 CHAPTER V. THE INVASIONS OF THE BARBERIANS. Instead of endeavouring to maintain a united empire, Constantine, in his will, divided up his dominions between three sons and two nephews. Before thirty years were over, however, a series of murders and civil wars had exterminated his family. And two brothers, Valentian and Valens, men of humble birth but capable soldiers, were elected as joint emperors. Valens ruled at Constantinople, his brother at Milan. And it was during this reign that the empire received one of the worst blows that had ever befallen her. We have already mentioned the Goths, a race of barbarians half-civilized by Roman influence and converted to Christianity by followers of Arius. One of their tribes, the Visigoths, had settled in large numbers in the country to the north of the Danube. On the whole their relations with the empire were friendly, and it was hardly their fault that the peace was finally broken. But rather of a strange tartare race called the Huns, that massing in the plains of Asia had suddenly swept over Europe. Here is a description given of the Huns by a Gothic writer, quote, men with faces that can scarcely be called faces, rather shapeless black callips of flesh with tiny points instead of eyes, little in stature but lithe and active, skillful in writing, broad-shouldered, hiding under a barely human form the ferocity of a wild beast, unquote. Tradition says that these monsters, mounted on their shaggy ponies, rode women and children underfoot and feasted on human flesh. Whether this be true or no, their name became a terror to the civilized world, and after a few encounters with them the Visigoths crowded on the edge of the Danube and implored the emperor to allow them to shelter behind the line of Roman forts. Valens, to whom the petition was made, hesitated. There was obvious danger to his dominions in the sudden influx of the whole tribe. But on the other hand fear might madden the Visigoths into trying to cross even if he refused, and if so could he withstand them? All the multitude that escaped from the murderous savagery of the Huns, says a writer of the day, no less than two hundred thousand fighting men beside the women and old men and children were there on the river banks, stretching out their hands with loud lamentations and promising that they would ever faithfully adhere to the imperial alliance if only the Boon was granted to them. Reluctantly Valens yielded, and soon the province of Dacia was crowded with refugees. But here the real trouble began. Food must be found for this multitude, and it was evident that the local crops would not suffice. In vain the emperor commanded that corn should be imported. The greed of officials who were responsible for carrying out this order led them to hold up large consignments and sell what little they allowed to pass at wholly extortionate rates. Their unwelcomed guests, half-starved and fleeced of the small savings they had been able to bring with them, complained, plotted, and at last broke into open rebellion. This treatment of the Visigoths in Dacia is one of the worst pages in the history of the Roman Empire, but it brought its own speedy punishment. The suspicion and hatred engendered by misery spread like a flame, and the barbarian forces were joined by deserters of their own race from the imperial legions and by runaway slaves until they had grown into a formidable army. Valens, forced to take steps to preserve his throne, met them on the battlefield of Adrianople, but only to suffer crushing defeat. He himself was slain and some forty thousand of those who had served under his banner. Never before had the imperial eagles met with such a reverse at barbarian hands, and the Visigoths, after the first moment of triumph, were almost alarmed at the extent of their own success. Before the frowning walls of Constantinople their courage faltered, and without attempting a siege they retreated northward into Thrace. Gladly they came to terms with Theodosius, Valen's successor, who not content with re-granting them the lands to the south of the Danube that they so much desired, increased his army by taking whole regiments of their best warriors into his pay. Lover of peace and of the Goths is the character with which Theodosius has passed down to posterity, and during his reign the Visigoths and other northern tribes received continual marks of his favour. One of the Gothic kings, the old chief of Thanaric, went to visit him at Constantinople and was overwhelmed by the magnificent and luxury he saw around him. Now do I at last behold, he exclaimed, what I have often heard but deemed incredible. Doubtless the emperor is a god on earth, and he who raises a hand against him is guilty of his own blood. The alliance between Goth and Greek served its purpose at the moment, for by the aid of the new troops Theodosius was able to defeat the rival emperor of Rome and to conquer Italy. When he died he left Constantinople in the east to his eldest son Arcadius, a youth of eighteen, and Rome and the west to the younger, Honorius, who was only eleven. True to his belief in barbarian ability, Theodosius selected a vandal chief, Staliccio, to whom he had given his niece in marriage that he might act as the boy's advisor and command the imperial forces. Under a wise regent a nation may wait in patience for their child ruler to mature. Unfortunately Canorius, as he grew up, belied any promise of manliness he had ever shown, languidly refusing to continue his boyish sports of writing or archery, and taking no interest save in some cocks and hens that it was his daily pleasure to feed himself. He had no affection or reverence for Rome, and finally settled in Ravenna on the Adriatic as the safest fortress in his dominions. From here he consented to sign the orders that dispatched the legions to protect his frontiers, or issued haughty manifestos to his enemies. So long as Staliccio lived such feebleness past comparatively unnoticed, for the vandal a man of giant build and strength possessed to the full a tireless energy and daring that the dangers of the time demanded. Theodosius had made the Visigoths his friends, but on his death they began to chafe at the restrictions laid on them by the Imperial Alliance. Arcadius was nearly as poor a creature as his younger brother, so inactive that he seldom spoke and always looked as though he were about to fall asleep. The barbarians bore him no hatred, and on the other hand he could scarcely inspire their affection or fear, and so they chose a king of their own, Alaric, one of the most famous generals, and from this moment they began to think of fresh conquests and pillage. The suggestion of sacking Constantinople was put on one side. Those massive walls against their background of sea would make it a difficult task. Besides, the Visigoths argued, were there not other towns equally rich and more vulnerable? With an exultant shout that answered this question they set out on their march first toward Illyricum on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and then to the fertile plains of Italy. Alaric and Stilicho were well matched as generals, and for years, through arduous campaigns of battles and sieges, the vandal kept the goth at bay. When at last death forced him to resign the challenge, it was no enemy's sword but the weapon of treachery that robbed Rome of her best defender. Honorius, lacking in gratitude, as in other virtues, had been ill-pleased at the success of his armies, for wily courtiers hoping to plant their fortunes amid another's ruin, told him that Stilicho intended to secure the imperial throne for himself, and that in order to do so he would think little of murdering his royal master. Suspicion made the timid emperor writhe with terror through sleepless nights. It seemed to him that he would never know peace of mind again until he had rid himself of this formidable commander-in-chief, and so by his orders Stilicho was put to death, and Italy lay at the mercy of Alaric and his followers. Sweeping across the Alps the Visigoths paused at last before the gates of Rome. We are many a number and prepared to fight, boldly began the ambassadors sent out from the city. Thick grass is easier to mow than thin, replied Alaric. Dropping their lofty tone the ambassadors demanded the price of peace, and on the answer, your gold, your silver, your treasures, all that you have, they exclaimed in horror, what then do you leave us? Your souls was the mocking rejoinder. For much argument the Visigoths consented to be bought off and retreated northwards, but it was only to return in the summer of the year 410 when Rome, after a feeble resistance, opened their gates. Her enemies poured in triumph through the streets, but Alaric was no hun loving slaughter for its own sake, and ordered his troops to respect human life and to spare the churches and the gold and silver vessels that rested on their alters. He spent only a few days in sacking the city, and then marched southward, intending to invade Africa. Well, his army was embarking, however. He fell ill and died, and so great was his loss that all thought of the campaign was surrendered. Alaric was mourned by his people as a national hero, and unable to bear the thought that his enemies might one day desecrate his tomb, they dammed up a river in the neighborhood and dug a grave for their general deep in its bed. When they had laid his body there, they released the stream into its old course, and so left their hero safe from insult beneath the waters. The sack of Rome that moved the civilized world profoundly made little impression on the young emperor. He had named one of his favorite hens after the capital, and when a messenger, haggard with the news he had brought, fell on his knees gasping, sire, Rome has perished. Honorius only frowned and replied, impossible, I fed her myself this morning. Saint Jerome in his hermit cell at Bethlehem was stupefied at the fate of the eternal city. The world crumbles, he said. There is no created work that rust or age does not consume, but Rome, who could have believed that, raised by her victories above the universe, she would one day fall. Why had Rome fallen? This was the question on everybody's lips. We know today that the process of her corruption had been working for centuries, but men and women rarely see what is going on around them, and some began to murmur that the old gods of Olympus were angry because their religion had been forsaken. It was affirmed that Christ would save the world, but what had he done to save Rome? Christianity was not long in finding a champion to defend her cause, an African monk, Augustine, to medieval minds the greatest of all the fathers of the church. Augustine was the son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, and grew up a wild and undisciplined boy. After some years at the University of Carthage spent in casual study and habitual dissipation, he determined to go to Rome, and from there he passed to Milan, where he went out of curiosity to listen to the preaching of St. Ambrose. It was obvious that he would either hate or be strongly influenced by this fiery old man, and in truth Augustine, who secretly repented of the way he had wasted his life, was in a ripe mood to receive the message that he had refused to hear from the lips of Monica his mother. Soon he was converted and baptized, and later he was made Bishop of Hippo, a place not far from Carthage. It is difficult to give a picture of Augustine in a few words. Like St. Ambrose and others of the early fathers, he was quite intolerant of heresy and believed that ordinary human love and the simplest pleasures of the world were snares set by the devil to catch the unwary. But against these unbalanced views largely the product of the age in which he lived must be set his burning enthusiasm for God and the services that he rendered to Christianity. A modern writer says of him, quote, as the supreme man of his time he summed up the past as it still lived, remolded it, added to it from himself, and gave it a new unity and form wherein it was to live on. The great heart, the great mind, the mind led by the heart's inspiration, the heart guided by the mind, this is Augustine, end quote. Superior in intellect to other men of his day, his whole being filled with the love of God and fired by the desire to make the world share his worship, he preached, worked, and wrote only to this end. In his confessions he describes his youth and repentance, but his most famous work is Savetus Day. Here was the answer to those who declared that Rome had fallen because she neglected her pagan deities. Rome, he maintained, was not and never could be eternal, for the one eternal kingdom was the Savetus Day, the city of God, toward whose reign of triumph the human race had been tending since earliest times. Before her glory the kingdoms of this world and all culture and civilization of which men boasted must fade away. Thus God had destined, and St. Augustine exerted all his eloquence and powers of reasoning to prove from history the magnitude and sureness of the divine purpose. The author of the Savetus Day was to have his faith severely tested, for he died amid scenes of desolation and horror that held out no hope of happiness for man on earth. Rome stood at the mercy of barbarians, and Christian Africa was also fast falling under their yoke. These new invaders, the Vandals, were also a German tribe, who, as soon as Staliccio withdrew legions from the Rhine to defend Italy from the Visigoths, broke over the weakened frontier into Gaul and from there crossed the Pyrenees and marched southwards. Spain had been one of the richest of Rome's provinces, and besides her minerals and corn had provided the empire with not a few rulers as well as famous authors and poets. In her commercial prosperity she had grown, like her neighbors, corrupt and unwarlike, so the Vandals met with little resistance and plundered and pillaged at their will. Instead of settling down amid their conquests they were driven by the promise of further loot and the pressure of other barbarian tribes following hard on their heels to cross the narrow Strait of Gibraltar and to pursue their way due east along the African coast. In Spain they have left the memory of their presence in the name of one of her fairest provinces Andalusia. The chief of the Vandals at this time was Genseric, who not only conquered all the coastline of North Africa, but also built a fleet that became the terror of the Mediterranean. Like the Goths the Vandals were Christians, but they held the views of Arius and there could be little hope that they would tolerate the Orthodox Catholics. Though hardly as inhuman and ruthless as their opponents would have had the world believe, they pillaged and laid waste as they passed, and posterity has since applied the word Vandal to the man who willfully destroys. The name Hun is even more sinister in repute. In the first half of the fifth century the Huns in their triumphant march across Europe would lead by their king Attila, the Scourge of God, whose boast it was that never grass grew again where his horse's hooves had once trod. So short and squat as to be almost deformed, flat-nosed with a swarthy skin and deep-set eyes that he would roll hideously when angered, the king loved to inspire terror, not only amongst his enemies, but in the chieftains under his command. Pity, gentleness, civilization, such words were either unknown or abhorrent to him, and in the towns whose walls were stormed by his troops, old men, women, priests and children fell alike, victims to his sword. It was his ambition that the name of Attila should become a terror to the whole earth, but the extent to which he succeeded in realizing this aim brought a serious check to his arms, for when he reached the boundaries of Gaul he found that fear had gathered into a single hostile force of formidable size, races that had warred for centuries amongst themselves. Here were not only provincials, descendants of the Romanized inhabitants of Gaul, but Goths, Franks, Burgundians and other tribes who, like the Vandals, had forced the passage of the Rhine as soon as the imperial garrisons were weakened or withdrawn. They had little in common, save hatred of the Hun, a passion so strong that in a desperate battle on the plain of Chalons they hurled back the tartar hordes forever from the lands of Western Europe. Shaken by his defeat, but sullen and vindictive, Attila turned his thoughts to Italy, and he and his warriors swept across the passes of the Alps and descended on the fertile country lying to the northwest of the Adriatic. The Italians made but a feeble resistance, and the palaces, baths and amphitheaters of once wealthy towns vanished in smoking ruins. One important work of construction, Attila unconsciously assisted, for the inhabitants of Acalea, seeking refuge from their cruel foal, fled to the coast, and there, amid the desolate lagoons, lay in their descendants, built for themselves in the course of centuries, a new city, Venice, the future queen of the Adriatic. Acalea has been a city of repute, but it can be safely guessed that she would never have attained the worldwide glory that Venice, safe behind her barrier of marshes and with every incentive to naval enterprise, was to establish in the Middle Ages. From the Adriatic provinces Attila passed to Rome, but refrained from sacking the city. It is said that he was uneasy because the armies of the Gaul that had defeated him at Chalon still hung on his rear, threatening to cut off his retreat across the Alps. At any rate, he consented to make terms negotiated by the Pope on behalf of the citizens of Rome. Contemporary accounts declare that the Hun was awed by the sight of Leo I in his priestly robes and by the fearlessness of his bearing, and certainly for his mediation he well deserved the title of great that the people in their gratitude bestowed on him. Attila, when he left Rome, turned northwards, but died quite shortly after some drunken orgy. The kingdom of massacre and fire that he had built on the terror of his name fell rapidly to pieces, and only the remembrance of that terror remained while the Huns merged themselves in the armies of other tribes are fought together in petty rivalry. Rome had been taken by Alaric the Visigoth and spared by Attila, but her trials were not yet at an end. Gensaric, the vandal king who had established himself at Carthage, was only awaiting his opportunity to plunder a city that was still a world-famous treasure-house. His fleet, that had cut off Italy entirely from the cornfields of Egypt, blockaded the mouth of the Tiber, and the Romans, weakened by famine in the warfare of the past few years, quickly sued for peace. Once more, Pope Leo went as mediator to the camp of his enemies, but the Aryan vandal, unlike the pagan Hun, was adamant. He was willing to forego a general massacre but nothing further, and for a fortnight the city was ruthlessly pillaged. Then Gensaric sailed away carrying with him thousands of prisoners besides all the treasures of money and art on which he could lay hands. Nearly four hundred years before, the Emperor Titus, when he sacked Jerusalem, brought to Rome the Golden Altar and candlesticks of the Jewish temple, and now Rome in her turn was despoiled of these trophies of former victories. It was little wonder if the Western emperors who had systematically failed to save their capital became discredited at last among their own troops, and Rome that had begun life according to a tradition under a Romulus was to end her empire under another, a handsome boy nicknamed in derision of his helplessness Augustulus, or little Augustus. The pretext of his deposition was his refusal to grant Italian lands to the German troops or form the main part of the Imperial Army, on which their captain, Odoacer, compelled him to abdicate. So low had the Imperial dignity sunk in public estimation that Odoacer, instead of claiming the once coveted honor, sent the diadem and purple robe to the Emperor at Constantinople. �We disclaim the necessity, or even the wish,� wrote Augustulus, �of continuing any longer the Imperial succession in Italy. The majesty of a sole monarch is sufficient to pervade and protect at the same time, both east and west.� The writer, so fortunate in his insignificance that no one wished to assassinate him, spent the rest of his days in a castle by the Mediterranean, supported by a revenue from the state while Odoacer, with a title of patrician, ruled the land with statesmen-like moderation for fourteen years. Two more waves of invasion were yet to break across the Alps and hinder all attempts at restoration and unity. The first was that of the Ostrogoths, or eastern Goths, a tribe of the same race as the Visigoths that, meeting the first onslaught of the Huns in their advance from Asia, had only just on the death of Attila freed themselves from this terrible yoke. They sought now an independent kingdom, and under the leadership of their prince, Theodoric, chafed on the boundaries of the Eastern Empire, with which they had formed an alliance. Theodoric had been educated in Constantinople, and, though brave and warlike, did not share the reckless love of battle that animated his followers. He realized, however, that they must lead the Ostrogoths to a new land of plenty, or incur their hatred and suspicion, so he appealed to the Emperor Zeno for leave to go to Italy as his general, and depose Odoacer. "'Direct me with the soldiers of my nation,' he wrote, "'to march against the Tyrant. If I fall you will be relieved from an expensive and troublesome friend. If, with divine permission, I succeed, I shall govern in your name and to your glory.'" Zeno had not been sufficiently powerful to prevent Odoacer from taking the title of patrician, but he had never liked the barbarian upstart who had dared to depose an emperor. He had also begun to dread the presence of the restless Ostrogoths so close to Constantinople, and warmly appreciated Theodoric's arguments in favor of their exodus. If the two barbarian kings destroyed one another, it would be all the better for the Empire. And so, with the imperial blessing, Theodoric started on his great adventure. He took with him not only as warriors, but the women and children of his tribe in all their possessions, and after several battles succeeded in defeating and slaying his opponent. Rome, that looked upon him as the Emperor's representative, joyfully opened her gates, but Theodoric preferred to make revenge on his capital, and here he settled and planted an orchard with his own hands. It was his hope that he might win the trust and affection of his new subjects, and though he ruled exactly as he liked, he remained outwardly submissive to the Emperor, writing him humble letters and marking the coinage with the imperial stamp. He frequently consulted the Senate at Rome that, though it had long ago lost any real power, had never ceased to take a nominal share in the government. And when he gave a third of the Italian lands to his own countrymen, he allowed Roman officials to make the division. Theodoric also maintained the laws and customs of Italy and forced the Ostrogoths to respect them too, but his army remained a national bodyguard, and in spite of his efforts at conciliation the two peoples did not mingle. Between them stood the barrier of religious bitterness, for the Ostrogoths were Aryans, and though their ruler was very tolerant in his attitude, the Catholics were always suspicious of his intentions. On one occasion there had been a riot against the Jews and several synagogues had been burned. Theodoric ordered a collection of money to be made amongst the Orthodox Catholics who were responsible, that the buildings might be restored. This command was disobeyed, and when the ring-leaders of the strike were whipped through the streets, popular anger against the Gothic king grew to white heat. He himself changed in character as he became older and showed himself morose and tyrannical. Toward the end of his reign he put to death Boethius, a Roman senator, who had been one of his favorite advisors, but who had dared to defend openly a man whom he himself had condemned. Boethius was not only a fearless champion of his friends, he was a great scholar who had kept alight the torch of classical learning amid the darkness and horror of invasion. Besides translating some of the works of Aristotle, he wrote treatises on logic, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, and made an able defense of the Nicene Creed against Aryan attacks. The last and most famous of his works, that for ten centuries men have remembered in love, was his consolations of philosophy, written when death in a most horrible form was already drawing close. Tortured by a cord drawn closely around his forehead, and then beaten with clubs, the philosopher escaped from a life where fortune had dealt with him cruelly. His master survived him by two years, repenting on his deathbed in an agony of remorse for the brutal sentence he had meted out. It is scarcely fair to judge Theodoric by the tyranny of his last days. It is better to recall the glory of his prime, and how in the western part of the empire there was no people who refused him homage. Allied by family ties with the Burgundians, the Visigoths, the Vandals, and the Franks, he was undoubtedly the greatest of all the barbarians of his age. Had his successors shown a little of his statesmen-like qualities, the Virgoth and Italian, in spite of their religious differences, might have united to form a single nation. But unfortunately, before twenty years had passed, the kingdom he had founded was destined to disappear. Theodoric was succeeded by his grandson, a boy who lived only a few years, and then by a worthless nephew without either royal or statesmen-like qualities. In contrast to this weak dynasty, there ruled at Constantinople an emperor who possessed in the highest degree the ability and steadfastness of purpose that the times required. Justinian was only a peasant by birth, but he had been well educated and took a keen interest not only in questions of law and finance that concerned the government, but in theology, music, and architecture. In his manner to his subjects he was friendly, though dignified, but there was something unsympathetic in his nature that prevented him from becoming popular. His courtiers regarded his industry with awe, but some professed to believe that he could not spend so many midnight hours at work unless he were an evil spirit, not requiring sleep. One writer says that no one ever remembered him young. Yet this serious prince married for love a beautiful actress Theodora, and dared in the face of general indignation to make her his empress. An historian of the time says of Theodora, it were impossible for mere man to describe her comeliness in words or imitated in art. Yet she was no doll but took a very definite share in the government, extorting admiration by her dignity even from those who had pretended to despise her. Justinian's chief passion was for building, and he spent a great part of his revenue interacting bridges, baths, forts, and palaces. Most famous of all the architecture of his time was Saint Sophia, the Church of the Holy Wisdom, that, after Constantinople passed into the hands of the Turks, became a mosque. It is not, however, for Saint Sophia that Justinian is chiefly remembered, but for the Corpus Juris Sevilus literally the body of civil law that he published in order that his subjects might know what the Roman law really was. The Corpus Juris Sevilus consisted of three parts, the Code, a collection of decrees made by various emperors, next the Digest, the Decisions of Eminent Lawyers, and thirdly the Institutes, an explanation of the principles of Roman law. After thirteen centuries, says a modern writer, it stands unsurpassed as a treasury of legal knowledge. All through the Middle Ages men were to look to it for inspiration. Thus it was on the Corpus Juris Sevilus that ecclesiastical lawyers based the canon law that gave the Pope and emperors power over the Church. Justinian worked for the progress of the world when he codified Roman law. It was unfortunate that military ambition led him to exhaust his treasury and overtax his subjects in order that he might establish his rule over the whole of Europe, like Theodosius and Constantine. Besides carrying on an almost continuous war with the King of Persia, he sent an army in a fleet under an able general Belisarius to fight against the Vandals in North Africa. And so successful was this campaign that Justinian became master of the whole coastline, and even of a part of southern Spain. This gave me command of the Mediterranean, any at once determined to overthrow the feeble descendants of Theodoric, and to restore the imperial dominion over Italy indeed, not as it had been from the time of Otto Asser, merely in name. The task was not easy, for the Italians, if we have noticed, did not love the Greeks, while the Goths fought bravely for independence. At length in the year 555 after nineteen campaigns, Narciss, an Armenian who was at the head of Justinian's forces, succeeded in crushing the barbarians and established his rule at Ravenna, from which city, under the title of Exarch, he controlled the whole peninsula. Narciss triumphed had been in a great measure due to a German tribe, the Lombards, whose hosts he enrolled under the imperial banner. These Lombards, Longobardy or Longbeards, as the name originally stood, had migrated from the banks of the Elbit to the base in the Danube, and there, looking about them for a warlike outlet for their energies, were quite as willing to invade Italy at Justinian's command as to go on any other campaign that promised to be profitable. Narciss, as soon as he was assured of success, paid them liberally for their services and sent them back to their own people. But the Lombards had learned to love the sunny climate and the vines growing out of doors, and were soon discontented with their bleaker homeland. They waited, therefore, until Narciss, whom they knew and feared, was dead, and then, under the leadership of Alboyn and their king, crossed over the Alps and invaded north Italy. They did not come in such tremendous strength as the Ostrogoths in the past, nor were the imperial troops powerless to stand against them. Indeed, the two forces were so balanced that, while the Lombards succeeded in establishing themselves in the province of Lombardy, to which they gave their name, with Pavia as its capital, the representatives of the emperor still held the coastline on both sides, also Ravenna, Naples, Rome, and other principal towns. This Lombard inroad, the last of the great barbarian invasions of Italy, was by far the most important in its effects. For one thing, two hundred years were to pass before the power of the new settlers was seriously shaken, and, therefore, even the fact that they were pagans and imposed their own laws ruthlessly on the Italians could not keep the races from gradually intermingling. In time the higher civilization conquered, and the fair-haired tutans learned to worship the Christian god, forgot their own tongue, and adopted the customs and habits they saw around them. The Italians, on their part, in the course of their struggles with the Lombards, became trained in the art of war they had almost forgotten. By the eighth century the fusion was complete. Another very interesting and important result of the Lombard invasion was that the prolonged duel between barbarians and Greeks prevented the development of any common form of government. There might in time emerge an Italian race, but there could be no Italian nation so long as towns and provinces were dominated by rulers whose policy and ambitions were utterly opposed. The ex-arch of Ravenna claimed in the name of the emperor at Constantinople to collect taxes from and administer the whole peninsula, but in practice he often ruled merely the strip of land around his city cut off from other Greek officials by Lombard dukes. He would be able to communicate by sea with the important towns on and near the coast, such as Naples, but so irregularly that the government would tend to grow every year more independent of his control. In Rome, for instance, there was not only the Senate with its traditions of government, but the Pope, who even more than the Senate had become the protector and adviser of his fellow-citizens. We have seen how Leo the Great persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw when his armies threatened at the very gates of Rome, while later he went on a like-though unavailing mission to Genseric the Vandal. It was acts like this that one recognized for the papacy amongst other rulers, and more than any of the popes before him, Gregory the Great, who ascended the chair of Peter in 8590, built up the foundations of this authority. A Roman of position and wealth, Gregory had become in middle age a poor monk, giving all his money to the poor and disciplining himself by fasting and penance. He is remembered best in England today for the interest he showed in the fair-haired angles in the Roman slave market. They have angels' faces, they should be fellow heirs of the angels in heaven. His comment he followed up by a petition that he might sail as a missionary to the northern island from which these slaves came, and when instead he was sent on an embassy to Constantinople, he did not forget England in the years that passed, but after he became pope chose St. Augustine to go and convert the heathen king of Kent. In this way Southern England was Christianized and brought into touch with the life of Western Europe. A great pope, it has been said, is always a missionary pope. Gregory had the true missionaries' enthusiasm, and his writings all of them theological, bear the stamp of St. Augustine of Hippo's ardent spirit, enforced with a faith absolutely assured and unbending. Besides being instrumental in converting England, Gregory during his pontificate saw the Aryan church in Spain reconciled to the Catholic, while he succeeded in winning the Lombard king to Christianity and friendship. It was little wonder that the people of Rome who had been at war with these invaders for long years looked up to the peacemaker not only as their spiritual father, but also as a temporal ruler. Had he not fed them when they were starving, declaring that it was thus the church should use their wealth? Had he not raised soldiers to guard the walls and sent out envoys to plead the city's cause against their enemies? There was no such practical help to be obtained from the exarchs of Ravenna, talk as they might about the glories of Constantinople. Thus Romans argued, and Gregory, who knew the real weakness of Constantinople, was able to disregard the imperial viceroys when he chose, a policy of independence followed by his successors. Since the Lombard kingdom had split up into a number of duchies each with its own capital, Italy and the early Middle Ages tended to become a group of city-states, each jealous of its neighbors and ambitious only for local interests. This provincial influence was so strong that it is lasted into modern times. An Englishman or a Frenchman will claim his country before thinking of the particular part from which he comes, but it is more natural for an Italian to say first, I am Roman, or Neapolitan, or Florentine, as the case may be. It is only by remembering this difference that Italian history can be read aright. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Europe in the Middle Ages by Ierna Lyford Plunkett Chapter 6 The Rise of the Franks The historian Tacitus, whose description of the German tribes we have already quoted, had told the people of Gaul that, unless these same Germans were kept at bay by the Roman armies on the Rhine frontier, they would exchange the solitude of their woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul. The fall of Rome, he added, would be fatal to the provinces, and you would be buried in the ruins of that mighty fabric. This prophetic warning proved only too true when Vandal and Visiga, Burgundian, Hun and Frank, forced the passage of the Rhine and swept in irresistible masses across vineyards and cornfields, setting fire to those towns and fortresses that dared to offer resistance. The Vandal migration was but a meteor flash on the road to Spain and North Africa. While on the battlefield of Shalom the Huns were beaten back and carried their campaign of bloodshed to Italy, but the other three tribes succeeded in establishing formidable kingdoms in Gaul during the 5th and 6th centuries. At the head of the Visigoths wrote Atholph, brother-in-law of Alaric, unanimously chosen king by the tribe on the death of that mighty warrior. Instead of continuing the campaign in South Italy, Atholph had made peace with the Emperor Honorius and married his sister, thus gaining a semi-royal position in the eyes of Roman citizens. I once aspired, he said frankly, to obliterate the name of Rome and to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths, but I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state. From that moment I proposed myself a different object of glory and ambition, and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merits of a stranger who employed the sword of the Goths not to subvert but to restore and maintain the prosperity of the Roman Empire. Fortified by such sentiments in the benediction of the Emperor, who was glad to free Italy from his brother-in-law's presence, Atholph succeeded, after a short struggle, in establishing a Visigothic kingdom in southern Gaul, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay. This under his successors was enlarged until it embraced the whole of the province of Aquitania, with Toulouse as its capital as well as both slopes of the Pyrenees. The Burgundians, another German tribe, had in the meanwhile built up a middle kingdom along the banks of the Rhon. Years of intercourse with the Romans had done much to civilize both their manners and thoughts, and they were quite prepared to respect the laws and customs that they found in Gaul, so long as they met with no serious opposition to their rule. The fact that both Burgundians and Visigoths were Aryans raised, however, a fatal barrier between conquerors and conquered, had did more than anything else to determine that ultimate dominion over the whole of Gaul should be the prize of neither of these races but of a third Teutonic tribe, the Salient Franks, whom good fortune placed beyond the influence of heresy. The Franks were a tall, fair-haired, loose-limbed people who, emerging from Germany, had settled for a time in the country we now call Belgium. Like their ancestors they worshipped Woden and other heathen gods of the Teutons, while in their Salic law we see much to recall the German customs described by Tacitus five centuries before. The king was no longer elected by his people, for his office had become hereditary in the house of Morovius, one of the heroes of the race. No woman, even of the Merovingian line, might succeed to the throne, nor prince whose hair had been shorn, since, with the Franks, flowing locks were a sign of royalty. Yet, in spite of the king's new position, the old spirit of equality had not entirely disappeared. The assembly of Freemans, still held once a year, had degenerated into a military review, but the warriors thus collected could demand that the coming campaign should meet with their approval. When a battle was over and victory obtained, the lions' share of the booty did not fall to the king, but the whole was divided by lot. A great part of the Salic law was really a tariff of violent acts, with a fine that those who had committed them must pay, so much for shooting a poisoned arrow, even if it missed its mark, so much for wounding another in the head, or for cutting off his nose or his great toe, or, worst of all, for damaging his second finger so that he could no longer draw the bowstring. The underlying principle of this code was different from that of the Roman law, which set up a certain standard of right, inflicting penalties on those who fell short of it. Thus the Roman citizen who murdered or maimed his neighbor would be punished because he had dared to do what the state condemned as a crime. The Frank, in a similar case, would be fined by the judges of his tribe, and the money paid his compensation to the person nor the relations of the person whom he had wronged, the idea being not to appease the anger of the state, but to remove the resentment of the injured party. For this purpose each Frank had his vergueld, literally his worth-gold, or the sum of money at which, according to his rank, his life was valued, beginning with the nobles of the king's palace and descending in a scale to the lowest freemen. When the Franks left Belgium and advanced, conquering into northern Gaul, they also fixed verguels for their Roman subjects, but raided them at only half the value of their own race. The vergueld of a Frankish freeman was two hundred gold pieces, of a Roman only one hundred. By the beginning of the sixth century, when the Franks were well established in Gaul, the management of their important tribal affairs had passed entirely into the hands of the nobles surrounding the king. These bore such titles as Major Domus, or Mayor of the Palace, at first only a steward, but later the Chief Minister of the Crown, the Seneshaw, or Head of the Royal Household, the Marshal, or Master of the Stables, the Chamberlain, or Chief Servant of the Bedchamber. The most famous of the Merovingian kings, as the descendant of Merovius were called, was Clovis, who established the Frankish capital at Paris. He and his tribe, though Pagans, were on friendly terms with the Roman inhabitants of northern Gaul, and especially with some of the Catholic clergy. When Clovis sacked the town of Soissant, he tried to save the church plate, and especially a vase of great beauty that he knew Saint Remy, Bishop of Reims, highly valued. Let it be put amongst my booty, he said to his soldiers, intending to give it to the bishop later. But one of them answered him insolently, Only that is thine which falls to thy share by lot, and with his axe he shivered the vase into a thousand pieces. Clovis concealed his fury at the moment, but he did not forget, and a year afterwards, when he was reviewing his troops, he noticed the same man who had opposed his will. Stepping forward, he tore the fellow's weapons from his grasp and threw them on the ground, saying, No arms are worse cared for than thine. The soldier stooped to pick them up, and Clovis, raising his battle axe high in the air, brought it down on the bent head before him with a comet, thus didst thou to the vase at Soissant. Clovis married a Christian princess, Quotilda, a niece of the Burgundian king, and at her request he allowed their eldest child to be baptized, but for a long time he refused to become a Christian himself. One day, however, when in the midst of a battle in which his warriors were so hard-pressed that they had almost taken to flight, he cried aloud, Jesus Christ, thou whom Quotilda doth call the Son of the Living God, I now devoutly beseech thy aid, and I promise, if thou dost give me victory over these my enemies, that I will believe in thee and be baptized in thy name, for I have called on my own gods, and they have failed to help me. Shortly afterwards the tide of battle turned, the Franks rallied, and Clovis obtained a complete victory. Remembering his promise, he went to Reims, and there he and three thousand of his warriors were received into the Catholic Church. Bow thy head low, said Saint Remy, who baptized the king. Henceforth adore that which thou hast burned, and burn that which thou didst formerly adore. When he became a Catholic, Clovis had no idea that he had altered the whole future of his race, for to him that seemed merely that he had fulfilled the bargain he had made with the Christian God. He did not change his ways, but pursued his ambitions as before, now by treachery and now by force. It was his determination to make himself supreme ruler over all the Franks, and in the case of another branch, the Ripuerians, he began by secretly persuading the heir to their kingly title, the young prince Clodaric, to kill his father and seize the royal coffers. Clodaric, fired by the idea of becoming powerful, did so, enroding zolpingly to Clovis, my father is dead and his wealth is mine. Let some of thine income hither and that of his treasure which pleases them I will send thee. Ambassadors from the salians duly arrived, and Clodaric led them secretly apart and showed them his money, running his hand through the pieces of gold that lay on the surface of the coffer. The man begged him to thrust his arm in deep that they might judge how great his wealth really was, and as he bent to do so, one of them struck him a mortal wound from behind. Then they fled. Thus, by treachery, died both father and son, but Clovis unblushingly denied to the Ripuerian Franks that he had been in any way responsible. Clodaric murdered his father, and he hath been assassinated by I know not whom. I am no partner in such deeds, for it is against the law to take the life of relations. Nevertheless, since it has happened, I offer you this advice, that you should put yourselves under my protection. The Ripuerian Franks were without a leader, and like all barbarians they worshiped success, so believing that Clovis would surely lead them to victory, they raised him on their shields and hailed him as king. Each day God struck down the enemies of Clovis under his hands, as Bishop Gregory of Tours, describing these events, and enlarged his kingdom because he went with an upright heart before the Lord and did the things that were pleasing in his sight. It is startling to find a bishop pass such a verdict on a career of treachery and murder. The more that Gregory of Tours was no cringing court flatterer, but a priest with a high sense of duty who dared, when he believed it right, to oppose some of the later Frankish kings even at the risk of his life. Yet it must be remembered that a sense of honor was not understood by the barbarians, except in a very crude form. They believed it was clever to outwit their neighbors, while to murder them was so ordinary as to excite little or no comment, save the inflection of the verguiled if the crime could be brought home. Centuries of the civilizing influence of Christianity were needed before the men and women of these fierce tribes could accept the Christian principles of truth, justice, and mercy in anything like their real spirit. The Romans and Gaul had almost given up expecting anything but brutality from their invaders if they aroused their enmity, and therefore welcomed even the smallest sign of grace. Thus the protection that Clovis afforded to the Catholic Church, and after her years of persecution, blinded their eyes to many of his vices. When Clovis had made himself master of the greater part of northern Gaul, he determined to strike a blow at the Visigoths in the south. It pains me, he said to his followers, to see Aryans in a part of Gaul, let us march against these heretics with God's aid and gain their country for ourselves. Probably he was sincere in his dislike of heresy, but it was a politic attitude to adopt, for it meant that wherever he and his warriors marched they would find help against the Burgundians and Visigoths amongst the Orthodox Roman population. It seemed to the latter that Clovis brought with him something of the glory of the Vanished Roman Empire, kept alive by the Catholic Church, and now revived through her in this her latest champion. In a fierce battle near Poitiers, Clovis defeated the Visigoths and drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving them merely narrow strips of territory along the Mediterranean seaboard and on either slope of the Pyrenees. He also fought against the Burgundians, and though he was not so successful, reduced them temporarily to submission. When he died at the age of forty-five, he was master of three-quarters of Gaul and had stamped the name of his race forever on the land he had invaded. His work of conquest was continued by his successors and reached its zenith in the time of King Dagoburt, who lived at the beginning of the seventh century. Dagoburt has been called the French Solomon, because, like the Jewish King, he was world-famed for his wisdom and riches. Not content with maintaining his power over Gaul to the west of the Rhine, he fought against the Saxon and Friesen tribes in Germany and forced them to pay tribute. At last his empire stretched from the Atlantic to the mountains of Bohemia. The Duke of Brittany, who had hitherto remained independent of the Franks, came to offer his allegiance while the Emperor of Constantinople sought a Frankish alliance. A chronicler of the day, speaking of Dagoburt, says, quote, he was a prince terrible in his wrath toward traitors and rebels. He held a royal scepter firmly in his grasp, and like a lion he sprang upon those who would foment discord, end quote. Another account describes his journeys through his kingdom and how he administered justice with an even hand, not altogether to the joy of tyrannical landowners. His judgment struck terror into the hearts of the bishops and of the great men, but it overwhelmed the poor with joy. In the treblous years that were to come, his reign stood out in people's minds as an age of prosperity. But already, before the death of the King, this prosperity had begun to wane. Luxury sapped the vigor of a once powerful mind and body, and the authority that the French Solomon, relaxed in his later years through self-indulgence, was never regained by his successors. With a contemptuous title the Sluggard Kings, the last rulers of the Merovingian line had passed down to posterity. Few were endowed with any ability or even ambition to govern. The majority died before they had reached manhood, looking already like senile old men, and the power that should have been theirs passed into the hands of the mayors of the palace who administered their domains. On state occasions, indeed, they were still shown to their subjects as they jolted to the place of assembly in a rough cart drawn by oxen. But the ceremony over they returned to their royal villas and insignificance. Nothing was left to the King save the name of the King, the flowing locks, the long beard. He sat on his throne and played at government, gave audiences to envoys, and dismissed them with the answers with which he had been schooled. It was a situation that could only last so long as the name Merovius retained its spell over the Franks. But the day came when the spell was broken, and a race of stronger fiber, the Carolingians, usurped the royal title. The heads of this family had for generations held the office of mayor of the palace in the part of Gaul between the Muse and the Lower Rhine, then called Austrasia. It was their duty to administer the royal domains in this large district, that is, to see that the laws were obeyed, to superintend the cultivation of the soil, and to collect a share of the various harvests as a revenue for the King. This was more important work than it may sound in modern years, for in the early Middle Ages, the majority of people, unlike men and women today, lived in the country. Ever since the decay of the Roman Empire, when the making of roads was neglected and then the imperial grain fleets disappeared from the Mediterranean, the problem of carrying merchandise and food from one part of Europe to another had grown steadily more acute. As commerce and industry languished, towns ceased to be centers of population and became merely strongholds where the neighborhood could find refuge when attacked by its enemies. People preferred to spend their ordinary life in villages in the midst of fields where they could grow corn and barley or keep their own sheep and oxen. If the crops failed or their beasts were smitten by disease, a whole province might suffer starvation. The mayor of the palace must guard the royal domains as far as possible from the ravages of weather, wolves, or lawless men, for the King of the Franks, as much as any of his subjects, depended on the harvests and herds for his prosperity rather than on commerce or manufactures. By the end of the seventh century the mayors of Australasia had ceased to interest themselves merely in local affairs and had begun to extend their authority over the whole of France. Nominally they acted in the name of the Merovingian kings, but once when the throne fell vacant they did not trouble to fill it for two years. The Franks made no protest. It was to their mayors, not to their kings, that they now turned whether in search of good government or daring national exploits. The Carolingian Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer, was a warrior calculated to arouse their profound admiration. He was a Herculean warrior, says an old chronicle, an ever-victorious prince who triumphed gloriously over other princes and kings and peoples and barbarous nations. In so much that, from the Slavs to the Frisians and even to the Spaniards and Saracens, there were none who rose up against him that escaped from his hand without prostrating themselves in the dust before his empire. It was Charles Martel who saved France from falling under the yoke of the Saracens, a race of Arabian warriors who, crossing from Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar, subdued in one short campaign three-quarters of Spain. Describing the first great victory over the Gothic king Roderico at Guadalete, the governor of Africa, wrote to his master the caliph, O commander of the faithful, these are no common conquests, they are like the meeting of the nations on the Day of Judgment. Puffed up with the glory they had gained, the Saracens, who were followers of the Prophet Muhammad, believed that they had only to advance for Christian armies to run away, and over the Pyrenees they swept in large bands, seizing first one stronghold on the Mediterranean coast and then another. Before this invasion Charles Martel had been engaged in a quarrel with the Duke of Aquitaine, but now they hastily made friends and on the field of Poitiers joined their forces to stem the Saracen tide. So terrible was the battle, we are told, that over three hundred thousand Saracens fell before the Frankish warriors inflexible as a block of ice. This number is almost certainly an exaggeration and so also is the claim that the victors, by forcing the remnant of the Mojavean army to retreat towards the Pyrenees and hasty flight, saved Europe for Christianity. Even had the decision of the battle been reversed, the Moors would have found the task of holding Spain in the years to come quite sufficient to absorb all their energies. Indeed, their attacks on Gaul were, from the first, more in the nature of gigantic raids than of invasions with a view to settlement, though at the time their ferocity made them seem of worldwide importance. Thus it was only natural that the mayor of the palace, to whom the victory was mainly due, became the hero of Christendom, the pope who was at that time trying to defend Rome from the king of the Lombards, set to implore his aid. But Charles knew that his forces had been weakened by their struggle with the Saracens and dared not undertake so big a campaign. Some years later his son, Pepin the Short, 751, 768, who had succeeded him, received the suggestion with a different answer. Pepin, as his nickname shows, was short in stature, but he was powerfully built and so strong that with a single blow of his axe he once cut off the head of a lion. Energetic and shrewd he saw a way of turning the pope's need of support against the Lombards to his own advantage. He therefore sent Frankish ambassadors to Rome to inquire whether it was not shameful for a land to be governed by kings who had no authority. The pope, who was anxious to please Pepin, replied discreetly, he who possesses the authority should doubtless possess the title also. This was exactly what the mayor of the palace had expected and wished, and the rest of the story may be told in the words of the old Frankish annals for the year 751. In this year Pepin was named king of the Franks with the sanction of the popes and in the city of Swassan he was anointed with the holy oil and was raised to the throne after the custom of the Franks. But Childerich, who had the name of king, was shorn of his locks and sent into a monastery. The last of the mayor of Vingiens had vanished into the oblivion of a cloister and Pepin the Carolingian was ruler of France. With a pope's blessing he had achieved his ambition and fortune soon enabled him to repay his debt, mainly as it happened at another's expense. In the last chapter we described the effect of the Lombard invasion of Italy and how the Teutonic race sank its roots deep in the heart of the peninsula, leaving a Greek fringe along the coasts that still considered itself part of the eastern empire. Rome in theory belonged to this fringe, but in reality the popes hated the imperial authority almost as much as the aggressions of Lombard king and dukes and struggled to free themselves from its yoke. When Pepin, his own ambition satisfied, turned his attention to the popes' affairs, the Lombards had just succeeded on overrunning the exarchate of Ravenna, the seat of the imperial government in Italy. Collecting an army, the king of the Franks crossed the Alps without encountering any opposition, marched on Pavia, the Lombard capital, and struck such terror into his enemies that almost without fighting they agreed to the terms that he dictated. Legally he should have at once commanded the restoration of the exarchate to the empire, but there was no particular reason why Pepin should gratify Constantinople while he had a very strong inclination to please Rome. He therefore told the Lombards to give the exarchate to Stephen II, who was pope at that time, and this they faithfully promised to do. But, as he turned homewards, they began instead to oppress the country around Rome, preventing food from entering the city and pillaging churches. Pepin was very angry when he heard the news. Once more he descended on Italy, and this time the Lombards were compelled to keep their word, and the papacy received the first of its temporal possessions, ratified by a formal treaty that declared the exact extent to the territory and the papal rights over it. This was an important event in medieval history, for it meant that henceforward the pope, who claimed to be the spiritual head of Christendom, would also be an Italian prince with recognized lands and revenues, and therefore with private ambitions concerning these. It would be his instinct to distrust any other ruler in the peninsula who might become powerful enough to deprive him of these lands, while he would always be phased when in difficulties by the temptation to use his spiritual power to further purely worldly ends. On the way in which popes dealt with his problem of their temporal and spiritual power, much of the future history of Europe was to depend. Pepin, in spite of his shrewdness, had no idea of the troubles he had sown by his donation. Well pleased with the generosity he had found so easy with the title of patrician bestowed on him by the pope, and perhaps still more by the spoils that he and his Franks had collected in Lombardy, he left Italy and was soon engaged in other campaigns nearer home against the Saracens and the rebellious German tribes, and these he continued until his death in 768. End of chapter 6 Chapter 7 Europe in the Middle Ages by Irna Lyford Plunkett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 Muhammad Christianity, first preached by humble fishermen in Palestine, had become the foundation of life in medieval Europe. Some 300 years after Constantine the Great had made this possible, another religion, Islam, designed to be the rival of Christianity, was also born in the East in Arabia, a narrow strip of territory lying between the Red Sea and miles of uninhabitable desert. On the sea coast of Arabia were some harbors, inland a few fertile oases where towns of low, white stone houses and mud hovels had sprung into being. But from the very nature of the soil and climate the Arabs were not drawn to manufacture goods or grow corn. Instead they preferred a wondrous life to tend the herds of horses or sheep that ranged the peninsula in search of water and pasture. Or, if more adventurous, to guard the caravans of camels that carried the silks and spices of India to Mediterranean seaports. These caravans had their regular routes, and every merchant a band of armed men to protect his goods and drive off robbers along the way. Only in the sacred months the time of the sowing of seeds in the spring and at the autumn harvest were such convoys of goods safe from attack. For then and then only every Arab believed, according to the traditions of his forefathers, that peace was a duty and that a curse would fall on him who dared to break it. The Arab, like all Orientals, was superstitious. He worshipped Allah, the all supreme God, but he accepted also a variety of other gods, heavenly bodies, spirits, devils, stones, and idols. One of the most famous Arabian sanctuaries was a template mecca called the Kaaba, where a black stone had been built into the wall that pilgrims would come from long distances to kiss and worship. Amongst the youths of the town who saw the ceremony and himself took part in the religious processions was an orphan lad, Muhammad, 576-632, brought up in the house of his uncle Abu Talib. Muhammad was handsome and strong. He had looked after sheep on the edge of the desert, taken part in tribal fights, and from the age of twelve wandered with caravans as far as the sea coast. What distinguished him from his companions was not his education, nor any special skill as a warrior, but his quickness of observation, his tenacious memory, and his gift for bending others to his will. Unable to read, he could only gain knowledge by word of mouth, and wherever he went, amongst the colonies of the Jews who were the chief manufacturers in the towns, or lying beside the campfires of the caravans at night, he would keep his ears open and store up in his mind all the tales that he heard. In this way he learned of the Jewish religion and a garbled version of Christianity. Soon he knew the stories of Joseph and of Abraham and some of the sayings of Christ, and the more he thought over them, the more he grew to hate the idol worship of the Arabs around him. When he was twenty-five, Muhammad married a rich widow, Qadijah, whose caravan he had successfully steered across the desert. And in this way he became a man of independent means possessing camels and horses of his own. Qadijah was some years older than Muhammad, but she was a very good wife to him and brought him not only a fortune, but a trust and a belief in his mission that he was to need sorely in the coming years. To her he confided his hatred of idol worship, and also to Abu Bakr, the wealthy son of a cloth merchant of Mecca, who had fallen under his influence. Muhammad declared that God, and later the angel Gabriel, had appeared to him in visions and had given him messages condemning the superstitions of the Arabs. There is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. This was the chief message received at first with contempt, but destined to be carried triumphant in the centuries to come right to the Pyrenees and the gates of Vienna. The visions or trances during which Muhammad received his messages, afterwards collected in the sacred book the Quran, are thought by many to have been epileptic fits. His face would turn livid and he would cover himself with a blanket, emerging at last exhausted to deliver some command or exhortation. Later it would seem that he could produce this state of insensibility at will and without much effort, whenever questions were asked, indeed, in answering which he required divine guidance. Much of the teaching in the Quran was based, like Judaism or Christianity, on far higher ideals than the fetish worship of the Arabs. It emphasized such things as the duty of almsgiving, the discipline that comes of fasting, the necessity of personal cleanliness, while it forbade the use of wine declaring drunkenness a crime. With regard to the position of women, the Quran would show nothing of the chivalry that was to develop in Christendoms through the respect felt by Christians for the mother of Christ and for the many women martyrs and saints who suffered during the early persecutions. Moslems were allowed by the Quran to have four wives, Muhammad permitted himself ten, and those might be divorced at their husband's pleasure without any corresponding right on their part. On the other hand, the power of holding property before denied was now secured to women, and the murder of female children that had been a practice in the peninsula was sternly abolished. As the years passed, more and more surahs or chapters were added to the Quran, but at first the Prophet's messages were few and appealed only to the poor and humble. When the Meccans told by Abu Bakr that Muhammad was a Prophet, came to demand a miracle as proof, he declared that there could be no greater miracle than the words he uttered. But this, to the prosperous merchants, seemed merely crazy nonsense. When he went farther, and acting on what he declared was Allah's revelation, destroyed some of the local idols, contempt changed to anger. For the inhabitants argued that if the Kaaba ceased to be a sanctuary, their trade with the pilgrims who usually came to Mecca would cease. For more than eight years, while a Prophet maintained his unpopular mission, his poorer followers were stoned and beaten, and he himself shunned. Perhaps it seems odd that in such a barbarous community he was not killed. But though Arabia possessed no government in any modern sense, yet a system of tribal laws existed that went far towards preventing promiscuous murder. Each man of any importance belonged to a tribe that he was bound to support with his sword, and that in turn was responsible for his life. If he were slain, the tribe would exact vengeance or demand blood money from the murderer. Now the head of Muhammad's tribe was Abu Talib, his uncle, and though the old man refused to accept his nephew as a Prophet, he would not allow him to be molested. In spite of persecution, the number of believers in Muhammad's doctrines grew, and when some of those who had been driven out of the city took refuge with the Christian King of Abyssinia, and were treated by him with greater kindness than the Pagan Arabs, the Meccans at home became so much alarmed that they adopted a new policy of aggression. Henceforth, both Muhammad and his followers, the hated Muslims or Heathens as they were nicknamed in the Syriac Tum, were to be outlaws and no one might trade with them or give them food. In an undisciplined community like an Arabian town, such an order would not be strictly kept, and for three years Muhammad was able to defy the ban. But every day his position grew more precarious, and the sufferings of his followers from hunger and poverty increased. During this time too, both Khadijah and Abu Talib died, and the Prophet, almost overwhelmed with his misfortunes, was only kept from doubting his mission by the faith and loyalty of those who would not deserve him. Weary of trying to convert Mecca, he sent messengers through Arabia to find if there were any tribe that would welcome a Prophet, and at last he received an invitation to go to Yathrim. This was a larger town in Mecca, farther to the north, and was populated mainly by Jewish tribes who hated the Arabian idol worshippers and welcomed the idea of a teacher whose views were based largely on Jewish traditions. In 622, therefore, Muhammad and his followers fled secretly from Mecca to Yathrim, later called Medina, or the city of the Prophet, and this date of the Hijarah or flight, when the new religion broke definitely with old Arab traditions, was taken as the first year of the Muslim calendar, just as Christians reckoned their time from the birth of Christ. Here in Medina was built the first mosque, or temple, of the new faith. A faith christened by its believers, Islam, a word meaning surrender, for in surrender to Allah and to the will of this Prophet lay the way of salvation to the Muslim Garden of Paradise. So beautiful to the Arabine were the very material luxuries and pleasures with which Muhammad entranced the imagination of believers that in later years his soldiers would fling themselves recklessly against their enemy's spears in order to gain Paradise the quicker. The alternative for the unbeliever was Hell, the everlasting fires of the Old Testament that so terrified the minds of medieval Christians, and between Paradise and Hell there was no middle way. The Jews in Medina were, like Muhammad, worshipers of one God, but they soon showed that they were not prepared to accept this wandering Arab as Jehovah's final revelation to man. They demanded miracles, sneered at the Koran which they declared was a parody of their own scriptures, and took advantage of the poverty of the refugees to drive hard bargains with them. At length it became obvious that the Muslims must find some means of livelihood, or else Medina, like Mecca, must be left for more friendly soil. Pressed by circumstances, Muhammad evolved a policy that was destined to overthrow the tribal system of government in Arabia. Mention has already been made of the caravans of camels that journeyed regularly from south to north of the peninsula, bearing merchandise. Many of these caravans were owned by wealthy meccans whose chief trade route passed quite close by the town of Medina, and they were protected and guarded by members of the tribe of Abu Talib, and of other families whose relations were serving with the prophet. At first, when Muhammad commanded that these caravans should be attacked and looted, his followers looked aghast for the sacredness of the tribes from attack by kinsmen was a tradition they had inherited for generations. Their prophet had once proved to them by a message from Allah that a new relationship had been formed stronger than the ties of blood, namely the bond of faith, and that to the believer, the unbeliever, whether father or son, was a cursed. In the same way, when the first marauding expeditions were unsuccessful because the caravans attacked were too well guarded, Muhammad explained the way the sacred months and chose in future at that very time for his warriors to descend upon unsuspecting merchants. The meccans, outraged by what they somewhat naturally considered treachery, soon dispatched some thousand men determined to make an end to the prophet and his followers, and at Badr, not very far from the coast, on the trade route between the two towns, this large force encountered 300 Muslims commanded by Muhammad. It is difficult to gain a clear impression of the battle, for romance and legend have rendered real details obscure. But, either by superior generalship, the valor and discipline of the Muslims as compared to the conduct of their forces, or as was later stated through the agency of angels sent by Allah from heaven, the vastly more numerous meccan force was utterly put to route. Muslims referred to the battle of Badr as the day of deliverance, for though not long afterwards they in their turn were defeated by the meccans, yet never again were they to become mere discredited refugees. Success pays, and with the victory of Badr as a tangible miracle to satisfy would-be converts, Muhammad soon gained a large army of warriors whom his personality molded into obedience to his will. The Jews who had mocked him had soon caused to repent, for Muhammad, remembering their jibes and the petty persecution to which they had subjected his followers, adopted a definitely hostile attitude towards them. Taking advantage of the reluctance with which these Jews had shared in the defense of Baddina, and in the throwing up of earthworks to protect it, when the meccans came to besiege it in the year five of the new calendar, Muhammad, as soon as the siege was raised, obtained his revenge. Those Jews of the city who still refused to recognize him as a prophet were slaughtered, their wives and children sold into slavery. The teaching and ritual of the Qur'an also, once carefully based on the scriptures of Israel, began to cast off this influence, and whereof old Muhammad had commanded his followers to look toward Jerusalem in their prayers, he now bade them kneel with their faces toward Mecca. In this command may be seen his new policy of conciliation toward his native town, for Muhammad recognized that in the city of Mecca lay the key to the peninsula, and he was determined to establish his power there, if not by force than by diplomacy. After some years of negotiation he persuaded those who had driven him into exile not so much of the truth of his teaching as of the certainty that his presence would bring more pilgrims than ever before to visit the shrine of Kaaba. In 8630 he entered Mecca in triumph and the worship of Islam was established in the heart of Arabia. As a concession to the meccans divine revelation announced that the sacred black stone built into the temple wall had been hallowed by Abraham and was therefore worthy of veneration. Instead of a general scheme of revenge, only two of Muhammad's enemies were put to death, and it is well to remember that, judged by the standards of his age and race, the Prophet was no lover of cruelty. In his teaching he condemned the use of torture, and throughout his life he was nearly always ready to treat with his foes rather than slay them. Those amongst his enemies who refused him recognition as a prophet, while willing to acknowledge him as a ruler, were usually allowed to live in peace on the payment of a yearly ransom divided amongst the believers. But in cases where he had met with an obstinate refusal or persistent treachery, as from the Jews of Medina, Muhammad would put whole tribes to the sword. In 632 the Prophet of Islam died, leaving a group of Arabian tribes bound far more securely together by the faith he had taught them than they could have been by the succession of any royal house. Though Muhammad is dead, yet as Muhammad's god not dead. While Muhammad was still in exile at Medina, it is evident that he already contemplated the idea of gaining the world for Islam. Let there be a new nation summoning unto good, says the Quran, and in token of this mission the Prophet, in the years following his Arabian victories, sent letters to foreign rulers to announce his ambition. Here is one to the Chief of the Cops, a Christian race living in Egypt. In the name of Allah the Merciful, from the Apostle of Allah to Chief of the Cops, peace be upon him who follows the guidance. Next I summon thee with the appeal to Islam. Become a Muslim and thou shalt be safe. God shall give thee thy reward twofold. But if thou decline, then on thee is the guilt of the cops. O ye people of the book, come unto an equal arrangement between us and you that we should serve none save God, associating nothing with him and not taking one another for lords besides God. And if ye decline, then bear witness that we are Muslims." Similar letters were sent to Chosros, King of Persia, and to Heraclius, the Christian emperor at Constantinople. The former tore the letter in pieces contemptuously, for at that time his kingdom extended over the greater part of Asia. Jerusalem, once the pride of the Eastern Empire, had fallen into his grasp, while his armies were besieging Constantinople itself. A letter that he himself penned to the Christian emperor shows his overweening pride and the depths into which Byzantium had fallen in the public regard. Quote, Chosros, greatest of the gods and master of the whole earth, to Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still refuse to submit to our rule and call yourself a king? Have I not destroyed the Greeks? You say that you trust in your God. Why has he not delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? And shall I not also destroy Constantinople? But I will pardon your faults if you will submit to me, and come hither with your wife and children, and I will give you lands, vineyards, and olive groves, and look upon you with a kindly aspect. Do not deceive yourself with vain hope in that Christ, who was not even able to save himself from the Jews, who killed him by nailing him to a cross. Even if you take refuge in the depths of the sea, I shall stretch out my hand and take you, so that you shall see me, whether you will or know." Christendom was fortunate in Heraclius. Instead of contemplating either despair or surrender, he called upon the church to summon all Christians to his aid, and by means of the gold and silver plate presented to him as a war loan by the bishops and clergy, and in command of a large army of volunteers, he beat back the Persians from the very gates of his capital. Not content with the policy of defense, he next invaded Asia and at the battle of Nineveh utterly destroyed the hosts of Chosros. The fallen king, deposed by his subjects, was forced to take refuge in the mountains and later was thrown into a dungeon where he died of cold and starvation. Had the reign of Heraclius ended at the state, it would be remembered as a glorious era in the history of Constantinople. But, unfortunately for his fame, another foe was to make much more lasting inroads on his empire, already weakened by the Persian occupation. When the emperor, 610-641, like Chosros, received Muhammad's letter, he is said to have read it with polite interest. It seemed to him that this fanatic Arab, who hated Jews as much as the Christians did, might turn his successful sword not only against them, but against the Persians. In this surmise, Heraclius was right, for under Abu Bakr, now Caliph, or successor of Muhammad, since a prophet had left no son, the Muslims invaded Persia. Unfortunately, for Heraclius they were equally bent on an aggressive campaign against the Christian Empire. There is but one god, Allah. With this test, and by which they could distinguish friend from foe, the Arab hosts burst through the gate of Syria, and at Yermuk encountered the imperial army sent by Heraclius to oppose them. The Greeks fought so stubbornly that, at first, it seemed that their disciplined valor must win. His not paradise before you are not hell and Satan behind, cried the Arab leader to his fanatical hordes, and in response to his words they rallied, broke the opposing lines by the sudden ferocity of their charge, and finally drove the imperial troops in headlong flight. After the battle of Yermuk, Syria fell and Palestine was invaded. In 637 Jerusalem became a Moslem town with a mosque standing where once had been the famous Temple of Solomon. Muhammad had declared Jerusalem a sanctuary, only second in glory to Mecca, and his followers, with a toleration strange in that age, left under Christian guardianship the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre and other sacred sites. After Syria, Palestine, after Palestine, Egypt and the North African coastline, the dying Heraclius heard nothing but the bitter news of disaster, and after his death the quarrels of his descendants increased the feebleness of Christian resistance. A spirit of unity might have carried the Moslem banners to the limits of the Eastern Empire, but in 656 the Caliph Othman was murdered, and the civil war that ensued enabled the Christian emperor Constans II to negotiate peace. He had lost Tripoli, Syria, Egypt, and the greater part of Armenia to his foes, who had also succeeded in establishing a naval base in the Mediterranean that threatened the islands of Greece herself. In the North his borders were overrun by Bulgar and Slav tribes, while in Italy the Lombards maintained a perpetual struggle against his viceroy, the Exarch of Ravenna. Constans himself spent six years in Italy, the greater part in campaigns against the Lombards. He even visited Rome, but earned hatred there, as elsewhere, by his ruthless pillage of the West for the benefit of the East. Thus the Pantheon was stripped of its golden tiles to enrich Constantinople, and the churches of South Italy were robbed of their plate to pay for his wars. At last a conspiracy was formed against him, and while enjoying the baths at Syracuse one of his servants struck him on the head with a marble soapbox and fractured his skull. Constans had been a brave and resolute emperor of considerable military ability. His son, Constantine Pogonatus, or the bearded, inherited his gifts and drove back the Mohammedans from Constantinople with so great a loss of man and prestige that the caliph promised to pay a large sum of money as tribute every year in return for peace. Constantine Pogonatus died when a comparatively young man and was succeeded by his son Justinian II, a lad of 17, arrogant, cruel, and restless. Without any reason save ambition he picked a quarrel with a Muslim caliph, marched a large army across his eastern border, and when he met with defeat proceeded in his rage to execute his generals and soldiers, declaring that they had failed him. At home in Constantinople his ministers tortured the inhabitants in order to extract money for his treasury and filled the imperial dungeons with senators and men of rank suspected of disloyalty. Such a state of affairs could not last, and the emperor, who treated his friends as badly as his foes, was captured by one of his own generals and, after having his nose cruelly slit, was exiled to the Crimea. Mutilation was supposed to be a final bar to the ride of wearing the imperial crown, but Justinian II was a type of man to be ignored only when dead. After some years of brooding over his wrongs he fled from the Crimea and took refuge with the king of the Bulgars. On his sea journey a terrific storm arose that threatened to overwhelm both him and his crew. My lord, exclaimed one of his attendants, I pray you make avow to God that if he spare you you will also spare your enemies. May God sink this vessel here and now, reported his master, if I spare a single one of them that falls into my hands. And the words were an ill omen for his reign that began once more in 705 when, with the aid of Bulgar troops and of treachery within the capital, Justinian II established himself once more in Constantinople. During six years the empire suffered his tyranny anew and those who had previously helped to dethrone him were hunted down, tortured and put to death. Like Nero of old he burned alive as political enemies or he would order the nobles of his court who had offended him to be sewn up in sacks and thrown into the sea. At last another rebellion brought a final end to his reign and that of the house of Heraclitus for both he and his young son were murdered in the eastern empire given up to anarchy. The man who did the most to save Constantinople from the next Muhammadan invasion was one of the military governors of the empire called Leo the Asaurian. Conscious of his own ability he took advantage of his first successes to seize the imperial crown and then having heard that the Muhammadan fleet was moored off the shores of Asia Minor he secretly sent a squadron of his own vessels that set the enemy's ships on fire. In the panic that ensued more than half the Arabian ships were sunk. About the same time a Muhammadan land force was also defeated by the king of the Bulgars who had allied himself with the emperor on account of their mutual dread of an eastern invasion. The result of these combined Christian victories was that the caliph Mosulma whose main forces were in camp beneath the walls of Constantinople grew alarmed lest he should be cut off from support and provisions. He therefore raised the siege embarking his army in what remained of his fleet and retreated to his own kingdom leaving the Christian capital free from acute danger from the east for another three hundred years. Elsewhere the Muhammadans pursued their triumph of progress with little check. After the fall of Carthage in 697 North Africa lay almost undefended before them and the half-savage tribes such as the Berbers who lived on the borders of the desert welcomed the new faith with its mission of conversion by the sword and prospects of plunder. It was the Berbers who at the invitation according to tradition of a treacherous Spanish governor, Count Julian, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and descended on the plains of Andalusia. Spain, when the power of the Roman Empire snapped, had been invaded first by vandals and then by Visigoths. The vandals, if we have seen, passed on to Africa while the Visigoths, like the Lombards in Italy, became converted to Christianity and, falling under the influence of the civilization and luxury they saw all around them, gradually adapted their government, laws, and way of life to the system and ideals of those whom they had conquered. Thus their famous Lex Visigothorum, or law of the Visigoths, was in reality the Roman code remodeled to suit the German settlers. In this new land the descendants of the once war-like Tutans acquired an indifference to the art of war, and when their king Rod Rico had been killed at the disastrous battle of Guadalete in his army overthrown, they made little further resistance to the Saracen hordes except in the far northern mountains of the Asturias. From France we have seen the Mojavidans were beaten back by Charles Martel, and here, established in Spain and on the borders of the Eastern Empire, we must leave their fortunes for the time. If Mohammed's life is short and can be quickly told, the story of how his followers attempted to establish their rule over Christendom is nothing else than the history of the foreign policy of Europe during medieval times. End of chapter 7