Carolingian Empire

“ The clergy were to assert their allegiance to a King higher than any earthly monarch, whose commands, as issued and tampered with by His representative on earth, were to be at variance with all the best interests of the emperor. Nationality was to war with universalism, the accepted principles of heredity with the desire for the necessary unity; and with the death of the last Carolingian emperor the empire itself was irretrievably to be cleft and riven. ”

“ Feudalism was not long in undisputed possession of the field. From the revival of the German kingdom by the Saxon kings sprang the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, beginning with the coronation of Otto the Great in 962. Less universal, less ecclesiastical, less truly Roman than the Carolingian Empire, the Empire of the Saxons and Franks was based essentially upon the German kingship, yet was ever trying to outgrow its limitations, and to claim in its completeness the Carolingian heritage. ”

“ The importance of the vassal depended entirely on his wealth and his rank in the King's employ. Only in the old age of the Carolingian Empire, when the class of free landowners, acknowledging no lord, had been almost ground out of existence by official oppression and the intolerable burden of military service, was the burden of national defence thrown entirely upon vassals. Then, as the sole military class in the community, they acquired the consideration which, in early stages of social development, is the monopoly of those who are trained to arms. ”

“ On the great siege of Paris by the Northmen, the turning-point in the history of the city, of the Duchy, and in truth of all Western Europe, we may fairly dwell at somewhat greater detail than we have done on the smaller events which paved the way for it. We must bear in mind the wretched state of all the countries which made up the Carolingian Empire. The Northmen were sailing up every river, and were spreading their ravages to every accessible point. ”

“ After his death the Carolingian Empire, attacked by the Northmen and other invaders and weakened by civil conflicts, broke up into separate kingdoms.
DECLINE OF ROYAL AUTHORITY Charlemagne's successors in France, Germany, and Italy enjoyed little real authority. They reigned, but did not rule. Under the conditions of the age, it was impossible for a king to govern with a strong hand. The absence of good roads or of other easy means of communication made it difficult for him to move troops quickly from one district to another, in order to quell revolts. ”

“ Suddenly there came, in 800, his own coronation as emperor, Relations
of the Carolingian to the Eastern empire. an act apparently unpremeditated at the moment, taking him by surprise, as one gathers from Einhard’s Vita Karoli, and interrupting his plans. It left him representative of the Empire for the West only, confronting another representative in the East. Such a position he did not desire: there had been a single Empire vested in a single person since 476, and he desired that there should still continue to be a single Empire, vested only in his own person. ”

“ The West Frankish realm was 3the prey of the rivalry of the Carolings and the Robertians. The Middle Kingdom was in still worse plight. Italy had fallen away under a line of nominal Italian or Lombard kings, but the south was Greek or Saracen, and the north was in hopeless confusion. The northern parts of the Middle Kingdom, to which alone the name Lotharingia clung, were tending towards their ultimate destiny of becoming a fifth national duchy of the German realm, though their loyalty for the Carolingian house brought them more than once back to the West Frankish kingdom. ”

“ It was not to be compared with the old Roman empire, it did not at all come up to what the Carolingian had been. But it did give strong and irrevocable expression to the idea of a highest authority in Germany, an authority bound up with religion, yet independent in itself. ... The foundation of the Germanic empire, that is of an organization which, resting on the internal development of the German nations had won a universal position through the extension of the power of the Ottos over Italy, forms the event of world-wide importance of the tenth century. ”

“ Thanks to Charlemagne, and through the The Carolingian Renaissance. restoration of order and of the schools, a common civilization was prepared for the varied elements of the Empire. By his means the Church was able to concentrate in the palatine academy all the intellectual culture of the middle ages, having preserved some of the ancient traditions of organization and administration and guarded the imperial ideal. Charlemagne apparently wished, like Theodoric, to use German blood and Christian unity to bring back life to the great body of the Empire. ”

“ Force had to be used to overcome immediate opposition, but the Carolingians were wise enough to realize that force alone would never give them a secure position. They had to gain the loyalty of their subjects by giving them a common set of ideals, and the only ideals which could be accepted by all the inhabitants of the West were those of Christianity. Therefore, the Carolingians consistently and energetically supported missions to the pagans and reform movements among the nominally Christian inhabitants of their empire. ”

“ The earliest Carolingians were as selfish and short-sighted as most of their wealthy neighbors — they struggled for land and power, and did not hesitate to oppose the king or to precipitate civil war if it was to their advantage to do so. As they became more prominent in the affairs of the kingdom they gradually developed more sense of responsibility and more interest in religion and learning. Their rise to power was made easier by the existence of a peculiar Frankish institution — the mayorship of the palace. ”

“ The idea of working for posterity does not naturally occur to half-civilised peoples; they live from hand to mouth, and are continually absorbed in the difficulties of the moment; they believe in the supremacy of chance or fate or providence, and speak of human forethought as presumptuous or merely futile. The imperial programme was cherished and publicly defended by a little clique of clerical statesmen; but they did not succeed in making many converts. When the last of the Carolingian Emperors was deposed (887) , there were cries of lamentation from ecclesiastics. ”

“ The Teuton Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver were as completely forgotten of the poets who met in that memorable combat of the Wartburg, as were the Teuton Sigurd and Dietrich. And if the Carolingian cycle survived, however much altered, I think it must have been thanks to the burghers and artizans of the Netherlands and of Provence, to whom the bluff, matter-of-fact heroism, the simple, gross, but not illegitimate amours of Carolingian heroes, were more satisfactory than any mystic quest of the Grail, any refined adultery of Guenevere or Yseult. ”

“ Throughout the 9th and 10th centuries, as the life-benefices of the later Carolingian kings became gradually transformed into hereditary fiefs, the insecurity of life and property grew greater; for there was no central power to curb the injustice of the petty dukes and counts who warred and pillaged at their will. ”

“ But the successors of Charlemagne had neither the power nor the understanding of their ancestors. No wonder then, that, under them, the general inclination of the subjects to change their benefices into fiefs gained ground. The division of the empire, and frequent wars between the brothers, weakened the royal authority, and strengthened their vassals; who, at the times of their kings distress, were rather to be entreated than commanded. ”

“ The assumption of the title of emperor was destined to make the German rulers a great deal of trouble. It constantly led them into futile efforts to maintain a supremacy over Italy, which lay without their natural boundaries. Then the circumstances under which Charlemagne was crowned made it possible for the popes to claim, later, that it was they who had transferred the imperial power from the old eastern line of emperors to the Carolingian house, and that this was a proof of their right to dispose of the crown as they pleased. ”

“ In their eyes, and in the eyes of Charlemagne’s own descendants, the Empire was something appendant to the kingship of the Franks, which made that kingship unique among others, but did not radically alter its character. True, the kingship might be divided among brothers by the old Germanic custom of partition, while the Empire must inhere in one person; but that was the one difference, and the one difficulty, which might easily be solved by attaching the name of emperor to the eldest brother. Such was the conception of the Carolings: such was not, however, the conception of the Church. ”

“ From the Papacy, then, on the accession of the Carlovingians, came the principal decisions and steps. The reciprocal services rendered one to the other by the two powers, and still more, perhaps, the similarity of their maxims as to the unity of the empire, established between the Papacy and the Carlovingians strong ties of gratitude and policy; and, accordingly, when the Carlovingian dynasty was in danger, the court of Rome was grieved and troubled; it was hard for her to see the fall of a dynasty for which she had done so much and which had done so much for her. ”

“ The Merovingian dynasty perished of decay, amid increasing anarchy. The crown passed, with the approval of the papacy, to an Austrasian mayor of the palace and his family, one of those mayors of the palace (i.e. chief officer of the king’s household) who had been the last support Carolingian period. of the preceding dynasty. It was then that there developed a certain number of institutions, which offered themselves as useful means of consolidating the political organism, and were in reality the direct precursors of feudalism. ”

“ The Carlovingian Empire broke into pieces, Frankish, Lothringian or Burgundian, and Germanic, with the last of which went the imperial title. And this disintegration might have continued indefinitely to chaos had not feudalism appeared to fortify and steady declining civilization.
Only force could successfully resist force, and at every threatened point the same mode of local resistance sprang up. Men willing and able to fight protected the community, and exacted in return certain services. ”

“ The Carolingian dynasty reigned in France from 751 to 987, when it was ousted by the Capetian dynasty. In Germany descendants of Pippin reigned till the death of Louis the Child in 911; in Italy the Carolingians maintained their position until the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887. Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, who was thrown into prison by Hugh Capet in 991, left two sons, the last male descendants of the Carolingians, Otto, who was also duke of Lower Lorraine and died without issue, and Louis, who after the year 1000 vanishes from history. ”

“ It was in fact a return to the old system realized by Charlemagne in the great empire of which he was the founder—a system whose glorious march was interrupted by the invasion of feudalism in its severest form, which, according to what was before said, came down from Scandinavia in the time of Charlemagne's immediate successors. Under the regime of the noble emperor, the Church, the Aristocracy, and the People, formed three Estates, each with its due share in the government. This mode of administering public affairs became general in Europe, and stood for nearly a thousand years. ”

“ The Carolingian, like the Merovingian, realm included many different peoples who were destined never to become one nation; and the whole Carolingian system of government virtually had existed in the Merovingian period. Before, as well as after, the dynastic change, the government throughout the realm was administered by Counts. Likewise the famous missi dominici, or royal legates, are found in Merovingian times; but they were employed more effectively by Charles Martell, Pippin, and, finally, by Charlemagne, who enlarged their sphere of action. ”

“ On the other hand, the palatine lords, agents of the emperor, and empowered to represent him in the great fiefs or in his domains, and the burgraves of the towns, impatient to free themselves from the imperial suzerainty, displayed at the same time the insubordination which the leudes had practised in the Carlovingian epoch, and endeavoured to establish for themselves an independence transmissible to their heirs. While this movement was going on, the Pope was lowering the status of the empire ”

“ The vast fabric resting upon one human will, passed with its creator; was gone like a shadow when he was gone.
It will be remembered that the Roman Empire in its decay fell into two parts, a Western and an Eastern empire. The dying embers of the Western empire, which had been fanned into a feeble flame in the sixth century by Justinian, Emperor of the East, were threatened with complete extinguishment by the Lombards in the eighth; from which calamity they were saved, as we have seen, by Pepin. So when the Franks were again appealed to, Charlemagne saw his opportunity. ”

“ If we look at the boundaries of his kingdom, reaching from the Eider in the north to the Ebro and the Garigliano in the south, and from the ocean in the west to the Elbe and the Enns in the east, we shall say as the people of his own time did, 'this power is Imperial.' That word may mean little to us, but in fact it has often in history been used to describe just the kind of power which Charlemagne in the year 800 really had. ... The idea of empire includes under this one term, kingdoms, duchies, or whatever powers might be in existence ”