What, then, was the government of this empire of which Charlemagne was
proud to assume the old title? How did this German warrior govern that
vast dominion which, thanks to his conquests, extended from the Elbe to
the Ebro, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean; which comprised nearly
all Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy and of
Spain, and which, sooth to say, was still, when Charlemagne caused
himself to be made emperor, scarce more than the hunting-ground and the
battle-field of all the swarms of barbarians who tried to settle on the
ruins of the Roman world they had invaded and broken to pieces? The
government of Charlemagne in the midst of this chaos is the striking,
complicated, and transitory fact which is now to be passed in review.
A word of warning must be first of all given touching this word
government, with which it is impossible to dispense. For a long time
past the word has entailed ideas of national unity, general organization,
and regular and efficient power. There has been no lack of revolutions
which have changed dynasties and the principles and forms of the supreme
power in the State; but they have always left existing, under different
names, the practical machinery whereby the supreme power makes itself
felt and exercises its various functions over the whole country. Open
the Almanac, whether it be called the Imperial, the Royal, or the
National, and you will find there always the working system of the
government of France; all the powers and their agents, from the lowest to
the highest, are there indicated and classed according to their
prerogatives and relations. Nor have we there a mere empty nomenclature,
a phantom of theory; things go on actually as they are described—the
book is the reflex of the reality. It were easy to construct, for the
empire of Charlemagne, a similar list of officers; there might be set
down in it dukes, counts, vicars, centeniers, and sheriffs (seabini), and
they might be distributed, in regular gradation, over the whole
territory; but it would be one huge lie; for most frequently, in the
majority of places, these magistracies were utterly powerless and
themselves in complete disorder. The efforts of Charlemagne, either to
establish them on a firm footing or to make them act with regularity,
were continual, but unavailing. In spite of the fixity of his purpose
and the energy of his action, the disorder around him was measureless and
insurmountable. He might check it for a moment at one point; but the
evil existed wherever his terrible will did not reach, and wherever it
did the evil broke out again so soon as it had been withdrawn. How could
it be otherwise? Charlemagne had not to grapple with one single nation
or with one single system of institutions; he had to deal with different
nations, without cohesion, and foreign one to another. The authority
belonged, at one and the same time, to assemblies of free men, to
landholders over the dwellers on their domains, and to the king over the
"leudes" and their following. These three powers appeared and acted side
by side in every locality as well as in the totality of the State. Their
relations and their prerogatives were not governed by any generally-
recognized principle, and none of the three was invested with sufficient
might to prevail habitually against the independence or resistance of its
rivals. Force alone, varying according to circumstances and always
uncertain decided matters between them. Such was France at the accession
of the second line. The co-existence of and the struggle between the
three systems of institutions and the three powers just alluded to had as
yet had no other result. Out of this chaos Charlemagne caused to issue a
monarchy, strong through him alone and so long as he was by, but
powerless and gone like a shadow when the man was lost to the
institution.
Whoever is astonished either at this triumph of absolute monarchy through
the personal movement of Charlemagne, or at the speedy fall of the fabric
on the disappearance of the moving spirit, understands neither what can
be done by a great man, when without him society sees itself given over
to deadly peril, nor how unsubstantial and frail is absolute power when
the great man is no longer by, or when society has no longer need of him.
It has just been shown how Charlemagne by his wars, which had for their
object and result permanent and well-secured conquests, had stopped the
fresh incursions of barbarians, that is, had stopped disorder coming from
without. An attempt will now be made to show by what means he set about
suppressing disorder from within and putting his own rule in the place of
the anarchy that prevailed in the Roman world which lay in ruins, and in
the barbaric world which was a prey to blind and ill-regulated force.
A distinction must be drawn between the local and central governments.
Far from the centre of the State, in what have since been called the
provinces, the power of the emperor was exercised by the medium of two
classes of agents, one local and permanent, the other despatched from the
centre and transitory.
In the first class we find:—
1st. The dukes, counts, vicars of counts, centeniers, sheriffs
(scabini), officers or magistrates residing on the spot, nominated by the
emperor himself or by his delegates, and charged with the duty of acting
in his name for the levying of troops, rendering of justice, maintenance
of order, and receipt of imposts.
2d. The beneficiaries or vassals of the emperor, who held of him,
sometimes as hereditaments, more often for life, and more often still
without fixed rule or stipulation, lands; domains, throughout the extent
of which they exercised, a little bit in their own name and a little bit
in the name of the emperor, a certain jurisdiction and nearly all the
rights of sovereignty. There was nothing very fixed or clear in the
position of the beneficiaries and in the nature of their power; they were
at one and the same time delegates and independent, owners and enjoyers
of usufruct, and the former or the latter character prevailed amongst
them according to circumstances. But, altogether, they were closely
bound to Charlemagne, who, in a great number of cases, charged them with
the execution of his orders in the lands they occupied.
Above these agents, local and resident, magistrates or beneficiaries,
were the missi dominici, temporary commissioners, charged to inspect,
in the emperor's name, the condition of the provinces; authorized to
penetrate into the interior of the free lands as well as of the domains
granted with the title of benefices; having the right to reform certain
abuses, and bound to render an account of all to their master. The
missi dominici were the principal instruments Charlemagne had,
throughout the vast territory of his empire, of order and administration.
As to the central government, setting aside for a moment the personal
action of Charlemagne and of his counsellors, the general assemblies,
to judge by appearances and to believe nearly all the modern historians,
occupied a prominent place in it. They were, in fact, during his reign,
numerous and active; from the year 776 to the year 813 we may count
thirty-five of these national assemblies, March-parades and May-parades,
held at Worms, Valenciennes, Geneva, Paderborn, Aix-la-Chapelle,
Thionville, and several other towns, the majority situated round about
the two banks of the Rhine. The number and periodical nature of these
great political reunions are undoubtedly a noticeable fact. What, then,
went on in their midst? What character and weight must be attached to
their intervention in the government of the State? It is important to
sift this matter thoroughly.
There is extant, touching this subject, a very curious document. A
contemporary and counsellor of Charlemagne, his cousin-german Adalbert,
abbot of Corbic, had written a treatise entitled Of the Ordering of the
Palace (De Ordine Palatii), and designed to give an insight into the
government of Charlemagne, with especial reference to the national
assemblies. This treatise was lost; but towards the close of the ninth
century, Hincmar, the celebrated archbishop of Rheims, reproduced it
almost in its entirety, in the form of a letter or of instructions,
written at the request of certain grandees of the kingdom who had asked
counsel of him with respect to the government of Carloman, one of the
sons of Charles the Stutterer. We read therein,
"It was the custom at this time to hold two assemblies every year. . .
In both, that they might not seem to have been convoked without motive,
there were submitted to the examination and deliberation of the grandees
. . . and by virtue of orders from the king, the fragments of law
called capitula, which the king himself had drawn up under the
inspiration of God or the necessity for which had been made manifest to
him in the intervals between the meetings."
Two striking facts are to be gathered from these words: the first, that
the majority of the members composing these assemblies probably regarded
as a burden the necessity for being present at them, since Charlemagne
took care to explain their convocation by declaring to them the motive
for it and by always giving them something to do; the second, that the
proposal of the capitularies, or, in modern phrase, the initiative,
proceeded from the emperor. The initiative is naturally exercised by him
who wishes to regulate or reform, and in his time it was especially
Charlemagne who conceived this design. There is no doubt, however, but
that the members of the assembly might make on their side such proposals
as appeared to them suitable; the constitutional distrusts and artifices
of our times were assuredly unknown to Charlemagne, who saw in these
assemblies a means of government rather than a barrier to his authority.
To resume the text of Hincmar:—
"After having received these communications, they deliberated on them
two or three days or more, according to the importance of the business.
Palace-messengers, going and coming, took their questions and carried
back the answers. No stranger came near the place of their meeting until
the result of their deliberations had been able to be submitted to the
scrutiny of the great prince, who then, with the wisdom he had received
from God, adopted a resolution which all obeyed."
The definitive resolution, therefore, depended upon Charlemagne alone;
the assembly contributed only information and counsel.
Hinemar continues, and supplies details worthy of reproduction, for they
give an insight into the imperial government and the action of
Charlemagne himself amidst those most ancient of the national assemblies.
"Things went on thus for one or two capitularies, or a greater number,
until, with God's help, all the necessities of the occasion were
regulated.
"Whilst these matters were thus proceeding out of the king's presence,
the prince himself, in the midst of the multitude, came to the general
assembly, was occupied in receiving the presents, saluting the men of
most note, conversing with those he saw seldom, showing towards the
elders a tender interest, disporting himself with the youngsters, and
doing the same thing, or something like it, with the ecclesiastics as
well as the seculars. However, if those who were deliberating about the
matter submitted to their examination showed a desire for it, the king
repaired to them and remained with them as long as they wished; and then
they reported to him with perfect familiarity what they thought about all
matters, and what were the friendly discussions that had arisen amongst
them. I must not forget to say that, if the weather were fine,
everything took place in the open air; otherwise, in several distinct
buildings, where those who had to deliberate on the king's proposals were
separated from the multitude of persons come to the assembly, and then
the men of greater note were admitted. The places appointed for the
meeting of the lords were divided into two parts, in such sort that the
bishops, the abbots, and the clerics of high rank might meet without
mixture with the laity. In the same way the counts and other chiefs of
the State underwent separation, in the morning, until, whether the king
was present or absent, all were gathered together; then the lords above
specified, the clerics on their side, and the laics on theirs, repaired
to the hall which had been assigned to them, and where seats had been
with due honor prepared for them. When the lords laical and
ecclesiastical were thus separated from the multitude, it remained in
their power to sit separately or together, according to the nature of the
business they had to deal with, ecclesiastical, secular, or mixed. In
the same way, if they wished to send for any one, either to demand
refreshment, or to put any question and to dismiss him after getting what
they wanted, it was at their option. Thus took place the examination of
affairs proposed to them by the king for deliberation.
"The second business of the king was to ask of each what there was to
report to him, or enlighten him touching the part of the kingdom each had
come from. Not only was this permitted to all, but they were strictly
enjoined to make inquiries, during the interval between the assemblies,
about what happened within or without the kingdom; and they were bound to
seek knowledge from foreigners as well as natives, enemies as well as
friends, sometimes by employing emissaries, and without troubling
themselves much about the manner in which they acquired their
information. The king wished to know whether in any part, in any corner
of the kingdom, the people were restless, and what was the cause of their
restlessness; or whether there had happened any disturbance to which it
was necessary to draw the attention of the council-general, and other
similar matters. He sought also to know whether any of the subjugated
nations were inclined to revolt; whether any of those that had revolted
seemed disposed towards submission; and whether those that were still
independent were threatening the kingdom with any attack. On all these
subjects, whenever there was any manifestation of disorder or danger, he
demanded chiefly what were the motives or occasion of them."
There is need of no great reflection to recognize the true character of
these assemblies: it is clearly imprinted upon the sketch drawn by
Hincmar. The figure of Charlemagne alone fills the picture: he is the
centre-piece of it and the soul of everything. 'Tis he who wills that
the national assemblies should meet and deliberate; 'tis he who inquires
into the state of the country; 'tis he who proposes and approves of or
rejects the laws; with him rest will and motive, initiative and decision.
He has a mind sufficiently judicious, unshackled, and elevated to
understand that the nation ought not to be left in darkness about its
affairs, and that he himself has need of communicating with it, of
gathering information from it, and of learning its opinions. But we have
here no exhibition of great political liberties, no people discussing its
interests and its business, interfering effectually in the adoption of
resolutions, and, in fact, taking in its government so active and
decisive a part as to have a right to say that it is self-governing,
or, in other words, a free people. It is Charlemagne, and he alone,
who governs; it is absolute government marked by prudence, ability,
and grandeur.
When the mind dwells upon the state of Gallo-Frankish society in the
eighth century, there is nothing astonishing in such a fact. Whether it
be civilized or barbarian, that which every society needs, that which it
seeks and demands first of all in its government, is a certain degree of
good sense and strong will, of intelligence and innate influence, so far
as the public interests are concerned; qualities, in fact, which suffice
to keep social order maintained or make it realized, and to promote
respect for individual rights and the progress of the general well-being.
This is the essential aim of every community of men; and the institutions
and guarantees of free government are the means of attaining it. It is
clear that, in the eighth century, on the ruins of the Roman and beneath
the blows of the barbaric world, the Gallo-Frankish nation, vast and
without cohesion, brutish and ignorant, was incapable of bringing forth,
so to speak, from its own womb, with the aid of its own wisdom and
virtue, a government of the kind. A host of different forces, without
enlightenment and without restraint, were everywhere and incessantly
struggling for dominion, or, in other words, were ever troubling and
endangering the social condition. Let there but arise, in the midst of
this chaos of unruly forces and selfish passions, a great man, one of
those elevated minds and strong characters that can understand the
essential aim of society and then urge it forward, and at the same time
keep it well in hand on the roads that lead thereto, and such a man will
soon seize and exercise the personal power almost of a despot, and people
will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate his praises, for they
do not quit the substance for the shadow, or sacrifice the end to the
means. Such was the empire of Charlemagne. Amongst annalists and
historians, some, treating him as a mere conqueror and despot, have
ignored his merits and his glory; others, that they might admire him
without scruple, have made of him a founder of free institutions, a
constitutional monarch. Both are equally mistaken. Charlemagne was,
indeed, a conqueror and a despot; but by his conquests and his personal
power he, so long as he was by, that is, for six and forty years, saved
Gallo-Frankish society from barbaric invasion without and anarchy within.
That is the characteristic of his government and his title to glory.
What he was in his wars and his general relations with his nation has
just been seen; he shall now be exhibited in all his administrative
activity and his intellectual life, as a legislator and as a friend to
the human mind. The same man will be recognized in every ease; he will
grow in greatness, without changing, as he appears under his various
aspects.
There are often joined together, under the title of Capitularies
(capitula, small chapters, articles) a mass of Acts, very different in
point of dates and objects, which are attributed indiscriminately to
Charlemagne. This is a mistake. The Capitularies are the laws or
legislative measures of the Frankish kings, Merovingian as well as
Carlovingian. Those of the Merovingians are few in number and of slight
importance, and amongst those of the Carlovingians, which amount to one
hundred and fifty-two, sixty-five only are due to Charlemagne. When an
attempt is made to classify these last according to their object, it is
impossible not to be struck with their incoherent variety; and several of
them are such as we should nowadays be surprised to meet with in a code
or in a special law. Amongst Charlemagne's sixty-five Capitularies,
which contain eleven hundred and fifty-one articles, may be counted
eighty-seven of moral, two hundred and ninety-three of political, one
hundred and thirty of penal, one hundred and ten of civil, eighty-five of
religious, three hundred and five of canonical, seventy-three of
domestic, and twelve of incidental legislation. And it must not be
supposed that all these articles are really acts of legislation, laws
properly so called; we find amongst them the texts of ancient national
laws revised and promulgated afresh; extracts from and additions to these
same ancient laws, Salle, Lombard, and Bavarian; extracts from acts of
councils; instructions given by Charlemagne to his envoys in the
provinces; questions that he proposed to put to the bishops or counts
when they came to the national assembly; answers given by Charlemagne
to questions addressed to him by the bishops, counts, or commissioners
(missi dominici); judgments, decrees, royal pardons, and simple notes
that Charlemagne seems to have had written down for himself alone, to
remind him of what he proposed to do; in a word, nearly all the various
acts which could possibly have to be framed by an earnest, far-sighted
and active government. Often, indeed, these Capitularies have no
imperative or prohibitive character; they are simple counsels, purely
moral precepts. We read therein, for example,—
"Covetousness doth consist in desiring that which others possess, and in
giving away nought of that which one's self possesseth; according to the
Apostle it is the root of all evil."
And,—
"Hospitality must be practised."
The Capitularies which have been classed under the heads of political,
penal, and canonical legislation are the most numerous, and are those
which bear most decidedly an imperative or prohibitive stamp; amongst
them a prominent place is held by measures of political economy,
administration, and police; you will find therein an attempt to put a
fixed price on provisions, a real trial of a maximum for cereals, and a
prohibition of mendicity, with the following clause:—
"If such mendicants be met with, and they labor not with their hands, let
none take thought about giving unto them."
The interior police of the palace was regulated thereby, as well as that
of the empire:
"We do will and decree that none of those who serve in our palace shall
take leave to receive therein any man who seeketh refuge there and cometh
to hide there, by reason of theft, homicide, adultery, or any other
crime. That if any free man do break through our interdicts, and hide
such malefactor in our palace, he shall be bound to carry him on his
shoulders to the public quarter, and be there tied to the same stake as
the malefactor."
Certain Capitularies have been termed religious legislation in
contradistinction to canonical legislation, because they are really
admonitions, religious exhortations, addressed not to ecclesiastics
alone, but to the faithful, the Christian people in general, and notably
characterized by good sense, and, one might almost say, freedom of
thought.
For example,
"Beware of venerating the names of martyrs falsely so called, and the
memory of dubious saints."
"Let none suppose that prayer cannot be made to God save in three tongues
[probably Latin, Greek, and Germanic, or perhaps the vulgar tongue; for
the last was really beginning to take form], for God is adored in all
tongues, and man is heard if he do but ask for the things that be right."
These details are put forward that a proper idea may be obtained of
Charlemagne as a legislator, and of what are called his laws. We have
here, it will be seen, no ordinary legislator and no ordinary laws: we
see the work, with infinite variations and in disconnected form, of a
prodigiously energetic and watchful master, who had to think and provide
for everything, who had to be everywhere the moving and the regulating
spirit. This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic
of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority
most incontestable and his power most efficient.
It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong
to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was
invested with all the splendor of sovereign power. Of the sixty-five
Capitularies classed under different heads, thirteen only are previous to
the 25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation as emperor at Rome;
fifty-two are comprised between the years 801 and 804.
The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician having thus been
exhibited, it remains to say a few words about his intellectual energy.
For that is by no means the least original or least grand feature of his
character and his influence.
Modern times and civilized society have more than once seen despotic
sovereigns filled with distrust towards scholars of exalted intellect,
especially such as cultivated the moral and political sciences, and
little inclined to admit them to their favor or to public office. There
is no knowing whether, in our days, with our freedom of thought and of
the press, Charlemagne would have been a stranger to this feeling of
antipathy; but what is certain is, that in his day, in the midst of a
barbaric society, there was no inducement to it, and that, by nature, he
was not disposed to it. His power was not in any respect questioned;
distinguished intellects were very rare; Charlemagne had too much need of
their services to fear their criticisms, and they, on their part, were
more anxious to second his efforts than to show towards him anything like
exaction or independence. He gave rein, therefore, without any
embarrassment or misgiving, to his spontaneous inclination towards them,
their studies, their labors, and their influence. He drew them into the
management of affairs. In Guizot's History of Civilization in France
there is a list of the names and works of twenty-three men of the eighth
and ninth centuries who have escaped oblivion, and they are all found
grouped about Charlemagne as his own habitual advisers, or assigned by
him as advisers to his sons Pepin and Louis in Italy and Aquitania, or
sent by him to all points of his empire as his commissioners (missi
dominici), or charged in his name with important negotiations. And
those whom he did not employ at a distance formed, in his immediate
neighborhood, a learned and industrious society, a school of the palace,
according to some modern commentators, but an academy, and not a school,
according to others, devoted rather to conversation than to teaching. It
probably fulfilled both missions; it attended Charlemagne at his various
residences, at one time working for him at questions he invited them to
deal with, at another giving to the regular components of his court, to
his children and to himself, lessons in the different sciences called
liberal, grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and even theology
and the great religious problems it was beginning to discuss.
Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have remained justly celebrated in the
literary history of the age. Alcuin was the principal director of the
school of the palace, and the favorite, the confidant, the learned
adviser of Charlemagne. "If your zeal were imitated," said he one day to
the emperor, "perchance one might see arise in France a new Athens, far
more glorious than the ancient—the Athens of Christ." Eginhard, who was
younger, received his scientific education in the school of the palace,
and was head of the public works to Charlemagne, before becoming his
biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate adviser of his son Louis
the Debonnair. Other scholars of the school of the palace, Angilbert,
Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were abbots of St. Riquier or
Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of Orleans. They had all
assumed, in the school itself, names illustrious in pagan antiquity;
Alcuin called himself Flaeens; Angilbert, Homer; Theodulph, Pindar.
Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in their society, a great
name of old, but he had borrowed from the history of the Hebrews—he
called himself David; and Eginhard, animated, no doubt, by the same
sentiments, was Bezaleel, that nephew of Moses to whom God had granted
the gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood and all the materials
which served for the construction of the ark and the tabernacle. Either
in the lifetime of their royal patron, or after his death, all these
scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or ended their lives in
monasteries of note; but, so long as they lived, they served Charlemagne
or his sons not only with the devotion of faithful advisers, but also as
followers proud of the master who had known how to do them honor by
making use of them.
It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had
inspired them with such sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences,
literature, and such studies as were then possible, and he cultivated
them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest.
It has been doubted whether he could write, and an expression of
Eginhard's might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other evidence
and even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined to believe
merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and without much success, to
write a good hand. He had learned Latin, and he understood Greek. He
caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the drawing up of
the first Germanic grammar. He ordered that the old barbaric poems, in
which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were celebrated, should be
collected for posterity. He gave Germanic names to the twelve months of
the year. He distinguished the winds by twelve special terms, whereas
before his time they had but four designations. He paid great attention
to astronomy. Being troubled one day at no longer seeing in the
firmament one of the known planets, he wrote to Alcuin, "What thinkest
thou of this Mars, which, last year, being concealed in the sign of
Cancer, was intercepted from the sight of men by the light of the sun?
Is it the regular course of his revolution? Is it the influence of the
sun? Is it a miracle? Could he have been two years about performing the
course of a single one?" In theological studies and discussions he
exhibited a particular and grave interest. "It is to him," say M.M.
Ampere and Haureau, "that we must refer the honor of the decision taken
in 794 by the Council of Frankfort in the great dispute about images; a
temperate decision which is as far removed from the infatuation of the
image-worshippers as from the frenzy of the image-breakers." And at the
same time that he thus took part in the great ecclesiastical questions,
Charlemagne paid zealous attention to the instruction of the clergy,
whose ignorance he deplored. "Ah," said he one day, "if only I had about
me a dozen clerics learned in all the sciences, as Jerome and Augustin
were!" With all his puissance it was not in his power to make Jeromes
and Augustins; but he laid the foundation, in the cathedral churches and
the great monasteries, of episcopal and cloistral schools for the
education of ecclesiastics, and carrying his solicitude still farther,
he recommended to the bishops and abbots that, in those schools, "they
should take care to make no difference between the sons of serfs and of
free men, so that they might come and sit on the same benches to study
grammar, music, and arithmetic." (Capitularies of 789, art. 70.) Thus,
in the eighth century, he foreshadowed the extension which, in the
nineteenth, was to be accorded to primary instruction, to the advantage
and honor not only of the clergy, but also of the whole people.
After so much of war and toil at a distance, Charlemagne was now at Aix-
la-Chapelle, finding rest in this work of peaceful civilization. He was
embellishing the capital which he had founded, and which was called the
king's court. He had built there a grand basilica, magnificently
adorned. He was completing his own palace there. He fetched from Italy
clerics skilled in church music, a pious joyance to which he was much
devoted, and which he recommended to the bishops of his empire. In the
outskirts of Aix-la-Chapelle "he gave full scope," said Eginhard, "to his
delight in riding and hunting. Baths of naturally-tepid water gave him
great pleasure. Being passionately fond of swimming, he became so
dexterous that none could be compared with him. He invited not only his
sons, but also his friends, the grandees of his court, and sometimes even
the soldiers of his guard, to bathe with him, insomuch that there were
often a hundred and more persons bathing at a time. When age arrived he
made no alteration in his bodily habits; but, at the same time, instead
of putting away from him the thought of death, he was much taken up with
it, and prepared himself for it with stern severity. He drew up,
modified, and completed his will several times over. Three years before
his death he made out the distribution of his treasures, his money, his
wardrobe, and all his furniture, in the presence of his friends and his
officers, in order that their voice might insure, after his death, the
execution of this partition, and he set down his intentions in this
respect in a written summary, in which he massed all his riches in three
grand lots. The first two were divided into twenty-one portions, which
were to be distributed amongst the twenty-one metropolitan churches of
his empire. After having put these first two lots under seal, he willed
to preserve to himself his usual enjoyment of the third so long as he
lived. But after his death or voluntary renunciation of the things of
this world, this same lot was to be subdivided into four portions. His
intention was, that the first should be added to the twenty-one portions
which were to go to the metropolitan churches; the second set aside for
his sons and daughters, and for the sons and daughters of his sons, and
redivided amongst them in a just and proportionate manner; the third
dedicated, according to the usage of Christians, to the necessities of
the poor; and, lastly, the fourth distributed in the same way, under the
name of alms, amongst the servants, of both sexes, of the palace for
their lifetime. . . . As for the books, of which he had amassed a
large number in his library, he decided that those who wished to have
them might buy them at their proper value, and that the money which they
produced should be distributed amongst the poor."
Having thus carefully regulated his own private affairs and bounty, he,
two years later, in 813, took the measures necessary for the regulation,
after his death, of public affairs. He had lost, in 811, his eldest son
Charles, who had been his constant companion in his wars, and, in 810,
his second son Pepin, whom he had made king of Italy; and he summoned to
his side his third son Louis, king of Aquitaine, who was destined to
succeed him. He ordered the convocation of five local councils which
were to assemble at Mayence, Rheims, Chalons, Tours, and Arles, for the
purpose of bringing about, subject to the king's ratification, the
reforms necessary in the Church. Passing from the affairs of the Church
to those of the State, he convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle a general assembly
of bishops, abbots, counts, laic grandees, and of the entire people, and,
holding council in his palace with the chief amongst them, "he invited
them to make his son Louis king-emperor; whereto all assented, saying
that it was very expedient, and pleasing, also, to the people. On Sunday
in the next month, August 813, Charlemagne repaired, crown on head, with
his son Louis, to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, laid upon the altar
another crown, and, after praying, addressed to his son a solemn
exhortation respecting all his duties as king towards God and the Church,
towards his family and his people, asked him if he were fully resolved to
fulfil them, and, at the answer that he was, bade him take the crown that
lay upon the altar, and place it with his own hands upon his head, which
Louis did amidst the acclamations of all present, who cried, 'Long live
the emperor Louis!' Charlemagne then declared his son emperor jointly
with him, and ended the solemnity with these words: 'Blessed be Thou, O
Lord God, who hast granted me grace to see with mine own eyes my son
seated on my throne!'" And Louis set out again immediately for
Aquitaine.
He was never to see his father again. Charlemagne, after his son's
departure, went out hunting, according to his custom, in the forest of
Ardenne, and continued during the whole autumn his usual mode of life.
"But in January, 814, he was taken ill," says Eginhard, "of a violent
fever, which kept him to his bed. Recurring forthwith to the remedy he
ordinarily employed against fever, he abstained from all nourishment,
persuaded that this diet would suffice to drive away or at the least
assuage the malady; but added to the fever came that pain in the side
which the Greeks call pleurisy; nevertheless the emperor persisted in his
abstinence, supporting his body only by drinks taken at long intervals;
and on the seventh day after that he had taken to his bed, having
received the holy communion," he expired about nine A.M., on Saturday,
the 28th of January, 814, in his seventy-first year.
"After performance of ablutions and funeral duties, the corpse was
carried away and buried, amidst the profound mourning of all the people,
in the church he himself had built; and above his tomb there was put up a
gilded arcade with his image and this superscription: 'In this tomb
reposeth the body of Charles, great and orthodox emperor, who did
gloriously extend the kingdom of the Franks, and did govern it happily
for forty-seven years. He died at the age of seventy years, in the year
of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction, on the 5th of the
Kalends of February.'"
If we sum up his designs and his achievements, we find an admirably sound
idea and a vain dream, a great success and a great failure.
Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the
Frankish-Christian dominion by stopping, in the north and south, the
flood of barbarians and Arabs—Paganism and Islamism. In that he
succeeded: the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in
vain against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was
placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and
infidel. No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater
service to the civilization of the world.
Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt. Like
more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman empire that
had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under
the hand of a single master. He thought he could resuscitate it,
durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the hand
of Franks and Christians. With this view he labored to conquer, convert,
and govern. He tried to be, at one and the same time, Caesar, Augustus,
and Constantine. And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded; but the
appearance passed away with himself. The unity of the empire and the
absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave. The Christian
religion and human liberty set to work to prepare for Europe other
governments and other destinies.
Great men do great things which would not get done without them; they set
their mark plainly upon history, which realizes a portion of their ideas
and wishes; but they are far from doing all they meditate, and they know
not all they do. They are at one and the same time instruments and free
agents in a general design which is infinitely above their ken, and
which, even if a glimpse of it be caught, remains inscrutable to them—
the design of God towards mankind. When great men understand that such
is their position and accept it, they show sense, and they work to some
purpose. When they do not recognize the limits of their free agency, and
the veil which hides from their eyes the future they are laboring for,
they become the dupes, and frequently the victims, of a blind pride,
which events, in the long run, always end by exposing and punishing.
Amongst men of his rank, Charlemagne has had this singular good fortune,
that his error, his misguided attempt at imperialism, perished with him,
whilst his salutary achievement, the territorial security of Christian
Europe, has been durable, to the great honor, as well as great profit, of
European civilization.
|