September 2, 2025 • 22 mins
In 395 A.D., the last emperor of the undivided Roman Empire, Theodosius, passed away, leaving his inept son, Honorius, to govern the western half. Honorius relied heavily on the formidable general Stilicho to fend off the Visigoths led by the relentless Alaric. However, when palace intrigues led to Stilichos execution, Alaric seized the moment, culminating in the sack of Rome in 410 A.D. This marked the dawn of an era characterized by chaotic leadership, social upheaval, and barbarian invasions that once bore the ominous label of the Dark Ages. Amidst this turmoil, the Franks rose to prominence, laying the groundwork for the Papacys temporal power. Charlemagne later unified a vast empire and sparked a revival of learning, but his reigns final years were marred by the terrifying incursions of the Vikings, who navigated their shallow-draft vessels through France‚s rivers and established a foothold across England. - Summary by Pamela Nagami, M.D.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section sixteen of the Beginning of the Middle Ages by
Richard William Church. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain recording by Pamela and Nagami, Chapter seven the Carolingians
Charles the Great Part three. Charles, like his father Pippin,
was too much of a statesman to be indifferent to
(00:22):
the good and evil in the Church and to the
great and increasing place which it occupied in the growing
society of the new nations. The Irish and English missionaries
were pioneers of frank influence in Central Germany, in some
cases its forlorn hope. They were instruments of keener temper
than the sword for the permanent conquest of barbarism. Both
(00:47):
for this reason and from a genuine sympathy for their
dauntless courage and severe and thoroughgoing religion, they were warmly
encouraged by the new frank kings. On the other hand,
the disorder or in the Church invited from so strong
a rulers Charles the most uncompromising policy of interference and correction.
(01:09):
His ecclesiastical administration was unswerving in purpose and absolute in
its claims. Never in modern Europe has the union of
church and state exhibited in the supremacy of the king
been carried to so high a point the Pope was
there recognized doubtless as the highest religious authority. He sanctioned
(01:31):
and consecrated Charles's power. But the Pope was too completely
dependent for his Italian dominions on his alliance with the
Franks to venture seriously to thwart his protector. In the
capitularies we find laws on ecclesiastical and spiritual matters placed
exactly on the same footing as the strictly political and
(01:53):
civil laws. The rebellious Saxons were baptized as a proof
of their submission to the king, just as in later
times the other sacrament has been used as a test
of loyalty to government, and in their case, to depart
from the religion of their conquerors was punished with death
(02:13):
as if it were treason. Bishops and abbots were peremptorily
recalled to their duties. They were forbidden to ride forth
to the wars, carry arms and shed blood, and to
live as laymen. The king's interference extended to matters strictly
belonging to their province. By his own authority, he altered, corrected,
(02:36):
and as he believed, reformed and improved the offices of
the church. In the controversies of the day, he formed
his opinion and ruled the conclusions of councils cautiously, indeed,
and with ecclesiastical learning to back him, but by authority
of his own. In the question about images, which was
(02:56):
so complicated by political difficulties, and had so much to
do with finally separating the Greek and Latin churches, he
took his part, the part, it must be said, of
moderation and sobriety. He rejected a council claiming to be
ecumenical Nicea two seven eighty seven, and opposed the pope
(03:18):
who had accepted it, while he boldly attempted in a
frank council of his own frankfort seven ninety two, and
by the pen of his scholars and divines, to fix
the opinion and usage of the Western Church. The most
unceremonious proclamations of strict and unsparing discipline were addressed to
(03:38):
the bishops, and articles of inquiry were sent about, detailed
and minute, as to their knowledge of the elements of religion,
the morality of their lives, their diligence in preaching their
capacity and that of their clergy to perform the offices
of religion. They are to be asked, he says, in
one of these visitations, soulars, and the question is to
(04:01):
be driven home. What is the meaning of the apostles?
Saying Seco Timothy Chapter two, verse four. No man that
wareth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life,
And to whom do the words apply? Charles's idea of
his office as king was deepened and enlarged when he
became emperor. He then rose from being the king of
(04:24):
the Franks and Lombards to what the world of this
day and after it the Middle Ages supposed to be
the unique and transcendent supremacy inherited from Caesar Augustus. As
Emperor of the Romans, he claimed to govern the Roman
world and all persons and things in it. As Emperor,
(04:44):
he claimed the Pope himself as his subject. The Pope
was his father and guide in religion, and governed the
Church by power not derived from man and according to
a legislation of its own, yet subject to his own
visitatorial control. At the Pope's hands, he received his own
imperial crown and anointing, but the election of the pope
(05:06):
required the Emperor's confirmation. The Pope, like everyone else, had
to take the oath of fidelity to the Emperor. The
Pope went through the ceremony, as it is expressed in
unsuspicious contemporary language, of adoring him at his coronation, after
the custom of the emperors of old, Pope Leo the
(05:27):
Third pleaded before him, and Charles, in bidding his envoys
exhort the Pope to live honestly, to observe the canons,
and to avoid simony, used the same force and freedom
with which he exhorted his bishops. Charles's claim to interfere
in religious matters, which he had put high as King
of the Franks and Lombards, was sensibly raised both in
(05:51):
extent and peremptoriness. When he became emperor, he conceived and
his age with him, that he had received from God,
together with the inheritance of the Caesars, the duty and
office of the Jewish kings, not only of protecting the
Church of God, but of purifying it from evil, and
(06:11):
making everyone in it, from the highest to the lowest,
do his duty and submit to the imperial authority and rebuke.
This broad claim to superintend and regulate the policy, the government,
the practice, and even the belief of the Church, with
which the East had been long familiar, was new among
(06:32):
the Teutonic rulers of the West. In Charles appeared for
the first time realized and complete the medieval idea of
the Roman Empire. According to this idea, the unity of
the Christian Empire reflected the unity of the Christian Church,
and the empire had its supreme head, Caesar Augustus, as
(06:54):
the Church had the successor and representative of Saint Peter.
In Charles's interpretation of the idea, the ultimate control of
this twofold realm rested with the divinely appointed Caesar. Where
there was a conflict of judgment, it was for his
authority to prevail. The revival of the empire was the
(07:15):
Pope's doing, and for a long time the Pope sought
in vain to undo what, in a time of need
they had to hastily sanctioned, But to undo was beyond
their power. Men took different sides in the great question
which arose out of the idea of the Empire, but
the idea had struck deep root. It was the idea
(07:37):
at once of Frederic the second and Dante, of Gregory
the seventh and Boniface the eighth. The precedent set by
Charles and the fierce debates arising out of it, affected
the whole history of the Middle Ages, and even of
the centuries which followed the Reformation. Nor is its eventful
significance exhausted. Yet in the great conflicts be between Church
(08:00):
and state, both parties have sought arguments from it. The
governments of Europe have found in it an armory of
precedence to limit or to extinguish the liberties of the Church.
While in the origin and incidents of the revived Empire,
and in the new place of the papacy which followed
on this revival, the champions of the Pope have seen
(08:21):
proofs of the theory which made him the master of
kings and laws. Charles was keenly alive to the depressed
state of knowledge and of general cultivation in his age,
and to the contrast in regard to literature and theology
between his own times and the great days before him.
(08:43):
Early in his reign, he collected about him in his
palace the best scholars he could attract, and made them
his familiar friends. The most considerable of them was, like
the great German missionary of the previous generation, Boniface, an Englishman.
Alquin came over from the school of York in seven
(09:03):
eighty two and remained, with a short interval on the
continent till his death in eight hundred four. By such help,
Charles tried to improve his own knowledge and to raise
the standard of acquirement round him. Records of the conversations
and discussions which went on between the king and his
palace school have been preserved in Alquin's writings. They show
(09:27):
the almost childish confusions and affectations of reviving knowledge, but
they also show the manly interest felt in the task
of inquiry and self improvement. The King and his companions
furnished themselves with names, partly from the Bible, partly from
Latin literature. Charles was David, and there was a Nathaniel
(09:49):
and a Bezalliol. Alquin was Flaccus Albinus, with a Homer,
a Mopsus, a Flavius de Moiitus. And for the ladies
of the palace, the sisters in daughters of Charles, there
were the names of Lucia, Columba, Dahlia eulalia. They employed
their mother wit and their curiosity on such learning as
(10:11):
was within their reach, relating to the processes of thought
and the powers of speech, the laws of numbers and sound,
the motions of the heavenly bodies. And they called it logic, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, music,
and astronomy. Charles learned to speak Latin with facility, and
(10:31):
he understood better than he spoke Greek in his native
Frankish German. He was a vigorous and impressive speaker, and
the splendor and usefulness of Latin did not shake his
allegiance to his mother tongue. He was passionately fond of
the old German songs and lays. He attempted a German grammar,
(10:51):
which means probably that by Godfred, the translator of the
Gospels in the next generation. He attempted the then hopeless
task of grasping, under rules like those of Latin, the
varying spoken dialects of his kingdom. He tried, late in life,
but without success, to acquire what was then the professional
(11:12):
art of writing. He was a severe critic of the
reading and singing in his chapel. It was his custom
to be read to at meals, and his favorite book
was Saint Augustine's City of God, which, with its grand,
sweeping generalizations and its religious sense of the presence of
God in the history and development of mankind, answered to
(11:35):
his own lofty view of the work to which he
had been called. In promoting the improvement of learning, Charles
showed the same eagerness of person as he did in
politics or war or hunting, Utterly disregardful of trouble, and
untiring in what he did himself. He called on his
bishops and abbots both to learn themselves and to enforce
(11:57):
learning among their subordinates. Ordinances were issued calling for schools
to be set up in the great seas and monasteries.
They arose or were quickened into activity where already founded,
and they produced their fruits in the next generation and
kept hope alive amid great disasters. Colonies were sent from
(12:18):
the schools and monasteries of Gaul into Germany. Thus, new Korkbay,
in the conquered Saxon Land was founded by converted Saxons
who had been trained at Korkbay on the Somme at Osnoboleuk.
In view of greater intercourse with Constantinople, Greek was specially
ordered to be taught. The increasing list of learned names
(12:41):
which began to appear from this century, almost all of
them pupils of the new German schools, shows that Charles's
efforts were not altogether in vain. But it was easier
to command and even show the way than to be obeyed,
and even to be obeyed than to alter the inherited
conditions of his aide. Yet Charles was as practical as
(13:03):
he was enthusiastic and resolute. In this, as in other things.
The wants of men and the necessity of supplying them,
were insisted upon by the master spirit of the time,
with such manifest truth and reason, that though the change
was imperceptible and was thwarted by countless adverse influences, a
(13:23):
great change had really set in, and encouragement was given
to those who, in those wild and perplexed times, believed
that men were meant for something better and higher than
a life of fighting of personal rivalries and of course, enjoyment.
Charles's great qualities were alloyed with great faults. With the
(13:45):
excellences of a strong nature, he had the failings and
self delusions of the strong great. As he was both
in what he aimed at and in what he accomplished,
he could not be above his age. He had the
rudeness of a barbarian, endeavoring to rise above barbarism, rude,
as Peter the Great, in like circumstances was rude. Yet
(14:08):
Charles's was the rudeness of a larger and more genial nature,
and of a nobler ambition. But Charles was one of
those who think they know enough and have strength enough
to mold the world at their will. With strong affections
and wide sympathies, he was imperious and masterful. He saw
(14:28):
no limits in his power to correct and mend, and
no limits in his right to exercise it. And his
too ambitious and sometimes unscrupulous attempts sowed the seeds of
mischief to come. Clement implacable as he was in peace,
His wars were ferocious and his policy after conquest unsparing.
(14:50):
Yet it was the ferocity which often since his time
has been judged the only weapon to extinguish obstinate and
dangerous resistance. He was in earnest in his religion, and
there was much in it, not only of earnestness, but
of intelligence. But it was not complete or deep enough
to exclude that waywardness and inconsistency of moral principle, and
(15:14):
that incapacity to control passion, which belonged to the time.
We do not hear of the foul murders and treasons
of the Merovingian times, but his court was full of
the gross licentiousness of the period. He was not superior
to it himself. There were many evil stories about him,
and tenderly attached as he was to his children, he
(15:37):
was not happy in their training and fortunes. The frank Kingdom,
which Charles had received from his father included Gaul from
the Loire to the Rhine, with an ill established sovereignty
over the German tribes between the Rhine, the Elba and
the Upper Danube, and over the impatient Latinised population of Aquitaine.
(15:58):
During the forty seven years of Charles's reign, it had
grown into a resemblance of the dominion of the Caesars.
When Charles died, its borders were the Ebro in Spain,
the Elba in Germany, or beyond the Elba, the Eider
and the Bavarian Ns, if not the Hungarian tice to
the southeast, all of what is now Germany west of
(16:20):
the Bohemian Mountains, not merely acknowledged in him an overlord,
but was really one to his rule. He secured what
his father had only fought to secure, the submission of
Latin Aquitaine, and the submission at last, complete and sincere
of the stout hearted and obstinate Saxons. There had been
(16:42):
one independent Christian kingdom on the mainland of the West,
that of the Lombards at Pavia. It had disappeared. He
had wrested from them all Italy, which was beginning to
be called by their name, from the Alps to Calabria,
and the King of the Franks preserved the memory of
his conquest by adding to his title that of King
(17:03):
of the Lombards. His more indefinite claims to sovereignty or
tribute extended beyond these limits to Corsica and perhaps Sardinia,
to the lands between the Danube and the head of
the Adriatic, to the barbarous tribes of Slavs eastward of
his proper border, as far as the Vistula, from the
Ocean to the mountains of the Bohemians, and the plains
(17:25):
of Hungary and Poland, from the Baltic till he met
the Arabs in Spain, the Greeks in Calabria, Sicily and Dalmatia.
The continental Europe of that time owned his sway and
formed his empire. It seemed to be the center of
all authority, the bond of union among the nations. Charles
(17:46):
was one of those men who, in person and outward,
bearing answer to their place. Tall, robust, well proportioned in body,
with great strength and activity, simple in dress, bright and
keen eyed, clear but shrillen voice, commanding in feature hail.
In his old age, he lived with unbroken health till
(18:07):
his last few years. Greatly despising physicians and remedies. He
was a great eater, but sparing of wine, and relied
on starvation as his only medicine. He was a great
rider and swimmer, passionately fond of bathing and delighting in
the hot springs and pools of his favorite Achen. To
(18:29):
the very last, he was a mighty and untiring hunter.
After an autumn spent in violent exercise, the winter of
eight thirteen to fourteen was at length too much for him.
Fever and pleurisy attacked him, and he would only meet
them by starving himself. On the morning of January twenty eighth,
(18:49):
eight fourteen, he died. He was buried the same day
in the stately basilica, which he had built hard by
his palace at Achen or ex LaChapelle, and adorned with
marbles brought from Rome and Ravenna. He was laid in
the tomb which he had made for himself. On the
gilded arch beneath which he lay was his effigy and
(19:10):
the inscription. Under this tomb is laid the body of
Charles Great and Orthodox Emperor, who nobly enlarged the kingdom
of the Franks, and four forty seven years reigned prosperously.
He died, being seventy years old, in the year of
Our Lord eight fourteen the seventh in diction, the fifth
day before the Calans of February. There in the vault
(19:34):
below he was left sitting as in life, on a
marble throne, dressed in his imperial robes, with his horn,
his sword, and his book of the Gospels on his knee.
And there says the legend. In the last years of
the tenth century, he was found by Otto the Third,
who ventured to open the tomb, and who beheld the
(19:55):
undecayed form of the Great Emperor of the Franks. For
the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire
in the West, a king, an emperor had arisen in
the New Nations to rule with glory, A conqueror, a legislator,
a founder of social order, a restorer of religion. His
(20:16):
unbroken success, his wide dominion, his consecrated authority, his fame
spread to the farthest bounds of the world. Recall the
great kings of the Bible, the great Caesars of Rome.
What made him so great was that his aim was
not only to conquer and overthrow and enjoy, but that
(20:37):
he labored so long and so resolutely, with deliberate purpose
for the benefit of men. It was all the more
wonderful and impressive from the disorder which had been before,
from the disorder which for a long time followed. His
reign was a romantic episode interposed in the midst of
what seemed normal and irremediable anarchy. The unique splendor of
(21:01):
his reign, which even we, with our cooler judgments, see
to have been so remarkable, naturally dazzle the imaginations of
his age, the haze of legend and poetry soon enveloped
his image. In the memory of the nations. The great
German king in Caesar was transformed into a Latin hero
of Romance, the theme of the Norman Chondor Roland, and
(21:24):
of the Italian poets of the Court of Ferrara, Boiardo
and Ariosto. More strangely, still, as the great champion and
legislator and benefactor of the church, he grew, though personally
so lax in his rules of life, into the reputation
of a saint. He was never formally canonized, but his
(21:46):
name and his doings appear in the catalog of the Saints.
His altar was frequent at one time in Germany and
the Low Countries, and to this day his title to
saintship is still acknowledged by altar and image and festival
in the churches of the Lower Valet. His glory was
the prelude to strange reverses in the fortunes of his posterity.
(22:08):
Strong as he was, the times were yet stronger, and
the children of Charles proved even less worthy of their
origin than the children of Clovis, for they started from
a higher point, and they sank at last, almost as
low as the Merovingians. End of Section sixteen.
Section sixteen of the Beginning of the Middle Ages by
Richard William Church. This LibriVox recording is in the public
domain recording by Pamela and Nagami, Chapter seven the Carolingians
Charles the Great Part three. Charles, like his father Pippin,
was too much of a statesman to be indifferent to
(00:22):
the good and evil in the Church and to the
great and increasing place which it occupied in the growing
society of the new nations. The Irish and English missionaries
were pioneers of frank influence in Central Germany, in some
cases its forlorn hope. They were instruments of keener temper
than the sword for the permanent conquest of barbarism. Both
(00:47):
for this reason and from a genuine sympathy for their
dauntless courage and severe and thoroughgoing religion, they were warmly
encouraged by the new frank kings. On the other hand,
the disorder or in the Church invited from so strong
a rulers Charles the most uncompromising policy of interference and correction.
(01:09):
His ecclesiastical administration was unswerving in purpose and absolute in
its claims. Never in modern Europe has the union of
church and state exhibited in the supremacy of the king
been carried to so high a point the Pope was
there recognized doubtless as the highest religious authority. He sanctioned
(01:31):
and consecrated Charles's power. But the Pope was too completely
dependent for his Italian dominions on his alliance with the
Franks to venture seriously to thwart his protector. In the
capitularies we find laws on ecclesiastical and spiritual matters placed
exactly on the same footing as the strictly political and
(01:53):
civil laws. The rebellious Saxons were baptized as a proof
of their submission to the king, just as in later
times the other sacrament has been used as a test
of loyalty to government, and in their case, to depart
from the religion of their conquerors was punished with death
(02:13):
as if it were treason. Bishops and abbots were peremptorily
recalled to their duties. They were forbidden to ride forth
to the wars, carry arms and shed blood, and to
live as laymen. The king's interference extended to matters strictly
belonging to their province. By his own authority, he altered, corrected,
(02:36):
and as he believed, reformed and improved the offices of
the church. In the controversies of the day, he formed
his opinion and ruled the conclusions of councils cautiously, indeed,
and with ecclesiastical learning to back him, but by authority
of his own. In the question about images, which was
(02:56):
so complicated by political difficulties, and had so much to
do with finally separating the Greek and Latin churches, he
took his part, the part, it must be said, of
moderation and sobriety. He rejected a council claiming to be
ecumenical Nicea two seven eighty seven, and opposed the pope
(03:18):
who had accepted it, while he boldly attempted in a
frank council of his own frankfort seven ninety two, and
by the pen of his scholars and divines, to fix
the opinion and usage of the Western Church. The most
unceremonious proclamations of strict and unsparing discipline were addressed to
(03:38):
the bishops, and articles of inquiry were sent about, detailed
and minute, as to their knowledge of the elements of religion,
the morality of their lives, their diligence in preaching their
capacity and that of their clergy to perform the offices
of religion. They are to be asked, he says, in
one of these visitations, soulars, and the question is to
(04:01):
be driven home. What is the meaning of the apostles?
Saying Seco Timothy Chapter two, verse four. No man that
wareth and tangleth himself with the affairs of this life,
And to whom do the words apply? Charles's idea of
his office as king was deepened and enlarged when he
became emperor. He then rose from being the king of
(04:24):
the Franks and Lombards to what the world of this
day and after it the Middle Ages supposed to be
the unique and transcendent supremacy inherited from Caesar Augustus. As
Emperor of the Romans, he claimed to govern the Roman
world and all persons and things in it. As Emperor,
(04:44):
he claimed the Pope himself as his subject. The Pope
was his father and guide in religion, and governed the
Church by power not derived from man and according to
a legislation of its own, yet subject to his own
visitatorial control. At the Pope's hands, he received his own
imperial crown and anointing, but the election of the pope
(05:06):
required the Emperor's confirmation. The Pope, like everyone else, had
to take the oath of fidelity to the Emperor. The
Pope went through the ceremony, as it is expressed in
unsuspicious contemporary language, of adoring him at his coronation, after
the custom of the emperors of old, Pope Leo the
(05:27):
Third pleaded before him, and Charles, in bidding his envoys
exhort the Pope to live honestly, to observe the canons,
and to avoid simony, used the same force and freedom
with which he exhorted his bishops. Charles's claim to interfere
in religious matters, which he had put high as King
of the Franks and Lombards, was sensibly raised both in
(05:51):
extent and peremptoriness. When he became emperor, he conceived and
his age with him, that he had received from God,
together with the inheritance of the Caesars, the duty and
office of the Jewish kings, not only of protecting the
Church of God, but of purifying it from evil, and
(06:11):
making everyone in it, from the highest to the lowest,
do his duty and submit to the imperial authority and rebuke.
This broad claim to superintend and regulate the policy, the government,
the practice, and even the belief of the Church, with
which the East had been long familiar, was new among
(06:32):
the Teutonic rulers of the West. In Charles appeared for
the first time realized and complete the medieval idea of
the Roman Empire. According to this idea, the unity of
the Christian Empire reflected the unity of the Christian Church,
and the empire had its supreme head, Caesar Augustus, as
(06:54):
the Church had the successor and representative of Saint Peter.
In Charles's interpretation of the idea, the ultimate control of
this twofold realm rested with the divinely appointed Caesar. Where
there was a conflict of judgment, it was for his
authority to prevail. The revival of the empire was the
(07:15):
Pope's doing, and for a long time the Pope sought
in vain to undo what, in a time of need
they had to hastily sanctioned, But to undo was beyond
their power. Men took different sides in the great question
which arose out of the idea of the Empire, but
the idea had struck deep root. It was the idea
(07:37):
at once of Frederic the second and Dante, of Gregory
the seventh and Boniface the eighth. The precedent set by
Charles and the fierce debates arising out of it, affected
the whole history of the Middle Ages, and even of
the centuries which followed the Reformation. Nor is its eventful
significance exhausted. Yet in the great conflicts be between Church
(08:00):
and state, both parties have sought arguments from it. The
governments of Europe have found in it an armory of
precedence to limit or to extinguish the liberties of the Church.
While in the origin and incidents of the revived Empire,
and in the new place of the papacy which followed
on this revival, the champions of the Pope have seen
(08:21):
proofs of the theory which made him the master of
kings and laws. Charles was keenly alive to the depressed
state of knowledge and of general cultivation in his age,
and to the contrast in regard to literature and theology
between his own times and the great days before him.
(08:43):
Early in his reign, he collected about him in his
palace the best scholars he could attract, and made them
his familiar friends. The most considerable of them was, like
the great German missionary of the previous generation, Boniface, an Englishman.
Alquin came over from the school of York in seven
(09:03):
eighty two and remained, with a short interval on the
continent till his death in eight hundred four. By such help,
Charles tried to improve his own knowledge and to raise
the standard of acquirement round him. Records of the conversations
and discussions which went on between the king and his
palace school have been preserved in Alquin's writings. They show
(09:27):
the almost childish confusions and affectations of reviving knowledge, but
they also show the manly interest felt in the task
of inquiry and self improvement. The King and his companions
furnished themselves with names, partly from the Bible, partly from
Latin literature. Charles was David, and there was a Nathaniel
(09:49):
and a Bezalliol. Alquin was Flaccus Albinus, with a Homer,
a Mopsus, a Flavius de Moiitus. And for the ladies
of the palace, the sisters in daughters of Charles, there
were the names of Lucia, Columba, Dahlia eulalia. They employed
their mother wit and their curiosity on such learning as
(10:11):
was within their reach, relating to the processes of thought
and the powers of speech, the laws of numbers and sound,
the motions of the heavenly bodies. And they called it logic, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, music,
and astronomy. Charles learned to speak Latin with facility, and
(10:31):
he understood better than he spoke Greek in his native
Frankish German. He was a vigorous and impressive speaker, and
the splendor and usefulness of Latin did not shake his
allegiance to his mother tongue. He was passionately fond of
the old German songs and lays. He attempted a German grammar,
(10:51):
which means probably that by Godfred, the translator of the
Gospels in the next generation. He attempted the then hopeless
task of grasping, under rules like those of Latin, the
varying spoken dialects of his kingdom. He tried, late in life,
but without success, to acquire what was then the professional
(11:12):
art of writing. He was a severe critic of the
reading and singing in his chapel. It was his custom
to be read to at meals, and his favorite book
was Saint Augustine's City of God, which, with its grand,
sweeping generalizations and its religious sense of the presence of
God in the history and development of mankind, answered to
(11:35):
his own lofty view of the work to which he
had been called. In promoting the improvement of learning, Charles
showed the same eagerness of person as he did in
politics or war or hunting, Utterly disregardful of trouble, and
untiring in what he did himself. He called on his
bishops and abbots both to learn themselves and to enforce
(11:57):
learning among their subordinates. Ordinances were issued calling for schools
to be set up in the great seas and monasteries.
They arose or were quickened into activity where already founded,
and they produced their fruits in the next generation and
kept hope alive amid great disasters. Colonies were sent from
(12:18):
the schools and monasteries of Gaul into Germany. Thus, new Korkbay,
in the conquered Saxon Land was founded by converted Saxons
who had been trained at Korkbay on the Somme at Osnoboleuk.
In view of greater intercourse with Constantinople, Greek was specially
ordered to be taught. The increasing list of learned names
(12:41):
which began to appear from this century, almost all of
them pupils of the new German schools, shows that Charles's
efforts were not altogether in vain. But it was easier
to command and even show the way than to be obeyed,
and even to be obeyed than to alter the inherited
conditions of his aide. Yet Charles was as practical as
(13:03):
he was enthusiastic and resolute. In this, as in other things.
The wants of men and the necessity of supplying them,
were insisted upon by the master spirit of the time,
with such manifest truth and reason, that though the change
was imperceptible and was thwarted by countless adverse influences, a
(13:23):
great change had really set in, and encouragement was given
to those who, in those wild and perplexed times, believed
that men were meant for something better and higher than
a life of fighting of personal rivalries and of course, enjoyment.
Charles's great qualities were alloyed with great faults. With the
(13:45):
excellences of a strong nature, he had the failings and
self delusions of the strong great. As he was both
in what he aimed at and in what he accomplished,
he could not be above his age. He had the
rudeness of a barbarian, endeavoring to rise above barbarism, rude,
as Peter the Great, in like circumstances was rude. Yet
(14:08):
Charles's was the rudeness of a larger and more genial nature,
and of a nobler ambition. But Charles was one of
those who think they know enough and have strength enough
to mold the world at their will. With strong affections
and wide sympathies, he was imperious and masterful. He saw
(14:28):
no limits in his power to correct and mend, and
no limits in his right to exercise it. And his
too ambitious and sometimes unscrupulous attempts sowed the seeds of
mischief to come. Clement implacable as he was in peace,
His wars were ferocious and his policy after conquest unsparing.
(14:50):
Yet it was the ferocity which often since his time
has been judged the only weapon to extinguish obstinate and
dangerous resistance. He was in earnest in his religion, and
there was much in it, not only of earnestness, but
of intelligence. But it was not complete or deep enough
to exclude that waywardness and inconsistency of moral principle, and
(15:14):
that incapacity to control passion, which belonged to the time.
We do not hear of the foul murders and treasons
of the Merovingian times, but his court was full of
the gross licentiousness of the period. He was not superior
to it himself. There were many evil stories about him,
and tenderly attached as he was to his children, he
(15:37):
was not happy in their training and fortunes. The frank Kingdom,
which Charles had received from his father included Gaul from
the Loire to the Rhine, with an ill established sovereignty
over the German tribes between the Rhine, the Elba and
the Upper Danube, and over the impatient Latinised population of Aquitaine.
(15:58):
During the forty seven years of Charles's reign, it had
grown into a resemblance of the dominion of the Caesars.
When Charles died, its borders were the Ebro in Spain,
the Elba in Germany, or beyond the Elba, the Eider
and the Bavarian Ns, if not the Hungarian tice to
the southeast, all of what is now Germany west of
(16:20):
the Bohemian Mountains, not merely acknowledged in him an overlord,
but was really one to his rule. He secured what
his father had only fought to secure, the submission of
Latin Aquitaine, and the submission at last, complete and sincere
of the stout hearted and obstinate Saxons. There had been
(16:42):
one independent Christian kingdom on the mainland of the West,
that of the Lombards at Pavia. It had disappeared. He
had wrested from them all Italy, which was beginning to
be called by their name, from the Alps to Calabria,
and the King of the Franks preserved the memory of
his conquest by adding to his title that of King
(17:03):
of the Lombards. His more indefinite claims to sovereignty or
tribute extended beyond these limits to Corsica and perhaps Sardinia,
to the lands between the Danube and the head of
the Adriatic, to the barbarous tribes of Slavs eastward of
his proper border, as far as the Vistula, from the
Ocean to the mountains of the Bohemians, and the plains
(17:25):
of Hungary and Poland, from the Baltic till he met
the Arabs in Spain, the Greeks in Calabria, Sicily and Dalmatia.
The continental Europe of that time owned his sway and
formed his empire. It seemed to be the center of
all authority, the bond of union among the nations. Charles
(17:46):
was one of those men who, in person and outward,
bearing answer to their place. Tall, robust, well proportioned in body,
with great strength and activity, simple in dress, bright and
keen eyed, clear but shrillen voice, commanding in feature hail.
In his old age, he lived with unbroken health till
(18:07):
his last few years. Greatly despising physicians and remedies. He
was a great eater, but sparing of wine, and relied
on starvation as his only medicine. He was a great
rider and swimmer, passionately fond of bathing and delighting in
the hot springs and pools of his favorite Achen. To
(18:29):
the very last, he was a mighty and untiring hunter.
After an autumn spent in violent exercise, the winter of
eight thirteen to fourteen was at length too much for him.
Fever and pleurisy attacked him, and he would only meet
them by starving himself. On the morning of January twenty eighth,
(18:49):
eight fourteen, he died. He was buried the same day
in the stately basilica, which he had built hard by
his palace at Achen or ex LaChapelle, and adorned with
marbles brought from Rome and Ravenna. He was laid in
the tomb which he had made for himself. On the
gilded arch beneath which he lay was his effigy and
(19:10):
the inscription. Under this tomb is laid the body of
Charles Great and Orthodox Emperor, who nobly enlarged the kingdom
of the Franks, and four forty seven years reigned prosperously.
He died, being seventy years old, in the year of
Our Lord eight fourteen the seventh in diction, the fifth
day before the Calans of February. There in the vault
(19:34):
below he was left sitting as in life, on a
marble throne, dressed in his imperial robes, with his horn,
his sword, and his book of the Gospels on his knee.
And there says the legend. In the last years of
the tenth century, he was found by Otto the Third,
who ventured to open the tomb, and who beheld the
(19:55):
undecayed form of the Great Emperor of the Franks. For
the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire
in the West, a king, an emperor had arisen in
the New Nations to rule with glory, A conqueror, a legislator,
a founder of social order, a restorer of religion. His
(20:16):
unbroken success, his wide dominion, his consecrated authority, his fame
spread to the farthest bounds of the world. Recall the
great kings of the Bible, the great Caesars of Rome.
What made him so great was that his aim was
not only to conquer and overthrow and enjoy, but that
(20:37):
he labored so long and so resolutely, with deliberate purpose
for the benefit of men. It was all the more
wonderful and impressive from the disorder which had been before,
from the disorder which for a long time followed. His
reign was a romantic episode interposed in the midst of
what seemed normal and irremediable anarchy. The unique splendor of
(21:01):
his reign, which even we, with our cooler judgments, see
to have been so remarkable, naturally dazzle the imaginations of
his age, the haze of legend and poetry soon enveloped
his image. In the memory of the nations. The great
German king in Caesar was transformed into a Latin hero
of Romance, the theme of the Norman Chondor Roland, and
(21:24):
of the Italian poets of the Court of Ferrara, Boiardo
and Ariosto. More strangely, still, as the great champion and
legislator and benefactor of the church, he grew, though personally
so lax in his rules of life, into the reputation
of a saint. He was never formally canonized, but his
(21:46):
name and his doings appear in the catalog of the Saints.
His altar was frequent at one time in Germany and
the Low Countries, and to this day his title to
saintship is still acknowledged by altar and image and festival
in the churches of the Lower Valet. His glory was
the prelude to strange reverses in the fortunes of his posterity.
(22:08):
Strong as he was, the times were yet stronger, and
the children of Charles proved even less worthy of their
origin than the children of Clovis, for they started from
a higher point, and they sank at last, almost as
low as the Merovingians. End of Section sixteen.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Herd with Colin Cowherd
The Herd with Colin Cowherd is a thought-provoking, opinionated, and topic-driven journey through the top sports stories of the day.