Stories of the Olden Time Part 15

14. A few days after, Leo was solemnly led to the church. Every door was set open as a sign that he might henceforth go whithersoever he would. Bishop Gregorius took him by the hand, and, standing, before the archdeacon, declared that for the sake of the good services rendered by his slave Leo, he set him free, and created him a Roman citizen. Then the archbishop read a writing of manumission. "Whatever is done according to the Roman law is irrevocable. According to the const.i.tution of the Emperor Constantine, of happy memory, and the edict that declares that whosoever is manumitted in church, in the presence of the bishops, priests, and deacons, shall become a Roman citizen under protection of the Church; from this day Leo becomes a member of the city, free to go and come where he will, as if he had been born of free parents. From this day forward he is exempt from all subjection of servitude, of all duty of a freedman, all bond of clients.h.i.+p. He is and shall be free, with full and entire freedom, and shall never cease to belong to the body of Roman citizens."

15. At the same time Leo was endowed with lands, which raised him to the rank of what the Franks called a Roman proprietor, the highest reward in the bishop's power, for the faithful devotion that had incurred such dangers in order to rescue the young Attalus from his miserable bondage.

_Charlotte M. Yonge._

_x.x.xV.--THE MOORS IN SPAIN._

1. Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain before they commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had now become the established policy of the commanders of the Faithful in Asia, the caliphs of Cordova distinguished themselves as patrons of learning, and set an example of refinement strongly contrasting with the condition of the native European princes. Cordova, under their administration, at its highest point of prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand houses, and more than a million inhabitants.

After sunset a man might walk through it in a straight line for ten miles by the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently, who ever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud.

2. Other cities, as Granada, Seville, Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the caliphs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which were scarcely better than stables--chimneyless, windowless, and with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians.

3. The Spanish Mohammedans had brought with them all the luxuries and prodigalities of Asia. Their residences stood forth against the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in woods. They had polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gardens, courts with cascades of water, shady retreats provocative of slumber in the heat of the day, retiring-rooms, vaulted with stained gla.s.s, speckled with gold, over which streams of water were made to gush; the floors and walls were of exquisite mosaic. Here a fountain of quicksilver shot up in a glistening spray, the glittering particles falling with a tranquil sound like fairy bells; there, apartments into which cool air was drawn from flower-gardens, in summer, by means of ventilating towers, and in the winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts, imbedded in the walls--the hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth volumes of warm and perfumed air through these hidden pa.s.sages.

4. The walls were not covered with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques and paintings of agricultural scenes and views of paradise.

From the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is said, was so large that it contained one thousand and eighty-four lamps. Cl.u.s.ters of frail marble columns surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In the boudoirs of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd-antique, and incrusted with lapis-lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock-crystal, Chinese porcelain, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter apartments were hung with rich tapestry; the floors were covered with embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches of elegant forms were scattered about the rooms, which were perfumed with frankincense.

5. It was the intention of the Saracen architect, by excluding the view of the external landscape, to concentrate attention on his work, and since the representation of the human form was religiously forbidden, and that source of decoration denied, his imagination ran riot with the complicated arabesques he introduced, and sought every opportunity of replacing the prohibited work of art by the trophies and rarities of the garden. For this reason the Arabs never produced artists; religion turned them from the beautiful, and made them soldiers, philosophers, and men of affairs. Splendid flowers and rare exotics ornamented the court-yards and even the inner chambers.

6. Great care was taken to make due provision for the cleanliness, occupation, and amus.e.m.e.nt of the inmates. Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of the year, ran into baths of marble; in niches, where the current of air could be artificially directed, hung dripping _alcarazzas_. There were whispering-galleries for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the women; labyrinths and marble play-courts for the children; for the master himself, grand libraries. The Caliph Alhakem's was so large that the catalogue alone filled forty volumes. He had also apartments for the transcribing, binding, and ornamenting of books. A taste for caligraphy and the possession of splendidly illuminated ma.n.u.scripts seems to have antic.i.p.ated in the caliphs, both of Asia and Spain, the taste for statuary and painting among the later popes of Rome.

7. Such were the palace and gardens of Zehra, in which Abderrahman III honored his favorite sultana. The edifice had twelve hundred columns of Greek, Italian, Spanish, and African marble. The body-guard of the sovereign was composed of twelve thousand hors.e.m.e.n, whose cimeters and belts were studded with gold. This was that Abderrahman who, after a glorious reign of fifty years, sat down to count the number of days of unalloyed happiness he had experienced, and could only enumerate fourteen. "O man!" exclaimed the plaintive caliph, "put not your trust in this present world."

8. No nation has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To them also we owe the introduction of very many of our most valuable cultivated fruits, such as the peach. Retaining the love of their ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot climate, they spared no pains in the superfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and artificial lakes in which fish were raised for the table. Into such a lake, attached to the palace of Cordova, many loaves were cast each day to feed the fish.

9. There were also menageries of foreign animals, aviaries of rare birds, manufactories in which skilled workmen, obtained from foreign countries, displayed their art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom; in jewelry and filigree-work, with which they ministered to the female pride. Under the shade of cypresses cascades disappeared; among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, bowers of roses, seats cut out of rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living stone. Nowhere was ornamental gardening better understood; for not only did the artist try to please the eye as it wandered over the pleasant gradation of vegetable color and form--he also boasted his success in the gratification of the sense of smell by the studied succession of perfumes from beds of flowers.

10. In the midst of all this luxury, which can not be regarded by the historian with disdain, since in the end it produced a most important result in the south of France, the Spanish caliphs, emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, were not only the patrons but the personal cultivators of human learning. One of them was himself the author of a work on polite literature in not less than fifty volumes; another wrote a treatise on algebra. When Taryak, the musician, came from the East to Spain, the Caliph Abderrahman rode forth to meet him with honor. The College of Music in Cordova was sustained by ample government patronage, and is said to have produced many ill.u.s.trious professors.

_John W. Draper._

_x.x.xVI.--CHARLEMAGNE._

1. We come now to one of the greatest men of all times, Charles the Great, son of Pepin the Short, a man who has left his mark on history for all time. Charles (called by the French Charlemagne) was great in many ways, whereas most great men are great in one or two. He was a great warrior, a great political genius, an energetic legislator, a lover of learning, and a lover also of his natural language and poetry at a time when it was the fas.h.i.+on to despise them. And he united and displayed all these merits in a time of general and monotonous barbarism, when, save in the church, the minds of men were dull and barren.

2. From 769 to 813, in Germany and Western and Northern Europe, Charlemagne conducted thirty-two campaigns against the Saxons, Frisians, Bavarians, Avars, Slavs, and Danes; in Italy, five against the Lombards; in Spain, Corsica, and Sardinia, twelve against the Arabs, two against the Greeks, and three in Gaul itself, against the Aquitanians and Bretons--in all, fifty-three expeditions in forty-five years, among which those he undertook against the Saxons, the Lombards, and the Arabs were long and difficult wars.

3. The kingdom of Charles was vast; it comprised nearly all Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and the north of Italy and of Spain. He had, in ruling this mighty realm, to deal with different nations, without cohesion, and to grapple with their various inst.i.tutions and bring them into system.

4. The first great undertaking of Charles was against the Saxons. They were still heathen, and were a constant source of annoyance to the Franks, for they made frequent inroads to pillage and destroy their towns and harvests.

5. In the line of mountains which forms the step from lower into upper Germany, above the Westphalian plains, is one point at which the river Weser breaks through and flows down into the level land about three miles above the town of Minden. This rent in the mountain is called the Westphalian Gate. The hills stand on each side like red sandstone door-posts, and one is crowned by some crumbling fragments of a castle; it is called the Wittekindsberg, and takes its name from Wittekind, a Saxon king, who had his castle there. Wittekind was a stubborn heathen, and a very determined man.

6. In 772 Charles convoked a great a.s.sembly at Worms, at which it was unanimously resolved to march against the Saxons and chastise them for their incursions. Charles advanced along the Weser, through the gate, destroyed Wittekind's castle, pushed on to Paderborn, where he threw down an idol adored by the Saxons, and then was obliged to return and hurry to Italy to fight the Lombards, who had revolted. Next year he invaded Saxony again. He built himself a palace at Paderborn, and summoned the Saxon chiefs to come and do homage. Wittekind alone refused, and fled to Denmark.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Charlemagne._]

7. No sooner had Charles gone to fight the Moors in Spain than Wittekind returned, and the Saxons rose at his summons, and, bursting into Franconia, devastated the land up to the walls of Cologne.

Charles returned and fought them in two great battles, defeated them, erected fortresses in their midst, and carried off hostages. Affairs seemed to prosper, and Charles deemed himself as securely master of Saxony as Varus had formerly in the same country, and under precisely the same circ.u.mstances. Charles then quitted the country, leaving orders for a body of Saxons to join his Franks and march together against the Slavs. The Saxons obeyed the call with alacrity, and soon outnumbered the Franks. One day, as the army was crossing the mountains from the Weser, at a given signal the Saxons fell on their companions and butchered them.

8. When the news of this disaster reached Charles he resolved to teach the Saxons a terrible lesson. Crossing the Rhine, he laid waste their country with fire and sword, and forced the Saxons to submit to be baptized and accept Christian teachers. Those who refused he killed.

At Verdun he had over four thousand of the rebels beheaded. At Detmold, Wittekind led the Saxons in a furious battle, in which neither gained the victory. In another battle, on the Hase, they were completely routed.

9. Then Wittekind submitted, came into the camp of Charles, and asked to be baptized. A little ruined chapel stands on the Wittekindsberg, above the Westphalian Gate, and there, according to tradition, near the overturned walls of his own castle, the stubborn heathen bowed the neck to receive the yoke of Christ. Charles's two nephews, the sons of Karlomann, were with Desiderius, the Lombard king, and Desiderius tried to force the Pope to anoint them kings of the Franks, to head a revolt against Charles. When the great king heard this he came over the Alps into Italy, dethroned Desiderius, and shut him up in a monastery. Then he crowned himself with the iron crown of the Lombard kings, which was said to have been made out of one of the nails that fastened Christ to the cross.

10. Duke Tha.s.sils of Bavaria had married a daughter of Desiderius, and he refused to acknowledge the authority of Charles. He also stirred up the Avars who lived in Hungary to invade the Frankish realm. Charles marched against Tha.s.sils, drove him out of Bavaria, subdued the Avars, and converted the country between the Ems and Raab--that is, Austria proper--into a province, which was called the East March, and formed the beginning of the East Realm (Oesterreich), or Austria. Charles also fought the Danes, and took from them the country up to the river Eider.

11. When we consider what continuous fighting Charles had, it is a wonder to us that he had time to govern and make laws; but he devoted as much thought to arranging his realm and placing it under proper governors as he did to extending its frontiers.

12. Charles const.i.tuted the various parts of his vast empire--kingdoms, duchies, and counties. He was himself the sovereign of all these united, but he managed them through counts and vice-counts. The frontier districts were called marches, and were under march-counts, or margraves. Count is not a German t.i.tle; the German equivalent is Graf, and the English is earl. The counties were divided into hundreds; a hundred villages went to a vice-count. He had also counts of the palace, who ruled over the crown estates, and send-counts (_missi_), whom he sent out yearly through the country to see that his other counts did justice, and did not oppress the people.

If people felt themselves wronged by the counts, they appealed to these send-counts; and if the send-counts did not do them justice, they appealed to the palatine-counts.

13. Every year Charles summoned his counts four times, when he could, but always once, in May, to meet him in council, and discuss the grievances of the people. As the great dukes were troublesome, because so powerful, Charles tried to do without them, and to keep them in check. He gave whole princ.i.p.alities to bishops, hoping that they would become supporters of him and the crown against the powerful dukes.

14. He was also very careful for the good government of the Church. He endowed a number of monasteries to serve as schools for boys and girls. He had also a collection of good, wholesome sermons made in German, and sent copies about in all directions, requiring them to be read to the people in church. He invited singers and musicians from Italy to come and improve the performance of divine wors.h.i.+p, and two song-schools were established, one at Gall, another at Metz. His Franks, he complained, had not much apt.i.tude for music; their singing was like the howling of wild beasts or the noise made by the squeaking, groaning wheels of a baggage-wagon over a stony road!

15. Charles was particularly interested in schools, and delighted in going into them and listening to the boys at their lessons. One day when he had paid such a visit he was told that the n.o.blemen's sons were much idler than those of the common citizens. Then the great king grew red in the face and frowned, and his eyes flashed. He called the young n.o.bles before him and said in thundering tones: "You grand gentlemen! You young puppets! You puff yourselves up with the thoughts of your rank and wealth, and suppose you have no need of letters! I tell you that your pretty faces and your high n.o.bility are accounted nothing by me. Beware! beware! Without diligence and conscientiousness not one of you gets anything from me."

16. Charles dearly loved the grand old German poems of the heroes, and he had them collected and copied out. Alas! they have been lost. His stupid son, thinking them rubbish, burned them all. The great king also sent to Italy for builders, and set them to work to erect palaces and churches. His favorite palaces were at Aix and at Ingelheim. At the latter place he had a bridge built over the Rhine. At Aix he built the cathedral with pillars taken from Roman ruins. It was quite circular, with a colonnade going round it; inside it remains almost unaltered to the present day.

17. He was very eager to promote trade, and so far in advance of the times was he that he resolved to cut a ca.n.a.l so as to connect the Main with the Regnitz, and thus make a water-way right across Germany from the Rhine to the Danube, and so connect the German Ocean with the Black Sea. The ca.n.a.l was begun, but wars interfered with its completion, and the work was not carried out till the present century by Louis I of Bavaria.

18. Charles was a tall, grand looking man, nearly seven feet high. He was so strong that he could take a horseshoe in his hands and snap it.

He ate and drank in moderation, and was grave and dignified in his conduct.

19. In the year 800, an insurrection broke out in Rome against Pope Leo III. While he was riding in procession his enemies fell on him, threw him from his horse, and an awkward attempt was made to put out his eyes and cut out his tongue. Thus, bleeding and insensible, he was put into a monastery. The Duke of Spoleto, a Frank, hearing of this, marched to Rome and removed the wounded Pope to Spoleto, where he was well nursed and recovered his eye-sight and power of speech. Charles was very indignant when he heard of the outrage, and he left the Saxons, whom he was fighting, and came to Italy to investigate the circ.u.mstance. He a.s.sumed the office of judge, and the guilty persons were sent to prison in France.

20. Then came Christmas-day, the Christmas of the last year in the eighth century of Christ. Charles and all his sumptuous court, the n.o.bles and people of Rome, the whole clergy of Rome, were present at the high services of the birth of Christ. The Pope himself chanted the ma.s.s; the full a.s.sembly were rapt in profound devotion. At the close the Pope rose, advanced toward Charles with a splendid crown in his hands, placed it upon his brow, and proclaimed him Caesar Augustus.

"G.o.d grant life and victory to the great emperor!" His words were lost in the acclamations of the soldiery, the people, and the clergy.

21. Charles was taken completely by surprise. What the consequences would be to Germany and to the papacy, how fatal to both, neither he nor Leo could see. So Charlemagne became King of Italy and Emperor of the West--the successor of the Caesars of Rome.

22. When Charles felt that his end was approaching, he summoned all his n.o.bles to Aix into the church he had there erected. There, on the altar, lay a golden crown. Charles made his son Ludwig, or Louis, stand before him, and, in the audience of his great men, gave him his last exhortation: to fear G.o.d and to love his people as his own children, to do right and to execute justice, and to walk in integrity before G.o.d and man. With streaming eyes Louis promised to fulfill his father's command. "Then," said Charles, "take this crown, and place it on your own head, and never forget the promise you have made this day."

_Sabine, Baring-Gould. "The Story of Germany."_ _Putnam's "Stories of the Nations" Series._

WESTERN RECORD.