Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

As in the preceding ages, so in this, the East was the source of all subsequent worth. Italy, in the northern deluge, was the predestined Mount Ararat; the last reached by the flood, and the first left. The history of modern Europe must necessarily be referred to Florence, as the history of all-conquering force has ever been ascribed to Rome. The great ascendancy of the Medici, and the influence of Italian genius at that epoch on literature, art, science, philosophy, and religion of the world, made that fair city the centre of light, the sovereign of thought, the beautifier of life, and the metropolis of civilization. The fall of old Rome and the rise of new Italy, were events as desirable as they were inevitable. The mission of the former had ceased before any foreign nation ventured across the Alps. With an animal instinct the superannuated body summoned all the remnants of vital energy to the heart, only to witness the fatal prostration of its members, and realize its final doom. Says Mariotti, "The barbarian invasion had then the effect of an inundation of the Nile. It found a land exhausted with its own efforts, burning and withering under the rays of the same tropical sun which had called into action its productive virtues, and languishing into a slow decay, from which no reaction could ever redeem it. Then, from the bosom of unexplored mountains, prepared in the silence of untrodden regions, the flood roared from above: the overwhelming element washed away the last pale remnants of a faded vegetation; but the seasons had their own course. Gardens and fields smiled again on those desolate marshes. Palms and cedars again waved their crests to the skies in all the pride of youth, as if singing the praises of the Creator, and attesting that man alone perishes, and his works—but Nature is immortal."

Until the age of Odoacer and Theodoric, A.D. 493, there was nothing but ravage and ruin; but then the morning star of a brighter day arose, and under the auspices of these two monarchs, the foundation was commenced of the new social edifice. Alboin, king of the Lombards, was crowned in Italy, about A.D. 568, an epoch in which the great crisis which divided the ancient from the modern world was passed. This people were in Italy what the Saxons were in England. They were the bravest, and freest, as well as most barbarous of the Teutonic races. The conquest of the South not having cost them a drop of blood, it is said that the whole host, as they descended from their Alpine fastnesses, settled on the lands of fair Italy, rather as new tenants than conquerors. They carried along with them their wives and families, and cherished their adopted home with ardent enthusiasm. Their martial spirit eventually gave place to other not less active and laborious habits; and through their love of home, together with other domestic virtues, the German nations gave Italy, as well as Europe, that form of government of which our own age has witnessed the final catastrophe—the feudal system.

The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, with its long line of castles, fortresses, and cities, lay mainly within the German territory. Here the nations of central Europe saw their brethren of a kindred race living under the control of laws which the freer classes sought to repel by force of arms; but they could but observe the superior advantages of civilization, and desire to penetrate those beautiful countries whence they were derived. Consequently the Suevi, the Saxons, and the Goths opposed to the Roman fortifications a living frontier-wall, and moving westward, not only possessed themselves of, but soon peopled with new nations and vivifying powers both the South and North. The protracted contest between the kings of Lombardy and the Greek Exarchs of Ravenna, provoked the arbitration of the Franks, and led to the establishment of their protectorate over Italy; as afterwards they became the head of the great Christian empire throned in Germany. Thenceforward the Franks constituted the leading state of the West. In the meantime its rival power in the East, the Byzantine empire, was sinking even lower in the scale of moral, political, and intellectual degradation. At the fitting moment, the Saracenic empire was called into provisional existence, and made to gather under the tedious uniformity of its despotic protection whatever of civilizing elements remained in the orient, and plant them where they might unfold a more salutary life from the fresh soil of the European West.

The Eastern Empire, founded by Constantine, had no ennobling traditions of any kind, for it was neither Greece nor Rome. It possessed neither the power nor the energy requisite to discover and appreciate the new end of activity introduced by Christian ideas. Hence, there was no progress in the intellectual domain, or in the fine arts; hence, also, every thing that tended to ameliorate the social state and exalt all ranks, advanced with languor at Byzantium. It was her office simply to guard the palladium of human weal during the ten centuries of western formations, and then to fall to rise no more till a succeeding cycle shall redeem her in common with the entire old hemisphere.

Greek literature continued to decline under the Greek emperors. A vast number of books, produced during this period, have been preserved, but only a very small portion of them inspire much interest. It is a singular fact, that, even when the Latin language was in its highest cultivation, no Greek seems to have studied it, much less to have attempted to write it. But the Latins, on the contrary, so long as any taste remained among them, did not cease to admire and to cultivate the language of Greece. Like every other valuable current, taste and learning move westward only. Placed between Asia and Europe, Byzantium became the great centre to which learned men could resort, and stimulate each other by mutual collision. Justinian reigned from A.D. 527 to 565. He was a talented prince, who, among the noblest objects of ambition, disdained not the less illustrious name of poet and philosopher, lawyer and theologian, musician and architect. It might have been expected that under such auspices literature and art would not only claim the highest patronage, but produce corresponding results. Few works, however, of any eminence appeared, except the laborious compilations on jurisprudence, under the titles of the Code, the Pandects, and the Institutes, which were partly extracted from the writings of former civilians, and digested into a complete system of law, by the great scholar and statesman Tribonian. Justinian espoused such labors as were connected with his own glory; while in other respects he has been represented as an enemy to learning, when, by an edict, he imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens; and when, from rapacity, or from the real want of money to complete the expensive edifices on which he was engaged, he confiscated the stipends, which, in many cities, had been appropriated from a remote period to support the masters of liberal arts.

As the tide ebbs here, it rises elsewhere. When the Mohammedan civilization had spread with the rapidity of lightning toward the West, where it was overpowered by France, Charlemagne created the first real elements of national organization; he so modified sacred and secular legislation as to establish civil power on the basis of spiritual authority. This followed immediately upon that fusion and variety to which Europe is indebted for all that manifoldness of excellence which may be traced in modern literature, art, and science. During ten centuries, a general confusion and fermentation was all that the superficial might observe; but a deeper investigation revealed an utility in the decrees of Providence of the sublimest moment, for it produced a new civilization, the richest and most fertile earth had borne. Instead of universal ruin, every thing bore the impress of regeneration. There was darkness, indeed, but it was a gloom out of which auspicious light arose, a healthy, vigorous barbarism which contained the latent seed of loftiest culture. Society at large was for a long time a chaotic mass, not, however, of dead matter, but of living and moving germs ready to spring into full bloom at the first touch of creative power. As from the bosom of primeval night, the brightness, vitality, and order of the universe were gradually unfolded, so the political and religious institutions of the Teutonic race, the mighty fabric of mediæval civilization, sprung from the inborn vigor of noble barbarism. Mind was not less active nor less powerful than that in earlier ages, but still contained within itself the eternal elements from which a new creation was to spring. The waters subsided, and fertile soils again teemed with life; but new trees and plants, and new races appeared, and but few vestiges remained of the ancient order of things. It is cheering to contemplate the progressive national development, the fullness of life, the stir, the activity, manifested in the commerce and industry, art and science of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, compared with the mournful monotony which pervaded the Byzantine empire. The dead treasures of Grecian knowledge were never turned to account till they were grasped by the vigorous Teutonic intellect in its maturity, and when, on the destruction of the eastern empire, the seeds of that immortal literature were scattered over the wide domain of the free West. The habits of mental exertion, prior to Pericles, which led to supreme political and intellectual dominion over the East, were confirmed by the emergencies of a foreign invasion. The genius of the Augustan age was matured in the civil wars which rocked the cradle of Rome and nourished her growth. But the restoration of literature and the arts in western Europe was achieved through an instrumentality utterly unlike the preceding steps of human advancement; and which, in vivacity and universality of interest prompted thereby, has no parallel in the progress of our race. The passionate exhilaration then kindled by great popular events, such as the attempt to recover the Holy Land, transformed all susceptible classes too powerfully to admit of a relapse into apathy or ignorance.

Thus the line of demarcation is clear, and the course of mediæval progress is not less evident. The tenth year of the fifth century saw Alaric with his Goths within the walls of Rome. By the year 476 of our era, Africa obeyed the Vandals; Spain and part of Gaul were subject to the Goths; the Burgundians and Franks occupied the remainder; and the Saxons ruled the most of Britain. From the great "Storehouse of Nations" were poured forth successive swarms of those barbarous tribes who were our progenitors, and who, in the moral course of things, pressed on from change to change, as humanity is ever compelled to ascend the arduous steep of excellence. From the fifth to the tenth century, the various races mingled without being compounded; but the collision of mighty nations, and the mixture of diverse mother-tongues, soon confounded all the dialects, and gave rise to new ones in their place. During these centuries of confusion which preceded and prepared the way for modern languages, it was impossible for Europe to possess any native literature. The talent for writing was small, and, indeed, the very materials were yet more limited. Parchment was enormously dear, and paper was not yet invented, or introduced by commerce into the West. It is said that the most sublime works of antiquity were sometimes erased, for the purpose of substituting some private agreement or some legendary tale.

Literature, the immortality of speech, embalms all monarchs of thought, and guards their repose in the eternal pyramids of fame. "What is writing?" asked Pepin, the son of Charlemagne. Alcuin replied, "It is the guardian of history." The sumptuous cities which have lighted the world since the beginning of time, and all the progressive heroes who have constituted the vanguard of national improvement, are now seen only in the light furnished by the great annalists of early triumphs. The dart that pierced the Persian breast-plate molders in the dust of Marathon, and the gleam of the battle-axe, wielded by the impassioned crusader, has passed away; but the arrow of Pindar still quivers with the life of his bow, and the romantic adventures of mediæval zeal are perpetuated in the unwasting freshness of new-born letters. When Gothic night descended, the ancient classics were for a time forgotten; but in secluded retreats the ritual of genius continued to be solemnized, and the sacred fire of learning burned upon its shattered shrines, until torch after torch carried the flame to the remotest quarter in the track of the sun. That light never sets, but sheds itself upon succeeding generations in diversified hues of splendor. Homer glows in the softened beauty of Virgil, and Dantè passed the purified flambeau to Milton's mightier hand. Literature, like art, suffers fearful vicissitudes and mutilations; but, unlike her more fragile sister, she can not be easily destroyed. A casualty may shatter into dust that statue of Minerva whose limbs seemed to breathe under the flowing robe, and her lips to move; but the fierceness of the Goth, the fanaticism of the crusader, and the frenzy of the iconoclast, have not extirpated Penelope and Electra, nor defaced the calm beauty of sublime martyr worth.

Poetry is the making of thought, and not the least interesting are the primitive productions of those who created the vernacular dialects of modern Europe. They call glorious shadows into the crystal of memory, as the Charmer of their day peopled his glass with faces of the absent. Mirrors of magic represent the inventions of the minstrel; and with the thrill of national affinity in our heart, our eyes perhaps lend a fascinating brightness to the providential wonders they behold.

The irruption of barbarians above described gradually shut out from the world the old Roman literature, and a period of general darkness transpired before the new languages arose to compensate for the loss. But while the corrupt Latin was retiring, the Italian and German languages were assuming their native form. The langue d'oc of the south of France was flourishing, closely connected with the Catalan; and the langue d'oïl of the north was rapidly becoming the French language. France was then the literary centre of Europe. Through the Normans, her language was spread from Sicily to England; her vernacular literature was imitated in Germany, and became naturalized in both Italy and Spain. The Troubadours of the south and the Trouvères of the north diffused a taste for letters in every direction, and their gay science was the partial inspirer and faithful companion of chivalry. The great age of Leo was commenced when the common people were addressed in their own native tongue, and it was indignantly, but truthfully, said, that "all the splendid distinctions of mankind were thereby thrown down; and the naked shepherd levelled with the knight clad in steel." The most valuable works were translated into the dialect of each tribe or nation, and the effect of this circumstance was very great in multiplying the number of readers and of thinkers, and in giving stability to the mutable forms of oral speech. Thus the foundations of the great social movements of European civilization were laid, in those modern languages which were the result of a slow popular elaboration, and in which the corresponding civilization is reflected. The Italians led the way, and lit that torch which was passed over to Switzerland, and thence to Germany, France, Holland, England, and the still remoter West. The grave of the old civilization was the cradle of the new; a more auspicious dispensation, whose divinest apostles, as in preceding cycles, were requited with crucifixion and martyrdom.