HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 



He wearied out all about him by his astonishing 

 powers of invention and labour, and the amount 

 of work he exacted from them. His favourite place 

 of residence was Aix-la-Chapelle, in the present 

 Prussian province of the Lower Rhine. Wher- 

 ever he was, he was usually surrounded by learned 

 churchmen, whom he drew to his court from all 

 quarters, and with whom he delighted to hold 

 conversations on literary and other subjects. The 

 man in whom he placed most confidence, and 

 who, during the greater part of his reign, acted as 

 his most intimate friend and adviser, was Alcuin, 

 an Englishman by birth, and perhaps the most 

 cultivated scholar of his time. Charlemagne gave 

 him three abbeys, and employed him as a kind of 

 prime minister, in all matters connected with the 

 :hurch or with the education of his subjects. 



In the course of Charles's long reign of forty-six 

 years, he carried out no less than fifty-three ex- 

 peditions, most of which he commanded in person. 

 Eighteen of these were against the fierce pagan 

 nations of Germany, especially the Saxons, who, 

 after much bloodshed, and being repeatedly 

 baptised by thousands at Charles's order, were at 

 last reduced to submission and the profession of 

 Christianity. Charles continued to act, as his 

 father had done, as the patron and defender of 

 the popes against the Lombards, who were again 

 assailing the Roman territory. Called upon by 

 Pope Adrian I. he crossed the Alps (773), defeated 

 the king of the Lombards, shut him up in a mon- 



Iastery, and assumed himself the Lombard crown. 

 At the same time, he confirmed the donation of 

 his father, Pepin, whereby all those portions of 

 Central Italy that had belonged to the Greek 

 exarchate, as well as certain towns and cities of 

 the Lombards, were bestowed on the papal see ; 

 in return for which act of generosity, the pope 

 acknowledged him as Patrician of Rome, and 

 Suzerain of Italy, with the right of ratifying the 

 elections of the popes. Thus, almost at the 

 beginning of his reign, Charles found himself 

 master of Italy. The Lombards, however, espe- 

 cially those of the duchy of Benevento, continued 

 to give him some trouble ; and it required several 

 subsequent expeditions to subdue them. 



Charlemagne led or sent seven expeditions 

 against the Arabs of Spain, adding portions of 

 Northern Spain to the Prankish Empire. In 

 returning from the first of these expeditions (778), 

 army was defeated by the Saracens and 

 Basques in the famous battle of Roncesvalles, the 

 subject of so many legends. 



The general result of all the wars and conquests 

 which we have described was, that by the year 

 Soo, Charlemagne, who had inherited from his 

 father, Pepin, a kingdom scarcely equal to all 

 Gaul, found himself lord of an empire as large as 

 the ancient Roman Empire of the West, and 

 extending from the Ebro, in Spain, to the Oder 

 and the Baltic, and from the coasts of Brittany to 

 the Elbe and the Save. That year may be 

 selected as the climax of his reign, as in it he 

 visited Italy in great state, and was solemnly 

 crowned ' Emperor of the West,' by Pope Leo 

 III., the successor of Adrian I., with the title of 

 * Carolus I., Caesar Augustus.' His power being 

 thus confirmed, all the world hastened to pay him 

 homage. The Arabian calif himself, the cele- 

 brated Haroun al Raschid, the fifth of the Abba- 

 side dynasty, exchanged courtesies with his great 



Christian brother of the West, sending him, 

 among other presents, an ape, an elephant, and a 

 curious clock which struck the hours. 



Up to the time of Charlemagne, the Romans 

 had in a vague way regarded the Greek emperor 

 as the true monarch of Rome ; but when Con- 

 stantine VI. was deposed by his mother Irene, 

 who put out the eyes of her son, and reigned in 

 his stead, it was thought a good opportunity to 

 throw off the authority of the Eastern ruler, and 

 the greatness, as well as the services of Charle- 

 magne pointed him out as the right man for the 

 vacant imperial dignity. Freeman, in his General 

 Sketch of European History, points out that 

 Charlemagne was always considered, in his own 

 time, the successor of Constantine. 



The great monarch died at Aix-la-Chapelle, in 

 January 814. His son and successor, Louis le 

 Ddbonnaire ('the Gentle'), was unable to manage 

 the vast empire, and began to partition it among 

 his sons during his lifetime. This led to quarrels 

 and civil war ; and after Louis's death (840),. his 

 three surviving sons came to a formal agreement 

 at Verdun (843), and divided the empire among 

 them. Lothaire received the kingdom of Italy, 

 including Switzerland, Provence, and Lorraine ; 

 Louis the German, the kingdom of Germany ; 

 and Charles, styled the Bald, the kingdom of 

 France. Charles is thus the first king of modern 

 France ; his ancestors having been kings of ' the 

 Franks.' 



But the process of dismemberment did not stop 

 here ; from the incapacity of the sovereigns, the 

 local dukes and chieftains became virtually inde- 

 pendent ; and in the course of forty years after 

 the treaty of Verdun, each of the three kingdoms 

 was broken up into fragmentary states, having 

 little or no connection with one another. Charles 

 the Fat, the son of Louis the German, contrived, 

 amid the universal anarchy, to get possession of 

 the sovereignty of France, in addition to that of 

 Germany and Italy (884), and thus momentarily 

 reunited the empire of Charlemagne. But he was 

 soon deposed, and died (887), and with him ended 

 the line of the Carlovingian emperors. 



Church History. 



Origin of the Monastic System Separation of 

 the Greek and Latin Churches Rise of the 

 Papacy. The practice of religious retirement 

 was of great antiquity, being known among the 

 heathen and the Jews. Among Christians in the 

 East, it had become a prominent usage as early 

 as the middle of the third century, having spread 

 first from Egypt. To regulate the abuses of the 

 practice, St Basil, bishop of Cassarea, established 

 a model monastery in Pontus, and framed a set of 

 regulations for the government of such institutions 

 in general. This code, or Rule of St Basil, was 

 extensively adopted throughout the East, and 

 imparted to monastic life the form in which it was 

 introduced into the West. At first, monks were 

 generally laymen, but in time they all belonged to 

 the priestly order, and came under vows of per- 

 petual chastity and of submission to the higher 

 ecclesiastical authorities. The monastic system 

 received its most perfect organisation from St 

 Benedict, an Italian who formed a monastery on 

 a new and severe rule. In addition to the usual 

 monastic vows, this rule included that of unques- 

 tioning obedience to superiors, and the novel 



