What, then, during the years of transition between 774 and 800, were his relations to that eastern emperor? Some answer to this question will be given in a subsequent chapter. And what were his relations to the pope, in those territories in which his or his father’s donation had taken effect? A question almost impossible to answer. Never was there a more striking case of that phenomenon of the Middle Ages to which M. Guizot has drawn attention, the co-existence of two opposing theories of law without any apparent perception of their discord in the minds of the men who had to carry them into practice. But though both Charles and the pope are spoken of as sovereigns in these territories it appears probable—we cannot say more—that Hadrian, had he been closely questioned on the subject, would have recognized that even in the duchy of Rome he was, in a manner difficult to define, subject to the over-lordship of the Frankish king.
As has been said, the conduct of Charles in reference to the kingdom of Italy, if that of an ambitious man, was on the whole wise and statesmanlike. This praise can hardly be given to his relations to the papacy, in which there was a want of that clear and frank statement of what was granted and what was withheld, which is the only means of avoiding future misunderstandings between the giver and the receiver of a benefit. And the consequences of this omission weighed heavily on Europe for centuries, and often involved two really upright and honest men, a Pope and an Emperor, in hopeless quarrels.
If we may recur to the simile of a country parish which was used in a foregoing chapter, the old absentee squire and the big Nonconformist farmer have both vanished from the scene. In their stead we have a new squire, young, enthusiastic, and devoted to the Church, who, as all the rustics see, is “hand and glove with the parson.” But he has other large estates in a distant county which claim the greater portion of his time; and, partly in his haste to return to them, partly in the effusion of his ecclesiastical zeal, he makes or is understood to make to his clerical friend such promises of subscriptions, endowments, rebuildings, and upholdings as he finds in after days of calmer calculation would practically exhaust his whole rent-roll.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS.
The year 772, which opened upon a reunited Frankish kingdom (Carloman having died at the close of the year preceding), and which was a blank as far as Frankish operations in Italy were concerned, was memorable as witnessing the beginning of that long struggle with Saxon independence and Saxon heathenism which was to occupy thirty-two central years in the life of Charles the Great.
Whether he entered upon this struggle with a light heart it is impossible for us to say. Many a time he thought it was ended, but found that he had only bent not broken the stubborn spirit of his foes, and assuredly it was with no light heart that he found himself, when past middle life and entering on his sixth decade, still obliged to resume his Sisyphean labor.[35]
The different tribes which made up the loosely bound confederation of the Saxons occupied those territories reaching to the Elbe on the east, and nearly to the Rhine on the west, which now bear the names of Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburgh and Westphalia. This block of territory was divided in nearly equal parts between the three tribes of the Westphalians, the Angarians and the Eastphalians, the first and the last, as we should expect from their names, occupying the western and eastern and the Angarians (or Engern) the central portion. Then, beyond the Elbe, between the German Ocean and the Baltic was seated a fourth section of the Saxon people who bore the name of the Nord-albingians, and whose territory must have pretty nearly corresponded with the modern duchy of Holstein.
Thus the Saxons had no connection with the present kingdom of Saxony, though part of Prussian Saxony was probably within their borders. As Professor Freeman says in his Historical Geography of Europe (p. 207), “After the breaking up of the great Saxon duchy (1191), from most of the old Saxon lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having altogether passed away. The name of Saxony as a geographical expression clave to the Eastphalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and the Slavonic conquests to the East.” One might add, that by a curious coincidence, Hanover, the home of the old continental Saxons, was for 123 years (1714–1837) ruled by descendants of Alfred the Great who were kings of the Saxons over the sea.
These Saxon neighbors of the Franks are not to be thought of as mere savages. They had probably to some extent exchanged the nomad life of the shepherd for the more settled habits of the tiller of the ground. The old Germanic institution of the Folksthing as described by Tacitus, still apparently flourished among them. They had already been brought into a sort of loose connection with the Frankish kingdom, having at intervals paid a yearly tribute of 500 cows to a Merovingian king and an Arnulfing mayor of the palace. There does not seem any reason to suppose that at the time of the accession of Charles they nourished any thought of deadly enmity to their Frankish neighbors, or would have dreamed of uniting their tribes in a well-organized invasion of the prosperous Rhine-lands—in fact, throughout the struggle which followed, the inability of the Saxons to combine for the mere purpose of defence against impending invasion is conspicuous and absurd. But no doubt they were lawless and disagreeable neighbors, often indulging in such raids as for centuries kept the Scottish Border in turmoil, and above all the majority of them were still heathens. The missionaries who like Boniface had crossed the sea from England to convert their German kinsfolk had hitherto labored chiefly among the Frisians, but had also made some impression on the mass of Saxon heathenism. From the fierce wars which Penda, the heathen King of Mercia, waged with Christian Northumberland, we can imagine what suspicious rage the success of these English missionaries would arouse in the minds of the still heathen chiefs of the East and Westphalians.