|Charles’s views of the Empire.| The most notable of the immediate results of the coronation was that Charles and all his subjects regarded his regal authority as being re-affirmed in a new and more hallowed shape by the ceremony. Formerly his power rested on his election as king by the Franks, and afterwards by the Lombards: now he was ‘crowned by God’ as well as chosen by the people. For the future he showed an increasing tendency to insist on the omnipotence of his authority in things ecclesiastical and moral as well as in civil matters. As Heaven’s anointed he claimed to be the guardian of morality and the reformer of Christendom, as well as the protector of the Church. Charles had always shown a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of his dominions. We have seen already what energy he displayed in enforcing the conversion of Saxony, of the Slavs, and of the Avars. He had presided at innumerable councils and synods, stirring up his bishops to enforce strict discipline and sober life among the clergy, and to root out heathen survivals and immorality among the laity. Now that he had become emperor he insisted even more than before on the moral side of his authority: he thought of himself not only as the successor of Constantine and Theodosius, but even as inheriting the theocratic powers of the ancient kings of Israel—of David or of Josiah. When Charles recrossed the Alps after his coronation and held his next great council in Austrasia, he took the opportunity of bringing home his views to his liegemen. He made all his subjects, lay and secular, swear allegiance to him for a second time under his new name of emperor: every person above the age of twelve was to have the oath administered to him by the local clergy, and to be warned ‘that his vow of homage was not merely a promise to be true to the emperor and to serve him against his enemies, but a promise to live in obedience to God and His law according to the best of each man’s strength and understanding. It was a vow to abstain from theft and oppression and injustice, no less than from heathen practices and witchcraft: a vow to do no wrong to the Churches of God, nor to injure widows and orphans, of whom the emperor is the chosen protector and guardian.’ Much more followed to the same effect: Charles formally claimed that the defence of all law and morality was involved in the imperial name, and warned his subjects that any offence against him and his ordinances was a direct crime against the anointed of God.
It was not only in the mind of Charles that this high and holy view of the duty and power of the emperor found a place. |The Holy Roman Empire.| He succeeded in impressing it on his own contemporaries and on long centuries to come: with him starts the idea of the ‘Holy Roman Empire,’ which affected so deeply the whole secular and religious life of the Middle Ages. The Frankish kingship, a mere rule of force, had no exalted and spiritual meaning: the new empire represented a close and conscious union of Church and State for the advantage of both. It started with the conception that the emperor should be the protector and overseer of the Church: by an unhappy development it ended in making the Pope the overseer of the State. But the generation which had seen Pope Leo on his knees ‘adoring’ the majesty of the great Charles, could not have foreseen the day when the successor of Charles should humbly wait for hours before the unopened door of the successor of Leo, or beg as a favour the privilege of holding his stirrup.
A new age then commences in Europe with the coronation of Charles the Great. The reign of pure barbaric force is ended: there follows a time when the history of Europe is complicated by the strife of ideas no less than by the strife of armed nations. For the future we must always be on the watch to detect the influence on politics of the ideal conception of Christendom as a great empire, under a single ruler chosen by God to sway the sword, and the rival conception of it as a great Church under a single Patriarch at Rome, appointed to hold the keys of heaven and hell, and to guide kings in the way they should go.
The internal government of the vast realm of Charles was a difficult problem. |Charles and his sons.| In his own lifetime the great king provided for it by delegating his authority in certain large sections of it to his sons: we have already spoken of his nomination of Charles, Pippin, and Lewis to be kings in Neustria, Italy, and Aquitaine. Charles contemplated the possibility of a single empire existing while yet many of its parts should be governed by vassal sovereigns. In his own time the plan worked well enough: he did not, perhaps, foresee that the problem would be far harder in the next generation, when the homage and obedience of the lesser kings would have to be paid to a brother, an uncle, and at last to a mere distant cousin.
Charles publicly issued in 806 the scheme on which his realm was to be ruled after his death: the title of emperor and all the Frankish lands, both Neustrian and Austrasian, were to go to his first-born Charles; with them went Saxony, Thuringia, and Burgundy. Pippin, the second son, had Italy, together with Bavaria and eastern Suabia. Lewis, the youngest child, was to take Aquitaine, Provence, and the Spanish March. This division, however, was rendered fruitless by the unexpected decease of the two elder kings: to the great grief of their father, Pippin died in 810, and Charles in 811. This necessitated a new division of the empire: Lewis was now the only grown man in the family: to him, therefore, was left the imperial name and all the realm save Italy, which was to be a vassal-kingdom for Bernard, the young son of Pippin.
Charles, while all his sons yet lived, gave over the charge of large sections of his realm to them. Beneath their authority the kingdoms were ruled by the same hierarchy of dukes and counts who had existed in Merovingian times. When any new land, such as Saxony or Lombardy, was added to the empire, it was ere long cut up into countships on the same pattern that already served for Austrasia and Neustria. Thus a regular ascending scale of grades lay between the count and the emperor. The count obeyed the duke, the duke the sub-king, the king his father the suzerain of all. In the conquered lands Franks were, as a rule, intrusted with the most important provincial governments: but Charles often gave countships in their own native districts to Lombards, Aquitanians, or even Saxons who had served him well and truly.
The best security for the unity and peace of the empire was the never-ceasing activity of Charles himself, who incessantly perambulated his realm from end to end so long as life was in him. It was his own frequent visits to Saxony, Italy, or Bavaria, that were the best means of keeping those outlying provinces in loyalty and obedience. But he had also a regular system of travelling commissioners who were always moving round the realm, and reporting to him on the needs and requirements of the different provinces. |The Missi Dominici.| The circuits of these Missi Dominici, or royal legates, as they were called, were fully settled by him only in 802, but he had been employing them less systematically at a far earlier date. His father and grandfather, Pippin the Short and Charles Martel, had been wont to send out occasionally travelling commissions (Missi discurrentes), but it was Charles the emperor who multiplied and systematised their activity. By his arrangements his emissaries, who were sometimes clerics, sometimes laymen, were appointed for a year’s duty over a certain number of countships. They visited the assemblies of the inhabitants of the district, summoned to the count’s Mallus,[[52]] and inquired into the state of the provinces. Complaints against the count himself or the local bishop were brought before them, and they would send them up to the king or take account of them on the spot. We sometimes find Missi charged with other duties, such as the conduct of an embassy or a warlike expedition, but this terminal inspection of the local governors was their primary duty. As long as men of probity and strength were chosen, no better machinery for keeping together the wide empire of the Franks could have been devised.
We have already mentioned in an earlier chapter the interest which Charles always showed in art and letters, an interest which had been very rare among the Frankish kings, whether of his own house or of the Merovings. Of all the two dynasties the ruffian Chilperich I. is—curiously enough—the only one who is recorded to have shown any literary tastes. Charles, however, atoned for the neglect of his predecessors. |Encouragement of learning.| He collected learned men from all quarters: the Northumbrian Alcuin and the Lombards Peter of Pisa and Paul the Deacon were the best-known names among them: at first his scholars were mostly foreigners, but by the end of his reign he had seen a generation of learned Franks arise in response to his encouragement. Two of his proclamations, the Epistola de litteris colendis and the Encyclica de emendatione librorum, set forth his purpose. He complains that the letters addressed to him by bishops and abbots from all parts of his realm are ‘very correct in sentiment but very incorrect in grammar,’ so that he has begun to fear whether his clergy have enough knowledge of Latin to understand the whole sense of the Scriptures. Wherefore he will have schools established in every monastery for the perfect teaching of the Latin tongue, ‘because it is useful that men of God should not only live by the rule and dwell in holy conversation, but should devote themselves to literary meditations, each according to his ability, that they may be able to give themselves to the duty of teaching others.’ |Multiplication of books.| Under the fostering hand of Charles all the greater monasteries became centres of learning: we owe to his care the preservation of many of the classical authors, for he was incessantly causing the old volumes, ‘almost worn out,’ as he says, ‘by the carelessness of our ancestors,’ to be fairly copied out and multiplied. Each monastery was urged to have its own treasures preserved by several copies, and to interchange them with those of its neighbours. He paid special attention to the books of the Old and New Testaments, was shocked at the diverse readings which he found to exist—due, as he asserts, to the extreme ignorance of copyists—and set Paul the Deacon to construct a new lectionary, corrected according to the best texts, and destined to be used in all the Churches in his realm. It was not only to religious books that he turned his attention: he had the old heroic epics of the Franks—the prototypes, we may suppose, of such works as the Nibelungenlied—collected and written out: unfortunately his pious son Lewis destroyed this invaluable corpus of Frankish poetry, because he deemed it heathenish. He is also found setting his scholars to work on the compilation of grammars—both Latin and German—biographies, and even of works of secular history. It is, no doubt, to his inspiration that we owe the sudden expansion and multiplication of the Frankish chronicles. Our historical sources, down to his time, are few, bald, and jejune; soon after his accession they become full, satisfactory, and numerous. The ninth century, in spite of all its troublous times, is far better known to us than the eighth.
Charles kept the best of his scholars about his Court, and treated them as familiar friends. When he was settled down at Aachen for the winter, and was at rest from wars, he gathered them about him to discuss all manners of subjects, from astronomy to logic. The literary circle assumed old classical names. Alcuin called himself Flaccus, Charles was addressed as King David, other scholars styled themselves Homer, Mopsus, and Damætas. Their discussions were often fruitless, and sometimes childish, but it was something new in Western Christendom to find a whole group of scholars busied in discussions of any sort whatever. After looking back at the blank darkness of the seventh century, we find the court of Charles the Great a very centre of light and wisdom. In it lay the promise of great things in the future, a promise for which we have looked in vain in any period of the preceding ages.