His head and body were pacific Emperor of the Romans." anointed with the holy oil, and, as was done in the case of the Cæsars, the pontiff himself saluted or adored him. the coronation oath Charlemagne promised to maintain the privileges of the Church. and carries out his com рарасу. In His The noble title of "Emperor of the West" was not inappropriate, for Charlemagne ruled in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary. An inferior dignity would not have been equal to his deserts. pact with the princely munificence to St. Peter was worthy of the great occasion, and even in his minor acts he exhibited a just appreciation of his obligations to the apostle. He proceeded to make in his dominions such changes in the Church organization as the Italian policy required, substituting, for instance, the Gregorian for the Ambrosian chant, and, wherever his priests resisted, he took from them by force their antiphonaries. As an example to insubordinates he, at the request of the pope, burnt some of the singers along with their books. He declines ship, The rapid growth of the power of Charlemagne, his overshadowing pre-eminence, and the subordinate position of the pope, who had really become his Italian lieutenant, are strikingly manifested by the event of image-worship in the West. On this, as we shall in another chapter image-wor- see, the popes had revolted from their iconoclastic sovereigns of Constantinople. The second Council of Nicea had authorized image-worship, but the good sense of Charlemagne was superior to such idolatry. He openly expressed his disapproval, and even dictated a work against it-the Carolinian books. The pope was therefore placed in a singular dilemma, for not only had image worship been restored at Constantinople, and the original cause of the dispute removed, but the new protector, Charlemagne, had himself embraced iconoclasm. However, it was not without reason that the relic-worship. pope at this time avoided the discussion, for a profitable sale of bones and relics, said to be those of saints, but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome, had arisen. To the barbarian people of the north these gloomy objects proved more acceptable than images of wood, and the traffic, though contemptible, was more honourable than but permits the slave-trade in vassals and peasant children which had been carried on with Jews and Mohammedans. Like all the great statesmen of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend the possibility of a highly civilized society without the existence of slavery, Charlemagne accepted that unfortunate condition as a political necessity, His policy as and attempted to draw from it as much benefit respects slavery. as it was capable of yielding to the state. From certain classes of slaves he appointed, by a system of apprenticeship, those who should be devoted to the mechanical arts and to trade. It was, however, slavery and warfare which, during his own life, by making the possession of property among small proprietors an absolute disadvantage, prepared the way for that rapid dissolution of his empire so quickly occurring after his death. trade. Yet, though Charlemagne thus accepted the existence of slavery as a necessary political evil, the evidences are not wanting that he was desirous to check its abuses wherever he could. When the Italian dukes accused Pope The EuroAdrian of selling his vassals as slaves to the Sara- pean slavecens, Charlemagne made inquiry into the matter, and, finding that transactions of the kind had occurred in the port of Civita Vecchia, though he did not choose to have so infamous a scandal made public, he ever afterwards withdrew his countenance from that pope. At that time a very extensive child slave-trade was carried on with the Saracens through the medium of the Jews, ecclesiastics as well as barons selling the children of their serfs. Improvements of the physical state of the people. Though he never succeeded in learning how to write, no one appreciated better than Charlemagne the value of knowledge. He laboured assiduously for the elevation and enlightenment of his people. He collected together learned men; ordered his clergy to turn their attention to letters; established schools of religious music; built noble palaces, churches, bridges; transferred, for the adornment of his capital, Aix-la-Chapelle, statues from Italy; organized the professions and trades of his cities, and gave to his towns a police. Well might he be solicitous that his State of the clergy should not only become more devout, but clergy. more learned. Very few of them knew how to read, scarcely any to write. Of the first half of the eighth century, a period of great interest, since it includes the invasion of France by the Saracens, and their expulsion, there is nothing more than the most meagre annals; the clergy understood much better the use of the sword than that of the pen. The schools of Charlemagne proved a failure, not through any fault of his, but because the age had no demand for learning, and the Roman pontiffs and their clergy, as far as they troubled themselves with any opinion about the matter, thought that knowledge was of more harm than good. The private life of Charlemagne was stained with great Private life of immoralities and crimes. He indulged in a Charlemagne. polygamy scarcely inferior to that of the khalifs, solacing himself with not less than nine wives and many concubines. He sought to increase the circle of the former, or perhaps it should be said, considering the greatness of his statesmanship, to unite the Eastern and Western empires together by a marriage with the Empress Irene. This was that Irene who put out the eyes of her own son in the porphyry chamber at Constantinople. His fame extended into Asia. The Khalif Haroun al Raschid, a.d. 801, sent him from Bagdad the keys of our Saviour's sepulchre as a mark of esteem from the Commander of the Faithful to the greatest of Christian kings. However, there was doubtless as much policy as Saracens. esteem in this, for the Asiatic khalifs perceived the advantage of a good understanding with the power that could control the emirs of Spain. Always bearing in mind his engagement with the papacy, that Roman Christianity should be enforced upon Europe wherever his influence could reach, he remorselessly carried into execution the penalty of death that he had awarded to the crimes of, 1, refusing baptism; 2, false pretence of baptism; 3, relapse to idolatry; 4, the murder of a priest or bishop; 5, human sacrifice; 6, eating meat in Lent. To the pagan German his sword was a grim, but a convincing missionary. To the last he observed a savage fidelity to his bond. He died A.D. 814. His relations with the Such was the compact that had been established between the Church and the State. As might be expected, the oppor the death of Charlemagne succeeding transactions exhibit an alternate preponderance of one and of the other, and the degradation of both in the end. Scarcely was Charlemagne dead ere Course of the imbecile character of his son and successor, events after Louis the Pious, gave the Church her tunity. By the expulsion of his father's numerous concubines and mistresses, the scandals of the palace were revealed. I have not the opportunity to relate in detail how this monarch disgracefully humiliated himself before the Church; how, under his weak government, the slavetrade greatly increased; how every shore, and, indeed, every country that could be reached through a navigable river, was open to the ravages of pirates, the Northmen extending their maraudings even to the capture of great cities; how, in strong contrast with the social decomposition into which Europe was falling, Spain, under her Mohammedan rulers, was becoming rich, populous, and great; how, on the east, the Huns and Avars, ceasing their ravages, accepted Christianity, and, under their diversity of interests. the nations that had been bound together by Charlemagne separated into two divisions-French and German-and civil wars between them ensued; how, through the folly of the clergy, who vainly looked for protection from relics instead of the sword, the Saracens ranged uncontrolled all over the south, and came within an hair's-breadth of capturing Rome itself; how France, at this time, had literally become a theocracy, the clergy absorbing everything that was worth having; how the pope, trembling at home, nevertheless maintained an external power by interfering with domestic life, as in the quarrel with King Lothaire II. and his wife; how Italy, France, and Germany became, as Africa and Syria had once been, full of miracles; how, through these means the Church getting the advantage, John VIII. thought it expedient to assert his right of disposing of the imperial crown in the case of Charles the Bald (the imperial supremacy that Charlemagne had obtained in reality implied the eventual supremacy of the pope); how an opportunity which occurred for reconstructing the empire of the West under Charles the Fat was thwarted by the imbecility of that sovereign, an imbecility so great that his nobles were obliged to depose him; how, thereupon, a number of new kingdoms arose, and Europe fell, by an inevitable necessity, into a political chaos; how, since there was thus no protecting government, each great landowner had to protect himself, and the rightfulness of private war became recognised; how, through this evil state, the strange consequence ensued of a great increase in the population, it becoming the interest of every lord to raise as many peasants as he could, offering his lands on personal service, the value of an estate being determined by the number of retainers it could furnish, and hence arose the feudal system; how the monarchical principle, once again getting the superiority, asserted its power in Germany in Henry the Fowler and his descendants, the three Othos; how, by these great monarchs, the subjection of Italy was accomplished, and the morality of the German. clergy vindicated by their attempts at the reformation of the рарасу, which fell to the last degree of degradation, becoming, in the end, an appanage of the Counts of Tusculum, and, shameful to be said, in some instances given by prostitutes to their paramours or illegitimates, in some, to mere boys of precociously dissolute life; before long, A.D. 1045, it was actually to be sold for money. We have now approached the close of a thousand years from the birth of Christ; the evil union of the Church and State, their rivalries, their intrigues, their quarrels, had produced an inevitable result, doing the same in the West that they had done in the East; disorganizing the political system, and ending in a universal social demoralization. The absorption of small properties into large estates steadily increased the number of slaves; where there had once been many free families, there was now found only a tion of Europe. rich man. Even of this class the number diminished by the same process of absorption, until there were sparsely scattered here and there abbots and counts with enormous estates worked by herds of slaves, whose numbers, since sometimes one man possessed more than 20,00) of them, might deceive us, if we did not consider the vast surface over which they were spread. Examined in that way, the West of Europe proves to have been covered with forests, here and there dotted with a convent or a town. From those countries, once full of the splendid evidences Social condi |