Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

We are told also that Charlemagne loved to bombard the people he met, from the Pope downwards, with difficult questions; but it was not merely a malicious desire to bring them to confusion that prompted his inquiries. Alert himself, and keenly interested in whatever business he had in hand, he despised slipshod or inefficient knowledge. He expected a bishop to be an authority on theology, an official to be an expert on methods of government, a scholar to be well grounded in the ordinary sciences of his day.

Hard work was the surest road to his favour, and he spared neither himself nor those who entered his service. Even at night he would place writing materials beneath his pillow that if he woke or thought of anything it might be noted down. On one occasion he visited the palace school that he had founded, and discovered that while the boys of humble birth were making the most of their opportunities, the sons of the nobles, despising book-learning, had frittered away their time. Commending those who had done well, the Emperor turned to the others with an angry frown. ‘Relying on your birth and wealth,’ he exclaimed, ‘and caring nothing for our commands and your own improvement, you have neglected the study of letters and have indulged yourselves in pleasures and idleness.... By the King of Heaven I care little for your noble birth.... Know this, unless straightway you make up for your former negligence by earnest study, you need never expect any favour from the hand of Charles.’

Government of Charlemagne

It was with the wealthy nobles and landowners that Charlemagne fought some of his hardest battles, though no sword was drawn or open war declared. Not only were most of the high offices at court in their hands, but it was from their ranks that the counts, and later the viscounts, were chosen who ruled over the districts into which the Empire was divided and subdivided.

The count received a third of the gifts and rents from his province that would have otherwise been paid to the King; and these, if he were unscrupulous, he could increase at the expense of those he governed. He presided in the local law-courts and was responsible for the administration of justice, the exaction of fines, and for the building of roads and bridges. He was in fact a petty king, and would often tyrannize over the people and neglect the royal interests to forward his selfish ambitions.

The Merovingians had tried to limit the authority of the counts and other provincial officials by occasionally sending private agents of their own to inquire into the state of the provinces and to reform the abuses that they found. Charlemagne adopted this practice as a regular system; and at the annual assemblies he appointed Missi, or ‘messengers’, who should make a tour of inspection in the district to which they had been sent at least four times in the year and afterwards report on their progress to the Emperor. Wherever they went the count or viscount must yield up his authority to them for the time being, allowing them to sit in his court and hear all the grievances and complaints that the men and women of the district cared to bring forward. If the Missi insisted on certain reforms the count must carry them out and also make atonement for any charges proved against him.

Here are some of the evils that the men of Istria, a province on the Eastern Adriatic, suffered at the hands of their lord, ‘Johannes’, and that the inquiries of the royal Missi at length brought to light. Johannes had sold the people on his estates as serfs to his sons and daughters: he had forced them to build houses for his family and to go voyages on his business across the sea to Venice and Ravenna: he had seized the common land and used it as his own, bringing in Slavs from across the border to till it for his private use: he had robbed his tenants of their horses and their money on the plea of the Emperor’s service and had given them nothing in exchange. ‘If the Emperor will help us,’ they cried, ‘we may be saved, but if not we had better die than live.’

From this account we can see that Charlemagne appeared to the mass of his subjects as their champion against the tyranny of the nobles, and in this sense his government may be called popular; but the old ‘popular’ assemblies of the Franks at which the laws were made had ceased by this reign to be anything but aristocratic gatherings summoned to approve of the measures laid before them.

The Emperor’s ‘capitularies’ would be based on the advice he had received from his most trusted Missi; and when they had been discussed by the principal nobles, they would be read to the general assembly and ratified by a formal acceptance that meant nothing, because it rarely or never was changed into a refusal.

Besides introducing new legislation in the form of royal edicts or capitularies, Charlemagne commanded that a collection should be made of all the old tribal laws, such as the Salic Law of the Franks, and of the chief codes that had been handed down by tradition, or word of mouth, for generations; and this compilation was revised and brought up to date. It was a very useful and necessary piece of work, yet Charlemagne for all his industry does not deserve to be ranked as a great lawgiver like Justinian. The very earnestness of his desire to secure immediate justice made his capitularies hasty and inadequate. He would not wait to trace some evil to its root and then try to eradicate it, but would pass a number of laws on the matter, only touching the surface of what was wrong and creating confusion by the multiplicity of instructions and the contradictions they contained.