The Rise of the North (566–1066)

England: 577–1066

Alfred and the Danes (577–1016)

After the Battle of Deorham (577) the Anglo-Saxon-Jute conquest of England met only slight resistance, and soon the invaders divided the kingdom among themselves. The Jutes founded a kingdom in Kent; the Angles formed three countries—Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia; and the Saxons ruled over three districts—Wessex, Essex, and Sussex, or West, East, and South Saxons. These seven small kingdoms, with others even smaller, constituted the "history of England" until Egbert, king of Wessex, by sword or stratagem united most of them under his rule (829).

But even before this new land of the Angles or "England" took shape under a Saxon king, Danish attacks had begun and were destined to ravage the island from end to end and threaten the newborn Christianity with the paganism of a savage and ignorant race. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records: "In the year 787 three ships steered toward the coast of West Saxons... and slew the people. These were the first ships of the Danes that sought the land of the Angles." In 793 another expedition fell upon Northumbria, plundered the famous monastery of Lindisfarne, and slew the monks. In 794 the Danes reached the river Wear, and ravaged Wearmouth and Jarrow—the very spot where Bede, the learned monk and greatest scholar of England, had written his works half a century before. In 838 the invaders turned toward East Anglia and Kent; in 839 a fleet of 350 ships, manned by sea-rovers, anchored in the Thames, and its crews plundered Canterbury and London. In 867 Northumbria was conquered by a force of Danes and Swedes. Thousands of "English" were slain, monasteries were pillaged, and several libraries were scattered or destroyed. York and its neighborhood, which had sent a scholar like Alcuin to Charlemagne, sank into poverty and ignorance. By 871 most of England north of the Thames lay open to the ravages of the invaders. In that year a Danish army under the chieftain Guthrum marched south to attack Reading, the capital of Wessex. Ethelred I, king of Wessex, and his younger brother Alfred met the Danes at Ashdown and defeated them; but a second battle at Merton went against the English, Ethelred was severely wounded, and the English forces were routed.

Alfred was only twenty-two when he ascended the throne of West Saxons (871). Asser, the learned bishop of Wales, describes Alfred in this period as illiteratus—meaning both "unlettered" (illiterate) and "unacquainted with Latin." Apparently he suffered from epilepsy, and had a seizure even at his wedding. But he is pictured as a mighty hunter, a handsome and dignified man, and superior to his brothers in the arts of war and statesmanship. A month after his accession he faced the Danes with a small force at Wilton and suffered so severe a defeat that he was compelled, to save his crown, to bow before the enemy's demands and sue for peace; but in 878 at Ethandun (modern Edington) he won a decisive victory. Half the Danish host crossed the Channel to raid the weakened France; the rest, by the Treaty of Wedmore, agreed not to pass beyond the northeastern part of England, the region later known as the Danelaw.

According to Asser, whose reliability is not great, Alfred "for plunder only" invaded East Anglia, conquered it, and—perhaps to unite England against Danish aggression—proclaimed himself, in addition to Wessex, king of East Anglia and Mercia. Then, like a smaller Charlemagne, he turned to the restoration of order and the organization of government. He re-formed the army, created a navy, established a uniform law for his three kingdoms, reformed his judiciary, provided laws for the protection of rights and the care of the poor, undertook the rebuilding and fortification of cities, and constructed "with wood and stone chambers and royal halls" to house his ever-increasing staff of officials. One eighth of all revenues he set aside for the relief of the poor, and another eighth for education. Alfred founded a school at his capital, Reading, attached to the royal palace, and from his private purse he lavished large sums upon churches and monasteries for cultural and religious work. He recalled with sorrow how in his childhood "the churches were filled with treasures and books... before they were all plundered and burned by the Danes." Now "learning had so declined among the English people that there were very few who could understand the services of the Church in English, or translate anything from Latin into their mother tongue." Alfred sent messengers in search of scholars—like Bishop Asser from Wales, and Eriugena from France, and many others—to come to his capital and instruct himself and his people. He regretted that he had so little time for reading, and now, like a monk, he devoted himself to the study of the sciences and sacred books. Reading was still difficult for Alfred, but "night and day he bade his attendants read to him." Since he was almost the first European to perceive the rising importance of the vernacular languages, he ordered that certain basic books should be translated into English. Himself, with great difficulty, he translated Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, Gregory's Pastoral Care, Orosius' Universal History, and Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation. Alfred, again like Charlemagne, collected the songs of his people, taught them to his children, and joined the court minstrels in singing them.

In 894 a new invasion of Danes was brought to the coast of Kent. The Danes of the Danelaw sent them reinforcements, and the patriotic Welsh—the remnant of the Celtic stock not yet subdued by the Anglo-Saxons—formed an alliance with the Danes. Edward, Alfred's son, attacked the camp of the Danish sea-rovers and destroyed it, and Alfred's new navy scattered the Danish fleet (899). Two years later Alfred died at the age of fifty-two, after a reign of twenty-eight years. He cannot be compared with a mountain of a man like Charlemagne, for the field of his high enterprises was small; but in moral and personal qualities—in piety, in an integrity tempered with humility, in self-restraint, patience, courtesy, devotion to the welfare of his subjects, and eagerness for wider culture—he gave to the English people an example and inspiration that they accepted with gratitude, but soon forgot. Voltaire perhaps exaggerated when he said: "I do not think that there has ever been in the world a man more worthy of respect than Alfred the Great."

Near the end of the tenth century the Scandinavian invasions of England began again. In 991 a band of Norwegian Vikings under Olaf I Tryggvason attacked the English coast, plundered Ipswich, and defeated the English forces at Maldon. Since the English under their king Ethelred II (978–1013, surnamed the Unready—because he would not take the counsel of his nobles) were unable to offer further resistance, they raised, through the first of those ruinous and demoralizing taxes known as the Danegeld, sums which they paid in successive tributes of 10,000, 16,000, 24,000, 36,000, and 48,000 pounds of silver to buy off the Danish attacks. Ethelred, seeking a foreign ally, contracted a marriage alliance with Normandy and wedded Emma, daughter of Richard I, Duke of Normandy—a union from which part of the history of Europe was to flow. Ethelred, pretending or really believing that the Danes resident in England were plotting his death and that of the members of the Witenagemot or parliament of the nation, secretly ordered that wherever Danes were found in the island they should be massacred (1002). It is not certain how fully this command was carried out. Perhaps only those adult males of the Danes who were capable of bearing arms were slain, and some of the women; one of these was the sister of Sweyn I Forkbeard, king of Denmark. Sweyn, bent on avenging his sister's blood, in 1003, and again in 1013 with all his forces, invaded England. The nobles of Ethelred's court deserted him, he fled to Normandy, and Sweyn became king and lord of England. When Sweyn died (1014), Ethelred renewed the struggle; the nobles again deserted him and made peace with Sweyn's son Canute (1015). Ethelred died in the besieged city of London; his son Edmund II, surnamed Ironside (the brave), fought valiantly, but was crushed by Canute at Assandun (1016). Thereafter all England accepted Canute as its king, and the Danish conquest was complete.

Anglo-Saxon Civilization (577–1066)

The conquest of England by the Danes was only political. The foundations, language, and customs of the Anglo-Saxons had in six centuries struck roots so deep that English government, racial characteristics, or language cannot now be understood without them. In the intervals of peace between wars or crimes, agriculture and trade were reorganized, a literary renaissance appeared, and law and order slowly took form.

The baseless fancy that Anglo-Saxon England was a paradise in which free yeomen lived in democratic village communities has no support in history. The leaders of the Anglo-Saxon tribes seized the land; by the seventh century a few families owned two-thirds of England; and by the eleventh century most towns belonged either to a noble, or to a bishop, or to the king himself. During the Danish invasions many peasants, in return for the protection of a lord, surrendered their ownership, and by the year 1000 the great majority of them, in return for rent or services, paid dues in kind to such noble landlords or worked for them. At this time the "tun-mots" or town meetings, and the "folk-mots" or "hundred-mots," which were village assemblies, performed the functions of shire courts and assemblies; but only landowners were allowed to attend these meetings; and after the eighth century these assemblies gradually declined in importance and frequency, and manorial courts of the landlords largely replaced them. The government of England was essentially in the hands of the national Witenagemot (assembly of the wise)—a relatively small body composed of nobles or ealdormen, bishops, and the chief ministers of the king. No king's election or continuance was possible without the consent of this primitive parliament. Moreover, the king himself could not legislate, judge, tax, make war or peace, or add a quarter-acre to his personal estates from which he drew revenue, without the agreement of such an assembly. The only recourse of the monarchy against this aristocratic class was an informal alliance between the king and the Church. Before and after the Norman Conquest English government relied upon the clergy for public education, social order, national unity, and even the performance of the political functions of the state. St. Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, became the chief counselor of the court in the reigns of Edmund (940–946) and Edred (946–955). He championed the middle and lower classes against the nobles, courageously criticized kings and princes, was banished by King Edwy (955–959), was recalled by King Edgar (959–975), and succeeded in preserving the crown for Edward the Martyr (975–978). He rebuilt the church of St. Peter at Glastonbury, strengthened education and art, and as archbishop of Canterbury died (988). Before Thomas à Becket, Dunstan was accounted the greatest and most honored of English saints.

In this supposedly centrifugal government national laws slowly evolved, so that the old Germanic codes, modified in phrase and adapted to new conditions, sufficed for the people's needs. Three Germanic judicial customs survived in England: compurgation or the clearing of the accused by the oath of witnesses, the payment of wergild by the offender in lieu of punishment, and the submission of the innocence of persons to the outcome of the ordeal. But trial by combat (duel) was unknown in this land. The payment of wergild or money fine was instructively graded in Anglo law: e.g., wergild or money fine for the murder of a king was 30,000 thrimsas ($13,000), for a bishop 15,000, for a nobleman or priest 2,000, and for a free peasant 266 thrimsas. According to Saxon law, if one man wounded another, he paid one or two shillings if the wound was an inch long; if he cut off an ear he was fined thirty shillings; but it must be remembered that in those days a shilling was the price of a sheep. According to the laws of the reign of Ethelbert, whoever committed adultery with another man's wife was required to pay a fine to her husband and buy him another wife. One who disobeyed the decision of a court was called "law-breaker," his goods were forfeited to the royal treasury, and anyone might kill him without fear of punishment. In some cases the offender was deprived of wergild and subjected to severe punishments, among them: reduction to slavery; scourging; castration; cutting off a hand, foot, upper lip, nose, or ear; or execution by hanging, beheading, burning, stoning, drowning, and casting into a whirlpool.

Economics, like law, was primitive, and its development was less than under Roman domination of Britain. Much had been done to drain and clear the land, but in the ninth century half of England was still forest, thicket, or marsh, and many wild animals like bears, boars, and wolves lurked in the woods. Most of the farm laborers of the kingdom were slaves or serfs. Persons might fall into slavery through crime or debt. Husbands or fathers in desperate straits might sell their wives or children as slaves. All the children of a female slave, even if their father was a free man, were accounted slaves. The master had the right to kill his slave at pleasure; he might get a female slave with child, and then expose her for sale. The slave had no right of appeal to a court; and if he was slain by an unknown hand, the small wergild fixed by law went to his master; if he fled and was caught, the master might scourge him to death. The chief trade of Bristol was in slaves. Almost the entire population of the kingdom was rural. Its shires were really villages and hamlets, and its towns were really shires. London, Exeter, York, Chester, Bristol, Gloucester, Oxford, Norwich, Worcester, and Winchester were all small cities, but they grew rapidly after the time of Alfred. When Bishop Mellitus came to London in 601 to preach he found there "a small company of pagans," though this had been one of the chief cities under Roman rule. In the eighth century London, because of its strategic position on the Thames, again advanced, and in the reign of Canute it became the capital of all England.

Artisans usually worked for a local market; but weavers and embroiderers made considerable progress and exported their products to European countries. Transportation was difficult and dangerous, and foreign commerce was very slight. Until the eighth century cattle and sheep continued to serve as means of exchange, but in that century several kings made silver shillings and pounds the currency of the realm. In tenth-century England a cow was worth four shillings, and an ox six shillings. Wages were correspondingly low. The poor lived in wooden huts whose roofs were thatched with straw and leaves, and their food was vegetables and pulse. Wheaten bread and meat were reserved for the well-to-do, or for Sunday fare. The rich adorned their ungainly palaces with figured hangings, kept themselves warm with furs of ermine and sable, and decorated their garments with embroidery and their persons with jewels.

Manners and morals lacked the decorum and courtesy of some later periods of English history. We hear many stories of rudeness, violence, brutality, lying, deceit, theft, and other ancient vices of mankind. The Norman pirates of 1066, some of whom were bastards, confessed that they were astonished at the low level of culture and morals among the conquered English, whose damp climate encouraged gluttony and intemperance in drink; to them the ale-feast (as we too suppose) betokened a gathering of men or a public holiday. St. Boniface described the Englishman of the eighth century in terms of exaggerated clarity as "a man both Christian and pagan who abstains from lawful marriage by religious rule, but by imitating neighing stallions and braying asses gives himself over to debauchery and adultery." In 756 St. Boniface wrote to Ethelbert, king of the Anglo-Saxons:

If your abhorrence of lawful marriage were for the sake of chastity it would be worthy of praise. But since you wallow in luxury and even do not shrink from adultery with nuns, your conduct is abominable and detestable. ... We have heard that almost all the nobles of Mercia follow your example and abandon their lawful wives and spend their time in adultery with harlots and nuns. ... Note this, that if the race of the Angles ... turns from lawful marriage and gives itself over to lust and adultery, a degenerate and God-forgetting stock will arise which, abandoning the customs of its fathers, will bring the kingdom to ruin.

In the early centuries of Anglo-Saxon domination a husband might at pleasure divorce his wife and marry another. The Synod of Hertford (673) condemned this custom, and gradually the influence of the Church stabilized marriage. Women were held in high respect, but this did not prevent their occasional sale as slaves. Women were almost excluded from school education, but this defect did not keep them from fascinating men and influencing them; kings fell in love with proud women and patiently awaited their favors, and consulted their wives in affairs of state. Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, as regent and queen, ruled Mercia for a generation with conscientiousness and effect. She built cities, planned campaigns, and captured Derby, Leicester, and York from the Danes. William of Malmesbury, in his account of her, writes: "When in her first labor she suffered such pangs that she ever after refused the embraces of her husband, declaring it unbecoming for the daughter of a king to submit to a pleasure which after a time produced such painful consequences." In this period (c. 1040) one of the nobles who ruled Mercia was Earl Leofric; his wife was Lady Godiva, who played a picturesque role in Anglo-Saxon legend and whose memory is kept alive in Coventry by a statue. According to the Anglo-Saxon legends, Leofric promised his wife Lady Godiva that if she would ride naked through the streets of the city he would remit the oppressive tax he had laid upon the people. [The rest of the story is that Lady Godiva undertook the ride, and the people, in sympathy, agreed not to come out of their houses at the time or to look upon the naked body of their lord's wife. Today in the annual carnivals at Coventry a nearly naked girl is placed upon a horse and the memory of the event is kept alive.—M.]

Education, like everything else, suffered from the Anglo-Saxon conquest, and only gradually recovered after these peoples had been converted to Christianity. About the year 660 Benedict Biscop founded a monastic school at Wearmouth. Bede, the bishop of Wales, was one of the pupils of this school. Archbishop Egbert established a library and school at York (735) which, under ecclesiastical supervision, became the chief center of secondary education in all England. This school, with others, in the second half of the eighth century made England north of the Alps the leading center of learning in Europe.

The sincere devotion of the teachers in these monasteries may be judged from the outstanding figure of the greatest scholar of the age, Bishop Bede (673–735), who was called "the Venerable." His character, with a brevity becoming his humility, summarizes his life as follows:

Bede, the servant of Christ, priest of the monastery of the two blessed apostles Peter and Paul, which is at Wearmouth and Jarrow. This weak one, when he was seven years old, was given by his kinsmen to the most reverend Abbot Benedict to be educated; and from that time all the days of his life he spent in that monastery, giving all his labor to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and in the observance of monastic discipline, and in the daily task of singing in the church; and he always took delight in learning, or teaching, or writing. ... In the nineteenth year of my life I was made deacon, and in the thirtieth I was ordained priest ... and from that time until my fifty-ninth year I have applied myself to the study of the Scriptures and to the composition of the following works. ...

All his works were in Latin, and included a series of commentaries on the Scriptures, religious homilies, a book on world history, treatises on grammar, mathematics, science, and theology, and above all the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731). This book, unlike most monastic chronicles, is not a dry recital of events. Perhaps toward the end it speaks too much of miracles, and a naïve credulity runs through it, as if it were the product of a mind that had been enclosed from the age of seven in the narrow walls of religious instruction; yet it has a clear and engaging prose that occasionally rises to a simple eloquence, as in the passage on the Anglo-Saxon conquest. Bede had a scrupulous conscience. He took great pains in the writing of events, and in general what he wrote is accurate. He specified his sources, sought first-hand evidence, and in composing his history quoted the documents available and pertinent to his theme. He said: "I would not have my children read in my writings what is false"—and we may hope that by his children he meant the six hundred pupils who studied in his school. He died four years after writing the autobiographical note to which we have referred. The tenderness and faith of medieval piety shine in the closing sentences of Bede's account of himself:

And I beseech Thee, merciful Jesus, that as Thou hast of Thy goodness granted me sweetly to drink of the words of Thy knowledge, so Thou wilt of Thy goodness vouchsafe that I may one day come to Thee, the Fountain of all wisdom, and stand forever before Thy face.

Bede notes in his history that in the England of his day people spoke five languages: English, British (Celtic), Irish, Pictish (Scottish), and Latin. "English" was the language of the Angles, but it differed little from Saxon, and was understood also by the Franks and Norwegians and Danes. These five peoples spoke different dialects of the Germanic tongue, and English gradually evolved from German. Anglo-Saxon literature was of note even before the seventh century. Our standard of judgment must often rest upon the remnants of these works, for with the spread of Christianity, which introduced the Latin script (in place of the runic alphabet with which Anglo-Saxon was written), most of them disappeared; in this period many libraries were destroyed by the Danish invasions, and with the Norman Conquest French words flooded the English language. Moreover, many of these Anglo-Saxon poems were pagan in origin and were transmitted orally by minstrels from generation to generation; since these were men who lived and spoke coarsely, monks and priests were not allowed to hear their songs and verses. Nevertheless, one of the oldest literary remains of the age, a free metrical paraphrase of Genesis that does not rise to the inspirational level of the original, is probably the work of a monk of the eighth century. Another addition to this metrical piece is the translation of a German tale of the Fall; here the verse gains a more living quality by portraying the devil as a bold and turbulent rebel. Perhaps Milton, reading this piece, conceived the idea of his own Lucifer. Some of the Anglo-Saxon poems are elegiac. Such is the "Wanderer," which tells of happy days when the lord's hall was still standing. Now the lord is dead and "all this earth-hall is empty and silent," and "the saddest of all the flowers that bloom in this mourning place is the memory of past joys." This description is so vivid that even a master poet like Dante could hardly raise the level of speech above it. Usually these ancient poems describe war with a cheerful and lively spirit. The poem known as "The Lady of the Battle of Maldon" (c. 1000) sees only bravery in the defeat of the English forces; and the aged warrior of the tale, Byrhtwold, standing over the corpse of his slain lord, with words that seem to herald the coming of Thomas Malory, the author of the greatest English romantic epic, gives the defeated Saxons this lesson in courage:

Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener, spirit the greater, as our strength lessens. Here our lord lies slain, and he has thrown us to the wolves! Grief and sorrow forever to him who leaves this battle! I am old, but I will not go hence. I am resolved to lie by the side of my lord, the man I loved.

The longest and greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poems is the epic Beowulf, which was apparently composed in England in the seventh or eighth century, and of which an old manuscript is preserved in the British Museum dating from the year 1000. This manuscript, which has 3,183 lines, is apparently complete. In this epic the verse is without meter, but alliteration of consonants gives a special rhythm to the West Saxon dialect, which is now quite unintelligible to us. The story of this poem seems childish, and it is as follows: Beowulf, prince of the Geats (perhaps the Goths), in southern Sweden, crosses the sea to deliver Hrothgar, king of the Danes, from the clutches of a monster named Grendel. Beowulf overcomes the monster and even his mother, takes ship, and returns to the land of the Geats, where he reigns justly for fifty years; then a third dragon, a fire-breathing creature, appears and devastates the land of the Geats; Beowulf attacks the foe and is severely wounded. One of his companions, Wiglaf, comes to his aid, and the two together slay the beast. Beowulf dies of his wound, and his body is burned on a funeral pyre. The tale is not so childish as it seems. In medieval literature the dragon is a symbol of the fierce beasts that lurked in the woods around European towns. It is not surprising if in the imagination of men who lived in great fear these beasts became associated with strange and weird ideas, and if, out of gratitude, the lives of those who overcame them and made the villages safe were mingled with legends and myths.

Some parts of this epic are incongruously Christian, as if a monkish editor had wished, by adding a few verses on piety, to save a pagan literary masterpiece from the ravages of time. But the tone of the verses and the details of the story are purely pagan. What these "beautiful women and brave men" loved was life and love and war in this earthly world, not the heaven empty of strife that was promised after death. At the beginning of the tale, when the body of Shield, king of the Danes, is sent to sea in a boat without oars according to the custom of the Viking people, the poet says: "No man can truly say who received that cargo." But it must be remembered that this was not a dominant paganism. A tone of melancholy pervades the whole poem and even finds its way into the banqueting hall of Hrothgar. Through the rhythmic words and the sighs of the simple verses we can hear the laments of the harp-singer:

Then Beowulf sat on a bench by the wall. ... He spoke of his wound, of the deadly wound; he well knew that his days were ended. ... Then the warriors on horseback rode around the mound of earth that was his grave; they were bidden to lament their sorrow, to mourn their king, and all to sing together and speak of their lord; all raised their voices in praise of his heroic life and with all their strength glorified his deeds. ... They said that among the kings of the world he was the mildest of men and the gentlest, kindest to his people, and most eager for praise ... so that when a man by necessity must leave the lifeless body of his beloved lord and depart from him, it is fitting that he should praise that lord.

Probably Beowulf is the oldest poem preserved in British literature; but Caedmon (d. 680) is the oldest poet whose name is mentioned. The only reference to this poet is in some graceful lines from Bede's book. In the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation it is related that in the monastery of Whitby there was a humble monk who, whenever it came his turn to read a hymn in church, found the task so difficult that he would hide himself in a corner. One night, as he lay asleep in his hiding place, it seemed to him that an angel appeared and said: "Caedmon, sing me a song!" The monk protested that he could not sing; the angel commanded him to sing. Caedmon tried and was amazed at his own success. In the morning when he awoke he remembered the song and sang it; thereafter he was afflicted with a stammer in counting numbers. And he turned Genesis, Exodus, and the Gospels, according to Bede, "into very sweet and pleasant verse." Nothing of these poems remains except a few lines that Bede himself translated into Latin. A year later Cynewulf (d. c. 750), one of the minstrels at the court of Northumbria, attempted to dramatize various religious stories—like "Christ," "Andreas," and "Juliana"—in verse. But these works, contemporary with the Beowulf epic, seem, in comparison with that poem, dead and lifeless on account of their verbal artifices and affected expressions.

In all the literatures of the world prose literature comes after metrical pieces, just as the rational faculty comes long after imagination has flowered; mankind for centuries "without knowing it" speaks in prose, at a time when it has not yet acquired the leisure or the self-conceit to mold prose into art. In the history of English prose literature, so far as we can clearly see, Alfred is the first writer; his translations and prefaces were eloquent through the sincerity and simplicity of his speech; and it was he who, through successive modifications and additions of his own, turned the "Bishop's Roll," which the secretaries of the archbishop of Winchester wrote, into the most authentic and lucid sections of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—the first prose work in the English language. It is possible that most of the history of "The Life of Alfred" was written by his teacher, Asser, and probably the composition of this book belongs to a period after Alfred's own time (c. 974). At any rate, this is one of the first cases in which the English showed from the beginning an interest in using the English language and preferring it to Latin in the composition of history and books of religious science, and this happened at a time when Europeans were ashamed to think of writing such weighty subjects in the "vulgar" tongue.

Even in the heat of warfare and poetry, the men and women of this land found the spirit and the opportunity to give beauty to the objects they used and form to what seemed to them of value and importance. Alfred established an art school at Athelney and attracted from far and wide monks who were skilled in the fine arts and various crafts. Asser writes that Alfred, "amid his frequent wars, still taught his workmen the art of goldsmithing and instructed other craftsmen in various arts." Dunstan, who was not content with being a saint and a statesman, was himself highly skilled in goldsmithing and metalwork, was an accomplished musician, and built a pipe organ for his cathedral at Glastonbury. The arts of carpentry, metalworking, and enameling continued to flourish. Jewelers worked hand in hand with sculptors and produced the carved and jeweled crosses of Raoul and Bewcastle (c. 700). A famous equestrian statue of King Ceadwalla (d. 677) was cast in bronze near Ludgate. Women offered bedspreads, tapestries, and embroideries "with the finest threads." The monks of Winchester illuminated a tenth-century prayer book with the most brilliant colors. Even in Winchester and York stone churches were being built as early as 635. Benedict Biscop introduced the Lombard style of architecture into England with the church he built at Wearmouth in 674. In 950 the cathedral at Canterbury was rebuilt, which had survived from Roman times. Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation describes how the church of Benedict Biscop was adorned with paintings from Italy "so that all the people who entered the building, even if they could not read, might turn in any direction and either gaze upon the ever-beautiful likeness of Christ and His apostles ... or, seeing the picture of the Last Judgment before their eyes, might examine themselves more strictly." In general, many buildings arose in Britain in the seventh century. The Anglo-Saxon conquest was complete, and the Danish domination had not yet begun; the architects who until then had used wood in their buildings now had both the materials and the spirit for laying the foundations of great stone tombs. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that Benedict brought his architects, glaziers, and goldsmiths from Gaul. Bishop Wilfrid brought sculptors and painters from Italy to adorn his seventh-century church at Hexham; the Lindisfarne Gospels (c. 730), which were delightfully illuminated, were the work of Irish monks who, in the glow of ascetic zeal or missionary propagation, had left their homeland and settled in that remote and cold island near the coast of Northumbria. The Danish invasion ended this short renaissance, and English architecture only resumed its progress and reached its peak when the foundations of Canute's government had been firmly laid.

Between Two Victories: 1016–1066

Canute was not only a conquering general but also a distinguished statesman. The fame of his name in the early years of his reign was tarnished by the cruelties he committed: he exiled the children of Edmund Ironside and murdered Edmund's brother to prevent the return of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty to the throne. But later, when he learned that the widow and sons of King Ethelred were still alive in Rouen, he removed many of his difficulties by offering marriage to Emma (1017). At this time Canute was twenty-three and Emma was thirty-three. Emma consented to the marriage, and Canute by this act both took a wife, secured the alliance of Emma's brother Richard II, Duke of Normandy, and obtained a secure crown. From that moment his reign became a blessing to England. Canute brought under discipline the rebellious nobles who had undermined the unity and morale of England. He protected the island from foreign attacks and for twelve years gave the country peace. He accepted Christianity, built many churches, raised a monument at Assandun in memory of both the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes who had fought there, and himself made a pilgrimage to Edmund's tomb. He promised to observe the laws and institutions existing in England, and kept his word except in two respects: one, that he insisted that the government of the realm, which until then had been debased by the actions of self-willed nobles, should be administered under his own appointees; and the other, that he deposed the archbishop of England and made a lay minister the king's chief counselor. Canute created a staff of administrative officials and a system for the performance of public services that gave the government an unprecedented continuity. After the early years of his reign, which were attended by insecurity, almost all the officials appointed by him to administer affairs were English. He was constantly occupied with the important business of the realm, and continually visited every corner of his dominion to see that justice was done and the laws observed. When he came to England he was a Dane, and when he died he was an Englishman. Canute was king of both England and Denmark, and in 1028 he became king of Norway, but he governed his three kingdoms from the city of Winchester.

The Danish conquest continued the long process of foreign invasion and racial mixture that led to the Norman Conquest and ultimately to the formation of the English nation. Celt and Gaul, Angle and Saxon and Jute, Dane and Norman, all mingled through marriage or other factors to transform the characterless Englishman of the Roman period into the adventurous Englishman of the Elizabethan age and the silent world-conquerors of later centuries. The Danes, like the Germans and Norsemen, brought with them an almost mysterious love of the sea; a love that made men accept the perilous call of the sea for adventure and trade in distant lands. Culturally, the Danish invasions were a barrier to progress. Architecture stagnated; the art of illumination declined from 750 to 950; and the intellectual advance that Alfred had so encouraged was blocked, just as the Norse attacks on Gaul nullified the labors of Charlemagne.

If Canute had lived longer he might have repaired more of the damage that his people had inflicted upon the land of England. But men engaged in war or government wear out quickly. Canute died in 1035 at the age of forty. Norway at once threw off the Danish yoke; Harthacanute, Canute's eldest son, who had been designated as his successor, did what he could to protect Denmark from Norwegian invasion; Canute's other son, Harold I, surnamed Harefoot (the swift-footed), ruled England for five years and then died; Harthacanute also reigned over the land for two years and then died (1042). Before his death he summoned from Normandy the son who had been born of the marriage of Ethelred and Emma, and proclaimed this Anglo-Saxon half-brother heir to the throne of England.

But Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) was as much a stranger to England as the other Danes. Edward, whom his father had brought to Normandy at the age of ten, spent thirty years at the Norman court, was educated under its nobles and priests, and grew up a pious and guileless man. When he came to England he brought with him the language, customs, and French companions. These friends of his obtained important offices in the realm and bishoprics; they received exclusive privileges from the king; they built castles in the Norman style; they despised English customs and language; and, a generation before William the Conqueror set foot on English soil, they began the Norman conquest.

There was only one Englishman who could compete with those French friends in influencing Edward, that mild and pliant king: Earl Godwin, governor of Wessex. He, the chief counselor of the court in the reigns of Canute, Harold, and Harthacanute, was a man who combined wealth and wisdom; he was a master of politics, his eloquence convinced all, he had great skill in administration, and in short he was the first lay statesman in English history. The experience he had gained in the conduct of public affairs gave him an ascendancy over the king. His daughter Edith was married to Edward. From this marriage Edward had no children, or Godwin might have become the grandfather of a king. When Tostig, Godwin's son, married Judith, daughter of the Count of Flanders, and Sweyn, Godwin's nephew, became king of Denmark, Godwin through these marriages had formed a triple alliance that made him the most powerful man in northern Europe, and far stronger than his king, Edward the Confessor. The friends of the king of Normandy aroused his jealousy; he deposed Godwin from his office. Earl Godwin fled to Flanders, and meanwhile his son Harold went to Ireland and there prepared an army to fight Edward (1051). The English nobles, who were opposed to Norman supremacy, invited Godwin to return to his country and guaranteed that they would support him with armed force. Harold invaded England, routed the king's troops, ravaged and laid waste the southeastern coast of the kingdom, joined his father, and with a powerful army marched northward along the Thames. The people of London came out to meet them and welcomed them. The bishops and Norman officials took to flight. A Witenagemot, composed of English bishops and nobles, went out triumphantly to meet Godwin; and Godwin recovered the political power and the property he had lost (1052). A year later, worn out by hardships and victory, he died.

Harold became Earl of Wessex, and to some extent inherited his father's special powers. He was now thirty-one years old; he was a tall, handsome, strong, bold, and fearless youth; ruthless in war, and sometimes chivalrous in peace. In a series of lightning-like daring campaigns he conquered Wales for England and presented to Edward, who was both pleased and terrified, the head of Gruffydd, chief of the Welsh tribes (1063). In a quieter phase of this adventurous and violent life, Harold lavished large sums without stint upon the building of a monastery and church at Waltham (1060) and helped to expand the college that had grown out of the cathedral school there. The people of all England praised this ardent and inexperienced youth.

The greatest architectural achievement of Edward's reign was the beginning of the building of Westminster Abbey (1055). When Edward lived in Rouen he had become familiar with the Norman style of architecture; now, in building the abbey that was to become the tomb and shrine of English genius, he ordered or permitted that the structure should be laid out in the Norman Romanesque style, like the great abbey and cathedral whose construction had begun five years before at Jumièges. This too was another example of the Norman conquest before William the Conqueror came to England. The building of Westminster Abbey marked the beginning of a period of architectural richness in which England acquired the most magnificent Romanesque structures in Europe.

It was early in the eventful year 1066 that the body of Edward the Confessor was buried in that splendid church. On the sixth of January the Witenagemot chose Harold for the throne of England. Harold had not yet been crowned when news came that William, Duke of Normandy, had claimed the throne of England and was preparing for war. William claimed that in 1051 Edward had promised him the kingdom of England in return for thirty years of support from Normandy. Apparently Edward had given such a promise, but Edward, whether he had forgotten the matter or had repented of his promise, before his death had named Harold as his successor; in any case it is natural that such a promise could not be valid without the consent of the Witenagemot. But William claimed that Harold, during a visit to Rouen (whose date is unknown), had accepted from him the title of knight, had become his vassal, and had therefore owed him allegiance, and had also promised to recognize William as Edward's heir and to support him in this matter. Harold admitted that he had given such a promise. But the English people by no means felt themselves bound to keep Harold's word; the representatives of that people had freely chosen Harold for the throne; and Harold was now determined to defend that choice. William appealed to the pope; and Pope Alexander II, on the advice of his counselor Hildebrand, declared Harold a usurper, excommunicated him and his supporters, and recognized William as the lawful claimant to the throne of England; and for the invasion he contemplated he wished him success, and sent him a consecrated banner and a diamond ring containing a hair of the head of the Apostle Peter. Hildebrand was pleased that he was creating a precedent for the determination of the right to the throne and the deposition of kings by the pope; ten years later, when he himself became pope, he applied this established method to Henry IV, king of Germany; later, in 1213, when a dispute arose between the pope and King John of England, the same method was used. Lanfranc, abbot of Bec, agreed with William and called upon the people of Normandy, and indeed of the whole kingdom, to join a crusade against the excommunicated king of England.

The sins that Harold had committed in the heat of youthful folly now came back to haunt him in the maturity of his good intentions. During his reign Harold had paid no attention to his brother Tostig, who had long before been exiled by order of the Witenagemot. Now Tostig allied himself with William and prepared an army in the north, and encouraged Harold III, king of Norway, surnamed Hardrada (the stern), to join the expedition by promising him the throne of England. In September 1066, while William's great fleet of 1,400 ships was sailing from Normandy to England, Tostig and the king of Norway invaded Northumbria. York surrendered to them and Harold was crowned there and proclaimed king of England. Harold with the forces at his disposal hastened northward and defeated the invaders at Stamford Bridge (September 25); in the course of that battle Tostig and Harold were slain. Harold now turned south with an army too small to withstand William's powerful forces. All the counselors of the nation advised him to hold back. But William was burning and laying waste the southern lands of England, and Harold felt bound to defend a land that he had once ravaged and now held dear to his heart. At Senlac near Hastings the two armies met (October 14) and fought for nine hours. Harold, struck in the eye by an arrow and blinded by the flow of blood, fell to the ground and was cut to pieces by the Norman knights: one severed his head from his body, another cut off a leg, and a third scattered his entrails over the battlefield. When the English soldiers saw their leader lying in blood and gore they took to flight. The brutality and chaos were so great that the monks who were later sent to find Harold's body could not identify him until Edith Swan-neck, who was his mistress, led them to the spot. Edith recognized the mangled body of her lover, and the dismembered limbs were buried in Waltham Abbey, which Harold himself had built. At Christmas 1066 William I was crowned king of England.

Wales: 325–1066

In the year 78 A.D. Frontinus and Agricola conquered Wales for Rome. When the Romans withdrew from Britain, Wales regained its freedom and again submitted to the rule of its own kings. In the fifth century a body of Irish immigrants settled in the western districts of Wales; in later years thousands of Britons, fleeing from the Anglo-Saxon conquerors, took refuge in Wales. The Anglo-Saxons stopped at the border of Wales and called the unsubdued people of that region "Welsh," meaning "foreigners." The Irish and the Britons found in Wales a Celtic tribe of their own blood, and soon these three groups united and formed the Cymric people ("fellow-countrymen"); this became the name of their nation and Cymru the name of their land. The people of Wales, like most Celtic peoples—the Bretons, the Cornish, the Irish, and the Gaels of northern Scotland—based their social system almost entirely on the family and the clan, and were so attached to these that they hated government and regarded every individual or foreign race with irreconcilable distrust. The spirit of tribal loyalty in them was balanced by their boundless hospitality; and their lack of discipline was redeemed by their courage, their hard life and unfavorable climate by music, song, and fidelity in friendship, and their poverty by the imaginative affections that made every girl a princess and every man a king.

The position of the minstrels was so honorable that they were ranked after the king. These men, in addition to being the poets of the nation, acted as soothsayers, historians, and counselors of the king. Among them two belong to the sixth century: Taliesin and Aneirin, whose names have endured in history. There were hundreds like them, and the stories they told passed from the English Channel to the land of Brittany and were refined and polished in France. The minstrels were a special class of professional poet-secretaries, and no one was allowed to join their ranks unless he had first acquired a high proficiency in the learning of his people. One who aspired to enter this class was called a "mabinog"; the subjects he studied were called "mabinogi"; and for this reason the stories that have survived are known as the Mabinogion. These tales, in the form in which we now have them, do not go back beyond the fourteenth century, but they probably date from an earlier period, that is, from a time when Christianity had not yet been established in Wales. These legends have the simplicity of primitive times, are animistic in a pagan way, and are made terrifying by the mention of marvelous adventures and strange beasts; in these stories there is a disquieting certainty of exile, defeat, and death that gives them a melancholy tone; yet they have a delicacy that is a world away from the world of violence and lust in the Icelandic "Eddas," the Norse "sagas," and the very ancient Germanic legend of the Nibelungenlied. In the seclusion of the mountains of Wales a romantic literature arose whose main themes were devotion to the nation, loyalty to woman, and—with the coming of Christianity—fidelity to the Virgin Mary and to Christ, and which helped to produce the class of devoted knights and those marvelous tales of King Arthur and the brave and amorous knights who swore to "subdue the pagans and strive for the exaltation of Christianity."

It was in the sixth century that Christianity spread in Wales, and soon schools were established in monasteries and churches. Asser, the learned bishop who was secretary and biographer to Alfred, came from the city and church of St. David's in Pembrokeshire. These settlements and shrines of the Christians were exposed to the most violent attacks of the Norman sea-rovers, until King Rhodri the Great (844–878) completely defeated them and established a lasting dynasty in Wales. King Howel the Good (910–950) united all Wales and provided it with a uniform code of laws. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (1039–1063) was a king of more than ordinary success; when he marched upon Mercia, one of the nearest English cities, and defeated its forces, Harold, the future king of England, in order to provide for the defense of England, declared war on Wales and conquered that land for Britain (1063).

Christian Spain (711–1095)

The history of Christian Spain in this period is the story of a long religious war or, in other words, a stubborn determination to drive out the Moors. The Moors were a wealthy and powerful people, possessing the most fertile lands and the best governments; while the Christians were a poor and weak people; their lands were difficult to cultivate, and their mountainous frontiers separated their territory from the rest of Europe, divided them into small principalities, and encouraged fraternal strife and an exaggeration of local patriotism. In this fiery peninsula Christian blood was shed far more by Christians than by Moors.

As a result of the Muslim invasion in 711 A.D., the Goths, Suevi, Christianized Berbers, and Celtiberians were driven into the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest of Spain. The Moors pursued them. But at Covadonga they were defeated by a small force under a Goth named Pelayo, and this leader at once proclaimed himself king of Asturias and thus founded the kingdom of Spain. The defeat of the Moors at Tours gave Alfonso I (739–757) an opportunity to extend the frontiers of Asturias to the regions of Galicia, Lusitania, and Vizcaya. The grandson of Alfonso II (791–842) added the province of Leon to his domain and made the city of Oviedo his capital.

It was in the reign of this Alfonso that one of the fundamental events of Spanish history occurred. According to statements whose truth is uncertain, a shepherd, guided by a star, found a marble tomb in a mountain glen whose contents, according to the belief of many, were the bones of the Apostle James, "the brother of the Lord." At that spot a chapel was first built. Then a magnificent cathedral was erected there called Santiago de Compostela or "St. James of the Starry Field," and after Jerusalem and Rome it became the pilgrimage shrine and Mecca of Christendom. The sacred bones found in that place were very useful in arousing the spirit of the people and in collecting funds for the war against the Moors. The Apostle James became the patron saint of Spain and spread the name of Santiago in three continents. Such "relics" make history, especially when they are false; in the service of vain delusions what men have not accepted the most honorable deaths!

East of Asturias, and directly south of the Pyrenees, lay the land of Navarre. Its inhabitants were mostly of Basque race—or, in other words, probably the result of a mixture of the Berbers of Africa and the Celtic stock of Spain. Since the mountains surrounding this region formed a strong fortress against invaders, the people of Navarre successfully preserved their independence against the attacks of the Muslims, the Franks, and the Spaniards. And in 905 their emir, Sancho I Garcés, founded the kingdom of Navarre and made the city of Pamplona his capital. Sancho (994–1035) was given the title of the Great because he added Leon, Castile, and Aragon to his domain. For a brief time the unity of Christian Spain seemed on the point of realization, but Sancho, by dividing his realm among his four sons on his deathbed, undid what he had woven. The kingdom of Aragon dates from this time. Aragon expanded in the south by pushing back the Muslims, and in the north by the peaceful annexation of Navarre (1076), so that by 1095 it included a large part of the central northern districts of Spain. Catalonia—the northeastern region of Spain around Barcelona—was conquered by Charlemagne in 788 and came under the rule of French counts who turned that region into a semi-independent "Spanish March." The language of that region, Catalan, was an interesting compromise between the Provençal dialect of France and the Castilian tongue. The name of Leon in the northwest entered history with the accession of Sancho the Fat or the Gross. Sancho was so corpulent that when he walked he had to lean on the shoulder of an attendant. When the nobles deposed him he went to Cordova, and there the famous Jewish statesman and physician, Hasdai ibn Shaprut, cured him of his obesity. Sancho, who had now become as pliant as "Don Quixote," returned to Leon and once more wrested the throne from his enemies (959). The name of Castile in central Spain is derived from the many castles that the Christian nobles built there. This land faced Muslim Spain and was constantly ready for war. In 930 the knights of Castile refused any longer to obey the orders of the king of Asturias or Leon at any price, formed an independent country of their own, and made the city of Burgos their capital. Ferdinand I (1035–1065) united Leon and Galicia with Castile, compelled the Muslim emirs of Toledo and Seville to pay annual tribute, and, like Sancho Garcés the Great, nullified his own labors by dividing his realm among his three sons on his deathbed. After their father's death his sons, with full zeal, continued the customary fratricidal wars among the Christian kings of Spain.

Christian Spain, because of the poverty of its agriculture and its political disunity, fell far behind Muslim Spain in the south, and never equaled its rival in the north—i.e., the Franks—in industry or the means of civilization. Even within each of the small principalities of the various Christian kings unity existed only for short intervals. The noble class almost ignored the kings except in time of war; and they ruled their serfs and slaves in feudal fashion. The hierarchy of the clergy formed the second aristocratic class. The bishops too owned land, serfs, and slaves, had armies of their own which they led independently in war, usually paid no attention to the popes, and ruled Spanish Christianity as if it were a completely independent church. In 1020 the nobles and bishops met at Leon, formed national councils, and legislated for the realm of Leon in parliamentary fashion. The "Council of Leon" granted the city a charter of self-government and proclaimed Leon the first "commune" or self-governing city in medieval Europe. Perhaps in order to win the support and financial aid of other cities in the struggle against the Moors, similar charters were granted to them also. Thus from Spanish feudalism, which still had monarchical governments, a limited urban democracy emerged.

The story of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar is the best witness to the bravery, manliness, and chaos of Christian Spain in the eleventh century. He is known in history as El Cid (the same as the Arabic sayyid), and his Christian surname is El Campeador, which in Spanish means champion or warrior. Rodrigo was born about 1040 at Vivar near the city of Burgos, and in his youth became an adventurous knight who drew his sword for any profitable cause. By the age of thirty his courage and prowess had reached such a degree that all Castile praised him but at the same time distrusted him, for apparently he was as ready to begin a war with the Moors in the service of the Christians as he was to fight the Christians for the sake of the Moors. Alfonso VI, king of Castile, sent him to the poet-emir al-Mu'tamid of Seville to collect tribute. On his return, being accused of having kept part of the tribute for himself, he was exiled from Castile (1081). Rodrigo gathered a band, formed a small mercenary army, and without any particular preference for Muslim or Christian princes placed his forces at the disposal of those who sought them. For eight years he served the emir of Saragossa and extended the Moorish territory by raiding the lands of Aragon. In 1089, at the head of an army of seven thousand men, mostly Muslims, he captured Valencia and compelled the city to pay a monthly tribute of ten thousand gold dinars. In 1090 he took the Count of Barcelona prisoner and demanded a ransom of eighty thousand gold dinars for his release. On his return from this mission, finding the gates of Valencia closed against him, he besieged the city for a year; when Valencia surrendered (1094) he violated all the conditions the city had made for laying down its arms, burned the chief judge of the city alive, divided the property of the people among his followers, and would have burned the judge's wife and daughters also had not the people of the city and his own soldiers protested. This deed and other actions of El Cid were in accordance with the customs of his time. He governed Valencia with efficiency and justice in compensation for his sins and turned that land into a fortress for the deliverance of the Christians from the Muslim sect of the Almoravids. When he died (1099) his wife Ximena held the city for three years. Later generations, in admiration, invented legends that portrayed him as a knight whose sole motive was a sacred zeal to restore Spain to Christendom, and for this reason his tomb in Burgos is today venerated like the shrine of a saint.

Christian Spain, which was itself so divided, was able gradually to recover the lost lands only because Muslim Spain finally surpassed Christian Spain in chaos and fragmentation. The collapse of the caliphate of Cordova in 1036 gave Alfonso VI, king of Castile, a brilliant opportunity to take advantage of it. With the help of al-Mu'tamid, emir of Seville, he captured the city of Toledo (1085) and made it his capital. He treated the defeated Muslims with a nobility characteristic of the Muslims themselves and encouraged the absorption of Islamic culture in Christian Spain.

France: 614–1060

The Rise of the Carolingian Dynasty (614–768)

When Clotaire II became king of the Franks the Merovingian dynasty seemed firmly established. Never before had any king of this house held so vast and so united a realm under his sway. But Clotaire owed his elevation to the nobles of Austrasia and Burgundy, and therefore increased their independence, enlarged the territory of each, and chose one of them, Pepin of Landen, as his "mayor of the palace" or "majordomo." The "mayor of the palace" was originally the steward of the royal household and manager of the royal estates. As the Merovingian kings became more given to pleasure and intrigue, the administrative duties of this steward increased. Step by step the process went on until he supervised all the courts, the army, and the financial departments of the realm. The son of Clotaire, King Dagobert (629–639), for a brief time checked the growth of the power of the mayor and the other magnates. Fredegar the chronicler writes of Dagobert: "In the administration of justice he treated poor and rich alike. He slept little, ate sparingly, and attached great importance to behaving in such a way that all men left his presence full of joy and admiration." But Fredegar also notes that "he had three queens and a multitude of concubines, and was a slave to debauchery." In the reign of his feeble successors, who were called the "do-nothing kings," power again fell into the hands of the mayor of the palace. Pepin of Herstal in the battle of Testry (687) defeated his rivals, changed his title from "mayor of the palace" to "duke and prince of the Franks," and ruled all Gaul except Aquitaine. His illegitimate son, Charles "Martel" (the Hammer), who was nominally mayor of the palace and duke of Austrasia, in the reign of Clotaire IV (717–719) actually governed all Gaul. With resolute determination he repelled the attacks of the Frisians and Saxons upon Gaul, and by defeating the Muslims at Tours he saved Europe for Christendom. He supported Boniface and other Christian missionaries in converting the Germans to Christianity, but in the critical moments of his rule, when he was in urgent need of money, he confiscated the lands belonging to the Church, sold bishoprics to generals, and quartered his soldiers in monasteries. He beheaded a monk who protested against this, and consequently was condemned to hell in dozens of religious tracts and sermons.

In the year 751 his son, Pepin III, who was the "mayor" of Childeric III, sent a mission to Pope Zacharias to ask whether it would be a sin, now that the kingship was actually in his hands, to put an end to the farce of Merovingian rule and openly proclaim himself king. Zacharias, who needed the support of the Franks against the ambitious Lombards, gave a reassuring negative answer. Pepin summoned a council of the nobles and high clergy of the nation at Soissons, and there all present with one accord hailed him as king of the Franks (751) and sent the last of the do-nothing kings, with his head shaved, to a monastery. In 754 Pope Stephen II came to the abbey of St. Denis outside Paris and anointed Pepin and called him "king by the grace of God." Thus the Merovingian dynasty (486–751) came to an end, and the Carolingian dynasty (751–987) began.

Pepin III, surnamed "the Short," was a patient and far-sighted king, pious and practical, peace-loving and invincible in war, and so faithful to moral principles that he had no equal among the kings of Gaul in those centuries. All the successes of Charlemagne were due to the foundations that Pepin had laid. In the reign of these two men, that is, in the course of sixty-three years (751–814), the land of Gaul finally became France. Pepin was aware of the difficulties of governing the realm without the aid of religion and therefore restored to the clergy of that organization their property, privileges, and immunities. He brought the relics of the saints to France and with impressive ceremonies carried them on his own shoulders. He freed the papal territory from the Lombard kings and by the "Donation of Pepin" (756) transferred extensive political rights to the pope. In return for these services he was content that the pope should give him the title of "Patricius Romanus" and should issue a decree to the Frankish people that they should never choose anyone as king except from the lineage of Pepin. Pepin III died in 768 at the height of his power, and on his deathbed divided the realm of the Franks jointly between his two sons, Carloman II and Charles (who later became the famous Charlemagne).

Charlemagne (768–814)

The greatest king of the Middle Ages was born in 742 in an unknown place; he was of German race, spoke their language, and shared in some of the characteristics of his people—including physical strength, courage, national pride, and a kind of rough simplicity—that differed by centuries from the refinement and polish of a modern Frenchman. The range of his knowledge and literacy did not exceed several books, but they were useful books. In his later years he tried to learn to write but never succeeded in this. Nevertheless he could speak the old Teutonic tongue and literary Latin, and he understood Greek.

In 771 Carloman II died, and Charles, who was then twenty-nine years old, became the sole Carolingian king. Two years later Pope Hadrian I, whose territory had been ravaged by the armies of Desiderius, king of the Lombards, hastily appealed to Charlemagne for help. Charlemagne besieged and captured the city of Pavia, took possession of the Lombard throne, confirmed the "Donation of Pepin," and declared himself the defender of the Church in all the non-spiritual affairs of the papal territory. Returning to his capital, the city of Aachen, Charlemagne began his fifty-three campaigns, in almost all of which the supreme command was in his own hands; he intended by these wars to subdue and Christianize Bavaria and Saxony, to repel the troublesome Avars, to check the Saracen advance into Italy, and to strengthen the defenses of the Franks against the Moorish expansion. On his eastern frontier were the pagan Saxons, who had burned a Christian church and occasionally stretched out a hand toward Gaul. These reasons sufficed for the eighteen campaigns of Charlemagne (772–804), which were waged with the utmost severity on both sides. Charles left the Saxons the choice between death and conversion to Christianity, beheaded 4,500 Saxon rebels in one day, and then set out for Thionville to take part in the feast of the Nativity.

In the year 777 Ibn al-Arabi, the Muslim governor of Barcelona, at Paderborn asked Charlemagne for help in his struggle against the caliph of Cordova. Charles crossed the Pyrenees with an army, besieged and captured the Christian city of Pamplona, treated the many Basques of northern Spain, who were also Christians, with hostility, and even advanced toward Saragossa. But the Muslim uprising that Ibn al-Arabi had promised as part of his plan of struggle against the caliph of Cordova did not materialize. Charlemagne saw that with his own forces alone he was unable to challenge Cordova, and at the same time news came that the conquered Saxons had risen with great violence and were marching upon the city of Cologne. Charlemagne, who in this situation saw prudence as the essence of courage, ordered his troops to retreat, and his forces formed a long and narrow column through the passes of the Pyrenees on their way back to Gaul. It was in one of these passes, at Roncesvalles in Navarre, that a band of Basque warriors attacked the rearguard of the Frankish army and almost annihilated it (778). In this battle a nobleman named Roland, who three centuries later in the eloquent epic Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland) became the hero of the most famous of French poems, lost his life. In the year 795 Charlemagne sent another army across the Pyrenees; as a result of this campaign the "Spanish March" or strip of northeastern Spain became part of Frankish territory, Barcelona surrendered, and the two lands of Navarre and Asturias recognized the suzerainty of the Frankish government (806). Meanwhile Charlemagne had crushed the Saxons (785), driven back the Slavic invaders (789), and defeated and destroyed the Avars (790–805), and now, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign, at the age of sixty-three, he had made peace.

In reality Charlemagne always preferred the administration of the realm to war, and had resorted to war only in order to bring about, by compulsion if necessary, a kind of unity of government and religion in Western Europe, a land that for centuries had been divided and fragmented by racial and religious differences. Now he had brought under his rule all the peoples of Europe from the Vistula to the Atlantic, and from the Baltic to the Pyrenees, together with almost all of Italy and a large part of the Balkans. How was it possible for one man alone to administer with efficiency so vast and varied a realm? His physical strength and courage were such that he could endure a thousand responsibilities, dangers, and crises, even the plots of his own sons who wished to kill him. He had inherited both the teachings of Pepin III—that wise and cautious king—and the cruelty of Charles Martel; or the blood of both flowed in his veins, and he himself was like a hammer in hardness and power. Charlemagne expanded the domain of his fathers, guarded it with a strong military organization, and strengthened its foundations with the rites and sanctity of religion. He had the power both to conceive lofty purposes with the aid of thought and to provide the means for their realization. And he was able to lead an army, make an assembly submit to his views, keep the nobles satisfied, make the clergy obedient, and rule a harem.

Charlemagne made the possession of landed property, from a small amount upward, conditional upon military service, and therefore made the defense and expansion of personal estates the foundation of the military spirit. Every free man, at the time of mobilization, was required to present himself at the muster station of his district with all his equipment; every noble was responsible for the fitness of the men in his domain. The government was based upon this organized force, and every existing psychological factor, from the respect due to the lawful king of the country and the pomp and splendor of his court ceremonial to the tradition of obedience to established governmental power, helped to strengthen its foundations. The courtiers of the king consisted of a group of clergy, administrative nobles, the steward or majordomo, the "count of the palace" or chief justice, the "pfalzgrafen" or judges of the palace court, and a hundred investigators, servants, and secretaries. Through the existence of assemblies attended by armed landowners, which met every six months, usually in the open air, at Worms, Valenciennes, Aachen, Geneva, Paderborn, and elsewhere, by the requirements of military necessity or other matters, the sense of public participation in government was strengthened. In these assemblies the king submitted his proposals on laws to smaller groups of nobles or bishops, who considered the king's views and returned them to him with their own suggestions. Then the king proceeded to draft the capitularies or special decrees, and when he had finished this task he presented it to the group present in the assembly so that they might declare their approval in a loud voice. It rarely happened that the assembly expressed its disapproval of a decree by a collective murmur or grumbling. Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, has described in private the behavior of Charlemagne in one of these sessions as follows: "He greeted the chief nobles, talked with those whom he seldom had an opportunity to see, showed a loving interest in the aged, and entertained himself with the young." In these assemblies every governor and bishop of a province was required to report to the king every important event that had occurred in his sphere of duty since the previous meeting of the assembly. Hincmar says that "the king wished to know whether in any part or corner of his realm the people had become discontented, and if so, why." Sometimes (continuing the old Roman institution of inquisitio or inquiry) the king's representatives in a district under their inspection summoned the leading subjects to appear before them for questioning, or bound them by oath to give a "verdictum" or "statement of fact" concerning their wealth for purposes of taxation, or the state of public order, and the existence of crimes and criminals. In the ninth century, in the Frankish realm, these "jurata" or "sworn groups of inquisitors" were used in settling many local disputes concerning land ownership or the guilt of criminals. One of these famous groups of jurata, when it developed among the Norman and English peoples, gradually became the jury system of modern times.

The empire was divided into several counties, the spiritual affairs of each being under the charge of a bishop or archbishop, and its secular affairs under the administration of a comes (the king's companion) or count. In the center of each province a local assembly, attended by the landowners, met two or three times a year to settle the governmental affairs of that district and to perform the functions of a provincial court of appeal. The dangerous frontier provinces (or marches) each had a special governor who sometimes bore the title of graf, margrave, or margrave duke. For example, Roland of Roncesvalles was governor of the Breton March. All the local administrations were subject to or envoys of the king, whom Charlemagne usually sent to communicate his wishes to the local officials, to inspect their work, to examine their decisions and account books; to prevent bribery, extortion, nepotism in appointments, and abuses; to hear complaints and do justice; to protect the "Church, the weak, minor children, widows, and all the people" against injustice and oppression; and finally to report the condition of the realm to the king himself. The Capitulare Missorum, or law that defined the duties and responsibilities of these royal envoys, was a kind of Magna Carta for the nation, and this four centuries before a Magna Carta was drawn up in England for the noble class. The best proof that this law was actually put into effect is the case of the Duke of Istria, who, when Charlemagne's envoys accused him of various acts of extortion and injustice, was compelled by the king to restore what he had stolen, to make compensation to everyone he had wronged, to confess his crimes publicly, and to give assurance that he would commit no further offenses. If we disregard Charlemagne's wars, we may say that his government was the most just and enlightened that Europe had seen since the reign of Theodoric, king of the Goths.

Sixty-five laws of Charlemagne have survived, which rank among the most interesting collections of legislation in the Middle Ages. These laws were not a system of consistent principles, but an application and extension of the old "barbarian" codes of earlier times to new conditions and needs. These codes were in some details not so progressive as the laws of Liutprand. For example, they retained old customs like the payment of wergild or blood money, the ordeal, the duel, and mutilation. They prescribed the death penalty for a return to paganism, or for persons who ate meat during the great fast, but the clergy were allowed to mitigate the severity of the punishment at their discretion. But not all the decrees were laws; some of them were answers to questions on various subjects, some were inquiries that Charlemagne himself had made of government officials, and some had the character of moral counsels. For example, in one of these counsels he said: "Since the Lord Emperor is unable to look after the discipline of every individual, it is the duty of all to serve God to the utmost of their power and to walk in the ways of His commandments." In the course of several months every effort had been made to bring greater order into the sexual and marital relations of the people. Obviously the people did not observe all these counsels, but from all these chapters it is clear that their author consciously and deliberately intended to lead his society from barbarism to the level of civilization.

Charlemagne's view in legislation, in addition to the administration of government and the strengthening of moral principles, was to create a system for agriculture, industry, finance, culture, and religion. The period of his rule coincided with an era in which, because of the Saracen domination of the Mediterranean, the economy of southern France and Italy was on a downward curve. It was a time when, according to Ibn Khaldun, "the Christians no longer had the power to float even a plank in the water." The whole foundation and basis of commercial relations between Western Europe and Africa and the eastern shores of the Mediterranean had been undermined. Now only the Jews were the link between the two hostile halves of a once unified world that had been under Roman sway, and for this reason Charlemagne gave the Jews his full support. In Byzantine and Slavic Europe, and in the northern regions that were the domain of the Teutonic people, commerce continued in its place. Trade flourished in the English Channel and the North Sea, but the order of this market too, even before the death of Charlemagne, was disrupted by the attacks and piracy of the Norsemen. The Vikings in the north, and the Muslims in the south, almost completely blocked the connection of the French ports with the outside and turned France into a country surrounded by land on all sides and dependent upon agriculture. The middle class of merchants declined, and no class was left to compete with the rural nobility. As a result of the victories of Islam and the grants of land by Charlemagne, the feudal system of France flourished.

Charlemagne tried to preserve the freedom of the peasants against the expanding system of serfdom, but the power of the nobles and the pressure of the conditions of the time nullified his efforts. Even as a result of the struggles of the Carolingian dynasty against the pagan tribes, the slave trade flourished for a time. The personal estates of the king—which expanded from time to time through the receipt of gifts, the confiscation of the property of others, the seizure of the lands of those who had died without a will, and the reclamation of waste land—formed an important source of revenue for his treasury. Charlemagne drew up a special ordinance with astonishing details for the supervision of these lands, from which one can infer the careful attention he gave to all the revenues and expenditures of the realm. Forests, waste lands, fords, ports, and all underground mineral resources belonged to the state. Every means of encouraging commerce, so far as it survived, was provided. Markets were protected; weights, measures, and prices were fixed by law; hoarding was prevented; roads and bridges were built and repaired, and a great bridge was constructed over the Rhine at Mainz; canals were dredged and kept in readiness; and efforts were made to dig a canal to connect the Rhine and the Danube and thereby join the North Sea to the Black Sea. A stable currency was introduced, but the scarcity of gold in France and the decline of trade caused the silver pound to replace the gold solidus of Constantine as the coin.

The energy and zeal of the king permeated every department of life, and the names he gave to the four cardinal points are still in use today. He established a special organization and method for helping the poor, and financed it by imposing a tax on the nobility and the clergy; and after all this, begging was made a crime. Since almost no one except the clergy could read or write, and Charlemagne was horrified at the illiteracy of the common people and the lack of education among the lower ranks of the clergy, he invited foreign scholars to revive the schools of France. Paul the Deacon was lured from Monte Cassino with promises, and Alcuin was invited from York (782) to teach in the school that Charlemagne had founded in his royal palace at Aachen. Alcuin (735–804), who was a Saxon, was born near the city of York and completed his studies in the school that Bishop Egbert had established in the cathedral there. In the eighth century Britain and Ireland were culturally ahead of France. When Offa, king of Mercia, sent Alcuin on a mission to Charlemagne, the Frankish king asked the scholar to remain there. At a time when the "Danes" were turning "England into a ruin and violating the sanctity of monasteries with adultery," Alcuin, glad not to return to his homeland, accepted Charlemagne's invitation. He sent messengers to England and other places to find books of the masters, and soon the palace school at Aachen became one of the active centers of teaching and learning, of the revision and copying of manuscripts, and of cultural reforms that spread throughout the realm. Charlemagne himself, his wife Liutgard, his sons, his daughter Gisela his secretary, Einhard, one of the nuns, and many others were among the pupils of this school. Charlemagne was the most eager of the pupils in acquiring knowledge and was as avid for learning as he was zealous in conquest. He studied grammar, dialectic, and astronomy. He made a praiseworthy effort to learn the art of writing and the secrets of script; Einhard says that "he kept tablets under his pillow so that in his leisure he might accustom his hand to drawing the shapes of the letters, but since he had begun this late in life, his effort was unsuccessful." Charlemagne applied himself with great intensity to learning Latin, but in his court he continued to speak German. He composed a grammar of the German language and specimens of the early poems of German-speaking poets.

When Alcuin, after eight years of teaching in the palace school, desired to live in a less exciting environment, Charlemagne reluctantly appointed him abbot of the monastery of Tours (796). There Alcuin encouraged the monks to prepare more accurate and precise copies of the Vulgate of Jerome, the Latin books of the Church Fathers from the early Christian period, and the classical Latin books, and other monasteries followed this example. Many of our best classical texts are the result of the labors of these copyists of the monasteries of the ninth century. It may be said that all the existing metrical works in Latin, except the poems of Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and almost all the existing prose works in Latin, except the writings of Varro, Tacitus, and Apuleius, have been preserved for us through the efforts of these monks of the Carolingian age. Many of the manuscripts of the period of Charlemagne and his successors were illuminated by patient artists who lived in the monasteries. The famous "Gospels of Vienna," upon which the German emperors later took their coronation oath, belonged to these illuminators of the "palace school."

In 787 Charlemagne issued a historic decree to all the bishops and abbots of the Franks under the name of the "Capitulary on the Acquisition of Knowledge." In this decree he rebuked the clergy for their "barbarous language" and "unpolished speech," and urged every cathedral and monastery to establish schools where both the clergy and the laity might equally learn to read and write. Another ordinance or decree of 789 compelled the heads of these schools to "take care that no distinction be made between the sons of free men and serfs, so that all might come to school and sit on the same benches and learn grammar, music, and arithmetic." By a law of 805 medical instruction was provided for, and another decree condemned medical superstitions. The establishment of numerous schools under the supervision of churches and monasteries in France and western Germany shows that Charlemagne's requests were not without effect. Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, built a school in every district of his ecclesiastical domain, received all children with open arms into these institutions, and forbade the priest-teachers to take any fee—in history this is the first case we encounter of public and free education. In the course of the ninth century important schools arose at Tours, Auxerre, Pavia, St. Gall, Fulda, Ghent, and other places, almost all of which were attached to monasteries. To remedy the shortage of teachers, Charlemagne invited a number of scholars and learned men from Ireland, Britain, and Italy to the land of France. It was upon the foundation of these schools that the universities of Europe later arose.

With all this, we should not exaggerate the intellectual characteristics of this period. The revival of learning was a movement confined to children, not to the older generation, as it existed at the same time, especially in academies like Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cordova. This movement produced no great writer. The official writings of Alcuin are oppressively dull. Only from his private correspondence and scattered poems can we infer that this man was not a pedantic and pompous scholar, but a kind man who could reconcile happiness with piety. In this short renaissance many people took to writing poetry, and the verses of Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, though they are not of great importance, are in their way graceful. But the only lasting work of this brilliant Gallic age is the simple and concise biography of Charlemagne himself by his secretary, Einhard. This book is written exactly in the style of The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, and the author has even taken some phrases from Suetonius' book and applied them to Charlemagne. Nevertheless, this sin of a writer who in humility calls himself a barbarian and claims "that he has no great skill in the Roman language" is pardonable. With all this, Einhard was certainly a man of talent, for Charlemagne made him his steward and treasurer and his intimate friend, and perhaps entrusted him with the supervision and design of most of the architectural works of this creative period of his reign.

Palaces were built for the emperor at Ingelheim and Nijmegen, and at Aachen itself, which was Charlemagne's favorite capital, at his direction a famous palace and chapel were constructed that survived a thousand accidents of fate until they were destroyed by shells and bombs in the Second World War. This palace, which was built by unknown architects on the model of the church of San Vitale at Ravenna, was similar in form and style to Byzantine and Syrian buildings; the result was that a cathedral in the Eastern style arose in the Western Christian world. The apex of this building, which was octagonal, was crowned with a round dome. The interior consisted of two circular stories, each with a row of columns, and "adorned with lamps of gold and silver, railings and doors of solid bronze, columns and fonts that had been brought from Rome and Ravenna," and a very fine mosaic on the dome of the roof.

Charlemagne was extremely generous to the Church. At the same time he kept all religious affairs under his supervision and made the principles of religious belief and the clergy a means of extending education and performing the functions of government. Much of his correspondence was about religion. In rebuking corrupt government officials or worldly clergy, verses from the Scriptures flowed from his tongue and pen like a torrent. The vehemence of his statements prevents us from picturing his piety as a kind of hypocrisy for political purposes. He sent money to help Christians who were suffering hardship and distress in foreign countries, and in his negotiations with Muslim rulers he always insisted that they should treat Christian subjects with justice. In the councils, assemblies, and administration of Charlemagne the bishops had important duties, but although he treated them courteously, he still considered himself the vicar of God and them his agents and servants, and even in matters of religious doctrine and morals he gave them orders without any hesitation. While the popes were defending image-worship, Charlemagne condemned the practice. Every priest was required to report in writing to him how baptism was performed in his diocese. He sent the popes as many gifts as he issued orders to them, suppressed rebels in the monasteries, and gave strict instructions that the nunneries should be closely supervised to prevent "prostitution, drunkenness, and greed" among the women who had renounced the world. In an ordinance of 811 he rebuked the clergy, asking what was the purpose of their renunciation of the world, especially when "we see" that some of them "day by day resort to all kinds of devices to increase their wealth; sometimes they use the eternal fire of hell as a means of terror, and sometimes they make salvation in the hereafter a means of their own enrichment; in the name of God or one of the saints they plunder the goods of simple people and become the cause of endless loss to the lawful heirs of these people." Nevertheless, Charlemagne left the clergy free to have their own courts, decreed that one tenth of all agricultural products should be given to the churches, entrusted the supervision of marriages and wills to the clergy, and in his will bequeathed two thirds of his estates to the episcopal sees of the realm. But from time to time he compelled the bishops to present a "gift" of considerable value to the royal treasury to help pay the expenses of the realm.

As a result of this sincere cooperation between Church and state, one of the most brilliant theories in the history of statecraft appeared; in other words, the realm of Charlemagne became a Holy Roman Empire that sought to enjoy both the prestige, sanctity, and stability of the empire and the government of the papacy in Rome. For many years the popes had been annoyed by their subjection to the Byzantine Empire, which gave them neither security nor support, and saw themselves coming more and more under the control of the emperor in Constantinople, and for this reason they feared for their freedom. It is not clear to us who first thought of compelling the pope to place the crown on Charlemagne's head and confer upon him the title of emperor of Rome. Alcuin, Theodulf, and other intimates of the king had discussed the possibility of such a plan. Perhaps the initiative was theirs, or perhaps the idea first occurred to the pope's advisers. There were great difficulties in the way of carrying out such a plan: one was that the Greek emperors had already been called emperors of Rome and all historical rights belonged to this title; another was that the Church had no power to grant or transfer a title; and the third difficulty was that giving such a title to a rival of the Byzantine Empire might intensify a great war between the Eastern and Western Christian worlds and deliver ruined Europe into the hands of the conquering Muslims. The seizure of the Greek throne by Irene (797) helped to solve this problem; for now some people believed that there was no longer a Greek emperor, and the field was open to anyone who claimed such a title. If this bold plan had been carried out in time, a Roman emperor would again have arisen in the West, Latin Christianity could have become a strong and united community to resist the disintegrating Byzantine Empire and the threatening Saracens, and barbarized Europe might have, with the help of the fear and magic of the emperor's name, left behind several dark centuries and inherited the culture and civilization of the ancient world and given it a Christian coloring.

On December 26, 795, Leo III was elected to the papacy. This pope was not popular with the Roman populace, for he was accused of various misdeeds. On April 25, 799 the people rose against him, mistreated him, and imprisoned him in a monastery. Leo III escaped from prison and took refuge with Charlemagne at Paderborn. The king received him kindly, placed him under the protection of a body of armed soldiers, and sent him back to the city of Rome, and arranged that in the following year the pope and those who accused him should meet there in his presence. On November 24, 800, Charlemagne entered the historic capital with his retinue. On December 1 an assembly composed of Franks and Romans agreed that if Leo would swear that he was innocent of the misdeeds attributed to him, the charges against him should be dropped. Leo took the oath; and preparations were made for a magnificent celebration of the feast of the Nativity. On Christmas Day, when Charlemagne, in the dress of a Roman patrician, with a short cloak and sandals, knelt for prayer before the altar of the church of St. Peter, Leo suddenly produced a jeweled crown that had been hidden from view and placed it on the king's head. The bystanders, who had perhaps been previously instructed to confirm the coronation according to the ancient custom of the Roman people's council, cried out three times: "Hail to the 'Augustus,' great emperor of the Romans, bringer of peace, upon whose head God has placed the imperial crown!" Charlemagne's head was anointed with holy oil, the pope called him emperor and "Augustus" and bowed his head in homage before him, that is, he performed for the Frankish king the ceremony that since 476 had been reserved for the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire.

If we believe Einhard, Charlemagne apparently said that if he had known beforehand that Leo intended to crown him he would not have entered the church. Perhaps he was generally aware of the plan, but regretted its haste and the conditions of its execution. Perhaps he did not like receiving the imperial crown from the hand of the pope, for this act opened the door to centuries of debate and controversy over the relative dignity and power of the giver and the receiver; it is also not unlikely that Charlemagne was thinking of the difficulties he would have with the Byzantine Empire. From this time on he often sent letters and envoys to Constantinople and sought to remove the discord, and for a long time he made no use of his new title. In 802 he proposed marriage to Irene in order that the dubious titles of both parties might be given a legal form, but Irene's fall from power upset this precise plan. To prevent any military attack by Byzantium, Charlemagne formed an alliance with the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, and Harun, to confirm this alliance, sent him the key of the holy places of Christian Jerusalem with several elephants as a gift. The emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, in retaliation, induced the emir of