FOOTNOTES:
[92] Pepin of Landen was the son of Carloman, a Frank noble of Brabant. Pepin’s daughter, Begga, was married to Arnulf’s son, Ansgesil; from this marriage sprang Pepin d’Heristal, the father of Charles Martel.
[93] However, two natural sons of Charibert founded, after the death of the latter, the semi-independent duchy of Aquitaine, in a more restricted sense, with the capital, Thoulouse.
[94] Mamaccæ (Mommarques) on the Oise between Compiègne and Noyon.
[95] Pepin of Heristal restored the annual national assembly of the Franks, which had fallen in desuetude since the days of Ebroin; when the younger Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, finally added the name of King to the exercise of the royal power which he wielded, he changed the month of meeting from March to May; the Campus Martius became accordingly a Campus Majus.
[96] Nam et opes et potentia regni penes palatii præfectos, qui Majores Domûs dicebantur, et ad quos summa imperii pertinebat, tenebantur; neque regi aliud relinquebatur quam ut regis tantum nomine contentus, speciem dominantis effingeret, legatos audiret, eisque abeuntibus responsa, quæ erat edoctus vel etiam JUSSUS, ex sua velut potestate redderet; cum præter inutile regis nomen et præcarium vitæ stipendium, quod ei præfectus aulæ, prout videbatur, exhibebat, nihil aliud proprium possideret.—Einhardi, (Eginhart,) Vita Caroli Magni; Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Tomus II., p. 444.
[97] At one time, it would appear, the Frison prince was on the point of consenting to his baptism; he had already placed one foot in the baptismal font, when it occurred to him to ask the officiating bishop (Wolfram, of Sens), “where his ancestors were gone to?” “To Hell,” was the unhesitating reply of the bigoted priest; whereupon the honest heathen exclaimed: “Then I will rather be damned with them than saved without them,” and withdrew his foot.
[98] Perhaps in some measure in consequence of the consecration of the missionary Willibrod, as bishop of Utrecht (696)?
[99] Of the race of the Bojoarian Agilolfingians.
[100] Alpais, or Alpheida, was the mother of these two sons.
[101] Raganfried had most likely perished on his flight.
[102] Better known as Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans. He was sent by Charles to Rome to obtain the episcopal ordination, that he might be able to act with greater ecclesiastical authority in the newly converted districts; on the 30th November, 723, Pope Gregory II. (715-731) ordained him bishop, after he had given in his “profession of faith,” which was approved of by Gregory as strictly orthodox. The pope furnished him then with letters and credentials to Christian princes and ecclesiastics, and to the heathen princes and nations of Germany, and also with faithful copies of the ordinances, creed, ritual, and regulations of the Romish Church; and the Christian missionary was thus converted into the Popish legate. By his base monkish truckling to the authority of Rome this narrow-minded zealot, who sought in idle formalities and ceremonies the spirit of the word of Christ, which he was totally unable to conceive and comprehend, turned the new Christian church in Germany into a dependence of the Papal see, and thus prepared ages of bloodshed and misery for that devoted country. He carried his “submissiveness” to Rome so far that he actually asked instructions in that quarter as to whether, on which part of the body, and with which finger he might, or was to, make the sign of the cross during the delivery of his sermons. No wonder, indeed, his “mission” succeeded only when backed by the sword. He was murdered by the Frisons, in 755. Apart from his narrow-minded bigotry, he was an estimable man, full of honest and disinterested zeal.
[103] The ingenuity displayed by man in the invention of specious terms to disguise the plain and simple fact of the domination of one being or nation over another, is truly marvellous.
[104] What a blessing a Primate like St. Corbinian would have been to that tender-conscienced casuist, Henry VIII. of England.
[105] Of course, under Frankish protection.
[106] Or as the dower of Suanehilda, Theudebaud’s daughter of a former marriage, whom Charles espoused on this occasion.
[107] Virtually independent.
[108] The idle and incredibly extravagant tale told by Paul Warnefried and Anastasius of 350,000 or 375,000 Arabs slain in this battle, to 1500 Christians, has been faithfully copied by most historians. One should think a moment’s reflection would suffice to show the absolute impossibility of these numbers. Where on earth was a governor of Spain, a recent conquest of the Saracens, to find the 450,000 men (for 100,000 are stated to have escaped) to lead into France; and where was he to find, in a thinly populated region, such as that country was in the time of Charles Martel, the means of subsistence for such a host? His chief of the commissariat must have been a rare genius indeed. And as to the number of fifteen hundred Christians slain, this looks very much like the “one man killed and four men slightly wounded,” to “one thousand of the enemy slain,” of some of our modern bulletins. Striking off a nought from the number of the Saracens, and adding one to that of the Christians may bring us somewhat nearer the truth.
[109] Charles Martel was not over-nice, it would appear, in the bestowal of ecclesiastical preferments and estates; it mattered very little indeed to him whether the recipient was a priest or a layman, or even whether he could read and write. He also laid his impious hands repeatedly upon the revenues of the church, and applied them to the necessities of the state, or to pay his soldiers. No wonder then that a sainted bishop of the times, Eucherius, of Orleans, should have been indulged with a pleasant vision of the body and soul of the wicked prince burning in the deepest abyss of hell—rather scurvy treatment, though, on the part of a Christian clergy, of a prince who, whatever might be his foibles as a man, and his vices as a king—(and it must be admitted, he had a goodly share of them)—had yet the merit of being the saviour of Christendom. (A synod held at Quiercy, in 858, had the calm impudence to communicate this interesting and flattering statement, accompanied by some others of the same stamp, to Lewis, King of Germany, grandson of Charlemagne!)
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
[Pg 11]: ‘same fate befel’ replaced by ‘same fate befell’.
[Pg 16]: ‘attuned to comtemplation’ replaced by ‘attuned to contemplation’.
[Pg 39]: ‘granted, Mahommed’ replaced by ‘granted, Mohammed’.
[Pg 54]: ‘let each party chose’ replaced by ‘let each party choose’.
[Pg 58]: ‘recal from the Persian’ replaced by ‘recall from the Persian’.
[Pg 59]: ‘Musulmans to oppose’ replaced by ‘Mussulmans to oppose’.
[Pg 59]: ‘decreed the downfal’ replaced by ‘decreed the downfall’.
[Pg 74]: ‘But Abd-eb-Malek had’ replaced by ‘But Abd-el-Malek had’.
[Pg 85]: ‘by the recal of’ replaced by ‘by the recall of’.
[Pg 104]: ‘Chlodomir’s seat’ replaced by ‘Clodomir’s seat’.
[Pg 124]: ‘the beleagured city’ replaced by ‘the beleaguered city’.
[Footnote 88]: ‘children of Coldomir’ replaced by ‘children of Clodomir’.