Above all, it is very difficult in the confusion which precedes the disciplined civilization of the peoples to keep up with the history of the mayor; that if we find ourselves cheated only when it is necessary to penetrate among the races, to choose their origins, to establish them by their nature and appearance, how can we then exactly define the way and the progress of social power? The conflicts of force and violence have an unstable character that cannot be grasped, and nevertheless there is nothing that matters more than this to explain the origin and growth of the Carolingic empire. He wants in a quick summary to narrow down the prospect of powers in society to the seventh and eighth centuries, and to determine in inspection, in which hands the regiment of men and ideas was entrusted in those times of shaking and darkness.
The succession of popes in these times is as rapid as death which overthrows gray and weak old age; Rome, always turbulent city, governed by its patricians and by its expired rallies, tormented the popes, now at the mercy of the Barbarians, who gave the failure to Italy, and now of the [40]emperors of Constantinople, perhaps even more cruel than the Barbarians because they are more refined. Anyone who reads the lives of St. Martin and St. Eugene, who were both popes in the space of less than eight years, will be able to account for the storms in which St. Peter’s ship was shaken. Martin is forcibly led away by the Greek emperors, and driven into the Taurian Chersonese [95] where he died of hunger; Eugenio, who succeeds him, lasts no more than two years [96] ; Vitaliano; man of firm purpose, tried to reorganize the unity of the Church by excommunicating the bishops, who want to stand out from it [97]; Adeodatus upholds papal dignity, and imparts apostolic blessing to emperors and kings with the authority of a father over his children. All these pontificates last only three or four years, in which short period the popes use their mind and zeal to build the strength of the Church; they have to defend themselves against the Lombard kings, against the counts of Benevento, and against the dukes of Spoleti and Friuli, who sovereign Italy, and to continually fight against the patriarchs and bishops, who want to disregard the rights of Catholic unity . The election of the popes is made in Rome in the ancient basilicas, and the emperors of Byzantium do not recognize the primacy of the Italian popes; it is the ancient jealousy of the two metropolises of the world, Rome and Constantinople, in another form. Most of the popes are Italian, and they defend the ancient national pre-eminence of the Romans; except that when and when the Caesars of Byzantium obtain the election of any Greek to the papal throne, and find in him greater obedience. Thus under the religious impression the ancient jealousy of the patricians of Lazio towards the new cardinal courtiers who live in the city of Constantine is manifested.
Gregory II was the most illustrious of those Latin popes. Roman by nation, and man of science, as librarian and custodian who was he of the bulls and archives, he was elected pope by the people, and turning all his attention to evangelical preaching among the barbarous nations, filled Germany with intrepid missionaries . The Bollandists have preserved for us the life of Saint Corbinian, a native of Chatres, near Paris, who preceded Saint Boniface in the apostolate in Germany, and had his sacred mandate from Saint Gregory the Pope. Corbinian flowed through Saxony, while Bonifazio converted Thuringia and Bavaria. San Gregorio was one of the most industrious and most learned popes, and [41]his letters to Carlo Martello, prefect of the palace, are a model of the firmness and togetherness of the greatness that a pope ought to have. The most violent enemy of him above all was Leo the Isaurian, that barbarian soldier who knew how to take the fren of the Greeks in protest, highly iconoclastic. St. Gregory defended the images, the devoted object of public veneration; and Roman as he was, and very tender of his Italian homeland, suffering did not want ancient Lazio to submit to the principality of the Greeks, and the descendants of the patricians, the noble families of the Paoli Emillii and the Marii [98] retained the their independence at the foot of the circuses and temples, remnants of Roman grandeur.
The patriarchate was an oriental and very ancient institution for the churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The patriarchs were born in conjunction with the apostolate, but the metropolitans of Egypt and Syria were contemporaries of the apostles. The patriarchate of Alexandria, which included the whole of Egypt, was founded by St. Mark, and soon extended to the last borders of Abyssinia. That of Antioch embraced Syria, Palestine and Arabia, and its foundation is attributed to St. Peter. Saint Mark was damned to martyrdom in Alexandria, amid the wildness of a feast of Serapis, and Saint Peter left Antioch, to come to die in Rome, where he founded the papacy, that institution which later had to civilize the Middle Ages. Unrepeatable was the antiquity of the Church of Jerusalem, whose first patriarch was St. Jacopo the Minor, of Israelite origin. The patriarchal chair of Constantinople also rose to the fourth century. Hence all these metropolitan bishops could contend in antiquity with the popes, in that manner which Byzantium had contended with Rome; yet in the end such papal unity came out victorious; but it took a long conflict to unravel this anarchy in the Church, until the genius of Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, came to order it under one hand, with which he surely tamed feudal barbarism. in that manner which Byzantium had contended with Rome; yet in the end such papal unity came out victorious; but it took a long conflict to unravel this anarchy in the Church, until the genius of Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, came to order it under one hand, with which he surely tamed feudal barbarism. in that manner which Byzantium had contended with Rome; yet in the end the great papal unity came out victorious; but it took a long conflict to unravel this anarchy in the Church, until the genius of Gregory VII, in the eleventh century, came to order it under one hand, with which he surely tamed feudal barbarism.
The empire of the Caesars lasted in Constantinople, but after Heraclius, as governor of Africa raised by soldiers to the honor of the purple, there was no longer any emperor who showed such vigor in that supreme command; and in that long list of Caesars we find only men relieved by fortune, and whim with the same readiness, fallen from the throne. Meanwhile, the Greek empire resisted in the midst of the strong and barbarous invasions of the Saracens ruled by the caliphs, the Lombards of Italy and the Bulgarians, who [42]they camp almost on the banks of the Danube. Greek fire saved the empire and supported its weakness; now one soldier of brutal strength, now the other rose from the middle of the fields or circuses, and took possession of the scepter, or, more often, the emperors reigned only for the protection of the barbarians, like Justinian II, who obtained the crown only through the help of the king of the Bulgarians; later an Armenian took on the purple, and the imperial bandages, and the family of Heraclius found themselves prey to the persecutions of these crowned adventurers, who feared the princes of ancient and imperial origin.
In these Byzantine annals one can read unheard of cruelty: now you see the eyes gouging out of the children on whom the imperial diadem shone; or give them prey to the circus fairs or have them trampled by horses in the hippodrome; finally, a hard-tempered soldier grasped Constantine’s scepter with an iron hand, and it was Leo III, the son of a worker from Seleucia, who raised him on his shields and shouted emperor by the Greek army. A man of barbaric habits, and rapacious as they are all those who are born of force, he waged war on images only to make his profit from the remains of the reliquaries, and to convert the gold statues into money; whence the destruction of the masterpieces of the Byzantine school: the Isauric had removed its customs from the Saracens who did not suffer carved figures, nor statues, nor designs of any fate. The Greeks with such a hot fantasy in their arts, the descendants of the Apelli and the Fidii, indignant at the inconclastic decrees of the Barbarian, rise up here and there to noise, and he then, in imitation of the Caliph Omar, has the public libraries set on fire , thousands of manuscripts with precious paintings are reduced to ashes! Pope Gregory in vain writes to him to induce him to have respect for the images that preserve and perpetuate the veneration of the Saints, because Leo in response orders to depose Gregory, the defender of the arts. It was at that time that Constantinople and Greece succumbed to a terrible scourge: the cities were shaken by a terrible earthquake, which opened up the earth in various places, and overthrew the walls of Constantinople; the pastoral letters,
Relentless enemies of the emperors of Constantinople were the Saracens to the east and the Lombards to the west. The latter, who descended from the Huns, had their leaders or kings from their first establishment in Italy. Even in some images or carved stones, their effigy can be seen: shaved their heads behind their necks they wore their hair parted on both cheeks, so that they came down to mingle with the prolix beard, and to cover their faces of the black hair, hence they had, according to what Paul the Deacon says, terrible aspect. The kings and the great wore skimpy clothes, no footwear other than sandals; in [43]war, they were covered up to the knees with feral skins. They had settled in the north of Italy, and there they were trying to free the cities from the dominion of the Eastern emperors; they respected the king, as a military leader who guided his companions to the conquest. The proudest and most valiant of these kings was Luitprando, Bavaro of nation, who, seeing the peoples of Italy embittered against Leo Isaurian for his persecution of images, taking advantage of the ill-content of those, and of the discredit into which he fell he authority of the exarchate, moves against Ravenna, and seizes it, together with all the other cities of the Pentapolis [99] .
If we want to get a correct concept of the dominion of the Lombards in Italy, we want to scroll through the sad cities that face the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona, and see the ruins of Ravenna, and the silent Pavia [100]. They aimed at the absolute sovereignty of the whole peninsula, and for this effect Luitprando fights against the Greek emperors, against the exarchs, against the popes; he is right in politics to the par that intrepid captain, and his government refers to the fall of Greek sovereignty in Italy; nor would he have failed to materially tame the papacy, had the Franks not come afterwards to help the popes. The dukes or exarchs of Ravenna, delegates who were from the Greek empire, were crushed by the Lombards, whose fate held the lordship of the cities on the Adriatic, up to the great empire of Charlemagne.
In Italy there were also the dukes of Friuli, who preceded the constitution of the Carolingic empire by more than a century, and whose names portray their Germanic origin and their affinity with the Lombards; they are the same family, and there are the Astolfi and Anselmi, types of the Longobard race. The same is to be said of the dukes of Spoleti who ruled Tuscany and Umbria, vassals of the kingdom of the Lombards, who were the first to lay the feudal system on solid foundations. From this also derives the great fiefdom of Benevento, which originally established by the Greeks, fell into the family of the Dukes of Friuli, and then merged into the iron crown that the Lombard kings encircled in Monza. Friuli, Spoleti and Benevento were the three major circles of this crown, and in this
The Bulgarians, of Scythian origin, had since the time they settled [44]on the Danube their princes or kings, with names of Sarmatic ending, except that Anna Comnena, still in vain of her memories, speaking in the twelfth century of the founder of that barbaric monarchy, lends him the Greek name of Mocro; but the Tartar lineage is too evident in the dynasty of those peoples. Tarbaglo, from whom the series of Bulgarian kings began in the eighth century, having helped Justinian II to buy back Constantinople, asked him what he would give him as a reward. “Whatever you want,” the emperor replied; and then Tarbaglo, throwing on the ground his very wide shield and the whip he used to stimulate the horse. “Fill, he said, this space with gold coins;” then, raising the pike, he wanted everything around it to be filled with silky fabrics, up to the tip, and each of his Bulgarians had his right hand full of gold coins and the left of silver coins. A proud man was this Tarbaglo, and instead of resigning himself to being a vassal of the empire, he wanted to be its protector;
But more enemies arose to the empire on the Asian shores of the Bosphorus, where the caliphate, which recognized its origin from Mohammed, united together, under his sword, civil and religious mayor. Muhammad’s successors had, in the eighth century, accomplished his work with glorious perseverance, and that period began with the famous Caliphate of Valid, under whose reign we see Galatia subjugated, the conquest of Africa finished by the Muslims, and the Berbers flee in terror to the moving arenas of the desert. On those rocks that face the Hispanic peninsula, an empire rises in the meantime, under Musa governor of Africa, a tremendous conqueror who traripa from all sides, “resembling, as an Arab poet says, the waves of the Mediterranean, who rush like daughters into their father’s arms, across the strait towards the ocean ». Tarifo then descends in Spain, and in fifteen months the weary populations of the Visigoths bow under the sword of the Caliph’s lieutenant. Valido was one of the most ardent sectarians, and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro across the strait to the ocean ». Tarifo then descends in Spain, and in fifteen months the weary populations of the Visigoths bow under the sword of the Caliph’s lieutenant. Valido was one of the most ardent sectarians, and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro across the strait to the ocean ». Tarifo then descends in Spain, and in fifteen months the weary populations of the Visigoths bow under the sword of the Caliph’s lieutenant. Valido was one of the most ardent sectarians, and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign, by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert seamen, like their elders, burn those ships with the Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of heartbreak at the sad news. Omaro and in fifteen months the weary populations of the Visigoths bow under the sword of the Caliph’s lieutenant. Valido was one of the most ardent sectarians, and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro and in fifteen months the weary populations of the Visigoths bow under the sword of the Caliph’s lieutenant. Valido was one of the most ardent sectarians, and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign, by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to pray. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro and the mosques of Damascus owe their splendor to him. He did not want to know either Greek language or architecture, but built his own minarets, from which the Muslims, at the triple and monotonous cry of Moezzino, were invited to prayer. Validus was succeeded by Suleiman, who inaugurated his reign by making an army of one thousand and eight hundred sails besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro armed with a thousand and eight hundred sails to besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro armed with a thousand and eight hundred sails to besiege Constantinople; but the Greeks, expert sailors, like their elders, burn those ships with Greek fire, and Suleiman dies of a broken heart at the sad news. Omaro [45]and Iezzido, were also ardent in faith as Valido, and their barbaric aversion to images prompted him to order to destroy the paintings in the churches and the beautiful mosaics on the walls, similar to what the iconoclastic Greeks had done. Irreparable losses to the arts!
The caliphate descended in the eighth century, and the Ommiades were overshadowed by the Abbassids, who had as their second caliph Abu-Giafar or Almanzorre. The Ommiades formed an independent monarchy in Africa, first, then in Spain where they founded the kingdom of Cordova. Almanzorre built Baghdad, the city of aromas, roses and peach trees, of which the crusades then gave Europe; Baghdad made the residence of the caliphs, eternal enemies of the Greek empire, and by law of religion, sun-drenched lords of everything bearing a Muslim name; but as is always the case where the conquest extends his dominion, the lieutenants of the caliph aspire to sovereign independence, as in Africa and as in Spain. The major invasions of the Saracens occurred in the eighth century, and we see them in Gaul, across the Pyrenees, in Provence, in the Dauphiné, everywhere; they flood cities and regions, and they show themselves with the wandering hordes as far as the Loire, destroying monasteries, cities, with all the remains of the ancient civilization. But let us not precede the times of Carlo Martello, when they will come to occupy their place in our chronicle of the past centuries.
This is the time that the peoples continually move to the north and south of the world; the time of invasions! Everywhere there arise leaders, to whom the Orientals give the name of emirs, and the Scandinavian nations and the Saxons that of heretog and herskonoung , to mean those who lead them to battle, that no one here understands the royal dignity in its monarchical sense, another in this case the word rex meaning only leader of men, and leader of victorious squads, and sometimes it seems captain of the pirates [101] . In the annals of the North, every man who leads an expedition has the quality of a rex, of governor, as is especially seen at the time that the Normans overflowed into Gaul, where a simple chief who drove a few boats set the rivers of the Loire or the Seine, to plunder the cities and monasteries he had the title of rex , and to obtain it he was enough swing the rod up, or shake the key vigorously. Anyone who has studied the history of the hetarchy well will see that among the Saxons mainly all these realms were nothing more than territorial compartments, which became, with the passage of time, [46]transforming into countryside. The eighth century is a time of fragmentation, and from the papal unity outwards there is nothing but the dismemberment of land and power, and here is why. To conceive any idea of universality is the professions of a certain power of intellect, of a great power of will, of such a vastness of mind; now the Barbarians possess nothing of all this; and they can apply their minds to great conquests, but after they have accomplished them, they cut them up like the hide of an ox, nor does the authority between them ever remain whole under one hand. They divide everything into tribes and families, they inherit the land, and when the children are several, they divide it as an inheritance, and cut into shreds. Then comes a sovereign mind, which, like Charlemagne, gathers all these clippings, and passes quickly, and opera returns in pieces, and falls back into chaos; because a civilization does not last except under the conditions that suit it, and when you want to anticipate it, it returns by itself to settle in its natural life, even if it is barbaric: it is a meteor that illuminates an instant and then soon gives way to the conquering darkness.
At the beginning of the eighth century, the Merovingian lineage no longer exists except in name: Dagobert is the last of those kings who shines with bright light among the maned sons of Meroveo. After him new divisions; there are kings of Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy or Aquitaine: nothing firm, all weak and unstable under the Clotarii, the Childerichi and the Terigi or Teoderici, until this lineage dies out entirely absorbed by a new dignity of which it is it is essential to clearly define the origin, to establish the conditions for the exaltation of the Carolingians.
It was not too much thought, as it should have been, of all the things that the barbarian peoples removed from the institutions and formolarii of Rome and Byzantium. A civilization, when it was luminous, never ceases to throw a few rays here and there even in the days of its decay and precipice, and therefore we see the Frankish kings, Clovis first, solicit the title of consol, and ask for the purple and the honors of Constantinople. Among the dignities of the empire there was one, the first of all, according to the cardinal formulary, and it was that of grand butler or master of the palace, the curopalata [102], to whom the conduct of the militias and the government of the imperial guards was committed; dignity of very broad powers, and in which the absolute regiment of the empire stood. The stewards, or, as we shall say, the prefects of the palace, after the Franks did not otherwise derive from any Germanic institution, [47]that in the midst of those boreal peoples he was a leader who was strong, and a king who knew how to wield the chiaverina bravely, nor is there anything that suggests in those ancient forests the institution of a king on strike, which was a degeneration of the mayor in the conquered lands. The dignity of prefect of the palace was therefore removed from the forms of the emperors of Byzantium [103], and also made, among the conquerors, of hereditary right; but that the Franks, warlike peoples as they were, could not submit to the same regiment as the effeminate Greeks; and the emperors of Byzantium could shut themselves up in their palaces, with the eunuchs and their women, their throats ringed in gold, but the Franks were men to break the scepter in the hands of the weak, and the prefects of the palace were rising on their throne of the Merovingians, in times when force and material power created the right, and confirmed it. Only the Greeks were allowed to suffer from an effeminate prince; to vigorous peoples a vigorous authority is desired.
The origin of the butlers or prefects of the palace descends almost from the first establishment of the Frankish kings, and we find them in the sixth century, that when Dagobert took over the whole empire of the Franks, he too had a prefect of the palace in his dependence . Except that, precisely because under Dagobert the king’s government lasted great and strong, the prefects of the palace were nothing but an imitation of the great domestic officers mentioned in the Theodosian and Justinian code. Their history, very confused as it is, mixes with the upheavals of the courts of Neustria and Austrasia; we see them leading the Franks to war; we see them contending with each other: being strong and spirited men, bearing names all of Germanic origin, such as those of Grimoaldo, Ebroino, Martino or Martello, which can be read in the long catalog of such officers; to fear weakened sovereignty; make and proclaim kings. The history of these is often intertwined in the legends of the Saints; they live in court and in the field, and the chronicles love to write their annals rather than those of the striking kings[104] .
The first, somewhat clear, somewhat exact life that we have of these Palatine prefects in the annals of the first lineage is that of Pepin the Elder, also called Landen, prefect of the Kingdom of Austrasia under Dagobert. His story is best described in a legend, but that he was in honor of a saint, it was otherwise [48]those Barbarians who stripped the monasteries, who indeed protected them and filled them with gifts. He shared authority with Arnold, bishop of Metz, and with Cunibert, bishop of Cologne. Under Dagobert, a warrior king as he was, the prefects of the palace were nothing more than simple ministers.
Pippin the Elder had as successor in his prefecture of Austrasia Pepin the Big or d’Eristal, his grandson of son, but only for mother: his progeny came from Austrasia, and he owed the nickname of Eristal to a small village of the Belgica where he was born. The Austrasiians formed the fiercest and most indomitable Germanic part of the Frankish kingdom, and had preserved the prowess and vigor of their priscal origin. On the death of Dagoberto, they elected to govern them, with the rank of duke, Pippin d’Eristal and Martino or Martello, who does not want to be confused with Carlo Martello. Amendue these Palatine prefects brought their weapons to Neustria, where Martin perished in battle, while Ebroino, prefect of that kingdom, was killed with a blow, and Terigi or Theodoric, king of Neustria, also defeated, he was forced to take Pippin as his prefect. Curious distinction! Pippin d’Eristal, is not only prefect, but duke and lord of Austrasia, that is, leader of men; invades Neustria with his Germans, guided by him to war as a true conqueror, he takes possession of the Palatine prefecture by force, but point Cozzar does not want to do with the prejudices of the Neustri and Burgundian race of Franks who want the royal hereditary dignity in the family of Clovis, and respects this principle, since he is well remembered as his uncle Grimoaldo, also prefect of the palace, having wanted to raise one of his sons by usurpation on the throne of the Merovei, the peoples never wanted to recognize him. Pippin d’Eristal is a man of firm thinking, and governs the Franks as Duke of[105] , and the goddesses are enough. There is a moment in which he tries to take possession of the royal dignity, to put his hand on the diadem, but in vain, because all these attempts are unsuccessful, but that the Franks have, like all barbarian peoples, a certain fidelity to the family that possesses the sovereign podestà, and the inheritance is inherent in it, just as it is found in the East in the Caliphs; and it is a maxim taken from the sacred traditions of the temple of Israel; the inheritance marks of his seal the most childish as well as the weakest fronts.
[49]
Much had to be fought before the Caroline lineage, all Germanic as it was, would come with royal rank to plant itself in Neustria and Burgundy, and the conflict of the hereditary principle with the material strength, which resides in the Pepin family, still continues; who are already dukes of Austrasia, but in order to become king of the Franks they still have many services to render, and they need a moral exhaustion in the dynasty of Meroveo. The usurpation of the Carolingians was like an irruption of the Germanic lineage in the midst of the Franks of Austrasia and Burgundy; the Germanic dukes became the kings of Paris and the Burgundians; this historical point which also prepares and starts the great work of Charlemagne.
