T. F. Tout

“ For the moment Innocent’s iron policy crushed opposition, but in adding the new hostility of the national kings and the rising nations of Europe to the old hostility of the declining Empire, Innocent was entering into a perilous course of conduct, which, within a century, was to prove fatal to one of the strongest of his successors. The more political the papal authority became, the more difficult it was to uphold its prestige as the source of law, of morality, of religion. Innocent himself did not lose sight of the higher ideal because he strove so firmly after more earthly aims. ”

“ Divided as was all the western world, there was no part of it more utterly divided in feeling and interest than the kingdom of the West Franks. When the early Capetians were carrying on their petty warfare in the regions between Seine and Loire, or making their vain progresses and emphasising their barren claims over more distant regions, half a score of feudal potentates as able, as wealthy, and as vigorous as themselves were building up a series of local states with foundations as strong, and patriotism as intense, as those of the lords of Paris. ”

“ We strive with all our might that Cæsar may enjoy his own. Come over and help us, for you will find in Rome all that you wish. Settle yourself firmly in the City that is the head of the world, and, freed from the fetters of the clergy, rule better than your predecessors over Germany and Italy.’ But Conrad, intent on his crusading projects, paid no heed to the Roman summons. ”

“ The offspring of vague discontent, twelfth century heresy took as a rule such vague and fantastic shapes that it almost condemned itself. After all, the spirit of Henry of Cluny or Peter Valdez was not very different from that of Norbert or Robert of Arbrissel. But however ill-regulated, it was another sign that the human mind had awakened from the sleep of the Dark Ages. If the popular heretics could not reason, they could at least feel. ”

“ Yet, even in the feeble reigns of the first four Capetian kings, it is plain that France had begun a new existence. The history of the Carolingians is a history of decline. The history of the Capetians is a story of progress. While beyond the Rhine and Alps the continuance of the imperial theory choked the growth of German and Italian national life, the disappearance of these remnants of the past proved a blessing to Gaul. The history of modern Europe is the history of the development of nationalities. ”

“ On the ruins of the Greek, Lombard and Saracen power, the Normans feudalised southern Italy so thoroughly that the feudalism of Naples and Sicily long outlasted the more indigenous feudalism of Tuscany or Romagna. Freed from his grasping brother’s tutelage after 1085, Roger ruled over Sicily as count till his death in 1101. We shall see how his son united Sicily with Apulia in a single sovereignty, which has in various shapes endured as the kingdom of Naples or Sicily, until the establishment of a united Italy in our own days. ”

“ The kingdoms of divided Spain, the Norman dominion of Sicily, show the universal drift of the tide. Even the greater feudatories of the larger kingdoms were making themselves centres of an authority that was not far from being national. States like Toulouse and Provence, representing the growing national feeling of the south French nation; opulent and manufacturing Flanders, cutting itself apart from France and Germany alike, and even mere dynastic powers, like the house of Champagne and Blois, show how authority was becoming concentrated into few hands. ”

“ To the east of Aquitaine the county of Toulouse became the nucleus of a sort of monarchical centralisation that, by the beginning of the twelfth century, had brought the French lands beyond the Aquitanian border, the imperial lands between the Alps and the Rhone, and the old Spanish march between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, to look to Toulouse as the source of its intellectual and almost of its political life. The lands dependent on the counts of Toulouse became emphatically the Languedoc, the region where the Romance vernacular of southern Gaul was spoken with the greatest purity and force. ”

“ He was assiduous at divine worship, devout in his behaviour in church, and very respectful to the clergy, regularly putting aside a tenth of his income for pious and charitable objects. A mighty warrior, he only rejoiced in battle because victory was the best means of assuring peace. He was zealous in his attention to public business, and kept in his hands the whole strings of his policy. He delighted in hunting, and was able to lay aside his royal state in hours of recreation without loss of dignity. He was fond of reading history, especially the story of his great predecessors in the Empire. ”

“ He could withstand the aggressions of a greedy pope or a self-seeking bishop the more effectively since his devotion to the Church and his zeal for her just rights were patent to all men. He could build up a new administrative system adequate for the government of his vast realm since it was common fame that his motive was not self-aggrandisement, but the well-being of his whole people. As a Christian and as a man, as a statesman and as a warrior, he was the exemplar of all that was best in his age. ”

“ The Lusignan King of Cyprus boasted that he was the vassal of the Latin Empire. The King of Armenia received his ambassadors. Henry’s brother, Philip of Swabia, now made Marquis of Tuscany and lord of the inheritance of the Countess Matilda, married young Roger’s widow Irene, an alliance that made Isaac Angelus the close connection of his Western rival. Three great ambitions henceforth possessed Henry’s soul. He would make the Empire hereditary in his own house, and unite for ever the German and the Sicilian thrones. He would rule Europe from Italy as a centre. ”

“ Hugh the Great was a man of very different calibre from his fierce ancestors. Robert the Strong, the founder of the house, had been a warrior pure and simple. His sons, Odo and Robert, the two dukes who had in turn grasped the sceptre, had faithfully followed in his footsteps. Wanting in policy and statecraft, they had been less powerful as kings than as dukes. Hugh the Great, the first statesman of the Robertian house, was a shrewd tactician, who saw that his fortunes could best be established by playing a waiting game. ”

“ Enzio, the son, and Eccelin, the son-in-law of Cæsar, strove to stamp out in blood all Guelfic resistance in Northern Italy. Frederick of Antioch, another bastard of Frederick’s, worked a similar reign of terror in Tuscany. So well did Frederick’s fortunes go, that he dreamt of crossing the Alps and marching to Lyons. In 1247 he was turned from his bold purpose by the unexpected revolt of Parma. He hurried back from Turin eager for revenge. Before long the dispersed partisans of Pope and Emperor flocked to Parma, eager to defend or attack the city. ”

“ Europe was now breaking up slowly but surely into the great nations of modern times, and was inevitably losing a good deal of her consciousness of unity in the process. Even Frederick Barbarossa, filled as he was with his dreams of reviving the power of Rome, had been, as we saw, obliged to adopt a different policy in Germany and Italy, and had attained his greatest successes in proportion as he acted most fully as a German national king. ”

“ It was a day of ill omen for East and West alike when the capture of Bagdad made the Turkish soldier the type of Mohammedan conquest. In the centuries when the Arab was the typical representative of Islam, the desolation of Africa and Syria showed how great were the evils that followed in the wake of Mohammedan conquest of Christian lands. But in East and West alike the triumphs of the Turk were unmixed evils, and the strife of East and West assumed a new aspect when a barbarous and unteachable soldier, mighty only in destruction, became the chief agent of Eastern advance. ”

“ But with all his faults he is a great and noble figure, and as the supreme representative of a dying type, his career marks a transition to a newer, brighter and more progressive world, than the gloomy realm over which he had reigned so long as unquestioned sovereign. Yet it shows that the days of brute force were over, when a simple monk, whose singleness of purpose and zeal for righteousness were never so much as questioned, could rule with such astounding power over the minds of men. ”

“ If the unity of the German kingdom was still rather illusory, the dukes, counts, and margraves, who ruled over its larger subdivisions, were making themselves, like the great French feudatories, centres of a local feeling and of a local order, which, in days when the strongest king’s arm did not reach very far, were real securities for peace and prosperity. ”

“ We begin in a time of gloom and sorrow. The Carolingian Empire, which had united the vigour of the barbarians with the civilisation of the Roman world, had broken up. The sacred name of Emperor had been assumed so constantly by weaklings that it had ceased to have much hold upon the minds of men. The great kingdoms, into which the Carolingian Empire had resolved itself, seemed destined to undergo the process that had destroyed the parent state. The East Frankish realm—the later Germany—was breaking up into its four national duchies of Saxony, Franconia, Bavaria, and Swabia. ”

“ Harold and Hugh alike found but a questioning obedience in the great earls and counts, who looked upon the upstart kings as their equals. The Norman Conquest destroyed Harold before it could be early demonstrated what a long step in the direction of feudalism was made by his accession. Hugh Capet and his successors had time to bear the full brunt of the feudal shock. The most powerful of dukes proved the weakest of kings. It was only gradually that the ceremonial centre, round which the cumbrous fabric of French feudalism revolved, became the real heart of French national life. ”

“ German unity suffered, but national unity was a far-off ideal in Northern Europe in the thirteenth century. The great development of trade, wealth, law, literature, and civilisation showed that Germany was far from being an absolute loser by the change of system. Unluckily the power of these lesser rulers did not, as in France, prepare the way for a strong monarchy when the time grew ripe for a single government. Germany paid the penalty for her premature unity under her early kings by her inability to set up a national authority when national states became possible. ”

“ He was not only a great giver of alms and founder of churches, monasteries, and hospitals. He daily fed the poor at his table, and visited the sick and wretched at their own abodes. He washed the feet of repulsive beggars and cripples. He did not shrink from contact with the lepers. His simple enthusiasm for good works powerfully affected the rough barons with whom he was brought into contact. ‘To see or hear him,’ we are told, ‘brought comfort and calm to the most troubled spirit.’
With all his piety and simplicity, there was nothing weak or puerile in Louis’ character. ”

“ To kings like Philip Augustus and Henry of Anjou, the Empire was a mere name, and they were conscious of no lord over them save God Himself. Such unity of feeling as remained in Europe was rather the result of common chivalrous and martial ideals, and the steady and persistent international influence of the Catholic Church, than of any ideal unity of the Christian state under the Roman Emperor. The kings of the West had too much work at home to give them much leisure to look abroad. ”

“ Their settlement within the Empire as traders only paved the way to the time when they aspired to establish themselves as rulers. It was a strange turn to make arbiters of the destiny of the Empire those Venetians who had in former times protected themselves from Western Cæsars by parading their dependence on the Emperor at Constantinople, and whose city bears to this day the abiding impress of Byzantine art. ”

“ INTRODUCTION General Characteristics of the Period—The End of the Dark Ages—The Triumph of Feudalism—The Revival of the Roman Empire and Papacy—The Struggles of Papacy and Empire—The Spread of Religion and Civilisation—The Crusades and the Latin East—The Growth of National Monarchies.
The general characteristics of the period. It is a trite thing to say that all long periods of European history are ages of transition. The old order is ever passing gradually away, and a new society is ever springing up from amidst the ruins of the dying system that has done its work. ”

“ Victorious over Saracens, nobles, and townsmen alike, Frederick skilfully played off one class or race against the others, and banished from his court the turbulent leaders of the lay and spiritual aristocracy. With the help of a handful of faithful prelates and barons, and of a wider circle of lawyers, notaries, and royal dependants, Frederick issued a series of laws for the government of Sicily and Naples that frankly strove to abolish the feudal state in the interests of autocracy. ”