A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 20

[Sidenote: Odo's mission to Emperor Charles the Fat]

One day Odo suddenly appeared in splendor in the midst of three bands of warriors. The sun made his armor glisten and greeted him before it illuminated the country around. The Parisians saw their beloved chief at a distance, but the enemy, hoping to prevent his gaining entrance to the tower, crossed the Seine and took up their position on the bank. Nevertheless Odo, his horse at a gallop, got past the Northmen and reached the tower, whose gates Ebolus opened to him. The enemy pursued fiercely the comrades of the count who were trying to keep up with him and get refuge in the tower. [The Danes were defeated in the attack.]

[Sidenote: Terms of peace arranged by Charles]

Now came the Emperor Charles, surrounded by soldiers of all nations, even as the sky is adorned with resplendent stars. A great throng, speaking many languages, accompanied him. He established his camp at the foot of the heights of Montmartre, near the tower.

He allowed the Northmen to have the country of Sens to plunder;[235] and in the spring he gave them 700 pounds of silver on condition that by the month of March they leave France for their own kingdom.[236] Then Charles returned, destined to an early death.[237]

[Sidenote: Rollo receives Normandy from Charles the Simple]

(c) THE BAPTISM OF ROLLO AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NORMANS IN FRANCE[238]

The king had at first wished to give to Rollo the province of Flanders, but the Norman rejected it as being too marshy. Rollo refused to kiss the foot of Charles when he received from him the duchy of Normandy. "He who receives such a gift," said the bishops to him, "ought to kiss the foot of the king." "Never," replied he, "will I bend the knee to any one, or kiss anybody's foot."

Nevertheless, impelled by the entreaties of the Franks, he ordered one of his warriors to perform the act in his stead. This man seized the foot of the king and lifted it to his lips, kissing it without bending and so causing the king to tumble over backwards.

At that there was a loud burst of laughter and a great commotion in the crowd of onlookers. King Charles, Robert, Duke of the Franks,[239] the counts and magnates, and the bishops and abbots, bound themselves by the oath of the Catholic faith to Rollo, swearing by their lives and their bodies and by the honor of all the kingdom, that he might hold the land and transmit it to his heirs from generation to generation throughout all time to come.

When these things had been satisfactorily performed, the king returned in good spirits into his dominion, and Rollo with Duke Robert set out for Rouen.

[Sidenote: Rollo becomes a Christian]

In the year of our Lord 912 Rollo was baptized in holy water in the name of the sacred Trinity by Franco, archbishop of Rouen. Duke Robert, who was his G.o.dfather, gave to him his name. Rollo devotedly honored G.o.d and the Holy Church with his gifts.... The pagans, seeing that their chieftain had become a Christian, abandoned their idols, received the name of Christ, and with one accord desired to be baptized. Meanwhile the Norman duke made ready for a splendid wedding and married the daughter of the king [Gisela] according to Christian rites.

[Sidenote: His work in Normandy]

Rollo gave a.s.surance of security to all those who wished to dwell in his country. The land he divided among his followers, and, as it had been a long time unused, he improved it by the construction of new buildings. It was peopled by the Norman warriors and by immigrants from outside regions. The duke established for his subjects certain inviolable rights and laws, confirmed and published by the will of the leading men, and he compelled all his people to live peaceably together. He rebuilt the churches, which had been entirely ruined; he restored the temples, which had been destroyed by the ravages of the pagans; he repaired and added to the walls and fortifications of the cities; he subdued the Britons who rebelled against him; and with the provisions obtained from them he supplied all the country that had been granted to him.

28. Later Carolingian Efforts to Preserve Order

The ninth century is chiefly significant in Frankish history as an era of decline of monarchy and increase of the powers and independence of local officials and magnates. Already by Charlemagne's death, in 814, the disruptive forces were at work, and under the relatively weak successors of the great Emperor the course of decentralization went on until by the death of Charles the Bald, in 877, the royal authority had been reduced to a condition of insignificance. This century was the formative period _par excellence_ of the feudal system--a type of social and economic organization which the conditions of the time rendered inevitable and under which great monarchies tended to be dissolved into a mult.i.tude of petty local states. Large landholders began to regard themselves as practically independent; royal officials, particularly the counts, refused to be parted from their positions and used them primarily to enhance their own personal authority; the churches and monasteries stretched their royal grants of immunity so far as almost to refuse to acknowledge any obligations to the central government. In these and other ways the Carolingian monarchy was shorn of its powers, and as it was quite lacking in money, lands, and soldiers who could be depended on, there was little left for it to do but to legislate and ordain without much prospect of being able to enforce its laws and ordinances. The rapidity with which the kings of the period were losing their grip on the situation comes out very clearly from a study of the capitularies which they issued from time to time. In general these capitularies, especially after about 840, testify to the disorder everywhere prevailing, the usurpations of the royal officials, and the popular contempt of the royal authority, and reiterate commands for the preservation of order until they become fairly wearisome to the reader. Royalty was at a bad pa.s.s and its weakness is reflected unmistakably in its attempts to govern by mere edict without any backing of enforcing power. In 843, 853, 856, 857, and many other years of Charles the Bald's reign, elaborate decrees were issued prohibiting brigandage and lawlessness, but with the tell-tale provision that violators were to be "admonished with Christian love to repent," or that they were to be punished "as far as the local officials could remember them," or that the royal agents were themselves to take oath not to become highway robbers!

Sometimes the king openly confessed his weakness and proceeded to implore, rather than to command, his subjects to obey him.

The capitulary quoted below belongs to the last year of the short reign of Carloman (882-884), son of Louis the Stammerer and grandson of Charles the Bald. It makes a considerable show of power, ordaining the punishment of criminals as confidently as if there had really been means to a.s.sure its enforcement. But in truth all the provisions in it had been embodied in capitularies of Carloman's predecessors with scarcely perceptible effect, and there was certainly no reason to expect better results now. With the n.o.bles practicing, if not a.s.serting, independence, the churches and monasteries heeding the royal authority hardly at all, the country being ravaged by Northmen and the people turning to the great magnates for the protection they could no longer get from the king, and the counts and _missi dominici_ making their lands and offices the basis for hereditary local authority, the king had come to be almost powerless in the great realm where less than a hundred years before Charlemagne's word, for all practical purposes, was law. Even Charlemagne himself, however, could have done little to avert the state of anarchy which conditions too strong for any sovereign to cope with had brought about.

Source--Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Leges_ (Boretius ed.), Vol. II., pp. 371-375.

[Sidenote: The keeping of the peace enjoined]

=1.= According to the custom of our predecessors, we desire that in our palace shall prevail the wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, the honor of the king, piety, concord, and a condition of peace; and that that peace established in our palace by the sanction of our predecessors shall extend to, and be observed throughout, our entire kingdom.

=2.= We desire that all those who live at our court, and all who come there, shall live peaceably. If any one, in breach of the peace, is guilty of violence, let him be brought to a hearing at our palace, by the authority of the king and by the order of our _missus_, as it was ordained by the capitularies of our predecessors, that he may be punished according to a legal judgment and may pay a triple composition with the royal ban.[240]

=3.= If the offender has no lord, or if he flees from our court, our _missus_ shall go to find him and shall order him, in our name, to appear at the palace.[241] If he should be so rash as to disdain to come, let him be brought by force. If he spurns both us and our _missus_, and while refusing to obey summons is killed in resisting, and any of his relatives or friends undertake to exercise against our agents who have killed him the right of vengeance,[242] we will oppose them there and will give our agents all the aid of our royal authority.

[Sidenote: The bishop's part in repressing crime]

=5.= The bishop of the diocese in which the crime shall have been committed ought, through the priest of the place, to give three successive invitations to the offender to repent and to make reparation for his fault in order to set himself right with G.o.d and the church that he has injured. If he scorns and rejects this summons and invitation, let the bishop wield upon him the pastoral rod, that is to say, the sentence of excommunication; and let him separate him from the communion of the Holy Church until he shall have given the satisfaction that is required.

[Sidenote: Obligations of lay officials to restrain violence]

=9.= In order that violence be entirely brought to an end and order restored, it is necessary that the bishop's authority should be supplemented by that of the public officials. Therefore we and our faithful have judged it expedient that the _missi dominici_ should discharge faithfully the duties of their office.[243] The count shall enjoin to the viscount,[244] to his _vicarii_ and _centenarii_,[245] and to all the public officials, as well as to all Franks who have a knowledge of the law, that all should give as much aid as they can to the Church, both on their own account and in accord with the requests of the clergy, every time they shall be called upon by the bishop, the officers of the bishop, or even by the needy. They should do this for the love of G.o.d, the peace of the Holy Church, and the fidelity that they owe to us.

29. The Election of Hugh Capet (987).

The election of Hugh Capet as king of France in 987 marked the establishment of the so-called Capetian line of monarchs, which occupied the French throne in all not far from eight centuries--a record not equaled by any other royal house in European history. The circ.u.mstances of the election were interesting and significant. For more than a hundred years there had been keen rivalry between the Carolingian kings and one of the great ducal houses of the Franks, known as the Robertians. In the disorder which so generally prevailed in France in the ninth and tenth centuries, powerful families possessing extensive lands and having large numbers of va.s.sals and serfs were able to make themselves practically independent of the royal power. The greatest of these families was the Robertians, the descendants of Robert the Strong, father of the Odo who distinguished himself at the siege of Paris in 885-886 [see p. 170]. Between 888 and 987 circ.u.mstances brought it about three different times that members of the Robertian house were elevated to the Frankish throne (Odo, 888-898; Robert I., 922-923; and Rudolph--related to the Robertians by marriage only,--923-936). The rest of the time the throne was occupied by Carolingians (Charles the Simple, 898-922; Louis IV., 936-954; Lothair, 954-986; and Louis V., 986-987). With the death of the young king Louis V., in 987, the last direct descendant of Charlemagne pa.s.sed away and the question of the succession was left for solution by the n.o.bles and higher clergy of the realm. As soon as the king was dead, such of these magnates as were a.s.sembled at the court to attend the funeral bound themselves by oath to take no action until a general meeting could be held at Senlis (a few miles north of Paris) late in May, 987. The proceedings of this general meeting are related in the pa.s.sage below. Apparently it had already been pretty generally agreed that the man to be elected was Hugh Capet, great-grandson of Robert the Strong and the present head of the famous Robertian house, and the speech of Adalbero, archbishop of Rheims, of which Richer gives a resume, was enough to ensure this result. There was but one other claimant of importance. That was the late king's uncle, Charles of Lower Lorraine. He was not a man of force and Adalbero easily disposed of his candidacy, though the rejected prince was subsequently able to make his successful rival a good deal of trouble. Hugh owed his election to his large material resources, the military prestige of his ancestors, the active support of the Church, and the lack of direct heirs of the Carolingian dynasty.

Richer, the chronicler whose account of the election is given below, was a monk living at Rheims at the time when the events occurred which he describes. His "Four Books of Histories," discovered only in 1833, is almost our only considerable source of information on Frankish affairs in the later tenth century. In his writing he endeavored to round out his work into a real history and to give more than the bare outline of events characteristic of the mediaeval annalists. In this he was only partially successful, being at fault mainly in indulging in too much rhetoric and in allowing partisan motives sometimes to guide him in what he said. His partisans.h.i.+p was on the side of the fallen Carolingians. The period covered by the "Histories" is 888-995; they are therefore roughly continuous chronologically with the Annals of Saint Bertin [see p. 164].

Source--Richer, _Historiarum Libri IV._ ["Four Books of Histories"], Bk. IV., Chaps. 11-12. Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores_ (Pertz ed.), Vol. III., pp.

633-634.

Meanwhile, at the appointed time the magnates of Gaul who had taken the oath came together at Senlis. When they had all taken their places in the a.s.sembly and the duke[246] had given the sign, the archbishop[247] spoke to them as follows:[248]

[Sidenote: Adalbero's speech at Senlis]

"King Louis, of divine memory, having been removed from the world, and having left no heirs, it devolves upon us to take serious counsel as to the choice of a successor, so that the state may not suffer any injury through neglect and the lack of a leader. On a former occasion[249] we thought it advisable to postpone that deliberation in order that each of you might be able to come here and, in the presence of the a.s.sembly, voice the sentiment which G.o.d should have inspired in you, and that from all these different expressions of opinion we might be able to find out what is the general will.

[Sidenote: Election, not heredity, the true basis of Frankish kings.h.i.+p]

"Here we are a.s.sembled. Let us see to it, by our prudence and honor, that hatred shall not destroy reason, that love shall not interfere with truth. We are aware that Charles[250] has his partisans, who claim that the throne belongs to him by right of birth. But if we look into the matter, the throne is not acquired by hereditary right, and no one ought to be placed at the head of the kingdom unless he is distinguished, not only by n.o.bility of body, but also by strength of mind--only such a one as honor and generosity recommend.[251] We read in the annals of rulers of ill.u.s.trious descent who were deposed on account of their unworthiness and replaced by others of the same, or even lesser, rank.[252]

[Sidenote: Objections to Charles of Lorraine]

[Sidenote: Election of Hugh Capet urged]

"What dignity shall we gain by making Charles king? He is not guided by honor, nor is he possessed of strength. Then, too, he has compromised himself so far as to have become the dependent of a foreign king[253] and to have married a girl taken from among his own va.s.sals. How could the great duke endure that a woman of the low rank of va.s.sal should become queen and rule over him? How could he tender services to this woman, when his equals, and even his superiors, in birth bend the knee before him and place their hands under his feet? Think of this seriously and you will see that Charles must be rejected for his own faults rather than on account of any wrong done by others. Make a decision, therefore, for the welfare rather than for the injury of the state. If you wish ill to your country, choose Charles to be king; if you have regard for its prosperity, choose Hugh, the ill.u.s.trious duke.... Elect, then, the duke, a man who is recommended by his conduct, by his n.o.bility, and by his military following. In him you will find a defender, not only of the state, but also of your private interests. His large-heartedness will make him a father to you all. Who has ever fled to him for protection without receiving it? Who that has been deserted by his friends has he ever failed to restore to his rights?"

[Sidenote: The beginning of his reign]

This speech was applauded and concurred in by all, and by unanimous consent the duke was raised to the throne. He was crowned at Noyon[254] on the first of June[255] by the archbishop and the other bishops as king of the Gauls, the Bretons, the Normans, the Aquitanians, the Goths, the Spaniards and the Gascons.[256]

Surrounded by the n.o.bles of the king, he issued decrees and made laws according to royal custom, judging and disposing of all matters with success.

FOOTNOTES:

[197] After the battle of Fontenay, June 25, 841, Charles and Louis had separated and Lothair had formed the design of attacking and conquering first one and then the other. He made an expedition against Charles, but was unable to accomplish anything before his two enemies again drew together at Stra.s.sburg.

[198] The name "Francia" was as yet confined to the country lying between the Loire and the Scheldt.

[199] This Pepin was a son of Pepin, the brother of Charles, Louis, and Lothair. Upon the death of the elder Pepin in 838 his part of the empire--the great region between the Loire and the Pyrenees, known as Aquitaine--had been taken possession of by Charles, without regard for the two surviving sons. It was natural, therefore, that in the struggle which ensued between Charles and Louis on the one side and Lothair on the other, young Pepin should have given such aid as he could to the latter.

[200] On the upper Moselle.

[201] This refers to the battle of Fontenay.

[202] The translation of this oath is as follows: "For the love of G.o.d, and for the sake as well of our peoples as of ourselves, I promise that from this day forth, as G.o.d shall grant me wisdom and strength, I will treat this my brother as one's brother ought to be treated, provided that he shall do the same by me. And with Lothair I will not willingly enter into any dealings which may injure this my brother."

[203] This oath, taken by the followers of the two kings, may be thus translated: "If Louis [or Charles] shall observe the oath which he has sworn to his brother Charles [or Louis], and Charles [or Louis], our lord, on his side, should be untrue to his oath, and we should be unable to hold him to it, neither we nor any whom we can deter, shall give him any support." The oath taken by the two armies was the same, with only the names of the kings interchanged.