preserved more of the light of learning than any of the western kingdoms. "Neque enim silenda laus Britanniæ, Scotia, et Hiberniæ, quæ studio liberalium artium eo tempore antecellebant reliquis occidentalibus regnis; et cura præsertim monachorum, qui literarum gloriam, alibi aut languentem aut depressam, in iis regionibus impigre suscitarent atque tuebantur."-Murat. Antiq. Ital. Diss. 43. The scarcity of books in those times, and the nature of their subjects, legends, lives of the saints, &c., evince the narrow diffusion of literature.

6. The pecuniary fines for homicide, the ordeal or judgment of God, and judicial combat, were striking peculiarities in the laws and manners of the northern nations, and particularly of the Franks. With this warlike but barbarous people, revenge was esteemed honourable and meritorious. The high-spirited warrior chastised or vindicated with his own hand the injuries he had received or inflicted, and he had only to dread the resentment of the sons or kinsmen of the enemy he sacrificed. The magistrate interfered, not to punish, but to reconcile; and was satisfied if he could persuade the aggressor to pay, and the injured party to accept, the moderate fine which was imposed as the price of blood; and of which the measure was estimated according to the rank, the sex, and the country of the person slain. But increasing civilization abolished those barbarous distinctions. We have remarked the equal severity of the laws of the Visigoths, both in the crime of murder and robbery; and even among the Franks in the age of Charlemagne, deliberate murder was punished with death.

7. By their ancient laws, a party accused of any crime was allowed to produce compurgators, or a certain number of witnesses, according to the measure of the offence; and if these declared upon oath their belief of his innocence, it was held a sufficient exculpation. Seventy-two compurgators were required to acquit a murderer or an incendiary. The flagrant perjuries occasioned by this absurd practice probably gave rise to the trial by ordeal, which was termed, as it was believed to be, the judgment of God. The criminal was ordered, at the option of the judge, to prove his innocence or guilt, by the ordeal of cold water, of boiling water, or red hot iron. He was tied hand and foot, and thrown into a pool to sink or swim; he was made to fetch a ring from the bottom of a vessel of boiling water, or to walk barefooted over burning ploughshares; and history records examples of those wonderful experiments having been undergone without injury or pain.

8. Another peculiarity of the laws and manners of the northern nations was judicial combat. Both in civil suits and in the trial of crimes, the party destitute of legal proofs might challenge his antagonist to mortal combat, and rest the cause upon its issue. This sanguinary and most iniquitous custom, which may be traced to this day in the practice of duelling, had the authority of law

in the court of the constable and marshal, even in the last century, in France and England.

SECTION VII.

A RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE CHURCH PRECEDING THE AGE OF CHARLEMAGNE.

1. THE Arian and Pelagian heresies divided the Christian church for many ages. In the fourth century, Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, maintained the separate and inferior nature of the Second Person of the Trinity, regarding Christ as the noblest of created beings, through whose agency the Creator had formed the universe. His doctrine was condemned in the first General Council, held at Nice, in Bythinia, by Constantine, in 325, who afterwards became a convert to his opinions. These heresies for many centuries had an extensive influence, and produced the sects of the Eunomians, Semi-Arians, Eusebians, &c.

2. In the beginning of the fifth century, Pelagius and Cælestius, the former a native of Britain, the latter of Ireland, denied the doctrine of original sin, and the necessity of Divine grace to enlighten the understanding and purify the heart; and maintained the sufficiency of man's natural powers for the attainment of the highest degrees of piety and virtue. These tenets were ably combated by St. Augustine, and condemned by an ecclesiastical council, but have ever continued to find many supporters.

3. The most obstinate source of controversy in those ages was regarding the worship of images; a practice which, though at first opposed by the clergy, was afterwards, from interested motives, countenanced and vindicated by them. It was, however, long a subject of division in the church. The emperor Leo the Isaurian, in 726, attempted to suppress this idolatry, by the destruction of every statue and picture found in the churches, and by punishment of their worshippers; but this intemperate zeal rather increased than repressed the superstition, and led to the loss of nearly all the Greek possessions in Italy. His son Constantine V., Copronymus, with wiser policy, satisfied himself with procuring its condemnation by the church in the council held at Constantinople in 754.

4. From the doctrines of the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, which recommended the purification of the soul by redeeming it from its subjection to the senses, arose the system of penances, mortification, religious sequestration, and monachism. After Constantine had put an end to the persecution of the Christians, many conceived it a duty to procure for themselves voluntary grievances and sufferings. They retired into caves and hermitages, and there practised the most rigorous mortifications of the

flesh, by fasting, scourging, vigils, &c. This frenzy first showed itself in Egypt in the fourth century, whence it spread all over the East, a great part of Africa, and within the limits of the bishopric of Rome. In the time of Theodosius, these devotees began to form communities or cœnobia, each associate binding himself by oath to observe the rules of his order. St. Benedict introduced monachism into Italy and founded the first monastery of the West, at Monte Cassino, near Naples, in 529. During the reign of Totila (541-552) the Benedictine order soon became extremely numerous, and most opulent, from the many rich donations made by the devout and charitable, who conceived they profited by their prayers. Benedict sent colonies into Sicily and France, whence they soon spread over all Europe.

5. In the East, the monachi solitarii were first incorporated into cœnobia by St. Basil, bishop of Cæsarea, in the middle of the fourth century; and, some time before that period, the first monasteries for women were founded in Egypt by the sister of St. Pacomo. From these, in the following age, sprung a variety of orders, under different rules. The rule of the Canons Regular was framed after the model of the apostolic life. The Mendicants,—to chastity, obedience, and poverty, added the obligation of begging alms. The military religious orders were unknown till the age of the Holy War. (See postea, Sect. XVIII. § 3.) The monastic fraternities owed their reputation chiefly to the little literary knowledge which, in those ages of ignorance, they exclusively possessed.

6. In the fifth century arose a set of fanatics termed Stylites, or pillar-saints, who passed their lives on the tops of pillars of various height. Simeon of Syria lived thirty-seven years on a pillar sixty feet high, and died upon it. This frenzy prevailed in the East for many centuries.

7. Auricular confession, which had been abolished in the East in the fourth century, began to be in use in the West in the age of Charlemagne, and has ever since prevailed in the Romish church. The canonization of saints was for near twelve centuries practised by every bishop. Pope Alexander III., one of the most vicious of men, first claimed and assumed this right as the exclusive privilege of the successor of St. Peter.

8. The conquests of Charlemagne spread Christianity in the north of Europe. [He founded the bishoprics of Munster, Osnaburg, Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt;] but all beyond the limits of his conquests was idolatrous. Britain and Ireland had received the light of Christianity at an earlier period, but it was afterwards extinguished, and again revived under the Saxon Heptarchy.

SECTION VIII.

EMPIRE OF THE WEST UNDER THE SUCCESSORS OF

CHARLEMAGNE. 814-923 A. C.

1. THE empire of Charlemagne, raised and supported solely by his abilities, fell to pieces under his weak posterity. Louis le Débonnaire, or the Good-natured, the only survivor of his lawful sons, was consecrated emperor and king of the Franks at Aix-la-Chapelle in 813, and crowned emperor at Rheims in 816, by Pope Stephen V. Among the first acts of his reign was the partition of his dominions among his three sons. To Pepin, his second son, he gave Aquitaine, the southern third of France; to Louis, the youngest, Bavaria; and he associated his eldest son Lothaire with himself in the government of the rest. The three princes quarrelled among themselves, agreeing in nothing but in hostilities against their father. They made open war against him, supported by pope Gregory IV. The pretence was, that the emperor having a younger son, Charles, by his second wife Judith of Bavaria, who was born to him after this partition of his states, wanted to provide this child likewise in a share, which could not be done but at the expense of his elder brothers. Louis was compelled to surrender himself, together with the empress and his son Charles (afterwards surnamed the Bald), as prisoners to his rebellious sons. They confined him for a year in a monastery; till, on a new quarrel between Louis the Younger and Pepin, Lothaire once more restored his father to the throne; but his spirits were broken, his health decayed, and he finished, soon after, an inglorious and turbulent reign, in 840.

2. The dissensions of the brothers still continued. Lothaire, now emperor, and Pepin, his brother's son, having taken up arms against the two other sons of Louis le Débonnaire, Louis of Bavaria, and Charles the Bald, were defeated by them in the battle of Fontenoy, where 100,000 are said to have fallen in the field. The church, in those times, was a prime organ of civil policy. A council of bishops immediately assembled, and solemnly deposed Lothaire; assuming at the same time an equal authority over his conquerors, whom they permitted to reign, on the express condition of submissive obedience to the supreme spiritual authority. Yet Lothaire, excommunicated and deposed, found means so to accommodate matters with his brothers, that they agreed to a new partition of the empire. By the treaty of Verdun, in 843, the western part of France, termed Neustria and Aquitaine, was assigned to Charles the Bald; Lothaire, with the title of emperor, had the nominal sovereignty of Italy, and the real territory of Lorraine, Franche Compté, Provence, and the Lyonnois; the share of Louis was the kingdom of Germany, and from this he was afterwards distinguished by the appellation of Louis the German.

3. Thus was Germany finally separated from the empire of the Franks. On the death of Lothaire, Charles the Bald assumed the empire in 875, or, as is said, purchased it from pope John VIII., on the condition of holding it as a vassal to the Holy See. This prince, after a weak and inglorious reign, died by poison in 877. Under the distracting reigns of the Carlovingian kings, the nobles attained great power, and commanded a formidable vassalage. They strengthened themselves in their castles and fortresses, and bid defiance to the arm of government, while the country was ravaged and desolated by their feuds. [They compelled Charles the Bald to confirm them in their offices and privileges, 843,-to promise to transact no affairs of state without their consent, 851,—to declare for himself and his successors that the nobles had the right, whenever their demands and claims should be just, to make common cause against them, 854and by the edict of Xiersi, that dutchies, earldoms, and all fiefs, should be hereditary, 877. The nobles then became the predominant power in the state; the great body of free yeomanry were compelled to give up their lands to the great barons, and hold them as dependent fiefs, whilst the national assemblies were changed into baronial courts. The barbarous custom of private war followed, which distracted the kingdom and led to the general ferocity of manners.]

4. In the reign of Charles the Bald, France was plundered by the Normans, or Northernmen, a new race of Goths from Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, and Norway), who had begun their depredations even in the time of Charlemagne, checked only in their progress by the terror of his arms, and by the naval force which he established to guard the mouths of the rivers. Their fleets consisted of small light vessels, which braved the storms of the ocean, and enabled them to penetrate into every quarter. In 843, they sailed up the Seine, and plundered Rouen; while another fleet entered the Loire, and laid waste the country in its vicinity, carrying, together with its spoils, men, women, and children, into captivity. In the following year they attacked the coasts of England, France, and Spain, but were repelled from the last by the good conduct and courage of its Mahometan rulers. In 845 they entered the Elbe, plundered Hamburgh, and penetrated far into Germany. Eric, king of Denmark, who commanded these Normans, sent once more a fleet into the Seine, which advanced to Paris. Its inhabitants fled, and the city was burned. Another fleet, with little resistance, pillaged Bourdeaux. To avert the arms of these ravagers, Charles the Bald bribed them with money; and his successor, Charles the Fat, yielded them a part of his Flemish dominions. These were only incentives to fresh depredations. Paris was attacked a second time, but gallantly defended by Count Odo, or Eudes, and the venerable Bishop Goslin. A truce was a second time concluded, and the barbarians only changed the scene of their attack. They