[189] Beginning with the reign of Charlemagne there were really two assemblies each year—one in the spring, the other in the autumn; but the one in the spring, the so-called "May-field," was much the more important. All the nobles and higher clergy attended, and if a campaign was in prospect all who owed military service would be called upon to bring with them their portion of the war-host, with specified supplies. Charlemagne proposed all measures, the higher magnates discussed them with him, and the lower ones gave a perfunctory sanction to acts already determined upon. The meeting place was changed from year to year, being rotated irregularly among the royal residences, as Aix-la-Chapelle, Paderborn, Ingelheim, and Thionville; occasionally they were held, as in this instance, in places otherwise almost unknown.
[190] Strassfurt was some distance south of Magdeburg.
[191] The date of the festival of St. John the Baptist was June 22.
[192] From earliest Germanic times we catch glimpses of this practice of requiring gifts from a king's subjects. By Charlemagne's day it had crystallized into an established custom and was a very important source of revenue, though other sources had been opened up which were quite unknown to the German sovereigns of three or four hundred years before. Ordinarily these gifts, in money, jewels, or provisions, were presented to the sovereign each year at the May assembly.
[193] The title "Patricius of Rome" was conferred on Charlemagne by Pope Hadrian I., in 774. Its bestowal was a token of papal appreciation of the king's renewal of Pepin's grant of lands to the papacy. In practice the title had little or no meaning. It was dropped in 800 when Charlemagne was crowned emperor [see [p. 130]].
[194] That is, the law of the Church; in case of the monasteries, more especially the regulations laid down for their order, e.g., the Benedictine Rule.
[195] In the Middle Ages it was assumed that churchmen were educated; few other men had any claim to learning. Charlemagne here says that it is bad indeed when men who have been put in ecclesiastical positions because of their supposed education fall into errors which ought to be expected only from ordinary people.
[196] In rhetoric a trope is ordinarily defined as the use of a word or expression in a different sense from that which properly belongs to it. The most common varieties are metaphor, metonomy, synechdoche, and irony.
[197] After the battle of Fontenay, June 25, 841, Charles and Louis had separated and Lothair had formed the design of attacking and conquering first one and then the other. He made an expedition against Charles, but was unable to accomplish anything before his two enemies again drew together at Strassburg.
[198] The name "Francia" was as yet confined to the country lying between the Loire and the Scheldt.