An Introduction to the History of Western Europe Part 3

[Sidenote: Odoacer.]

10. The year 476 has commonly been taken as the date of the "fall" of the Western Empire and of the beginning of the Middle Ages. What happened in that year was this. Since Theodosius the Great, in 395, had provided that his two sons should divide the administration of the Empire between them, most of the emperors of the West had proved weak and indolent rulers. The barbarians wandered hither and thither pretty much at their pleasure, and the German troops in the service of the Empire amused themselves setting up and throwing down puppet emperors.

In 476 the German mercenaries in the Roman army demanded that a third part of Italy be given to them. On the refusal of this demand, Odoacer, their leader, banished the last of the western emperors (whose name was, by the irony of fate, Romulus Augustus the Little) to a villa near Naples. Then Odoacer sent the insignia of empire to the eastern emperor with the request that he be permitted to rule Italy as the emperor's delegate, thus putting an end to the line of the western emperors.[12]

[Sidenote: Theodoric conquers Odoacer and establishes the kingdom of the East Goths in Italy.]

It was not, however, given to Odoacer to establish an enduring German kingdom on Italian soil, for he was conquered by the great Theodoric, the king of the East Goths (or Ostrogoths). Theodoric had spent ten years of his early youth in Constantinople and had thus become familiar with Roman life. Since his return to his people he had been alternately a dangerous enemy and an embarra.s.sing friend to the eastern emperor. The East Goths, under his leaders.h.i.+p, had hara.s.sed and devastated various parts of the Eastern Empire, and had once threatened the capital itself.

The emperor had repeatedly conciliated him by conferring upon him various honors and t.i.tles and by making large grants of money and land to his people. It must have been a great relief to the government when Theodoric determined to lead his people to Italy against Odoacer. "If I fail," Theodoric said to the emperor, "you will be relieved of an expensive and troublesome friend; if, with the divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory, the Roman Senate and that part of the Empire delivered from slavery by my victorious arms."

The struggle between Theodoric and Odoacer lasted for several years, but Odoacer was finally shut up in Ravenna and surrendered, only to be treacherously slain a few days later by Theodoric's own hand (493).[13]

[Sidenote: The East Goths in Italy.]

The att.i.tude of the East Goths toward the people already in possession of the land and toward the Roman culture is significant. Theodoric put the name of the eastern emperor on the coins that he issued and did everything in his power to insure the emperor's approval of the new German kingdom. Nevertheless, although he desired that the emperor should sanction his usurpation, Theodoric had no idea of being really subordinate to Constantinople.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Interior of a Church at Ravenna, built in Theodoric's Time]

The invaders appropriated one third of the land for themselves, but this was done with discretion and no disorder appears to have resulted.

Theodoric maintained the Roman laws and inst.i.tutions, which he greatly admired. The old offices and t.i.tles were retained, and Goth and Roman lived under the same Roman law. Order was restored and learning encouraged. In Ravenna, which Theodoric chose for his capital, beautiful buildings that date from his reign still exist.

[Sidenote: The East Goths were Arian heretics.]

On his death in 526, Theodoric left behind him an admirably organized state, but it had one conspicuous weakness. The Goths, although Christians, were unorthodox according to the standard of the Italian Christians. They had been converted by eastern missionaries, who taught them the Arian heresy earlier prevalent at Constantinople. This doctrine, which derived its name from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria (d. 336), had been condemned by the Council of Nicaea. The followers of Arius did not have the same conception of Christ's nature and of the relations of the three members of the Trinity as that sanctioned at Rome. The East Goths were, therefore, not only barbarians,--which might have been forgiven them,--but were guilty, in the eyes of the orthodox Italians, of the unpardonable offense of heresy. Theodoric himself was exceptionally tolerant for his times. His conviction that "we cannot command in matters of religion because no one can be compelled to believe against his will," showed a spirit alien to the traditions of the Roman Empire and the Roman Church, which represented the orthodox belief.

[Sidenote: The German kingdoms of Theodoric's time.]

11. While Theodoric had been establis.h.i.+ng his kingdom in Italy with such enlightenment and moderation, what is now France was coming under the control of the most powerful of the barbarian peoples, the Franks, who were to play a more important role in the formation of modern Europe than any of the other German races. Besides the kingdoms of the East Goths and the Franks, the West Goths had their kingdom in Spain, the Burgundians had established themselves on the Rhone, and the Vandals in Africa. Royal alliances were concluded between the reigning houses of these nations, and for the first time in the history of Europe we see something like a family of nations, living each within its own boundaries and dealing with one another as independent powers. It seemed for a few years as if the process of a.s.similation between Germans and Romans was going to make rapid progress without involving any considerable period of disorder and retrogression.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Europe in the Time of Theodoric]

[Sidenote: Extinction of Latin literature.]

[Sidenote: Boethius.]

But no such good fortune was in store for Europe, which was now only at the beginning of the turmoil from which it was to emerge almost completely barbarized. Science, art, and literature could find no foothold in the s.h.i.+fting political sands of the following centuries.

Boethius,[14] whom Theodoric put to death (in 524 or 525) for alleged treasonable correspondence with the emperor, was the last Latin writer who can be compared in any way with the cla.s.sical authors in his style and mastery of the language. He was a scholar as well as a poet, and his treatises on logic, music, etc., were highly esteemed by following generations.

[Sidenote: Ca.s.siodorus and his manuals.]

Theodoric's distinguished Roman counselor, Ca.s.siodorus (d. 575), to whose letters we owe a great part of our knowledge of the period, busied himself in his old age in preparing text-books of the liberal arts and sciences,--grammar, arithmetic, logic, geometry, rhetoric, music, and astronomy. His manuals were intended to give the uninstructed priests a sufficient preparation for the study of the Bible and of the doctrines of the Church. His absurdly inadequate and, to us, silly treatment of these seven important subjects, to which he devotes a few pages each, enables us to estimate the low plane to which learning had fallen in Italy in the sixth century. Yet his books were regarded as standard treatises in these great fields of knowledge all through the Middle Ages. So mediaeval Europe owed these, and other text-books upon which she was dependent for her knowledge, to the period when Latin culture was coming to an end.

[Sidenote: Scarcely any writers in western Europe during the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries.]

A long period of gloom now begins. Between the time of Theodoric and that of Charlemagne three hundred years elapsed, during which scarcely a writer was to be found who could compose, even in the worst of Latin, a chronicle of the events of his day.[15] Everything conspired to discourage education. The great centers of learning--Carthage, Rome, Alexandria, Milan--were partially destroyed by the barbarians or the Arabs. The libraries which had been kept in the temples of the G.o.ds were often annihilated, along with the pagan shrines, by Christian enthusiasts, who were not sorry to see the heathen literature disappear with the heathen religion. Shortly after Theodoric's death the eastern emperor withdrew the support which the government had hitherto granted to public teachers and closed the great school at Athens. The only important historian of the sixth century was the half-illiterate Gregory, Bishop of Tours (d. 594), whose whole work is unimpeachable evidence of the sad state of intellectual affairs. He at least heartily appreciated his own ignorance and exclaims, in incorrect Latin, "Woe to our time, for the study of letters has perished from among us."

[Sidenote: Justinian destroys the kingdoms of the Vandals and the East Goths.]

12. The year after Theodoric's death one of the greatest of the emperors of the East, Justinian (527-565), came to the throne at Constantinople.[16] He undertook to regain for the Empire the provinces in Africa and Italy that had been occupied by the Vandals and East Goths. His general, Belisarius, overthrew the Vandal kingdom in northern Africa in 534, but it was a more difficult task to destroy the Gothic rule in Italy. However, in spite of a brave defense, the Goths were so completely defeated in 553 that they agreed to leave Italy with all their movable possessions. What became of the remnants of the race we do not know. They had been too few to maintain their control over the ma.s.s of the Italians, who were ready, with a religious zeal which cost them dear, to open their gates to the hostile armies of Justinian.

[Sidenote: The Lombards occupy Italy.]

The destruction of the Gothic kingdom was a disaster for Italy.

Immediately after the death of Justinian the country was overrun anew, by the Lombards, the last of the great German peoples to establish themselves within the bounds of the former Empire. They were a savage race, a considerable part of which was still pagan, and the Arian Christians among them appear to have been as hostile to the Roman Church as their unconverted fellows. The newcomers first occupied the region north of the Po, which has ever since been called Lombardy after them, and then extended their conquests southward. Instead of settling themselves with the moderation and wise statesmans.h.i.+p of the East Goths, the Lombards chose to move about the peninsula pillaging and ma.s.sacring.

Such of the inhabitants as could, fled to the islands off the coast. The Lombards were unable, however, to conquer all of Italy. Rome, Ravenna, and southern Italy continued to be held by the Greek empire. As time went on, the Lombards lost their wildness, accepted the orthodox form of Christianity, and gradually a.s.similated the civilization of the people among whom they lived. Their kingdom lasted over two hundred years, until it was overthrown by Charlemagne.

[Sidenote: The Franks; their importance and their method of conquest.]

13. None of the German peoples of whom we have so far spoken, except the Franks, ever succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a permanent kingdom. Their states were overthrown in turn by some other German nation, by the Eastern Empire, or, in the case of the West-Gothic kingdom in Spain, by the Mohammedans. The Franks, to whom we must now turn, were destined not only to conquer most of the other German tribes but even to extend their boundaries into districts inhabited by the Slavs.

When the Franks are first heard of in history they were settled along the lower Rhine, from Cologne to the North Sea. Their method of getting a foothold in the Empire was essentially different from that which the Goths, Lombards, and Vandals had adopted. Instead of severing their connection with Germany and becoming an island in the sea of the Empire, they conquered by degrees the territory about them. However far they might extend their control, they remained in constant touch with the barbarian reserves behind them. In this way they retained the warlike vigor that was lost by the races who were completely surrounded by the enervating influences of Roman civilization.

In the early part of the fifth century they had occupied the district which const.i.tutes to-day the kingdom of Belgium, as well as the regions east of it. In 486, seven years before Theodoric founded his Italian kingdom, they went forth under their great king, Clovis (a name that later grew into Louis), and defeated the Roman general who opposed them.

They extended their control over Gaul as far south as the Loire, which at that time formed the northern boundary of the kingdom of the West Goths. Clovis then enlarged his empire on the east by the conquest of the Alemanni, a German people living in the region of the Black Forest.[17]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Frankish Warrior]

[Sidenote: Conversion of Clovis, 496, and its consequences.]

The battle in which the Alemanni were defeated (496) is in one respect important above all the other battles of Clovis. Although still a pagan himself, his wife was an orthodox Christian convert. In the midst of the conflict, as he saw his line giving way, he called upon Jesus Christ and pledged himself to be baptized in His name if He would help the Franks to victory over their enemies. He kept his word and was baptized together with three thousand of his warriors. His conversion had the most momentous consequences for Europe. All the other German peoples within the Empire were Christians, but they were all Arian heretics; and to the orthodox Christians about them they seemed worse than heathen.

This religious difference had prevented the Germans and Romans from inter-marrying and had r.e.t.a.r.ded their fusion in other ways. But with the conversion of Clovis, there was at least one barbarian leader with whom the Bishop of Rome could negotiate as with a faithful son of the Church. It is from the orthodox Gregory of Tours that most of our knowledge of Clovis and his successors is derived. In Gregory's famous _History of the Franks_, the cruel and unscrupulous king appears as G.o.d's chosen instrument for the extension of the Catholic faith.[18]

Certainly Clovis quickly learned to combine his own interests with those of the Church, and the alliance between the pope and the Frankish kings was destined to have a great influence upon the history of western Europe.

[Sidenote: Conquests of Clovis.]

To the south of Clovis' new acquisitions in Gaul lay the kingdom of the Arian West Goths, to the southeast that of another heretical German people, the Burgundians. Gregory of Tours reports him as saying: "I cannot bear that these Arians should be in possession of a part of Gaul.

Let us advance upon them with the aid of G.o.d; after we have conquered them let us bring their realms into our power." So zealous was the newly converted king that he speedily extended his power to the Pyrenees, and forced the West Goths to confine themselves to the Spanish portion of their realm. The Burgundians became a tributary nation and soon fell completely under the rule of the Franks. Then Clovis, by a series of murders, brought portions of the Frankish nation itself, which had previously been independent of him, under his scepter.

[Sidenote: Character of Frankish history.]

14. When Clovis died in 511 at Paris, which he had made his residence, his four sons divided his possessions among them. Wars between rival brothers, interspersed with the most horrible murders, fill the annals of the Frankish kingdom for over a hundred years after the death of Clovis. Yet the nation continued to develop in spite of the unscrupulous deeds of its rulers. It had no enemies strong enough to a.s.sail it, and a certain unity was preserved in spite of the ever-s.h.i.+fting distribution of territory among the members of the royal house.[19]

[Sidenote: Extent of the Frankish kingdoms in the sixth century.]

The Frankish kings succeeded in extending their power over pretty nearly all the territory that is included to-day in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, as well as over a goodly portion of western Germany. By 555, when Bavaria had become tributary to the Frankish rulers, their dominions extended from the Bay of Biscay to a point east of Salzburg.

Considerable districts that the Romans had never succeeded in conquering had been brought into the developing civilization of western Europe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Dominions of the Franks under the Merovingians]

[Sidenote: Division of the Frankish territory into Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy.]

As a result of the divisions of the Frankish lands, fifty years after the death of Clovis three Frankish kingdoms appear on the map. Neustria, the western kingdom, with its center at Paris or Soissons, was inhabited mainly by the older Romanized people among whom the Franks had settled.

To the east was Austrasia, with Metz and Aix-la-Chapelle as its chief cities. This region was completely German in its population. In these two there was the prophecy of the future France and Germany. Lastly, there was the old Burgundian realm. Of the Merovingian kings, as the line descended from Clovis was called, the last to rule as well as reign was Dagobert (d. 638), who united the whole Frankish territory once more under his scepter.

[Sidenote: The Frankish n.o.bility.]

A new danger, however, threatened the unity of the Frankish kingdom, namely, the aspirations of the powerful n.o.bles. In the earliest accounts which we have of the Germans there appear to have been certain families who enjoyed a recognized preeminence over their companions. In the course of the various conquests there was a chance for the skillful leader to raise himself in the favor of the king. It was only natural that those upon whom the king relied to control distant parts of the realm should become dangerously ambitious and independent.

[Sidenote: The Mayors of the Palace.]