1. D.

their barbarous natives. The fiercest of the Saxon idolaters CHAP.

XLIX. escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren of the north; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy. Had the

pope

and the Romans revived the primitive con- His successtitution, the titles of emperor and Augustus were confer- scrs, red on Charlemagne for the term of his life ; and his suc- 814 ..857

in I aly; cessors, on each vacancy, must have ascended the throne

911 i: Gerby a formal or tacit election. But the association of his sor. n.any ;' Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy France. and conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have forescen and prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown from A. D. 813. the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. 116 The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the subsequent associations of Loth:ire and Lewis the second; the Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lincal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced to the empty honour of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes who were already invested with their power and dominion. The pious Lewis the

Pisus, Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne ; but the nations and the nobles, his 814...840. bishops and his children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Lothaire I. Germany and France were for ever separated; the provin. 2. B.

A. D.

840...856. ces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial

A. D.

116 Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this coronation; and Baronills has honestly transcribed it (A. D. 813, No. 13, &c. See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508), howsoever adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany; Pfeffel, Schimidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose pictures are some. times just and always pleasing. VOL. VI.

DD

XLIX.

CHAP. dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine

and Arles, two recent and transitory kingdoms, were beLewis II. stowed on the younger children; and Lewis the second, his

A. D. eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the proper 856...875.

and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on the most obsequious or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the bald, the stammerer, the fat, and the simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral bran

ches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, Division of the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorised the the empire, desertion of Germany, Italy, and France : he was deposed A. D. 888.

in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels, by whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some preference was shewn to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat

to the establishment of Otho the first. Otho king Otho 117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony ; of Germa- and if he truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and ny restores and appro- proselyte of Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished priates the Western people was exalted to reign over their conquerors. His faempire,

117 He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in whose favour the dutchy of Saxony had been instituted, A. D. 858. Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno (Bibliot. Bunavianæ Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p.679), gives a splendid character of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener facile reperitur (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216). Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent from Witikind.

ther Henry the Fowler was elected, by the suffrage of the CHAP. nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its

XLIX. limits 118 were enlarged on every side by his son, the first A. D. 962. and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language it has been tinged since the time of Cæsar and Tacitus. Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and Arles. In the north, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder; the marches of Brandenburg and Sleswick were fortified with German colonies : and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the pope, and for ever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of Germany. From that memorable æra, two maxims of public jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. 1. That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired from that instant the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the Roman pontiff.11

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to Transacthe East by the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting tions of the his fathers, the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the and Eastmore equal and familiar appellation of brother.120 Perhaps pires. in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name of hus. band: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marri

a

CHAP. age with that ambitious princess, who had renounced the most XLIX.

sacred duties of a mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such an union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers of the West.121 The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a proverb, “ That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbours," was in every one's mouth; but it was danger. ous to provoke a neighbour who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp, on the banks of the river Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine palace.122 The Greeks were successively led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the horse of the emperor. The

same mistake, and the same answer, were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the chamberlain ; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the doors of the presence chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his

, throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right of present possession. But the Greeks123

XLIX.

soon forgot this humiliating equality, or remembered it only CHAP. to hate the Barbarians by whom it was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne with the acclamations of basileus, and emperor

of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son, the Byzantine let. ters were inscribed, “To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor

of the Franks and Lombards.” When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the second of his hereditary title, and, with the barbarous appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His reply124 is expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning, that both in sacred and profane history, the name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the pope, a just participation of the honours of the Roman purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their ambassador describes, in lively colours, the insolence of the Byzantine court.125 The Greeks affected to despise the poverty and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline, refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman emperors. These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued Authority

of the emto exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the importance of this preroga- the elective increased with the temporal estate and spiritual ju- the popes, risdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian aristo- A. D. 800

...1060. cracy, the principal members of the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy of the bishop. Rome was divided into twenty-eight parish

perors in

tions of