bians to the Christians of the Latin church, the nations of the West, who stretched beyond their knowledge to the shores of the Atlantic ocean. The vast body had been inspired and united by the soul of Charlemagne; but the division and degeneracy of his race soon annihilated the imperial power, which would have rivalled the Cæsars of Byzantium, and revenged the indignities of the Christian name. The enemies no longer feared, nor could the subjects any longer trust, the application of a public revenue, the labours of trade and manufactures in the military service, the mutual aid of provinces and armies, and the naval squadrons which were regularly stationed from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Tiber. In the beginning of the tenth century, the family of Charlemagne had almost disappeared; his monarchy was broken into many hostile and independent States; the regal title was assumed by the most ambitious chiefs; their revolt was imitated in a long subordination of anarchy and discord, and the nobles of every province disobeyed their sovereign, oppressed their vassals, and exercised perpetual hostilities against their equals and neighbours. Their private wars, which overturned the fabric of government, fomented the martial spirit of the nation. In the system of modern Europe, the power of the sword is possessed, at least in fact, by five or six mighty potentates; their operations are conducted on a distant frontier, by an order of men who devote their lives to the study and practice of the military art; the rest of the country and community enjoys in the midst of war, the tranquillity of peace, and is only made sensible of the change by the aggravation or decrease of the public taxes. In the disorders of the tenth and eleventh centuries, every peasant was a soldier, and every village a fortification; each wood or valley was a scene of murder and rapine; and the lords of each castle were compelled to assume the character of princes and warriors. To their own courage and policy they boldly trusted for the safety of their family, the protection of their lands, and the revenge of their injuries; and, like the conquerors of a larger size, they were too apt to transgress the privilege trando Imperio, 1. 2, c. 27, 28), and Eutychius (Annal. tom. i. p. 55, 56), who both lived before the crusades. The testimonies of Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 69), and Abulfeda (Prefat. ad Geograph.) are more recent. of defensive war. The powers of the mind and body were hardened by the presence of danger and necessity of resolution; the same spirit refused to desert a friend and to forgive an enemy; and, instead of sleeping under the guardian care of the magistrate, they proudly disdained the authority of the laws. In the days of feudal anarchy, the instruments of agriculture and art were converted into the weapons of bloodshed; the peaceful occupations of civil and ecclesiastical society were abolished or corrupted; and the bishop who exchanged his mitre for a helmet, was more forcibly urged by the manners of the times than by the obligation of his tenure.* 66 "The The love of freedom and of arms was felt with conscious pride by the Franks themselves, and is observed by the Greeks with some degree of amazement and terror. Franks," says the emperor Constantine, are bold and valiant to the verge of temerity; and their dauntless spirit is supported by the contempt of danger and death. In the field and in close onset, they press to the front, and rush headlong against the enemy, without deigning to compute either his numbers or their own. Their ranks are formed by the firm connections of consanguinity and friendship; and their martial deeds are prompted by the desire of saving or revenging their dearest companions. In their eyes, a retreat is a shameful flight; and flight is indelible infamy.+" A nation endowed with such high and intrepid spirit, must * On this subject of ecclesiastical and beneficiary discipline, father Thomassin (tom. iii. 1. 1, c. 40. 45-47), may be usefully consulted. A general law of Charlemagne exempted the bishops from personal service; but the opposite practice, which prevailed from the ninth to the fifteenth century, is countenanced by the example or silence of saints and doctors. . . . You justify your cowardice by the holy canons, says Ratherius of Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and yet- - [Who formed "the manners of the times?" None but those who professed to instruct yet neglected to educate. Studiously they withheld from the people all employment for the mind, and so concentrated activity in the animal resources. Ages of ignorance and turbulence were the consequence, amid which, bishops rose to be princes, maintained and led armies, and their chief aspired to be the master of the world.-ED.] + In the eighteenth chapter of his Tactics, the emperor Leo has fairly stated the military vices and virtues of the Franks (whom Meursius ridiculously translates by Galli) and the Lombards, or Langobards. See likewise the twentysixth Dissertation of Muratori, de Antiquitatibus Italiæ medii Ævi. have been secure of victory, if these advantages had not been counterbalanced by many weighty defects. The decay of their naval power left the Greeks and Saracens in possession of the sea, for every purpose of annoyance and supply. In the age which preceded the institution of knighthood, the Franks were rude and unskilful in the service of cavalry ;* and in all perilous emergencies, their warriors were so conscious of their ignorance, that they chose to dismount from their horses and fight on foot. Unpractised in the use of pikes or of missile weapons, they were encumbered by the length of their swords, the weight of their armour, the magnitude of their shields, and, if I may repeat the satire of the meagre Greeks, by their unwieldy intemperance. Their independent spirit disdained the yoke of subordination, and abandoned the standard of their chief, if he attempted to keep the field beyond the term of their stipulation or service. On all sides they were open to the snares of an enemy, less brave, but more artful, than themselves. They might be bribed, for the Barbarians were venal; or surprised in the night, for they neglected the precautions of a close encampment or vigilant sentinels. The fatigues of a summer's campaign exhausted their strength and patience, and they sank in despair if their voracious appetite was disappointed of a plentiful supply of wine and of food. This general character of the Franks was marked with some national and local shades, which I should ascribe to accident, rather than to climate, but which were visible both to natives and to foreigners. An ambassador of the Great Otho declared, in the palace of Constantinople, that the Saxons could dispute with swords better than with pens; and that they preferred inevitable death to the dishonour of turning their backs to an enemy. was the glory of the nobles of France, that, in their humble dwellings, war and rapine were the only pleasure, the sole occupation, of their lives. They affected to deride the palaces, the banquets, the polished manners, of the Ita It * Domini tui milites (says the proud Nicephorus), equitandi ignari pedestris pugnæ sunt inscii: scutorum magnitudo, loricarum gravitudo, ensium longitudo, galearumque pondus neutrâ parte pugnare eos sinit; ac subridens, impedit, inquit, et eos gastrimargia, .... hoc est ventris ingluvies, &c. Luitprand in Legat. p. 480, 481. + In Saxonia certe scio. . . . decentius ensibus pugnare quam cala lians, who, in the estimate of the Greeks themselves, had degenerated from the liberty and valour of the ancient Lombards.* By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from Britain to Egypt, were entitled to the name and privileges of Romans, and their national sovereign might fix his occasional or permanent residence in any province of their common country. In the division of the East and West, an ideal unity was scrupulously preserved, and in their titles, laws, and statutes, the successors of Arcadius and Honorius announced themselves as the inseparable colleagues of the same office, as the joint sovereigns of the Roman world and city, which were bounded by the same limits. After the fall of the western monarchy, the majesty of the purple resided solely in the princes of Constantinople; and of these, Justinian was the first who, after a divorce of sixty years, regained the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted, by the right of conquest, the august title of emperor of the Romans.† A motive of vanity or mis, et prius mortem obire quam hostibus terga dare (Luitprand, p. 482). * Φραγγοὶ τοίνυν καὶ Λαγοβαρδοι λόγον ἐλευθερίας περὶ πολλοῦ ποιοῦνται, ἀλλ ̓ οἱ μὲν Λαγοβαρδοι τὸ πλέον τῆς τοιαύτης ἀρετῆς νῦν ἀπώλεσαν. Leonis Tactica, c. 18, p. 805. The emperor Leo died A.D. 911: an historical poem, which ends in 916, and appears to have been composed in 940, by a native of Venetia, discriminates in these verses the manners of Italy and France: Quid inertia bello Pectora (Ubertus ait) duris prætenditis armis, O Itali? Potius vobis sacra pocula cordi; (Anonym. Carmen Panegyricum de Laudibus Berengarii Augusti, 1. 2, in Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ii. pars 1 p. 393.) Justinian, says the historian Agathias (1. 5, p. 157), πρштOS Ρωμαίων αὐτοκράτωρ ὀνόματί τε καὶ πράγματι. Yet the specific title of emperor of the Romans was not used at Constantinople, till it had been claimed by the French and German emperors of old Rome. [After the time of Caracalla, the title of Imperator was generally disused, at least on coins (Eckhel, Num. Vet. viii. 346). Yet subsequently to the division of the empire, and before the time of Justinian, it was sometimes revived by the sovereigns of the East, as by Theodosius II., discontent solicited one of his successors, Constans the Second, to abandon the Thracian Bosphorus, and to restore the pristine honours of the Tiber: "an extravagant project," exclaims the malicious Byzantine, as if he had despoiled a beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or rather to expose, the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron. But the sword of the Lombards opposed his settlement in Italy; he entered Rome, not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive, and, after a visit of twelve days, he pillaged, and for ever deserted, the ancient capital of the world. The final revolt and separation of Italy was accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of Justinian, and from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of the Latin tongue. That legislator had composed his Institutes, his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which he celebrates as the proper and public style of the Roman government, the consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of the camps and tribunals of the East. But this Leo I., and Zeno (Ib. 182. 194. 200). From Arcadius to Justin I., even when the Goths were masters of Italy, the dominion and glory of Rome were asserted at Constantinople (Ib. 168, 169. 181. 205. 207). Grater has also preserved an inscription, in which the Senate ascribes the defeat of Gildo, Imperatoribus Arcadio et Honorio (p. 287. 3.)-ED.] * Constantine Manasses reprobates this design in his barbarous verse: Τὴν πόλιν τὴν βασίλειαν ἀποκοσμῆσαι θέλων, Καὶ τὴν ἀρχὴν χαρίσασθαι τῇ τριπεμπέλῳ Ρώμη, and it is confirmed by Theophanes, Zonaras. Cedrenus, and the Historia Miscella: voluit in urbem Romam Imperium transferre (1. 19, p. 157, in tom. i. pars 1, of the Scriptores Rer. Ital. of Muratori). + Paul. Diacon. 1. 5, c. 11, p. 480. Anastasius in Vitis Pontificum, in Muratori's collection, tom. iii. pars 1, p. 141. Consult the preface of Ducange (ad Gloss. Græc. medii Ævi), and the Novels of Justinian (7. 66). The Greek language was koivos, the Latin was πάτριος to himself, κυριώτατος to the πολιτείας σχῆμα, the system of government. [Joh. Lydus, who, through the disuse of Latin in the public offices of Constantinople, lost his clerkship (see vol. iv. p. 321), often deplores the change. (De Magistrat. lib. 2, c. 12, p. 177, 178; lib. 3, c. 42, p. 235, c. 68, p. 262.) It was begun, he says, in the reign of Theodosius II. by the prætorian prefect, the Egyptian Cyrus. (Cyrus Panopolites, consul solus, A.D. 441. Clinton, F. R. i. p. 626.) This prime minister, whose knowledge of Latin was very limited, introduced the Greek language into all official proceedings, and the change was completed by Justinian's favourite, the ignorant John of Cappadocia. This was in the time of Lydus, who after forty VOL. VI. |