Historical Miniatures Part 33

To my dear wife and present sister in Christ,

Emma, from Eginhard, formerly secretary to Charles the Great, now a monk in Seligenstadt on the Main:

Pa.s.sion-week is at an end, and the Resurrection days are here; spring has melted the frost; mind and memory have woken, and the past rises up again.

Yesterday, on Easter Eve, I walked in the convent garden, and thought of my vanished five and seventy years. I thought of the fine things which were said in the learned circle or academy of the Great Unforgettable, when we played with words and thoughts, like chess-players with their pieces.

"What is man?" asked our teacher, our wisest, Alcuin, whom we called Flaccus.

Angilbert, the Emperor's son-in-law, the husband of the beautiful Bertha, answered, "Man is the slave of death, a flying traveller, a guest in his own dwelling."

"Yes, truly," I said to myself, "a guest; and soon I will pack my knapsack, pay my account, and journey on."

I went along the river-bank and thought, "The same river, always the same river, but always new water; the same water never runs twice past. Such is life, such is the river of time, the heroes and events of history--the panorama of time, the years and the glory of them, all pa.s.s and perish."

I then wished to pluck the first Easter lilies to send to you, who were once my wife, and went to the gardener down by the carp-pond. Whom did I meet on the path under the ivy, this plant of eternity, which only knows of death and birth, but not the changes of the seasons? I met the last survivor of the great days, of the Emperor's Round Table, Thiodolf the Goth, now Bishop of Orleans. I cannot describe to you my joy at meeting him again, nor depict my feelings when I read in the face of the old man the whole history of our life.

It was six o'clock in the evening, and after we had sung Vespers, our fast was at an end. I had a large round table placed in the refectory, only for us two, but with twelve chairs and twelve places laid. From the Bishop's guest-room I had the largest armchair brought, and decorated it with leaves and flowers; it was that of the Emperor of blessed memory, who now rests in the cathedral at Aachen, the cathedral which I had the favour and honour of building. The other chairs I a.s.signed to absent friends, first Alcuin, then the poet Angilbert-Homerus, the Irishman Clement, the Bavarian Leidrade, and others whom you knew, but have forgotten.

What an evening, what a night, we pa.s.sed by the open garden window!

We spoke naturally of the Great Unforgettable, and lived his rich and varied life again in our thoughts. We followed him against the Longobards and Saracens, against the Hungarians and other Slavs. But we did not like to linger over his thirty years' war against the Saxons, chiefly out of reverence for his memory, for he ought to have used only spiritual weapons in his campaign of conversion. Remember the Frankish King who sent our friend Anschar to the wild Swedes. He had no armed men, but only G.o.d's Holy Word. Certainly he was robbed by thieves like St. Paul, but when once he had arrived he won the King and the n.o.bles of the country by his gentle bearing and preaching.

On the other hand, we lingered gladly in our conversation over the great Christmas Day of 800 A.D. in Rome, when the Western Roman Empire was restored, and the crown was bestowed on Germany. This had been prophesied by Tacitus, and Hermann in the Teutoburger Wald had shed his martyr's blood for it. Rome and Germany! A spiritual and a worldly kingdom! Inscrutable are the ways of the Lord!

When we drank to the strong and gentle Carolus Magnus Augustus, we both rose, Thiodolf and I, and bowed before the empty chair, as though he sat there in bodily presence. Where is he now, the departed of blessed memory--where is his great kingdom, which only his powerful spirit could hold together? What he united has now been scattered by his successors!

You know, after the last treaty at Verdun, the kingdom of Karl the Great has ceased to exist; in its place we now have three--Germany, France, and Italy. Perhaps it must be so, and perhaps a single man cannot rule so great an empire. But it is sad to perceive in history that every great achievement carries within it the seeds of decay, and that the heights are always bordered by deep abysses. Brother Thiodolf brought disquieting news from France. The Saxons, who were finally overthrown with their powerful chief Widukind, have devised a terrible revenge.

They have invited Danish and Swedish pirates, called Vikings, into the country. These have sailed up the Rhine, up the Seine as far as Rouen, and up the Loire. These Scandinavians are of German stock, and are therefore of kin to us Franks, but are more nearly related to the Goths, Heruli, Rugieri, and Longobards, of whom the last three are Scandinavian. Odovacer, who overthrew the Western Roman Empire, and deposed the last Emperor Romulus Augustulus, was a Rugier from the Danish island Rugen. These men from the North seem to be now about to step on the stage. Possibly they are the Gog and Magog concerning whom the Old Testament prophesied that they should come from the North. We did not end our conversation till midnight, Thiodolf and I; then we walked up and down in the garden till early ma.s.s, for we could not sleep.

Now I close this letter, dear wife, by wis.h.i.+ng you happy days far from all the tumult of the world. I only wait for my departure, for life has lost its relish for me, since my lord and Emperor has pa.s.sed into the great silence. Greet the brethren and the few who still survive from the time of the Great Emperor, and accept, dear Emma, the greeting of your dead husband, whom you will not see before the Day of Resurrection, the great Easter, when we shall all meet again. Till then, "Be of one mind, live in peace, and the G.o.d of Jove and of peace shall be with you."

THE CLOSE OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM

In the year 998 A.D. Rome had become a German Empire and the German Emperor had become a Roman. Otto III, brought up by his Graeco-Byzantine mother Theofano, had inherited her love of the southern lands, and therefore generally occupied his palace on the Aventine, installed himself as Emperor, and cherished a plan of converting Rome into the capital of the German Empire. He was now twenty years old, ambitious, crochety, pious, and cruel.

During one of his absences, the old Roman spirit had revived, and the high-born senator Crescentius had set up himself as Tribune of the people, freed Rome from the Germans, driven away Pope Gregory V, and installed John XVI in his place. The Emperor returned quickly to Rome, took Crescentius and his Pope prisoner, and then presented the Romans with a vivid spectacle, the like of which they had not seen, though their fathers had.

The Leonine quarter, which embraced the Vatican Hill, with the oldest St. Peter's Church and a papal palace, was connected with the town by the Pons Aelius or Bridge of Hadrian. At the head of the bridge, on the right side, was the sepulchre of Hadrian, a tower-shaped building in which the Emperors up to the time of Caracalla had been buried. When the Goths took Rome, the sepulchre became a fortress, and remained so for a long time.

When the Romans woke up on that memorable morning of the year 998 A.D., they saw twelve wooden crosses erected on Hadrian's Tower terrace. Right above them was to be seen the image of the Archangel Michael, with his drawn sword, which had been erected by Gregory the Great. Many people were a.s.sembled on the Aelian Bridge to see the spectacle, and among them were a French merchant and a Gothic pilgrim who had come from the west across the Leonine quarter. The sword of the Archangel flamed in the beams of the sun, which was now high.

"What are those crosses for?" asked the pilgrim, shading his eyes.

"There are twelve! Perhaps they are intended to represent the twelve Apostles."

"No, they have finished their sufferings, and the pious Emperor does not crucify the disciples of the Lord anew."

"Yes, the Emperor! The Saxon! Neither the Goth, nor the Longobard, nor the Frank were to have Rome, but the Saxon--one of the cursed nation whom Charles the Great thought that he had extirpated. He sent ten thousand to Gaul, in order to make a present of these savages to the enemy, and he beheaded four thousand five hundred in a single day, without its costing him a sleepless night. Wonderful are the ways of the Lord!"

"The last are often the first."

"O Lord Jesus, Redeemer of the world! there is something moving on the crosses! Do you see?"

"Yes, by heaven! No, I cannot look! They are crucified men!"

Two Romans stood by the strangers: "Hermann, you are avenged," said one.

"Was Hermann a Saxon?" objected the other.

"Probably, since he lived in the Harz district."

"A thousand years ago Thusnelda pa.s.sed through the streets in the triumph-train of Germanicus, and carried the unborn Thumelicus under her heart! To think that a thousand years had to pa.s.s before she was avenged!"

"A thousand years are as a day! But are not these our Roman brothers on the cross martyrs for Rome's freedom?"

"Martyrs for our cause! But this time they were wrong, because the G.o.ds so willed it."

Now there was a change in the scene. Under the tower a band of soldiers made a pa.s.sage through the crowd of people. Pope John XVI came riding backwards on an a.s.s. His ears and nose had been cut off, and his eyes had been dug out. It was a gruesome sight. A wine-bladder, waving over his head in the wind, made it worse. The people were silent, and shuddered simultaneously, for he was, after all, Christ's representative and St. Peter's successor, although no martyr.

A Sicilian stood on the bridge close to a Jew.

The Sicilian was a Muhammedan, for Sicily was then in the possession of the Saracens, and had been so for about two hundred years.

"He must be suffering for his predecessors' sins," said the Jew; "that is the Christian belief: _satisfactio vicaria_."

"Suffering is necessary," answered the Moslem; "and I do not grieve at such an end to the p.o.r.nocracy. For a hundred years the Popes have lived like cannibals. You remember Sergius III, who lived with the harlot Theodora and her daughters. John X continued with Marozia, who with her own hand first killed her brother and then suffocated the Pope with a cus.h.i.+on. John XII was only nineteen when he became Pope. He took bribes, and consecrated a ten year-old boy as bishop in a stable. He committed incest, and turned the Lateran into a brothel. He played cards, drank and swore by Jupiter and Venus.... You know it well."

"Yes," answered the Jew, "the Christians live in h.e.l.l since they have abandoned the one true G.o.d. The fools have, however, stolen from us the Messianic promise; but the promise to Abraham we still possess. Rome is a mad-house, Germany a slaughter-house, and France a brothel. It is a matter to rejoice at, to see how they destroy each other."

He placed himself by the bal.u.s.trade of the bridge, in order to be able to see better what now followed.

Between the twelve patriots, who writhed on their crosses like worms on hooks, appeared five men dressed in red, who began to construct a platform.

"Those are the executioners--on the Emperor's grave!" said the Jew.

"Against Crescentius I have nothing; he was a n.o.ble man who fought for the Roman State. But there is one Christian the less!"

"The Christians have always two ways of explaining a man's sufferings.

If he is innocent, his suffering is a test, and if he is guilty, well!

he deserved his fate. There he comes!"

Crescentius, the last Roman, was led forth. His head fell, and thereby Rome became German, or Germany Roman--till 1806! In the afternoon the nomination of the new Pope (for one could not call it an election) took place, and Gerbert of Auvergne was made Pope, with the t.i.tle of Silvester II.

The Emperor sat in his palace on the Aventine, and did not venture to go out, for the Romans hated him. In the little hermitage on the slope of the hill, where his friend Adalbert of Prague, the missionary martyr recently killed by the Saxons, used to live, the Emperor shut himself up with his teacher, the new Pope, Silvester II.