ન CHAP. VIII. Empire was feudalized, and came to be considered not the antagonist but the perfection of an aristocratic system. This conception of a suzerainty over minor potentates, since it was adapted to existing political facts, enabled the Empire afterwards to assume an international character. Nevertheless, even while they seemed to blend, there remained between the genius of imperialism and that of feudalism a deep and lasting hostility. And so the rule of Otto and his successors was in a measure adverse to feudal polity, not from knowledge of what Roman government had been, but from the necessities of their position, raised as they were to an unapproachable height above their subjects, surrounded with a halo of sanctity as protectors of the Church. Thus were they driven to seek to reduce local independence, and assimilate the various races through their vast territories. It was Otto who made the Germans, hitherto an aggregate of tribes, a single people, and welding them into a strong political body taught them to rise through its collective greatness to the consciousness of national life, never thenceforth to be extinguished. The com mons. One expedient against the land-holding oligarchy which old Roman traditions as well as present needs might have suggested it was scarcely possible for Otto to use. He could not invoke the friendship of a Third Estate, for as yet none existed. The Teutonic order of freemen, which two centuries earlier had formed the bulk of the population, was now fast disappearing, just as in England all who did not become thanes were classed as ceorls, and from ceorls sank for the most part, after the Norman Conquest, into villeins. It was only in the Alpine valleys and along the shores of the ocean that small free communities maintained themselves. Town-life there was none, till Henry the Fowler forced his forest-loving people to dwell in fortresses that might repel the Hungarian invaders; and CHAP. VIII. the burgher class thus beginning to form was as yet too small to be a power. But popular freedom, as it expired, bequeathed to the monarch such of its rights as could be saved from the grasp of the nobles; and the crown thus became what it has been wherever an aristocracy presses upon both, the tacit ally of the people. More, too, than the royal name could have done, did the imperial name invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of its history, however unable to comprehend its functions, there yet lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious way consecrated to Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and law, to the restraint of the strong and the defence of the helpless. CHAP. IX. CHAPTER IX SAXON AND FRANCONIAN EMPERORS He who begins to read the history of the Middle Ages is alternately amused and provoked by the seeming absurdities that meet him at every step. He finds writers proclaiming amidst universal assent magnificent theories which no one attempts to carry out. He sees men stained with every vice full of sincere devotion to a religion which, even when its doctrines were most obscured, never sullied the purity of its moral teaching. He is disposed to conclude that such people must have been either fools or hypocrites. Yet in so concluding he would greatly err. Every one knows how little a man's actions conform to the general maxims which he would lay down for himself, and how many beliefs he holds without realizing their application, so that his opinions, though they influence his thoughts, do not govern his conduct. Now in the Middle Ages this perpetual opposition of theory and practice was peculiarly abrupt. Men's impulses were more violent and their conduct more reckless than is usually seen in modern communities; while the absence of a criticizing and measuring spirit made them surrender their minds more unreservedly than they would now do to a complete and imposing theory. Therefore it was, that while every one believed in the rights of the Empire as a part of divine truth, no one would yield to them where his own passions or interests interfered. Resistance to God's Vicar might be and indeed was admitted to be a deadly sin, but it was CHAP. IX. one which few hesitated to commit. Hence, in order to give this unbounded imperial prerogative any practical efficiency, it was found necessary to prop it up by the limited but tangible authority of a feudal king. And the one spot in Otto's empire on which feudality had never fixed its grasp, and where therefore he was forced to rule merely as Emperor, and not also as king, was that in which he and his successors were never safe from insult and revolt. This spot was his capital. Accordingly an account of what befel the first Saxon Emperor in Rome is a not unfitting comment on the theory expounded above, as well as a curious episode in the history of the Apostolic Chair. After his coronation Otto had returned to North Italy, where the partizans of Berengar and his son Adalbert still maintained themselves in arms. Scarcely was he gone when the restless Pope, who found too late that in seeking an ally he had given himself a master, renounced his allegiance, opened negotiations with Berengar, and did not even scruple to send envoys pressing the heathen Magyars to invade Germany. The Emperor was soon informed of these plots, as well as of the flagitious life of the pontiff, a youth of twenty-five, the most profligate if not the most guilty of all who have worn the tiara. But he affected to despise them, saying, with a sort of unconscious irony, 'He is a boy, the example of good men may reform him.' When, however, Otto returned with a strong force, he found the city gates shut, and a party within furious against him. John the Twelfth was not only Pope, but as the heir of Alberic, the head of a strong faction among the nobles, and a sort of temporal prince in the city. But neither he nor they had courage enough to stand a siege : John fled into the Campagna to join Adalbert, and Otto Otto the Great in Rome. CHAP. IX. entering convoked a synod in St. Peter's. Himself presiding as temporal head of the Church, he began by inquiring into the character and manners of the Pope. At once a tempest of accusations burst forth from the assembled clergy. Bishop Liudprand, a credible although a hostile witness, gives us a long list of them: 'Peter, cardinalpriest, rose and witnessed that he had seen the Pope celebrate mass and not himself communicate. John, bishop of Narnia, and John, cardinal-deacon, declared that they had seen him ordain a deacon in a stable, neglecting the proper formalities. They said further that he had defiled by shameless acts of vice the pontifical palace; that he had openly diverted himself with hunting; had put out the eyes of his spiritual father Benedict; had set fire to houses; had girt himself with a sword, and put on a helmet and hauberk. All present, laymen as well as priests, cried out that he had drunk to the devil's health; that in throwing the dice he had invoked the help of Jupiter, Venus, and other demons; that he had celebrated matins at uncanonical hours, and had not fortified himself by making the sign of the cross. After these things the Emperor, who could not speak Latin, since the Romans could not understand his native, that is to say, the Saxon tongue, bade Liudprand bishop of Cremona interpret for him, and adjured the council to declare whether the charges they had brought were true, or sprang only of malice and envy. Then all the clergy and people cried with a loud voice, 'If Pope John hath not committed all the crimes which Benedict the deacon hath read over, and even greater crimes than these, then may the chief of the Apostles, the blessed Peter, who by his word closes heaven to the unworthy and opens it to the just, never absolve us from our sins, but may we be bound by the chain of anathema, and on the last day may we stand on the left hand along with those who |