Ennobling influence of the conception of the World Empire.
Nor was that which may be called the inner life of the Empire less momentous in its influence upon the minds of men than were its outward dealings with the Roman church upon her greatness and decline. In the Middle Ages, men conceived of the communion of the saints as the formal unity of an organized body of worshippers, and found the concrete realization of that conception in their universal religious state, which was in one aspect, the Church; in another, the Empire. Into the meaning and worth of the conception, into the nature of the connexion which subsists or ought to subsist between the Church and the State, this is not the place to inquire. That the form which it took in the Middle Ages was always imperfect and became eventually rigid and unprogressive was sufficiently proved by the event. But by it the European peoples were saved from the isolation, and narrowness, and jealous exclusiveness which had checked the growth of the earlier civilizations of the world, and which we see now lying like a weight upon the kingdoms of the East: by it they were brought into that mutual knowledge and co-operation which is the condition if it be not the source of all true culture and progress. For as by the Roman Empire of old the nations were first forced to own a common sway, so by the Empire of the Middle Ages was preserved the feeling of a brotherhood of mankind, a commonwealth of the whole world, whose sublime unity transcended every minor distinction.
As despotic monarchs claiming the world for their realm, the Teutonic Emperors strove from the first against three principles, over all of which their forerunners ofPrinciples adverse to the Empire.the elder Rome had triumphed,—those of Nationality, Aristocracy, and Popular Freedom. Their early struggles were against the first of these, and ended with its victory in the emancipation, one after another, of England, France, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Burgundy, and Italy. The second, in the form of feudalism, menaced even when seeming to embrace and obey them, and succeeded, after the Great Interregnum, in destroying their effective strength in Germany. Aggression and inheritance turned the numerous independent principalities thus formed out of the greater fiefs, into a few military monarchies, resting neither on a rude loyalty, like feudal kingdoms, nor on religious duty and tradition, like the Empire, but on physical force, more or less disguised by legal forms. That the hostility to the Empire of the third was accidental rather than necessary is seen by this, that the very same monarchs who strove to crush the Lombard and Tuscan cities favoured the growth of the free towns of Germany. Asserting the rights of the individual in the sphere of religion, the Reformation weakened the Empire by denying the necessity of external unity in matters spiritual: the extension of the same principle to the secular world, whose fulness is still withheld from the Germans, would have struck at the doctrine of imperial absolutism had it not found a nearer and deadlier foe in the actual tyranny of the princes. It is more than a coincidence, that as the proclamation of the liberty of thought had shaken it, so that of the liberty of action made by the revolutionary movement, whose beginning the world saw and understood not in 1789, whose end we see not yet, should have indirectly become the cause which overthrew the Empire.
Its fall in the midst of the great convulsion that changedChange marked by its fall.the face of Europe marks an era in history, an era whose character the events of every year are further unfolding: an era of the destruction of old forms and systems and the building up of new. The last instance is the most memorable. Under our eyes, the work which Theodoric and Lewis the Second, Guido and Ardoin and the second Frederick essayed in vain, has been achieved by the steadfast will of the Italian people. The fairest province of the Empire, for which Franconian and Swabian battled so long, is now a single monarchy under the Burgundian count, whom Sigismund created imperial vicar in Italy, and who wants only the possession of the capital to be able to call himself 'king of the Romans' more truly than Greek or Frank or Austrian has done since Constantine forsook the Tiber for the Bosphorus. No longer the prey of the stranger, Italy may forget the past, and sympathize, as she has now indeed, since the fortunate alliance of 1866, begun to sympathize, with the efforts after national unity of her ancient enemy—efforts confronted by so many obstacles that a few years ago they seemed all but hopeless. On the new shapes that may emerge in this general reconstruction it would be idle to speculate. Yet one prediction may be ventured. No universal monarchy is likely to arise. More frequent intercourse, and the progress of thought, have done much to change the character of national distinctions, substituting for ignorant prejudice and hatred a genial sympathy and the sense of a common interest. They have not lessened their force. No one who reads the history of the last three hundred years, no one, above all, who studies attentively the career of Napoleon, can believe it possible for any state, however great her energy and material resources, to repeat in modern Europe the partRelations of the Empire to the nationalities of Europe.of ancient Rome: to gather into one vast political body races whose national individuality has grown more and more marked in each successive age. Nevertheless, it is in great measure due to Rome and to the Roman Empire of the Middle Ages that the bonds of national union are on the whole both stronger and nobler than they were ever before. The latest historian of Rome, after summing up the results to the world of his hero's career, closes his treatise with these words: 'There was in the world as Cæsar found it the rich and noble heritage of past centuries, and an endless abundance of splendour and glory, but little soul, still less taste, and, least of all, joy in and through life. Truly it was an old world, and even Cæsar's genial patriotism could not make it young again. The blush of dawn returns not until the night has fully descended. Yet with him there came to the much-tormented races of the Mediterranean a tranquil evening after a sultry day; and when, after long historical night, the new day broke once more upon the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-guided movement began their course towards new and higher aims, many were found among them in whom the seed of Cæsar had sprung up, many who owed him, and who owe him still, their national individuality[427].' If this be the glory of Julius, the first great founder of the Empire, so is it also the glory of Charles, the second founder, and of more than one amongst his Teutonic successors. The work of the mediæval Empire was self-destructive; and it fostered, while seeming to oppose, the nationalities that were destined to replace it. It tamed the barbarous races of the North, and forced them within the pale ofcivilization. It preserved the arts and literature of antiquity. In times of violence and oppression, it set before its subjects the duty of rational obedience to an authority whose watchwords were peace and religion. It kept alive, when national hatreds were most bitter, the notion of a great European Commonwealth. And by doing all this, it was in effect abolishing the need for a centralizing and despotic power like itself: it was making men capable of using national independence aright: it was teaching them to rise to that conception of spontaneous activity, and a freedom which is above law but not against it, to which national independence itself, if it is to be a blessing at all, must be only a means. Those who mark what has been the tendency of events sinceA.D.1789, and who remember how many of the crimes and calamities of the past are still but half redressed, need not be surprised to see the so-called principle of nationalities advocated with honest devotion as the final and perfect form of political development. But such undistinguishing advocacy is after all only the old error in a new shape. If all other history did not bid us beware the habit of taking the problems and the conditions of our own age for those of all time, the warning which the Empire gives might alone be warning enough. From the days of Augustus down to those of Charles the Fifth the whole civilized world believed in its existence as a part of the eternal fitness of things, and Christian theologians were not behind heathen poets in declaring that when it perished the world would perish with it. Yet the Empire is gone, and the world remains, and hardly notes the change.
This is but a small part of what might be said upon an almost inexhaustible theme: inexhaustible not from itsDifficulties arising from the nature of the subject.extent but from its profundity: not because there is so much to say, but because, pursue we it never so far, more will remain unexpressed, since incapable of expression. For that which it is at once most necessary and least possible to do, is to look at the Empire as a whole: a single institution, in which centres the history of eighteen centuries—whose outer form is the same, while its essence and spirit are constantly changing. It is when we come to consider it in this light that the difficulties of so vast a subject are felt in all their force. Try to explain in words the theory and inner meaning of the Holy Empire, as it appeared to the saints and poets of the Middle Ages, and that which we cannot but conceive as noble and fertile in its life, sinks into a heap of barren and scarcely intelligible formulas. Who has been able to describe the Papacy in the power it once wielded over the hearts and imaginations of men? Those persons, if such there still be, who see in it nothing but a gigantic upas-tree of fraud and superstition, planted and reared by the enemy of mankind, are hardly further from entering into the mystery of its being than the complacent political philosopher, who explains in neat phrases the process of its growth, analyses it as a clever piece of mechanism, enumerates and measures the interests it appealed to, and gives, in conclusion, a sort of tabular view of its results for good and for evil. So, too, is the Holy Empire above all description or explanation; not that it is impossible to discover the beliefs which created and sustained it, but that the power of those beliefs cannot be adequately apprehended by men whose minds have been differently trained, and whose imaginations are fired by different ideals. Something, yet still how little, we should know of it if we knew what were the thoughts of Julius Cæsar when he laid thefoundations on which Augustus built: of Charles, when he reared anew the stately pile: of Barbarossa and his grandson, when they strove to avert the surely coming ruin. Something more succeeding generations will know, who will judge the Middle Ages more fairly than we, still living in the midst of a reaction against all that is mediæval, can hope to do, and to whom it will be given to see and understand new forms of political life, whose nature we cannot so much as conjecture. Seeing more than we do, they will also see some things less distinctly. The Empire which to us still looms largely on the horizon of the past, will to them sink lower and lower as they journey onwards into the future. But its importance in universal history it can never lose. For into it all the life of the ancient world was gathered: out of it all the life of the modern world arose.
THE END.
It would be hard to mention any geographical name which, by its application at different times to different districts, has caused, and continues to cause, more confusion than this name Burgundy. There may, therefore, be some use in a brief statement of the more important of those applications. Without going into the minutiæ of the subject, the following may be given as the ten senses in which the name is most frequently to be met with:—
I. The kingdom of the Burgundians (regnum Burgundionum), foundedA.D.406, occupying the whole valley of the Saone and lower Rhone, from Dijon to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half of Switzerland. It was destroyed by the sons of Clovis inA.D.534.
II. The kingdom of Burgundy (regnum Burgundiæ), mentioned occasionally under the Merovingian kings as a separate principality, confined within boundaries apparently somewhat narrower than those of the older kingdom last named.
III. The kingdom of Provence or Burgundy (regnum Provinciæ seu Burgundiæ)—also, though less accurately, called the kingdom of Cis-Jurane Burgundy—was founded by Boso inA.D.877, and included Provence, Dauphiné,the southern part of Savoy, and the country between the Saone and the Jura.
IV. The kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy (regnum Iurense,Burgundia Transiurensis), founded by Rudolf inA.D.888, recognized in the same year by the Emperor Arnulf, included the northern part of Savoy, and all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.
V. The kingdom of Burgundy or Arles (regnum Burgundiæ,regnum Arelatense), formed by the union, under Conrad the Pacific, inA.D.937, of the kingdoms described above as III and IV. On the death, in 1032, of the last independent king, Rudolf III, it came partly by bequest, partly by conquest, into the hands of the Emperor Conrad II (the Salic), and thenceforward formed a part of the Empire. In the thirteenth century, France began to absorb it, bit by bit, and has now (since the annexation of Savoy in 1861) acquired all except the Swiss portion of it.
VI. The Lesser Duchy (Burgundia Minor), (Klein Burgund), corresponded very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the Reuss, including the Valais. It was Trans-Jurane Burgundy (IV)minusthe parts of Savoy which had belonged to that kingdom. It disappears from history after the extinction of the house of Zahringen in the thirteenth century. Legally it was part of the Empire tillA.D.1648, though practically independent long before that date.
VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy (Franche Comté), (Freigrafschaft), (called also Upper Burgundy), to which the name of Cis-Jurane Burgundy originally and properly belonged, lay between the Saone and the Jura. It formed a part of III and V, and was therefore a fief of the Empire. The French dukes ofBurgundy were invested with it inA.D.1384, and in 1678 it was annexed to the crown of France.
VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy (Landgrafschaft) was in Western Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn. It was a part of the Lesser Duchy (VI), and, like it, is hardly mentioned after the thirteenth century.
IX. The Circle of Burgundy (Kreis Burgund), an administrative division of the Empire, was established by Charles V in 1548; and included the Free County of Burgundy (VII) and the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands, which Charles inherited from his grandmother Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold.
X. The Duchy of Burgundy (Lower Burgundy), (Bourgogne), the most northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, was always a fief of the crown of France, and a province of France till the Revolution. It was of this Burgundy that Philip the Good and Charles the Bold were Dukes. They were also Counts of the Free County (VII).
The most copious and accurate information regarding the obscure history of the Burgundian kingdoms (III, IV, and V) is to be found in the contributions of Baron Frederic de Gingins la Sarraz, a Vaudois historian, to theArchiv für Schweizer Geschichte. See also an admirable article in theNational Reviewfor October 1860, entitled 'The Franks and the Gauls.'
The history of the relations of Denmark and the Duchies to the Romano-Germanic Empire is a very small part of the great Schleswig-Holstein controversy. But having been unnecessarily mixed up with two questions properly quite distinct,—the first, as to the relation of Schleswig to Holstein, and of both jointly to the Danish crown; the second, as to the diplomatic engagements which the Danish kings have in recent times contracted with the German powers,—it has borne its part in making the whole question the most intricate and interminable that has vexed Europe for two centuries and a half. Setting aside irrelevant matter, the facts as to the Empire are as follows:—
I. The Danish kings began to own the supremacy of the Frankish Emperors early in the ninth century. Having recovered their independence in the confusion that followed the fall of the Carolingian dynasty, they were again subdued by Henry the Fowler and Otto the Great, and continued tolerably submissive till the death of Frederick II and the period of anarchy which followed. Since that time Denmark has been always independent, although her king was, until the treaty ofA.D.1865, a member of the German Confederation for Holstein.
II. Schleswig was in Carolingian times Danish; the Eyder being, as Eginhard tells us, the boundary between Saxonia Transalbiana (Holstein), and the Terra Nortmannorum(wherein lay the town of Sliesthorp), inhabited by the Scandinavian heathen. Otto the Great conquered all Schleswig, and, it is said, Jutland also, and added the southern part of Schleswig to the immediate territory of the Empire, erecting it into a margraviate. So it remained till the days of Conrad II, who made the Eyder again the boundary, retaining of course his suzerainty over the kingdom of Denmark as a whole. But by this time the colonization of Schleswig by the Germans had begun; and ever since the numbers of the Danish population seem to have steadily declined, and the mass of the people to have grown more and more disposed to sympathize with their southern rather than their northern neighbours.
III. Holstein always was an integral part of the Empire, as it is at this day of the North German Bund.
This subject is a great deal too wide and too intricate to be more than touched upon here. But a few brief statements may have their use; for the practice of the Germanic Emperors varied so greatly from time to time, that the reader becomes hopelessly perplexed without some clue. And if there were space to explain the causes of each change of title, it would be seen that the subject, dry as it may appear, is very far from being a barren or a dull one.
I.Titles of Emperors.
Charles the Great styled himself'Carolus serenissimus Augustus, a Deo coronatus, magnus et pacificus imperator, Romanum (orRomanorum) gubernans imperium, qui et per misericordiam Dei rex Francorum et Langobardorum.'
Subsequent Carolingian Emperors were usually entitled simply'Imperator Augustus.'Sometimes'rex Francorum et Langobardorum'was added[428].
Conrad I and Henry I (the Fowler) were only German kings.
A Saxon Emperor was, before his coronation at Rome,'rex,'or'rex Francorum Orientalium,'or'Francorum atque Saxonum rex;'after it, simply'Imperator Augustus.'Otto III is usually said to have introduced the form'Romanorum Imperator Augustus,'but some authorities state that it occurs in documents of the time of Lewis I.
Henry II and his successors, not daring to take the title of Emperor till crowned at Rome (in conformity with the superstitious notion which had begun with Charles the Bald), but anxious to claim the sovereignty of Rome, as indissolubly attached to the German crown, began to call themselves'reges Romanorum.'The title did not, however, become common or regular till the time of Henry IV, in whose proclamations it occurs constantly.
From the eleventh century till the sixteenth, the invariable practice was for the monarch to be called'Romanorum rex semper Augustus,'till his coronation at Rome by the Pope; after it,'Romanorum Imperator semper Augustus.'
InA.D.1508, Maximilian I, being refused a passage to Rome by the Venetians, obtained a bull from Pope Julius II permitting him to call himself'Imperator electus'(erwählter Kaiser). This title Ferdinand I (brother of Charles V) and all succeeding Emperors took immediately upon their German coronation, and it was tillA.D.1806 their strict legal designation[429], and was always employed by them in proclamations or other official documents. The term 'elect' was however omitted, even in formal documents when the sovereign was addressed or spoken of in the third person; and in ordinary practice he was simply 'Roman Emperor.'
Maximilian added the title'Germaniæ rex,'which had never been known before, although the phrase'rex Germanorum'may be found employed once or twice in early times.'Rex Teutonicorum,''regnum Teutonicum[430],'occur often in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A great many titles of less consequence were added from time to time. Charles the Fifth had seventy-five, not, of course, as Emperor, but in virtue of his vast hereditary possessions[431].
It is perhaps worth remarking that the word Emperor has not at all the same meaning now that it had even so lately as two centuries ago. It is now a commonplace, not to say vulgar, title, somewhat more pompous than that of King, and supposed to belong especially to despots. It is given to all sorts of barbarous princes, like those of China and Abyssinia, in default of a better name. It is peculiarly affected by new dynasties; and has indeed grown so fashionable, that what with Emperors of Brazil, of Hayti, and of Mexico, the good old title of King seems in a fair way to become obsolete[432]. But in former times there was, and could be but one Emperor; he was always mentioned with a certain reverence: his name summoned up a host of thoughts and associations, which we cannot comprehend or sympathize with. His office, unlike that of modern Emperors, was by its very nature elective, and not hereditary; and, so far from resting on conquest or the will of the people, rested on and representedpure legality. War could give him nothing which law had not given him already: the people could delegate no power to him who was their lord and the viceroy of God.
II.The Crowns.
Of the four crowns something has been said in the text. They were those of Germany, taken at Aachen; of Burgundy, at Arles; of Italy, sometimes at Pavia, more usually at Milan or Monza; of the world, at Rome.
The German crown was taken by every Emperor after the time of Otto the Great; that of Italy by every one, or almost every one, who took the Roman down to Frederick III, by none after him; that of Burgundy, it would appear, by four Emperors only, Conrad II, Henry III, Frederick I, and Charles IV. The imperial crown was received at Rome by most Emperors till Frederick III; after him by none save Charles V, who obtained both it and the Italian at Bologna in a somewhat informal manner. But down toA.D.1806, every Emperor bound himself by his capitulation to proceed to Rome to receive it.
It should be remembered that none of these inferior crowns was necessarily connected with that of the Roman Empire, which might have been held by a simple knight without a foot of land in the world. For as there had been Emperors (Lothar I, Lewis II, Lewis of Provence (son of Boso), Guy, Lambert, and Berengar) who were not kings of Germany, so there were several (all those who preceded Conrad II) who were not kings of Burgundy, and others (Arnulf, for example) who were not kings of Italy. And it is also worth remarking, that although no crown save the German was assumed by the successors of Charles V, their wider rights remained in fullforce, and were never subsequently relinquished. There was nothing, except the practical difficulty and absurdity of such a project, to prevent Francis II from having himself crowned at Arles[433], Milan, and Rome.
III.The King of the Romans (Römischer König).
It has been shewn above how and why, about the time of Henry II, the German monarch began to entitle himself'Romanorum rex.'Now it was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for the heir-apparent to a throne to be crowned during his father's lifetime, that at the death of the latter he might step at once into his place. (Coronation, it must be remembered, which is now merely a spectacle, was in those days not only a sort of sacrament, but a matter of great political importance.) This plan was specially useful in an elective monarchy, such as Germany was after the twelfth century, for it avoided the delays and dangers of an election while the throne was vacant. But as it seemed against the order of nature to have two Emperors at once[434], and as the sovereign's authority in Germany depended not on the Roman but on the German coronation, the practice came to be that each Emperor during his own life procured, if he could, the election of his successor, who was crowned at Aachen, in later times at Frankfort, and took the title of 'Kingof the Romans.' During the presence of the Emperor in Germany he exercised no more authority than a Prince of Wales does in England, but on the Emperor's death he succeeded at once, without any second election or coronation, and assumed (after the time of Ferdinand I) the title of 'Emperor Elect[435].' Before Ferdinand's time, he would have been expected to go to Rome to be crowned there. While the Hapsburgs held the sceptre, each monarch generally contrived in this way to have his son or some other near relative chosen to succeed him. But many were foiled in their attempts to do so; and, in such cases, an election was held after the Emperor's death, according to the rules laid down in the Golden Bull.
The first person who thus became king of the Romans in the lifetime of an Emperor seems to have been Henry VI, son of Frederick I.
It was in imitation of this title that Napoleon called his son king of Rome.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:At simul effigies arasque superstitiosasDeiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarumImpero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:At simul effigies arasque superstitiosasDeiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarumImpero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placebant,
Militia, populo, mœnibus alta fui:
At simul effigies arasque superstitiosas
Deiiciens, uni sum famulata Deo,
Cesserunt arces, cecidere palatia divûm,
Servivit populus, degeneravit eques.
Vix scio quæ fuerim, vix Romæ Roma recordor;
Vix sinit occasus vel meminisse mei.
Gratior hæc iactura mihi successibus illis;
Maior sum pauper divite, stante iacens:
Plus aquilis vexilla crucis, plus Cæsare Petrus,
Plus cinctis ducibus vulgus inerme dedit.
Stans domui terras, infernum diruta pulso,
Corpora stans, animas fracta iacensque rego.
Tunc miseræ plebi, modo principibus tenebrarum
Impero: tunc urbes, nunc mea regna polus.
Written by Hildebert, bishop of Le Mans, and afterwards archbishop of Tours (bornA.D.1057). Extracted from his works as printed by Migne,Patrologiæ Cursus Completus[436].