[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!)