Lotharingia

“ Both in policy and resources he overmatched the young king Lothair, who tried as he grew up to play his father’s part; but his means were too small, and he embarked on contradictory policies which destroyed 70each other. His father had relied upon the support of Otto I., but Lothair, tempted by the long tradition of loyalty which bound Lotharingia to the Carolingian house, sought to find a substitute for his dwindling patrimony in northern France by winning domains for himself in that region. ”

“ The definite separation of the East Franks, who ultimately constituted the Germany of modern history, from the West or Neustrian Franks, out of whose political organization sprang the kingdom of France, took place in 911, when the Franconian duke Conrad was elected king by the Germanic nations, and the rule of the Carolingian princes was ended for them. In this proceeding Lotharingia, or Lorraine, refused to concur. "Nobles and people held to the old imperial dynasty. ... Opinions, customs, traditions, still rendered the Lotharingians mainly members of Romanized Gaul. ”

“ During the twelfth century, the knowledge of French was regarded as a necessary element of perfect culture. On the common people, however, French civilization had no influence at all; they knew and spoke only Flemish.
The French influence was especially strong from a linguistic point of view; the German influence was overwhelming in the literary domain, especially in Lotharingia. The bishops were, generally speaking, the sole possessors of literary and scientific culture, and in Lotharingia most of them were strongly Germanized. ”

“ It took in nothing to the east of those rivers, and Lotharingia, as we have seen, was a border land which at last settled down as part of the Eastern kingdom. Thus the extent of the old Karolingia to the east was very much smaller than the extent of modern France. But, on the other hand, the Western kingdom took in lands at three points which are not part of modern France. These are the march or county of Flanders in the north, the greater part of which forms part of the modern kingdom of Belgium; the Spanish March, or county of Barcelona, which is now part of Spain ”

“ Though cities had been pillaged and the country laid waste, though heaps of ashes and tottering walls were all that remained of the monuments with which Charlemagne and his successors had adorned the cradle of their race, though art and culture had been well-nigh wiped out, the Church laid low and the State shattered almost beyond hope of repair, there was one body of men in the old kingdom of Lotharingia whose interests had been singularly favoured by the coming of the Danes—the great lay proprietors. ”

“ But the house of Long Col was not extinguished by the death of its chief—the old count had two sons, Régnier and Lambert, who, when their father was captured and his estates confiscated, found an asylum in France at the Court of King Lothaire. The French monarchs, as direct heirs of Charlemagne, had always regarded Lotharingia as their own inheritance, and Lothaire himself and his brother Charles were the sons of Duke Giselbert's widow Gerberge by her second husband, Louis d'Outremer. ”

“ Both in matters of politics and religion Lotharingia tended more and more to break away from Germany.
Hitherto only one monastic order had influenced religious life in Belgium, namely, the Benedictines. In the twelfth century other orders were born—the Cistercians and the Norbertins or Premontrés. The Cistercians, founded by St. Bernard in France, played the part, mainly, of clearers of wild land and of colonizers; they introduced new economic and agricultural methods and exerted a deep influence in economic life. ”

“ Historically, therefore, he is Dirk I., Count of Holland.
Of this small sovereign and his successors, the most powerful foe for centuries was ever the Bishop of Utrecht, the origin of whose greatness has been already indicated. Of the other Netherland provinces, now or before become hereditary, the first in rank was Lotharingia, once the kingdom of Lothaire, now the dukedom of Lorraine. In 965 it was divided into Upper and Lower Lorraine, of which the lower duchy alone belonged to the Netherlands. ”

“ The same year Charles, on the invitation of the barons, took possession of the kingdom of Lotharingia. In 920 the barons, jealous of the growth of the royal authority and discontented with the favour shown by the king to his counsellor Hagano, rebelled, and in 922 elected Robert, brother of King Odo, in place of Charles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For many years we have seen the Germans, particularly the entire kingdom of Lotharingia, struggling with barbaric obstinacy against the commands of Saint Peter and of his pontiffs. [79] In their striving, they prefer to remain under a daily, or even eternal excommunication rather than submit. Last year while I was arguing with a certain archdeacon of Mainz about a rebellion of his people, I heard him vilify our king and our people, merely because the king had given a gracious welcome everywhere in his kingdom to his Highness Pope Paschal and his princes ”

“ This marks the great age of the Saxon Ottos. ♦Boundary towards the West.♦ The frontier towards the{193} Western kingdom was now fairly ascertained, and it was subject to dispute only at a few points. ♦Lotharingia.♦ It is hardly needful to insist again on the fact that all Lotharingia, in the sense of those days, taking in all the southern Netherlands except the French fief of Flanders, was now Imperial. ♦Encroachments of France.♦ It is along this line that the German border has in later times most largely fallen back. The advance of France has touched Burgundy more than Germany ”

“ Moreover, although Flanders formed a politically united body, Lotharingia was subdivided into several small principalities: the duchy of Brabant, including the actual provinces of Brabant and Antwerp, the county of Limburg, the county of Namur, the duchy of Luxemburg, the county of Hainaut, and two ecclesiastical principalities, Cambrai and Liège.
The absence of political unity was a consequence of the new political constitution of most of the countries of Western Europe in the tenth century—of feudalism, so called. ”

“ Otho's hopes, however, were only partly realised. He had no reason to suspect Charles's good faith, but the feudal chiefs, with Régnier and Lambert at their head, so far from acknowledging the new duke, did all in their power to second the desperate efforts which Lothaire was making to annex Lotharingia, efforts which in despite of his allies were doomed to disappointment. ”

“ The man on whose head Otho now placed the ducal crown was his brother Bruno, a clerk in holy orders, on whom he also conferred the metropolitan See of Cologne, which included among its suffragans Utrecht, Liége and Cambrai, thus making him supreme alike in Church and State (953) . The success of Otho's policy in Lotharingia was in great measure, if not entirely, due to the energy, the perseverance, the courage, and, above all, to the consummate tact and the marvellous administrative capacity of this great man. ”

“ One of the uncles who killed the poor boys was Hlodhari, or Chlotachari, famous warrior, a terrible savage, but the last survivor of the brothers, and counted in the Frank history as Chlother, or Clotaire. Others of his race likewise were so baptized, and when the name passed to the Karlingen it was as Lothar. So was called the son of Louis le Debonnaire, whose portion, known at first as Lotharingen, came to be in Latin Lotharingia, and still remains Lorraine. Lothar did not pass away from Germany; one emperor, after the separation, was so called ”

“ No doubt, the resistance offered by the Belgian nobles to their foreign sovereigns might be simply represented as the direct effect of the feudal system and of the jealous pride which every vassal entertained towards his suzerain. But, if local ambitions became supreme in Europe in the tenth century, we may at least point out that, owing to the mixed characters of language and race prevailing in Belgium, and to the peculiar position occupied by Flanders and Lotharingia, nowhere were those tendencies more evident than in these distant marches of France and Germany. ”

“ Charles, France to the west of the Scheld, the Meuse, the Saone, and the Rhone; finally, Lothaire, Italy, with the long range of country comprised between the Alps and the Cevennes, the Jura, the Saone, the Rhine, and the Meuse, which from his name was called Lotharingia. This designation is still to be traced in one of the recently French provinces, Lorraine." S. Menzies, History of Europe from the Decadence of the Western Empire to the Reformation, chapter. 13. GERMANY: A. D. 843. Accession of Louis II. GERMANY: A. D. 843-962. Treaty of Verdun. Definite separation from France. ”

“ Duke Godfrey was a man of marvellous enterprise, undaunted courage and indomitable will; a man, too, of infinite tact—shrewd, long-headed, keen, and withal a convinced believer in the justice of the imperial cause. Through good report and evil report he had been true to Henry; he was his intimate counsellor and devoted friend, and the only man who had any influence over him for good. He always showed himself a staunch supporter of the bishops, and during the six years of his government of Lotharingia (1070-1076) , with their aid he had kept the feudal lords at bay. ”

“ Her frontiers were steadily advancing at the expense of Spain and of the German princes. Neither force nor treaties seemed to avail aught against her superior strength and cunning. The Lotharingian bishoprics and their dependencies; Elsass, Breisach and Bar, Roussillon, Franche Comté, parts of Flanders, of Artois, of Hainault and Luxemburg, the free imperial city of Strassburg, the territory of Orange, were steadily absorbed by her, and thoroughly incorporated with the French kingdom.
Her opponents saw no possibility of resistance, save in a great confederacy against her. ”

“ Lothair's kingdom, separated into two parts by the Alps, never became a national state. Italy, indeed, might be united under one government, but the long, narrow strip north of the Alps had no unity of race, no common language, and no national boundaries. It was fated to be broken into fragments and to be fought over for centuries by its stronger neighbors. Part of this territory now forms the small countries of Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, and another part, known as Alsace and Lorraine, [17] still remains a bone of contention between France and Germany. ”

“ But I quite agree with my lord, now, that you stayed too long at Rome under the circumstances. It was a good move—that going to Sicily, and so wise of you to travel in Egypt. Men should travel.”
“I have not been to Egypt,” said Lothair; “I have been to the Holy Land, and am a pilgrim. I wish you would tell Miss Arundel that I shall ask her permission to present her with my crucifix, which contains the earth of the holy places. I should have told her this myself, if I had seen her yesterday. Is she here?”
“She is at Vauxe; she could not tear herself away from the roses.” ”

“ Sometimes his carriage seemed in the heart of an ancient forest; sometimes the deer, startled at his approach, were scudding over expanding lawns; then his course wound by the margin of a sinuous lake with green islands and golden gondolas; and then, after advancing through stately avenues, he arrived at mighty gates of wondrous workmanship, that once had been the boast of a celebrated convent on the Danube, but which, in the days of revolutions, had reached England, and had been obtained by the grandfather of Lothair to guard the choice demesne that was the vicinage of his castle. ”

“ In the partition of Charlemagne’s empire only two of the three divisions were to survive. The western evolved finally into modern France. The easternmost became Germany. Lying between the two, Lothringia naturally became the coveted morsel which crumbled to pieces in the struggle waged for its possession.
A highway of migration cannot be the abode of a pure race. Its inhabitants necessarily represent the successive human groups by which it has been overrun. [29] The Alsatian of the present day is, accordingly, a product of racial mingling. ”

“ But not even the animating presence of the saint could make Anacletus and Roger submit. Innocent was forced to continue at Pisa until, in 1136, Lothair crossed the Alps a second time to help him. On this occasion the Emperor came with an army, and St. Bernard’s fervid denunciations of the Norman tyrant, who alone upheld to any purpose the schismatic cause, gave the expedition the character of a crusade. Lothair performed exploits, said Otto of Freising, in Calabria and Apulia such as no Frankish king had done since the days of Charles the Great. ”

“ The scenery grew dark, and the orangeries, vineyards, and coppice that bordered the way seemed black and sombre, as the stars, like diamonds in a dark-blue dome, twinkled in the early morning sky.
The yellow dawn began to gild its eastern quarter above the distant chain of the Vosges; green hill tops brightened in the rising tide of light, and the vanes of village spires and of old châteaux embosomed among oaks that were perhaps coeval with Lothario, king of Lorraine, glittered in the rosy beams. Squirrels and rabbits fled before us across the road from hedge to hedge ”

“ While he spoke, Theresa had been looking at him with a very friendly air. "Oh, how sweet is it to hear one's own opinion uttered by a stranger tongue! We are never properly ourselves until another thinks entirely as we do. My own opinion of Lothario is perfectly the same as yours: it is not every one that does him justice, and therefore all that know him better are enthusiastic in esteem of him. ”