+Maximilian added the title 'Germaniae rex,' which had never been known
+before, although the phrase 'rex Germanorum' may be found employed
+once or twice in early times. 'Rex Teutonicorum,' 'regnum
+Teutonicum[430],' occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A
+great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time.
+Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in
+virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
+
+It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the
+same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It
+is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous
+than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is
+given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and
+Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by
+new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with
+Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of
+King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times
+there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with
+a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and
+associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His
+office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature
+elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or
+the will of the people, rested on and represented pure legality. War
+could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people
+could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of
+God.
+
+II. THE CROWNS.
+
+Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were
+those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy,
+sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at
+Rome.
+
+The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the
+Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the
+Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it
+would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick
+I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most
+Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who
+obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal
+manner. But down to A.D. 1806, every Emperor bound himself by his
+capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
+
+It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was
+necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have
+been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For
+as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son
+of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany,
+so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not
+kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings
+of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save
+the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider
+rights remained in full force, and were never subsequently
+relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and
+absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself
+crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
+
+III. THE KING OF THE ROMANS (ROeMISCHER KOeNIG).
+
+It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the
+German monarch began to entitle himself 'Romanorum rex.' Now it was
+not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to
+be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the
+latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be
+remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not
+only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.)
+This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as
+Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and
+dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed
+against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as
+the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on
+the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor
+during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his
+successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and
+took the title of 'King of the Romans.' During the presence of the
+Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of
+Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at
+once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after
+the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before
+Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be
+crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch
+generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near
+relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts
+to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's
+death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
+
+The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of
+an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
+
+It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of
+Rome.
+
+
+NOTE D.
+
+LINES CONTRASTING THE PAST AND PRESENT OF ROME.
+
+ Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
+ Militia, populo, moenibus alta fui:
+ At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
+ Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
+ Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divum,
+ Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
+ Vix scio quae fuerim, vix Romae Roma recordor;
+ Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
+ Gratior haec iactura mihi successibus illis;
+ Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
+ Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Caesare Petrus,
+ Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
+ Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
+ Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
+ Tunc miserae plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
+ Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
+
+Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of
+Tours (born A.D. 1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,
+_Patrologiae Cursus Completus_[436].
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[428] Waitz (_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_) says that the phrase
+'semper Augustus' may be found in the times of the Carolingians, but
+not in official documents.
+
+[429] There is some reason to think that towards the end of the Empire
+people had begun to fancy that 'erwaehlter' did not mean 'elect,' but
+'elective.' Cf. note 410, p. 362.
+
+[430] These expressions seem to have been intended to distinguish the
+kingdom of the Eastern or Germanic Franks from that of the Western or
+Gallicized Franks (Francigenae), which having been for some time
+'regnum Francorum Occidentalium,' grew at last to be simply 'regnum
+Franciae,' the East Frankish kingdom being swallowed up in the Empire.
+
+[431] It is right to remark that what is stated here can be taken as
+only generally and probably true: so great are the discrepancies among
+even the most careful writers on the subject, and so numerous the
+forgeries of a later age, which are to be found among the genuine
+documents of the early Empire. Goldast's _Collections_, for instance,
+are full of forgeries and anachronisms. Detailed information may be
+found in Pfeffinger, Moser, and Puetter, and in the host of writers to
+whom they refer.
+
+[432] We in England may be thought to have made some slight movement
+in the same direction by calling the united great council of the Three
+Kingdoms the Imperial Parliament.
+
+[433] Although to be sure the Burgundian dominions had all passed from
+the Emperor to France, the kingdom of Sardinia, and the Swiss
+Confederation.
+
+[434] Nevertheless, Otto II was crowned Emperor, and reigned for some
+time along with his father, under the title of 'Co-Imperator.' So
+Lothar I was associated in the Empire with Lewis the Pious, as Lewis
+himself had been crowned in the lifetime of Charles. Many analogies to
+the practice of the Romano-Germanic Empire in this respect might be
+adduced from the history of the old Roman, as well as of the Byzantine
+Empire.
+
+[435] Maximilian had obtained this title, 'Emperor Elect,' from the
+Pope. Ferdinand took it as of right, and his successors followed the
+example.
+
+[436] See note 326, p. 270.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+ A.
+
+ Aachen, 72, 77, 86, 148, 212, 316 note, 403.
+
+ ADALBERT (St.), 245; the church founded at Rome to receive
+ his ashes, 286.
+
+ ADELHEID (Queen of Italy), account of her adventures, 83.
+
+ ADOLF of Nassau, 221, 222, 262.
+
+ ADSO, his _Vita Antichristi_, 114 note.
+
+ AISTULF the Lombard, 39.
+
+ ALARIC, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 19.
+
+ ALBERIC (consul or senator), 83.
+
+ ALBERT I (son of Rudolf of Hapsburg), 221, 224, 262.
+
+ Albigenses, revolt of the, 241.
+
+ ALBOIN, his invasion of Italy, 36.
+
+ ALCUIN of York, 59, 66, 96, 201.
+
+ ALEXANDER III (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 170;
+ their meeting at Venice, 171.
+
+ ALFONSO of Castile, his double election with Richard of
+ England, 212, 229.
+
+ America, discovery of, 311.
+
+ ANASTASIUS, his account of the coronation of Charles, 55.
+
+ ANGELO (Michael), rebuilding of the Capitol by, 295.
+
+ Antichrist, views respecting, in the earlier Middle Ages,
+ 114 note; in later times, 334.
+
+ Architecture, Roman, 48, 290; analogy between it and the
+ civil and ecclesiastical constitution, 296; preservation of
+ an antique character in both, 296.
+
+ ARDOIN (Marquis of Ivrea), 149.
+
+ Aristocracy, barbarism of the, in the Middle Ages, 289;
+ struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against the, 388.
+
+ Arles; _see_ Burgundy.
+
+ ARNOLD of Brescia, Rome under, 174, 252, 276; put to death
+ at the instance of Pope Hadrian, 278, 299 note.
+
+ ARNULF (Emperor), 78.
+
+ ATHANARIC, 17.
+
+ ATHANASIUS, the triumph of, 12.
+
+ ATHAULF the Visigoth, his thoughts and purposes respecting
+ the Roman Empire, 19, 30.
+
+ Augsburg, 259; treaty of, 334.
+
+ AUGUSTINE, 94.
+
+ Aulic Council, the, 340, 342 note.
+
+ Austria, privilege of, 199; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 381.
+
+ Austrian succession, war of the, 352.
+
+ Avignon, exactions of the court of, 219; its subservience
+ to France, 219, 243.
+
+ AVITUS, letter of, on Sigismund's behalf, 18.
+
+
+ B.
+
+ Barbarians, feared by the Romans, 14; Roman armies largely
+ composed of, 14; admitted to Roman titles and honours, 15;
+ their feelings towards the Roman Empire, 16; their desire
+ to preserve its institutions, 17; value of the Roman
+ officials and Christian bishops to the, 19.
+
+ BARTOLOMMEO (San), the church of, 287.
+
+ BASIL the Macedonian and Lewis II, 191.
+
+ 'Basileus,' the title of, 143, 191.
+
+ Basilica, erected at Aachen by Charles the Great, 76 note.
+
+ BELISARIUS, his war with the Ostrogoths, 29, 273.
+
+ Bell-tower, or campanile, in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ BENEDICT of Soracte, 51 note.
+
+ BENEDICT VIII (Pope), alleged decree of, 197.
+
+ Benevento, the Annals of, 150.
+
+ BERENGAR of Friuli, 82; his death, 83.
+
+ BERENGAR II (King of Italy), 83.
+
+ BERNARD (St.), 109 note.
+
+ Bible, rights of the Empire proved from the, 112;
+ perversion of its meaning, 114.
+
+ Bohemia, acquired by Luxemburg A. D. 1309, 222; the king
+ of, an elector, 230.
+
+ BONIFACE VIII (Pope), his extravagant pretensions, 109,
+ 247; declares himself Vicar of the Empire, 219 note.
+
+ BOSO, 81, 395.
+
+ Bosphorus, removal of the seat of government to the, 154.
+
+ Britain, abandoned by Imperial Government, 24; Roman Civil
+ Law not forgotten in, at a late date, 32; Roman ensigns and
+ devices in, 258.
+
+ Buildings, the old, destruction and alteration of, by
+ invaders, 291; by the Romans of the Middle Ages, 292; by
+ modern restorers of churches, 292.
+
+ Bull, the Golden, of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Burgundy, the kingdom of, Otto's policy towards, 143; added
+ to the Empire under Conrad II, 151; effect of its loss on
+ the Empire, 305; confusion caused by the name, 395; ten
+ senses in which it is met with, 395-7.
+
+ Byzantium, effect of the removal of the seat of power to,
+ 9; Otto's policy towards, 141; attitude towards Emperor,
+ 189.
+
+
+ C.
+
+ Campanile; _see_ Bell-tower.
+
+ Canon law, correspondence between it and the Corpus Juris
+ Civilis, 101; its consolidation by Gregory IX, 112, 217.
+
+ CAPET (Hugh), 142.
+
+ Capitol, rebuilding of the, by Michael Angelo, 295.
+
+ Capitulary of A. D. 802, 65.
+
+ CARACALLA (Emperor), effect of his edict, 6.
+
+ Carolingian Emperors, 76.
+
+ Carolingian Empire of the West, its end in A. D. 888, 78;
+ Florus the Deacon's lament over its dissolution, 85 note.
+
+ Carroccio, the, 178 note, 328.
+
+ Cathari and other heretics, spread of, 241.
+
+ Catholicity or Romanism, 94, 106.
+
+ Celibacy, enforcement of, 158.
+
+ Cenci, name of, 289 note.
+
+ CHARLEMAGNE; _see_ Charles I.
+
+ CHARLES I (the Great), extinguishes the Lombard kingdom,
+ 41; is received with honours by Pope Hadrian and the
+ people, 41; his personal ambition, 42; his treatment of
+ Pope Leo III, 44; title of 'Champion of the Faith and
+ Defender of the Holy See' conferred upon, 47; crowned at
+ Rome, 48; important consequences of his coronation, 50, 52;
+ its real meaning, 52, 80, 81; contemporary accounts, 53,
+ 64, 65, 84; their uniformity, 56; illegality of the
+ transaction, 56; three theories respecting it held four
+ centuries after, 57; was the coronation a surprise? 58; his
+ reluctance to assume the imperial title, 60; solution
+ suggested by Doellinger, 60; seeks the hand of Irene, 61;
+ defect of his imperial title, 61; theoretically the
+ successor of the whole Eastern line of Emperors, 62, 63;
+ has nothing to fear from Byzantine Princes, 63; his
+ authority in matters ecclesiastical, 64; presses Hadrian to
+ declare Constantine VI a heretic, 64; his spiritual
+ despotism applauded by subsequent Popes, 64; importance
+ attached by him to the Imperial name, 65; issues a
+ Capitulary, 65; draws closer the connexion of Church and
+ State, 66; new position in civil affairs acquired with the
+ Imperial title, 67, 68, 69; his position as Frankish king,
+ 69, 70; partial failure of his attempt to breathe a
+ Teutonic spirit into Roman forms, 70, 71; his personal
+ habits and sympathies, 71; groundlessness of the claims of
+ the modern French to, 71; the conception of his Empire
+ Roman, not Teutonic, 72; his Empire held together by the
+ Church, 73; appreciation of his character generally, 73,
+ 74; impress of his mind on mediaeval society, 74; buried at
+ Aachen, 74; inscription on his tomb, 74; canonised as a
+ saint, 75; his plan of Empire, 76.
+
+ CHARLES II (the BALD), 77, 156, 157.
+
+ CHARLES III (the FAT), 78, 81.
+
+ CHARLES IV, 223; his electoral constitution, 225; his
+ Golden Bull, 225, 236; general results of his policy, 236;
+ his object through life, 236; the University of Prague
+ founded by, 237; welcomed into Italy by Petrarch, 254.
+
+ CHARLES V, accession of, 319; casts in his lot with the
+ Catholics, 321; the momentous results, 322; failure of his
+ repressive policy, 322.
+
+ CHARLES VI, 348, 351, 352.
+
+ CHARLES VII, his disastrous reign, 351.
+
+ CHARLES VIII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples
+ and Milan, 315.
+
+ CHARLES MARTEL, 36, 38.
+
+ CHARLES of Valois, 223.
+
+ CHARLES the BOLD and Frederick III, 249.
+
+ CHEMNITZ, his comments on the condition and prospects of
+ the Empire, 339.
+
+ CHILDERIC, his deposition by the Holy See, 39.
+
+ Chivalry, the orders of, 250.
+
+ Church, the, opposed by the Emperors, 10; growth of, 10;
+ alliance of, with the State, 10, 66, 107, 387; organization
+ of, framed on the model of the secular administration, 11;
+ the Emperor the head of, 12; maintains the Imperial idea,
+ 13; attitude of Charles the Great towards, 65, 66; the bond
+ that holds together the Empire of Charles, 73; first gives
+ men a sense of unity, 92; how regarded in Middle Ages, 92,
+ 370; draws tighter all bonds of outward union, 94; unity
+ of, felt to be analogous to that of the Empire, 93; becomes
+ the exact counterpart of the Empire, 99, 101, 107, 328;
+ position of, in Germany, 128; Otto's position towards, 129;
+ effect of the Reformation upon, 327; influence of the
+ Empire upon the history of, 384.
+
+ Churches, national, 95, 330.
+
+ Churches of Rome, destruction of old buildings by modern
+ restorers of, 292; mosaics and bell-tower in the, 294.
+
+ Cities, in Lombardy, 175; growth of in Germany, 179; their
+ power, 223.
+
+ Civil law, revival of the study of, 172; its study
+ forbidden by the Popes in the thirteenth century, 253.
+
+ CIVILIS, the Batavian, 17.
+
+ Clergy, aversion of the Lombards to the, 37; their idea of
+ political unity, 96; their power in the eleventh century,
+ 128; Gregory VII's condemnation of feudal investitures to
+ the, 158; their ambition and corruption in the later Middle
+ Age, 290.
+
+ CLOVIS, his desire to preserve the institutions of the
+ Empire, 17, 30; his unbroken success, 35.
+
+ Coins, papal, 278 note.
+
+ COLONNA (John), Petrarch's letters to, 270 and note; the
+ family of, 281.
+
+ Commons, the, 132, 314.
+
+ Concordat of Worms, 163.
+
+ Confederation of the Rhine, provisions of the, 362.
+
+ CONRAD I (King of the East Franks), 122, 226.
+
+ CONRAD II, the reign of, 151; comparison between the
+ prerogative at his accession and at the death of Henry V,
+ 165; the crown of Burgundy first gained by, 194.
+
+ CONRAD III, 165, 277.
+
+ CONRAD IV, 210.
+
+ CONRADIN (Frederick II's grandson), murder of, 211.
+
+ Constance, the Council of, 220, 253, 301; the peace of,
+ signed by Frederick I, 178.
+
+ CONSTANTINE, his vigorous policy, 8; the Donation of, 43,
+ 100, 288 note.
+
+ Constantinople, capture of, 303, 311.
+
+ Coronations, ceremonies at, 112; the four, gone through by
+ the Emperors, 193, 403; their meaning, 195; churches in
+ which they were performed, 284, 288.
+
+ Corpus Juris Civilis, correspondence between, and the Canon
+ Law, 101.
+
+ Councils, General, right of Emperors to summon, 111.
+
+ Counts Palatine, Otto's institution of, 125.
+
+ CRESCENTIUS, 146.
+
+ Crown, the Imperial, the right to confer, 57, 61, 81; not
+ legally attached to Frankish crown or nation, 81; how
+ treated by the Popes, 82.
+
+ Crowns, the four, 193, 403.
+
+ Crusades, the, 164, 166, 179, 193, 205, 209.
+
+
+ D.
+
+ DANTE, 208; his attitude towards the Empire, 255; his
+ treatise _De Monarchia_, 262; sketch of its argument, 264
+ et seq.; its omissions, 268, 299.
+
+ Dark Ages, existing relics of the, 294.
+
+ Decretals, the False, 156.
+
+ Denmark, and the Slaves, 143; imperial authority in, 184;
+ its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ Diet, the, 126, 314, 353; its rights as settled A. D. 1648,
+ 340; its altered character A. D. 1654, 344; its triflings,
+ 353.
+
+ DIOCLETIAN, his vigorous policy, 8.
+
+ Divine right of the Emperor, 246.
+
+ DOeLLINGER (Dr.), 60 note.
+
+ Dominicans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Donation of Constantine, forgery of the, 43, 100, 118 note,
+ 261 note.
+
+ Dukes, the, in Germany, 125.
+
+
+ E.
+
+ East, imperial pretensions in the, 189.
+
+ Eastern Church, the, 191.
+
+ Eastern Empire, its relations with the Western, 24, 25;
+ decay of its power in the West, 45; how regarded by the
+ Popes, 46.
+
+ Edict of Caracalla, 6.
+
+ EDWARD II (King of England), his declaration of England's
+ independence of the Empire, 187.
+
+ EDWARD III (King of England) and Lewis the Bavarian, 187;
+ his election against Charles IV, 223.
+
+ EGINHARD, his statement respecting Charles's coronation,
+ 58, 60.
+
+ Elective constitution, the, 227; difficulty of maintaining
+ the principle in practice, 233; its object the choice of
+ the fittest man, 233; restraint of the sovereign, 233;
+ recognition of the popular will, 234.
+
+ Elector, the title of, its advantage, 232 note; personages
+ upon whom it was conferred by Napoleon, 232.
+
+ Electoral body in primitive times, 226.
+
+ Electoral function, conception of the, 235.
+
+ Electorate, the Eighth, 231; the Ninth, 231.
+
+ Electors, the Seven, 165, 229; their names and offices, 230
+ note; the question of their vote, 257 note.
+
+ Emperor, the position of, in the second century, 5, 6; the
+ head of the Church, 12, 23, 111; sanctity of the name, 22,
+ 120; correspondence between his position and functions and
+ those of the Pope, 104; proofs from mediaeval documents,
+ 109; and from the coronation ceremonies, 112; illustrations
+ from mediaeval art, 116; nature of his power, 120; fusion of
+ his functions with those of German King, 127; his office
+ feudalized, 130; attitude of Byzantine Emperors towards,
+ 189; his dignities and titles, 193, 257, 261, 400; the
+ title not assumed till the Roman coronation, 196; origin
+ and results of this practice, 196; policy of, 222; his
+ office as peace-maker, 244, 245; divine right of the, 246;
+ his right of creating kings, 249; his international place
+ at the Council of Constance, 253; change in titles of, 316;
+ his rights as settled A.D. 1648, 340; altered meaning of
+ the word now-a-days, 402.
+
+ Emperors, meaning of their four coronations, 193, 195, 403;
+ persons eligible as, 251; after Henry VII, 263; their
+ short-sighted policy towards Rome, 277; their visits to
+ Rome, 282; their approach, 283; their entrance, 284;
+ hostility of the Pope and people to the, 284; their
+ burial-places, 287 note; nature of the question at issue
+ between the Popes and the, 385; their titles, 400.
+
+ Emperors, Carolingian, 76.
+
+ Emperors, Franconian, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Hapsburg, beginning of their influence in
+ Germany, 310; their policy, 305, 348; repeated attempts to
+ set them aside, 350; causes of the long retention of the
+ throne by the, 349; modern pretensions of, 368, 381.
+
+ Emperors, Italian, 80.
+
+ Emperors, Saxon, 133.
+
+ Emperors, Swabian or Hohenstaufen, 57, 165, 167.
+
+ Emperors, Teutonic, defects in their title, 61; their
+ short-sighted policy, 277; their memorials in Rome, 286;
+ names of those buried in Italy, 287 note; their struggles
+ against nationality, aristocracy, and popular freedom, 388.
+
+ Empire, the Roman, growth of despotism in, 5; obliteration
+ of national distinctions in, 6; unity of, threatened from
+ without and from within, 7, 8; preserved for a time by the
+ policy of Diocletian and Constantine, 8, 9; partition of,
+ 9; influence of the Church in supporting, 13; armies of,
+ composed of barbarians, 15; how regarded by the barbarians,
+ 16; belief in eternity of, 20; reunion of Italy to, 29; its
+ influence in the Transalpine provinces, 30; influence of
+ religion and jurisprudence in supporting, 31, 32; belief
+ in, not extinct in the eighth century, 44; restoration of
+ by Charles the Great, 48; the 'translation' of the, 52,
+ 111, 175, 218; divided between the grandsons of Charles,
+ 77; dissolution of, 78; ideal state supposed to be embodied
+ in, 99; never, strictly speaking, restored, 102.
+
+ Empire, the Holy Roman, created by Otto the Great, 80, 103;
+ a prolongation of the Empire of Charles, 80; wherein it
+ differed therefrom, 80; motives for establishment of, 84;
+ identical with Holy Roman Church, 106; its rights proved
+ from the Bible, 112; its anti-national character, 120; its
+ union with the German kingdom, 122; dissimilarity between
+ the two, 127; results of the union, 128; its pretensions in
+ Hungary, 183; in Poland, 184; in Denmark, 184; in France,
+ 185; in Sweden, 185; in Spain, 185; in England, 186; in
+ Naples, 188; in Venice, 188; in the East, 189; the epithet
+ 'Holy' applied by Frederick I, 199; origin and meaning of
+ epithet, 200; its fall with Frederick II, 210; Italy lost
+ to, 211; change in its position, 214; its continuance due
+ to its connexion with the German kingdom, 214; its
+ relations with the Papacy, 153, 155, 216; its financial
+ distress, 223; theory of, in the fourteenth and fifteenth
+ centuries, 238; its duties as an international judge and
+ mediator, 244; why an international power, 248;
+ illustrations, 249; attitude of new learning towards, 251,
+ 254, 256; doctrine of its rights and functions never
+ carried out in fact, 253; end of its history in Italy, 263,
+ 304; relation between it and the city, 297; reaches its
+ lowest point in Frederick III's reign, 301; its loss of
+ Burgundy, 305, and of Switzerland, 306; change in its
+ character, 308, 313; effects of the Renaissance upon, 312;
+ effects of the Reformation upon, 319, 325; its influence
+ upon the name and associations of, 332; narrowing of its
+ bounds, 341; causes of the continuance of, 344; its
+ relation to the balance of power, 345; its position in
+ Europe, 346; its last phase, 352; signs of its approaching
+ fall, 356; its end, 363; the desire for its
+ re-establishment, 364; unwillingness of certain states,
+ 364; technically never extinguished, 364 note; summary of
+ its nature and results, 366; claim of Austria to represent,
+ 368; of France, 368; of Russia, 368; of Greece, 368; of the
+ Turks, 368; parallel between the Papacy and, 369, 373;
+ never truly mediaeval, 373; sense in which it was Roman,
+ 374; its condition in the tenth century, 374; essential
+ principles of, 377; its influence on Germany, 378; Austria
+ as heir of, 381; its bearing on the progress of Europe,
+ 383; ways in which it affected the political institutions
+ of the Middle Ages, 383; its influence upon modern
+ jurisprudence, 383; upon the history of the Church, 384;
+ influence of its inner life on the minds of men, 387;
+ principles adverse to, 388; change marked by its fall, 389;
+ its relations to the nationalities of Europe, 390;
+ difficulty of fully understanding, 392.
+
+ Empire and Papacy, interdependence of, 101; consequences,
+ 102; struggle between, 153; their relations, 155, 216;
+ parallel between, 369; compared as perpetuation of a name,
+ 372.
+
+ Empire Western, last days of the, 24; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Empire, French, under Napoleon, 360.
+
+ ENGELBERT, 113 note.
+
+ England, 45; Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperors in, 186; vague notion that it
+ must depend on the Empire, 186; imperial pretensions
+ towards, 187; position of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; feudalism in, 343.
+
+ Estate, Third, did not exist in time of Otto the Great,
+ 132.
+
+ EUDES (Count of Champagne), 151.
+
+ Europe, bearing of the Empire on the progress of, 383; on
+ the nationalities of, 390.
+
+
+ F.
+
+ False Decretals, the, 156.
+
+ FERDINAND I, 316 note, 323, 401.
+
+ FERDINAND II, accession of, 335; his plans, 335; deprives
+ the Palsgrave Frederick of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ Feudal aristocracy, power of the, 221.
+
+ Feudal king, his peculiar relation to his tenants, 124.
+
+ Feudalism, 90, 123; reason of its firm grasp upon society,
+ 124; hostility between it and imperialism, 131; its results
+ in France, 343; in England, 343; in Germany, 344; struggles
+ of the Teutonic Emperors against, 388.
+
+ Financial distress of the Empire, 223.
+
+ FLORUS the Deacon's lament over the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 85 note.
+
+ Fontenay, battle of, 77.
+
+ France, modern, dates from Hugh Capet, 142; imperial
+ authority exercised in, 185; her irritation at Germany's
+ precedence, 185; growth of the regal power in, as compared
+ with Germany, 215; alliance of the Protestants with, 325;
+ territory gained by treaties of Westphalia, 341; feudalism
+ in, 343; under Napoleon, 360; her claim to represent the
+ Roman Empire, 368, 376.
+
+ Francia occidentalis, given to Charles the Bald, 77.
+
+ FRANCIS I, reign of, 351.
+
+ FRANCIS II, accession of, 356; resignation of imperial
+ crown by, 1, 363.
+
+ Franciscans, the order of, 205.
+
+ Franconia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Franconian Emperors, 133.
+
+ 'Frank,' sense in which the name was used, 142 note.
+
+ Franks, rise of the, 34; success of their arms, 35;
+ Catholics from the first, 36; their greatness chiefly due
+ to the clergy, 36; enter Rome, 48.
+
+ Franks, the West, Otto's policy towards, 142.
+
+ Frankfort, synod held at, 64; coronations at, 316 note,
+ 404.
+
+ FREDERICK I (Barbarossa), his brilliant reign, 167, 179;
+ his relations to the Popedom, 167; his contest with Pope
+ Hadrian IV, 169, 316; incident at their meeting on the way
+ to Rome, 314 note; his contest with Pope Alexander III,
+ 170; their meeting at Venice, 171; magnificent ascriptions
+ of dignity to, 173; assertion of his prerogative in Italy,
+ 174; his version of the 'Translation of the Empire,' 175;
+ his dealings with the rebels of Milan and Tortona, 175; his
+ temporary success, 177; victory of the Lombards over, 178;
+ his prosperity as German king, 178; his glorious life and
+ happy death, 179; legend respecting him, 180; extent of his
+ jurisdiction, 182; his dominion in the East, 189; his
+ letter to Saladin, 189; anecdote of, 214.
+
+ FREDERICK II, character of, 207; events of his struggle
+ with the Papacy, 209; results of his reign, 221; the charge
+ of heresy against, 251 note; memorials left by, in Rome,
+ 287.
+
+ FREDERICK III, abases himself before the Romish court, 220;
+ Charles the Bold seeks an arrangement with, 249; his
+ calamitous reign, 301.
+
+ FREDERICK (Count Palatine and King of Bohemia), deprived by
+ Ferdinand II of his electoral vote, 231.
+
+ FREDERICK of Prussia (the Great), 347, 352, 353 note.
+
+ Freedom popular, growth of, 240; struggles of the Teutonic
+ Emperors against, 388.
+
+
+ G.
+
+ Gallic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ Gauverfassung, the so-called, 123.
+
+ GERBERT (Pope Sylvester II), 146.
+
+ 'German Emperor,' the title of, 127, 317.
+
+ Germanic constitution, the, 221; influence upon, of the
+ theory of the Empire as an international power, 307;
+ attempted reforms of, 313; means by which it was proposed
+ to effect them, 314; causes of their failure, 314.
+
+ Germany, beginning of the national existence of, 77;
+ chooses Arnulf as king, 78; overrun by Hungarians, 79;
+ establishment of monarchy in, by Henry the Fowler, 79;
+ desires the restoration of the Carolingian Empire, 86;
+ position of in the tenth century, 122; union of the Empire
+ with, 122; results of the union, 128; dissimilarity of the
+ two systems, 127; feudalism in, 123; the feudal polity of,
+ generally, 125; nature of the history of, till the twelfth
+ century, 126; princes of, ally themselves with the Pope
+ against the Emperor, 162; its hatred of the Romish Court,
+ 169; the position of under Frederick Barbarossa, 179;
+ growth of towns in, 179, 223; decline of imperial power in,
+ 211; state of during Great Interregnum, 213; decline of
+ regal power in, 215; encroachments of nobles in, 221, 228;
+ kingdom of, not originally elective, 225; how it ultimately
+ became elective, 226; changes in the constitution of, 228;
+ its weakness as compared with other states of Europe, 302;
+ its loss of imperial territories, 303; its internal
+ weakness, 306; position of the Emperor in, compared with
+ that of his predecessors in Europe, 309; beginning of the
+ Hapsburg influence in, 310; first consciousness of its
+ nationality, 315; destruction of its State-system, 324; its
+ troubles, 324; finally severed from Rome, 340; after the
+ peace of Westphalia, 342; effect of a number of petty
+ independent states upon, 343; feudalism in, 343; its
+ political life in the eighteenth century, 345; foreign
+ thrones acquired by its princes, 346; French aggression
+ upon, 346; its weakness and stagnation, 347; popular
+ feeling in at the close of eighteenth century, 354;
+ Napoleon in, 361; changes in, by war of 1866, 365 note;
+ influence of the Holy Empire on, 378.
+
+ GERSON, chancellor of Paris, plans of, 301.
+
+ Ghibeline, the name of, 304.
+
+ GOETHE, 236 note, 316 note, 356.
+
+ Golden Bull of Charles IV, 225, 230, 236.
+
+ Goths, wisest and least cruel of the Germanic family, 28;
+ Arian Goths regarded as enemies by Catholic Italians, 29.
+
+ Greece, her influence in the fifteenth and sixteenth
+ centuries, 240, 252; her claim to represent the Roman
+ Empire, 368.
+
+ Greeks and Latins, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Greeks, effect of their hostility upon the Teutonic Empire,
+ 210.
+
+ GREGORY THE GREAT, fame of his sanctity and writings, 31;
+ means by which he advanced Rome's ecclesiastical authority,
+ 154.
+
+ GREGORY II (Pope), reason of his reluctance to break with
+ the Byzantine princes, 102.
+
+ GREGORY III (Pope) appeals to Charles Martel for succour
+ against the Lombards, 39.
+
+ GREGORY V (Pope), 146.
+
+ GREGORY VII (Pope), his condemnation of feudal investitures
+ to the clergy, 158; war between him and Henry IV, 159; his
+ letter to William the Conqueror, 160; passage in his second
+ excommunication of Henry, 161; results of the struggle
+ between them, 162; his death, 162; his theory as to the
+ rights of the Pope with respect to the election of
+ Emperors, 217; his silence about the Translation of the
+ Empire, 218; his simile between the Empire and the Popedom,
+ 373; his demands on the Emperor, 386.
+
+ GREGORY IX (Pope), Canon law consolidated by, 102; receives
+ the title of 'Justinian of the Church,' 102.
+
+ GREGORY X (Pope), 219.
+
+ GROTIUS, 384.
+
+ Guelf, the name of, 304.
+
+ GUIDO, or GUY, of Spoleto, 82.
+
+ GUISCARD, Robert, 292.
+
+ GUNDOBALD the Burgundian, 25.
+
+ GUNTHER of Schwartzburg, 222.
+
+ GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, 336.
+
+
+ H.
+
+ HADRIAN I (Pope), summons Charles (the Great) to resist the
+ Lombards, 41; motives of his policy, 42; his allusion to
+ Constantine's Donation, 118 note.
+
+ HADRIAN IV (Pope), Frederick I's contest with, 169, 285;
+ his pretensions, 197.
+
+ HALLAM, his view of the grant of a Roman dignity to Clovis,
+ 30 note.
+
+ Hanseatic Confederacy, 223, 347.
+
+ Hapsburg, the castle of, 213 note.
+
+ HAROLD the BLUE-TOOTHED, 143.
+
+ HENRY I (the Fowler), 79, 122, 132, 226.
+
+ HENRY II crowned Emperor, 149.
+
+ HENRY II (King of France), assumes the title of 'Protector
+ of the German Liberties,' 325.
+
+ HENRY II (King of England), his submissive tone towards
+ Frederick I, 186.
+
+ HENRY III, power of the Empire at its meridian under, 151;
+ his reform of the Popedom, 152; fatal results of his
+ encroachments, 152; his death, 152.
+
+ HENRY IV, election of, 226 note; war between him and
+ Gregory VII, 159; his humiliation, 159; results of the
+ struggle, 162; his death, 162.
+
+ HENRY V (Emperor), his claims over ecclesiastics, 163; his
+ quarrel with Pope Paschal II, 163; his perilous position,
+ 163; comparison between the prerogative at his death and
+ that at the accession of Conrad II, 165; tumults produced
+ by his coronation, 285.
+
+ HENRY V (King of England) refuses submission to the Emperor
+ Sigismund, 187.
+
+ HENRY VI, 188; his proposal to unite Naples and Sicily to
+ the Empire, 206; opposition to the scheme, 206; his
+ untimely death, 206.
+
+ HENRY VII, 221, 223; in Italy, 262; his death, 263.
+
+ HENRY VIII (King of England), 334 note.
+
+ Hessen-Cassel, Elector of, dethroned, 232.
+
+ HILARY, feelings of, towards the Roman Empire, 21 note.
+
+ HILDEBERT (Bishop of Caen), his lines contrasting the past
+ and present of Rome, 406.
+
+ HILDEBRAND; _see_ Gregory VII.
+
+ HIPPOLYTUS a Lapide, the treatise of, 339.
+
+ Hohenstaufen; _see_ Emperors, Swabian.
+
+ Hohenstaufen, the castle of, 165 note.
+
+ Holland, declared independent, 342.
+
+ Holstein, its relations to the Empire, 398.
+
+ HUGH CAPET, 42.
+
+ HUGH of Burgundy, 83.
+
+ Hungarians, the, 143.
+
+ Hungary, imperial authority exercised in, 183; its
+ connexion with the Hapsburgs, 184 note.
+
+ HUSS, the writings of, 241.
+
+
+ I.
+
+ Iconoclastic controversy, 38.
+
+ 'Imperator electus,' the title of, 316, 405.
+
+ Imperialism, Roman, French, and Mediaeval, 375.
+
+ Imperial titles and ceremonies, 193, 400.
+
+ INNOCENT III (Pope), his exertions on behalf of Otto IV,
+ 206; his pretensions, 209, 217; his struggle with Frederick
+ II, 208.
+
+ INNOCENT X and the sacred number Seven of the electors, 227
+ note; his protest against the Peace of Westphalia, 341.
+
+ International power, the need of an, 242; why the Roman
+ Empire an, 248.
+
+ Interregnum, the Great, frightful state of Germany during,
+ 213; enables the feudal aristocracy to extend their power,
+ 221.
+
+ Investitures, the struggle of the, 162.
+
+ IRENE (Empress), behaviour of, 47, 61, 68.
+
+ Irminsul, overthrow of, by Charles the Great, 69; meaning
+ of term, 69 note.
+
+ Italian Emperors, 80.
+
+ Italian nationality, era at which its first rudiments
+ appeared, 140.
+
+ Italians, modern, their feelings towards Rome, 299.
+
+ Italy, under Odoacer, 26, 27; attempt of Theodoric to
+ establish a national monarchy in, 27; reconquered by
+ Justinian, 29; harassed by the Lombards, 37; condition of,
+ previous to Otto's descent into, 80; Otto the Great's first
+ expedition into, 84; its connexion with Germany, 87; Otto's
+ rule in, 139; liberties of the northern cities of, 150;
+ Frederick I in, 174; Henry VII in, 263; lost to the Empire,
+ 211, 304; names of Emperors buried in, 287 note; the nation
+ at the present day, 389.
+
+ Italy, Southern, 150.
+
+
+ J.
+
+ JOHN VIII (Pope), 156.
+
+ JOHN XII (Pope), crowns Otto the Great, 87; plots against
+ him, 134; his reprobate life, 134; Liudprand's list of the
+ charges against, 135; letter recounting them sent to him,
+ 136; his reply, 136; Otto's answer, 136; deposed by Otto,
+ 137; regret of the Romans at his expulsion, 137; his return
+ and death, 138.
+
+ JOHN XXII (Pope), his conflict with Lewis IV, 220.
+
+ JOSEPH II, reign of, 352.
+
+ JULIUS CAESAR, 390, 392.
+
+ JULIUS II (Pope), 316.
+
+ Jurisprudence, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31;
+ aversion of the Romish court to the ancient, 252; influence
+ of the Empire on modern, 383.
+
+ Jurists, their attitude towards imperialism, 256.
+
+ JUSTINIAN, Italy reconquered by, 29; study of the
+ legislation of, 240, 256.
+
+ 'Justinian of the Church,' title of, conferred on Gregory
+ IX, 102.
+
+ Jutland, Otto penetrates into, 143.
+
+
+ K.
+
+ Kings, the Emperor's right of creating, 249.
+
+ Knighthood, analogy between priesthood and, 250.
+
+
+ L.
+
+ LACTANTIUS, his belief in the eternity of the Roman Empire,
+ 21.
+
+ LAMBERT (son of Guido of Spoleto), 82.
+
+ Landgrave of Thuringia, choice of the, commanded by the
+ Pope, 219.
+
+ Lateran Palace at Rome, mosaic of the, 117, 288.
+
+ Latins and Greeks, origin of their separation, 37 note.
+
+ Lauresheim, Annals of, their account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 53.
+
+ Law, old, the influence exercised by, 32; era of the
+ revived study of, 276.
+
+ Learning, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LEO I (Pope), his assertion of universal jurisdiction, 154.
+
+ LEO the ISAURIAN (Emperor), his attempt to abolish the
+ worship of images, 38.
+
+ LEO III (Pope), his accession, 43; his adventures, 44;
+ crowns Charles at Rome on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, 3, 49;
+ charter of, issued on same day, 106; relation of, to the
+ act of coronation, 52, 53; lectured by Charles, 64.
+
+ LEO VIII (Pope), 138.
+
+ Leonine city, the, 286 note.
+
+ LEOPOLD I, ninth electorate conferred by, 231.
+
+ LEOPOLD II, 352.
+
+ LEWIS I (the Pious), 76, 77.
+
+ LEWIS II, 77, 104 note, 191, 403.
+
+ LEWIS III (son of Boso), 82.
+
+ LEWIS IV, his conflict with Pope John XXII, 220.
+
+ LEWIS XII (King of France), his pretensions on Naples and
+ Milan, 315.
+
+ LEWIS XIV (King of France), 346.
+
+ LEWIS (the German) (son of Lewis the Pious), 77.
+
+ LEWIS the CHILD (son of Arnulf), 121.
+
+ Literature, revival of, 240; connexion between it and
+ imperialism, 254.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (Bishop of Cremona), his list of the accusations
+ against John XII, 135; account of his embassy to the
+ princess Theophano, 141.
+
+ LIUDPRAND (King of the Lombards), attacks Rome and the
+ exarchate, 38.
+
+ Lombard cities, 175; their victory over Frederick I, 178.
+
+ Lombards, arrival of the, A.D. 568, 29, 37; their aversion
+ to the clergy, 37; the Popes seek help from the Franks
+ against the, 39; extinction of their kingdom by
+ Charlemagne, 41.
+
+ LOTHAR I (son of Lewis the Pious), 77, 403.
+
+ LOTHAR II, election of, 165, 228.
+
+ LOTHAR (son of Hugh of Burgundy), 83.
+
+ Lotharingia or Lorraine, 78, 79, 143, 183, 341, 349.
+
+ Luneville, the Peace of, 361.
+
+ LUTHER, 319.
+
+
+ M.
+
+ Majesty, the title of, 247 note.
+
+ Mallum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ MANUEL COMNENUS, 193.
+
+ Mario (Monte), 283.
+
+ MARSILIUS of Padua, his 'de Imperio Romano,' 231 note.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN I, 231, 310; character of his epoch, 310; events
+ of his reign, 313; his title of 'Imperator electus,' 316,
+ 405; his proposals to recover Burgundy and Italy, 317.
+
+ MAXIMILIAN II, 323.
+
+ Mayfield, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ Mediaeval art, rights of the Empire set forth in, 116.
+
+ Mediaeval monuments, causes of the want of in Rome, 289.
+
+ MICHAEL, 61.
+
+ MICHAEL ANGELO, capital rebuilt by, 295.
+
+ Middle Ages, the state of the human mind in, 90; theology
+ of, 95; philosophy of, 97; relations of Church and State
+ during, 107, 387; mode of interpreting Scriptures in, 114;
+ art of, 116; opposition of theory and practice in, 133,
+ 261; real beginning of, 204; reverence for ancient forms
+ and phrases in, 258; absence of the idea of change or
+ progress in, 259; the city of Rome in, 269; barbarism of
+ the aristocracy in, 289; ambition and corruption of the
+ clergy in the latter, 290; destruction of old buildings by
+ the Romans of, 292; existing relics of, 294; aspiration for
+ unity during, 370; the Visible Church in the, 370; ferocity
+ of the heroes of, 382; ways in which the Empire affected the
+ political institutions of, 383; idea of the communion of
+ saints during, 387.
+
+ Milan, Frederick I's dealings with the rebels of, 125; the
+ rebuilding of, 178; victory of Frederick II over, 287;
+ pretensions of Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on,
+ 315.
+
+ Mahommedanism, rise of, 45.
+
+ Moissac, Chronicle of, its account of the coronation of
+ Charles, 54, 84.
+
+ MOMMSEN, 390.
+
+ Monarchy, universal, doctrine of, 91, 97.
+
+ Monarchy, elective, 232.
+
+ Mosaics in the churches of Rome, 294.
+
+ MUeLLER, Johannes von, 354.
+
+ Muenster, the treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+
+ N.
+
+ Naples, imperial authority in, 188, 205; pretensions of
+ Charles VIII and Lewis XII of France on, 315.
+
+ NAPOLEON, as compared with Charles the Great, 74;
+ extinction of Electorates by, 232; Emperor of the West,
+ 357; his belief that he was the successor of Charlemagne,
+ 358; attitude of the Papacy towards, 359; his mission in
+ Germany, 361.
+
+ Nationalities of Europe, the formation of, 242; relations
+ of the Empire to the, 390.
+
+ Nationality, struggles of the Teutonic Emperors against,
+ 388.
+
+ Neo-Platonism, Alexandrian, effect of, 7.
+
+ Nicaea, first council of, 23, 301; second council of, 64.
+
+ NICEPHORUS, 61, 192.
+
+ NICHOLAS I (Pope) and the case of Teutberga, 252.
+
+ NICHOLAS II (Pope), fixes a regular body to elect the Pope,
+ 158.
+
+ NICHOLAS V (Pope), 279, 292, 312.
+
+ Nobles, the, in feudal times, 125, 221; encroachments of
+ the, 228.
+
+ Nuernberg, 259.
+
+
+ O.
+
+ OCCAM, the English Franciscan, 220.
+
+ ODO, 81.
+
+ ODOACER, extinction of the Western Empire by, A.D. 476, 25;
+ his original position, 25 note; his assumption of the title
+ of King, 26; nature of his government, 27.
+
+ OPTATUS (Bishop of Milevis), his treatise _Contra
+ Donatistas_, 13 note.
+
+ Orsini, the family of, 281.
+
+ Osnabrueck, treaty of; _see_ Westphalia.
+
+ Ostrogoths, 24; war between Belisarius and the, 273.
+
+ OTTO I, the GREAT, appealed to by Adelheid, 83; his first
+ expedition into Italy, 84; invitation sent by the Pope to,
+ 84; his victory over the Hungarians, 85; crowned king of
+ Italy at Rome, 87; his coronation a favourable opening to
+ sacerdotal claims, 155; causes of the revival of the Empire
+ under, 84; his coronation feast the inauguration of the
+ Teutonic realm, 123; consequences of his assumption of the
+ imperial title, 128; his position towards the Church, 128;
+ changes in title, 129; his imperial office feudalized, 130;
+ the Germans made a single people by, 131; incidents which
+ befel him in Rome, 134; inquires into the character and
+ manners of Pope John XII, 135; his letters to John, 136;
+ deposes John, 136; appoints Leo in his stead, 137; his
+ suppression of the revolts of the Romans on account of
+ John, 138; his rule in Italy, 139; resumes Charles's plans
+ of foreign conquest, 140; his policy towards Byzantium,
+ 141; seeks for his heir the hand of the princess Theophano,
+ 141; his policy towards the West Franks, 142; his Northern
+ and Eastern conquests, 143; extent of his empire, 144;
+ comparison between it and that of Charles, 144; beneficial
+ results of his rule, 145; how styled by Nicephorus, 211.
+
+ OTTO II, 142; memorials left by, in Rome, 317.
+
+ OTTO III, his plans and ideas, 146, 147, 148; his intense
+ religious belief in the Emperor's duties, 147; his reason
+ for using the title 'Romanorum Imperator,' 147; his early
+ death, 148, 228; his burial at Aachen, 148; respect in
+ which his life was so memorable, 149; compared with
+ Frederick II, 207; his expostulation with the Roman people,
+ 285 note; memorials left by, in Rome, 286.
+
+ OTTO IV, Pope Innocent III's exertions in behalf of, 206;
+ overthrown by Innocent, 207; explanation of a curious seal
+ of, 266 note.
+
+
+ P.
+
+ PALGRAVE (Sir F.), his view of the grant of a Roman dignity
+ to Clovis, 30 note.
+
+ PALSGRAVE, deprived of his vote, 231; reinstated, 231.
+
+ Panslavism, Russia's doctrine of, 368.
+
+ Papacy, the Teutonic reform of, 146; Frederick I's bad
+ relations with, 168; Henry III's purification of, 152, 204;
+ growth of its power, 153; its relations with the Empire,
+ 153, 155, 216; its condition after the dissolution of the
+ Carolingian Empire, 275; its attitude towards Napoleon,
+ 359.
+
+ Papacy and Empire, interdependence of, 101; its
+ consequences, 102; struggle between them, 153; their
+ relations, 155, 216; parallel between, 369; compared as
+ perpetuation of a name, 372.
+
+ Papal elections, veto of Emperor on, 138, 155.
+
+ Partition treaty of Verdun, 77.
+
+ PASCHAL II (Pope), his quarrel with Henry V, 163.
+
+ Patrician of the Romans, import of the title, 40; date when
+ it was bestowed on Pipin, 40 note.
+
+ PATRITIUS, secretary of Frederick III, on the poverty of
+ the Empire, 224.
+
+ Pavia, the Council of, and Charles the Bald, 156.
+
+ Persecution, Protestant, 330.
+
+ Peter's (St.), old, 48.
+
+ PETRARCH, his feelings towards the Empire, 254; towards the
+ city of Rome, 270.
+
+ PFEFFINGER, 351 note.
+
+ PHILIP of Hohenstaufen, contest between Otto of Brunswick
+ and, 206; his assassination, 206.
+
+ Philosophy, scholastic, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ PIPIN of Herstal, 35.
+
+ PIPIN the SHORT appointed successor to Childeric, 39; twice
+ rescues Rome from the Lombards, 39; receives the title of
+ Patrician of the Romans, 40; import of this title, 40; date
+ at which it was bestowed, 40 note.
+
+ PIUS VII (Pope), 359.
+
+ Placitum, the popular assembly so called, 126.
+
+ PODIEBRAD (George), (King of Bohemia), 223.
+
+ Poland, imperial authority in, 184; partition of, 345.
+
+ Politics, beginning of the existence of, 241.
+
+ Popes, emancipation of the, 27, 37, 281, 282; appeal to the
+ Franks for succour against the Lombards, 39; their reasons
+ for desiring the restoration of the Western Empire, 45, 46;
+ their theory respecting the coronation of Charles, 57;
+ their profligacy in the tenth century, 82, 85, 275; their
+ theory respecting the chair of St. Peter, 99; their
+ position and functions, 104; growth of their pretensions,
+ 108, 156, 217; and power, 153; their relations to the
+ Emperor, 155; their temporal power, 157; their position as
+ international judges, 243; reaction against their
+ pretensions, 243, 275; their aversion to the study of
+ ancient jurisprudence, 252; hostility of, to the Germans,
+ 284; nature of the question at issue between the Emperors
+ and, 385.
+
+ PORCARO (Stephen), conspiracy of, 279.
+
+ Praetaxation, the so-called right of, 228, 229.
+
+ Pragmatic Sanctions of Frederick II, 212, 221.
+
+ Prague, University of, 237.
+
+ Prerogative, Imperial, contrast of, at accession of Conrad
+ II and death of Henry V, 165.
+
+ Priesthood, analogy between knighthood and, 250.
+
+ Princes, league of, formed by Frederick the Great, 352.
+
+ Protestant States, their conduct after the Reformation,
+ 330.
+
+ Protestants of Germany, their alliance with France, 325.
+
+ Public Peace and Imperial Chamber, establishment of the,
+ 313.
+
+
+ R.
+
+ RADULFUS DE COLONNA, his account of the origin of the
+ separation of Greeks and Latins, 37 note.
+
+ Ravenna, exarch of, 27.
+
+ Reformation, dawnings of the, 240; Charles V's attitude
+ towards the, 321; influence of its spirit on the Empire,
+ 319, 325; its real meaning, 325; its effect on the
+ doctrines regarding the Visible Church, 327; consequent
+ effect upon the Empire, 328; its small immediate influence
+ on political and religious liberty, 329; conduct of the
+ Protestant States after the, 330; its influence on the name
+ and associations of the Empire, 332.
+
+ Religion, influence of, in supporting the Empire, 31; wars
+ of, 330.
+
+ Renaissance, the, 240, 311.
+
+ 'Renovatio Romani Imperii,' signification of the seal
+ bearing legend of, 103.
+
+ Rhine, towns of the, 223; provisions of the Confederation
+ of the, 362.
+
+ RICHARD I (King of England), pays homage to the Emperor
+ Henry VI, 186; his release, 187.
+
+ RICHARD (Earl of Cornwall), his double election with
+ Alfonso X of Castile, 212, 229.
+
+ RICHELIEU, policy of, 336.
+
+ RICIMER (patrician), 25.
+
+ RIENZI, Petrarch's letter to the Roman people respecting,
+ 255; his character and career, 278.
+
+ Romans, revolts of the, at the expulsion of Pope John XII,
+ 137, 138; Otto's vigorous measures against the, 138; their
+ revolt from the Iconoclastic Emperors of the East, 274; the
+ title of King of the, 404.
+
+ Romanism or Catholicity, 94, 106.
+
+ Rome, commanding position of, in the second century, 7;
+ prestige of, not destroyed by the partition of the Empire,
+ 9; lingering influences of her Church and Law, 31, 32;
+ claim of, to the right of conferring the imperial crown,
+ 57, 61, 81; republican institutions of, renewed, 83;
+ profligacy of, in the tenth century, 82, 85; under Arnold
+ of Brescia, 174; imitations of old, 257; in the Middle
+ Ages, 269; absence of Gothic in, 271; the modern traveller
+ in, 271, 283; causes of her rapid decay, 273; peculiarities
+ of her position, 274; her internal history from the sixth
+ to the twelfth century, 274; her condition in the ninth and
+ tenth centuries, 274; growth of a republican feeling in,
+ 276; short-sighted policy of the Emperors towards, 277;
+ causes of the failure of the struggle for independence in,
+ 280; her internal condition, 280; her people, 280; her
+ nobility, 281; her bishop, 281; relation of the Emperor to,
+ 282; the Emperors' visits to, 282; dislike of, to the
+ Germans, 285; memorials of Otto III in, 286; of Otto II,
+ 287; of Frederick II, 287; causes of the want of mediaeval
+ monuments in, 289; barbarism of the aristocracy of, 289;
+ ambition, weakness, and corruption of the clergy of, 290;
+ tendency of her builders to adhere to the ancient manner,
+ 290; destruction and alteration of old buildings in, 291;
+ her modern churches, 293; existing relics of Dark and
+ Middle Ages in, 291; changed aspect of, 295; analogy
+ between her architecture and the civil and ecclesiastical
+ constitution, 296; relation of, to the Empire, 297;
+ feelings of modern Italians towards, 299; perpetuation of
+ the name of, 367; parallel instances, 367; Hildebert's
+ lines contrasting the past and present of, 406.
+
+ ROMULUS AUGUSTULUS, his resignation at Odoacer's bidding,
+ 25.
+
+ RUDOLF (King of Transjurane), 81.
+
+ RUDOLF of Hapsburg, 213, 219, 221, 222; financial distress
+ under, 224; Schiller's description of the coronation feast
+ of, 231 note, 262.
+
+ RUDOLF II, 335.
+
+ RUDOLF III, 151.
+
+ RUDOLF of Swabia, 162.
+
+ RUDOLF III (King of Burgundy), his proposal to bequeath
+ Burgundy to Henry II, 151.
+
+ Russia, her claim to represent the Roman Empire, 368.
+
+
+ S.
+
+ Sachsenspiegel, the, 108 note.
+
+ SALADIN (the Sultan), Frederick I's letter to, 189.
+
+ Santa Maria Novella at Florence, fresco in, 118.
+
+ Saxon Emperors, 133.
+
+ Saxony, extinction of the dukedom of, 222.
+
+ Schleswig, its annexation by Otto, 143; its relation to the
+ Empire, 398.
+
+ Scholastic philosophy, spread of, in the thirteenth
+ century, 240.
+
+ Seal, ascribed to A. D. 800, 103.
+
+ SEPTIMIUS SEVERUS, concentration of power in his hands, 5,
+ 6.
+
+ SERGIUS IV (Pope), 228 note.
+
+ Seven Years' War, 352.
+
+ Sicambri, probably the chief source of the Frankish nation,
+ 34.
+
+ Sicily, imperial authority in, 188, 205.
+
+ SIGISMUND (the Burgundian king), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ SIGISMUND (Emperor), his visit to Henry V, 187; at the
+ Council of Constance, 253, 301.
+
+ Simony, measures taken against, 158.
+
+ Slavic races, the, 27, 143, 260, 378.
+
+ Smalkaldic league, the, 322.
+
+ Southern Italy, 150.
+
+ Spain, Otto's position towards, 143; authority not
+ exercised by any Emperor in, 185; compared with Germany,
+ 303.
+
+ Speyer, Diet of, 111 note.
+
+ STEPHANIA (widow of Crescentius), 148.
+
+ Swabia, extinction of the dukedom of, 222; the towns of,
+ 223, 313; theory of the Emperors of the house of,
+ respecting the coronation of Charles, 57.
+
+ Sweden, improbability of imperial pretensions to, 185.
+
+ Swiss Confederation, the, 306; her gains by treaties of
+ Westphalia, 341.
+
+ Switzerland lost to the Empire, 306, 342.
+
+ SYLVESTER (Pope), 43.
+
+
+ T.
+
+ Taxes, mode of collecting in Roman Empire, 9 note.
+
+ TERTULLIAN, his feelings towards the Roman Emperor, 21
+ note, 23 note.
+
+ TEUTBERGA (wife of Lothar), the famous case of, 252.
+
+ Teutonic race, political character of the, 376.
+
+ THEODEBERT (son of Clovis), his desire to preserve the
+ institutions of the Empire, 18.
+
+ THEODORIC the Ostrogoth, his attempt to establish a
+ national monarchy in Italy, 27, 28; its failure, 29; his
+ usual place of residence, 28 note; prosperity under his
+ reign, 29.
+
+ THEODOSIUS (the Emperor), his abasement before St. Ambrose,
+ 12.
+
+ THEOPHANO (princess), 141.
+
+ Thirty Years' War, 335; its unsatisfactory results, 336;
+ its substantial advantage to the German princes, 338.
+
+ THOMAS (St.), his statement respecting the election of
+ Emperors, 227.
+
+ Tithes, first enforced by Charles the Great, 67.
+
+ Titles, change of, 129, 316, 400.
+
+ Tortona, Frederick I's dealing with the rebels of, 175.
+
+ Transalpine provinces, influence of the Empire in, 30.
+
+ 'Translation of the Empire,' 52, 111, 175, 218.
+
+ Transubstantiation, 326 note.
+
+ Turks, the, 303; their claim to represent the Roman Empire,
+ 368.
+
+ TURPIN (Archbishop), 51 note.
+
+
+ U.
+
+ University of Prague, foundation of, 237.
+
+ Unity, political, idea of, upheld by the clergy, 96.
+
+ URBAN IV (Pope), on the right of choosing the Roman king,
+ 229.
+
+
+ V.
+
+ Venice, her attitude, 171; imperial pretensions towards,
+ 188; maintains her independence, 188.
+
+ Verdun, partition treaty of, 77.
+
+ VESPASIAN, his dying jest, 23 note.
+
+ Vienna, Congress of, 364.
+
+ VILLANI (Matthew), his idea of the Teutonic Emperors, 304;
+ his etymology of Guelf and Ghibeline, 304 note.
+
+ Visigothic kings of Spain, the Empire's rights admitted by
+ the, 30.
+
+
+ W.
+
+ WALLENSTEIN, 335.
+
+ WENZEL of Bohemia, 223.
+
+ Western Empire, its last days, 24, 25; its extinction by
+ Odoacer, 26; its restoration, 34.
+
+ Westphalia, the Peace of, 336; its advantages to France,
+ 341; to Sweden, 341; its importance in imperial history,
+ 342.
+
+ WICKLIFFE, excitement caused by his writings, 241.
+
+ WILLIAM the Conqueror, letter of Hildebrand to, 160.
+
+ WIPPO, 227 note.
+
+ WITUKIND, 85 note.
+
+ WOITECH (St. Adalbert), 269.
+
+ World-Monarchy, the idea of a, 91; influence of metaphysics
+ upon the theory, 97.
+
+ World-Religion, the idea of a, 91; coincides with the
+ World-Empire, 92.
+
+ Worms, Concordant of, 163; Diet of, 319, 334.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Holy Roman Empire, by James Bryce
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