CHAP. V. Nominal authority of the Empire. Effect of the Impe and his acquisition of the patriciate practically extended his dominion from the Ocean to the frontiers of Beneventum. But, down to his Imperial coronation in the last week of the eighth century, the Emperor who reigned in the New Rome was still the nominal sovereign of the old. The event of the year 800, with all its weighty significance, did not practically either extend the territories of Charles or increase his powers. Still the Imperial coronation of Charles is one of rial corona- the great landmarks both of history and of historical tion of Charles. 800. sion of the Empire. geography. The whole political system of Europe was changed when the Old Rome cast off its formal allegiance to the New, and chose the King of the Franks and Lombards to be Emperor of the Romans. Though the powers of Charles were not increased nor his dominions extended, he held everything by a new title. The Final divi- Roman Empire was divided, never to be joined together again. But its Western half now took in, not only the greatest of its lost provinces, but vast regions which had never formed part of the Empire in the days of Trajan himself. Again, the distinctive character of the older Roman Empire had been the absence of nationality. The whole civilized world had become Rome, and all its free inhabitants had become Romans. But of the two from this time each of the two divisions of the Empire begins to assume something like a national character. East and West alike remained Roman in name and in political traditions. The Old Rome was the nominal centre of one; the New Rome was both the nominal and the real centre of the other. But there was a sense in which both alike ceased from this time to be Roman. The Western Empire has passed to a German Growing nationality Empires, and Greek. FINAL DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE. V. the two 125 king, and later changes tended to make his Empire CHAP. more and more German. The Eastern Empire meanwhile, by the successive loss of the Eastern provinces, of Latin Africa, and of Latin Italy, became nearly conterminous with those parts of Europe and Asia where the Greek speech and Greek civilization prevailed. From one point of view, both Empires are still Roman; from another point of view, one is fast becoming German, the other is fast becoming Greek. And the Rivalry of two powers into which the old Roman Empire is thus Empires. split are in the strictest sense two Empires. They are no longer mere divisions of an Empire which has been found to be too great for the rule of one man. The Emperors of the East and West are no longer Imperial colleagues dividing the administration of a single Empire between them. They are now rival potentates, each claiming to be exclusively the one true Roman Emperor, the one true representative of the common predecessors of both in the days when the Empire was still undivided. It is further to be noted that the same kind of The two Caliphates. change which now happened to the Christian Empire, had happened earlier in the century to the Mahometan Empire. The establishment of a rival dynasty at Cordova, even though the assumption of the actual title of Caliph did not follow at once, was exactly analogous to the establishment of a rival Empire in the Old Rome. The Mediterranean world has now four great powers, the two rival Christian Empires, and the two rival Mahometan Caliphates. Among these, it naturally follows that each is hostile to its neighbour of the opposite religion, and friendly to its neighbour's rival. The Western Emperor is the V. Rivalry pires and CHAP. enemy of the Western Caliph, the friend of the Eastern. The Eastern Emperor is the enemy of the Eastern of the Em- Caliph, the friend of the Western. Thus the four Caliphates. great powers stood at the beginning of the ninth century. And it was out of the dismemberments of the two great Christian and the great Mahometan powers that the later states, Christian and Mahometan, of the Mediterranean world took their rise. Extent of the Carolingian Empire. It is a point of geographical as well as of historical importance that Charles the Great, after he was crowned Emperor, caused all those who had been hitherto bound by allegiance to him as King of the Franks to swear allegiance to him afresh as Roman Emperor. This marks that all his dominions, Frankish, Lombard, and strictly Roman, are to be looked on as forming part of the Western Empire. Thus the Western Empire now took in all those German lands which the old Roman Emperors never could conquer. Germany became part of the Roman Empire, not by Rome conquering Germany, but by Rome choosing the German king as her Emperor. Contrast of The boundaries of the Empire thus became different from what they had ever been before. Of the old elder Em- provinces of the Western Empire, Britain, Africa, and all Spain save one corner, remained foreign to the new Roman Empire of the Franks. But, on the other hand, the Empire now took in all the lands in Germany and beyond Germany over which the Frankish power now reached, but which had never formed part of the elder Empire. The long wars of Charles with the Saxons led to Conquest of their final conquest, to the incorporation of Saxony with its bounda ries with those of the pire. Saxony. 772-804. the Frankish kingdom, and, after the Imperial coronation of the Frankish king, to its incorporation with the Western Empire. THE CAROLINGIAN EMPIRE. in 127 CHAP. V. of the allies and The conquests of Charles had thus, among their other results, welded Germany into a single whole. For though the Franks had long been the greatest power Germany, yet Germany could not be said to form a single whole as long as the Saxons, the greatest people of Northern Germany, remained independent. The conquest of Saxony brought the Frankish power for the first time in contact with the Danes and the other people of Scandinavia. The dominions of Charles took in what was then called Saxony beyond the Elbe, that is the modern Holstein, and the Eider was fixed as the Boundary northern boundary of the Empire. More than one Eider. Danish king did homage to Charles and to some of the Emperors after him; but Denmark was never incorporated with the Empire or even made permanently dependent. To the east, the immediate dominions of Slavonic Charles stretched but a little way beyond the Elbe; but neighhere the Western Empire came in contact, as the Eastern had done at an earlier time and by a different process, with the widely spread nations of the Slavonic race. The same movements which had driven one branch of that race to the south-west had driven another branch to the north-west, and the wars of Charles in those regions gave his Empire a fringe of Slavonic allies and dependents along both sides of the Elbe, forming a barrier between the immediate dominions of the Empire and the independent Slaves to the east. To the Overthrow south Charles overthrew the kingdom of the Avars; he kingdom. thus extended his dominions on the side of south-eastern Germany, and here he came in contact with the southern branch of the Slaves, a portion of whom, in Carinthia and the neighbouring lands, became subjects of his Empire. In Spain he acquired the north-eastern corner bours. of the Avar 796. СНАР. The Span ish March. 778. Divisions of the Em pire. as far as the Ebro, forming the Spanish March, afterwards the county of Barcelona. Thus the new Western Empire took in all Gaul, all that was then Germany, the greater part of Italy, and a small part of Spain. It thus took in both Teutonic and Romance lands, and contained in it the germs of the chief nations of modern Europe. It was a step towards their formation when Charles, following the example both of earlier Roman Emperors and of earlier Frankish kings, planned several divisions of his dominions among his sons. Owing to the deaths of all his sons but one, none of these divisions took effect. And it should be noticed that as yet none of these schemes of division agreed with any great natural or national boundary. They did not as yet foreshadow the division which afterwards took place, and out of which the chief states of Western Europe grew. In two cases only was anything like a national kingdom thought of. Charles's son Lewis reigned under him Kingdom of as king in Aquitaine, a kingdom which took in all Southern Gaul and the Spanish March, answering pretty nearly to the lands of the Provençal tongue or tongue of Oc. And when Charles died, and was succeeded in the Empire by Lewis, Charles's grandson Bernard still went on reigning under his uncle as King Kingdom of Italy. The Kingdom of Italy must be understood as taking in the Italian mainland, except the lands in the south which were held by the dependent princes of Beneventum and by the rival Emperors of the East. Use of the During this period Francia commonly means the strictly Aquitaine. Death of Charles. 814. of Italy. name Francia. 1 The geographical extent of the Frankish dominion before and after the conquest of Charles is most fully marked by Einhard, Vita Karoli, c. 15. |