Western Christendom to find a whole group of scholars busied in discussions of any sort whatever. After looking back at the blank darkness of the seventh century, we find the court of Charles the Great a very centre of light and wisdom. In it lay the promise of great things in the future, a promise for which we have looked in vain in any period of the preceding ages.

It was not only in literature that Charles busied his leisure hours. He was a great admirer of music, both secular and ecclesiastical. His ear was charmed by the Gregorian chants which he heard at Rome, and he took back with him Italian choirmasters to teach the churchmen of the north the sonorous cadences of the sainted Pope.

He was also a mighty builder. At Aachen he reared a great palace for himself and a magnificent cathedral. The former has perished, but enough survives of the latter to show the exact extent to which Romanesque architecture had developed by his time. So much was he set on making it the most magnificent basilica to the north of the Charles Alps, that when he found his own workmen un- as builder. able to carry out his ideas, he sent for ancient columns and marbles from distant Rome and Ravenna. His own coffin was a splendid Roman sarcophagus, probably procured from Italy. He constructed palaces in two other Austrasian towns besides Aachen, the old royal seats of Nimuegen and Engelheim, for he was Austrasian to the core, and always made the land of his ancestors his favourite dwelling. He built a bridge at Mainz five hundred yards long, the first effort of Frankish engineering in that class of structure. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in 813, and never renewed. Another piece of work which testifies to his interest in engineering was a canal to join the Rhine and Danube, by means of their tributaries, the Altmühl and the Rednitz.

But to follow Charles into every department of his activity during his long life and reign would require many volumes. Here it must suffice to say that after all these achievements he

Death of

winter cold.

died at his chosen abode at Aachen, on the 28th of January 814, carried off at a ripe old age by a pleurisy caught in the He was buried in the cathedral Charles, 814. that he himself had built, and over his tomb was placed a golden shrine, with his image and the inscription:-'SUB HOC CONDITORIO SITUM EST CORPUS KAROLI MAGNI ET ORTHODOXI IMPERATORIS, QUI REGNUM FRANCORUM NOBILITER AMPLIAVIT, ET PER ANNOS XLVII FELICITER REXIT.' It was but a short epitaph considering the mighty deeds of him who lay beneath, but no length of words could have done justice to his greatness. A far better memorial was left to him in the hearts of his subjects; his name survived in the mouths of all the races that had served him, as the type of power, wisdom, and righteousness. All Western Europe looked back to him for seven hundred years as the common pride of Christendom, the founder of that 'Holy Roman Empire' which satisfied their ideal of governance. His figure looms out, though often with outlines blurred and distorted, from dozens of the legends and romances which shadowed forth the aspirations of the Middle Ages. Within a hundred years of his death it was currently believed that he had conquered Spain and Byzantium, and carried his arms as far as Palestine. So great was the impression he had left behind him, that the world thought nothing too impossible for him to have achieved. Perhaps the notion that his reign had been a kind of Golden Age was partly produced by the contrasting years of trouble and civil strife that followed his death. But the tendency to look back to his time as a period of unexampled splendour and righteousness was no delusion, but a just recognition of the fact that he had given the Western world a glimpse of new and high ideals, such as it had never known under the brutal rule of twelve generations of barbarian kings, nor in those earlier days when it was still held together in the iron grasp of the Caesars of ancient Rome.

CHAPTER XXIII

LEWIS THE PIOUS

814-840

Character of Lewis the Pious-He reforms the Frankish court-His ecclesiastical legislation-After a narrow escape from death he divides his kingdom among his sons-The partition of Aachen-Rebellion and death of Bernard of Italy-The second marriage of Lewis and its consequences -Second partition of the empire followed by rebellion of Lewis' elder sons-Their repeated risings-The 'Lügenfeld '-Lewis twice deposed and restored-Continued troubles of his later years-He dies while leading an army against his son Lewis-Disastrous consequences of his reign.

CHARLES THE GREAT left his throne and his empire to his only surviving son born in lawful wedlock, Lewis the Pious, as his own age named him, though later chroniclers style him Lewis the Débonnair. The heir of the great emperor was a devout prince, who proved-like our own Edward the Confessor-'a sair saint for the crown.' He was a weak, goodnatured man, no longer in the first flower of his youth, whose meek virtues were far more suited to adorn a monastery than a palace. Utterly wanting in self-respect and determination, the slave of his wife, his chaplains, and bishops, a doting father and husband, and an over-liberal giver, he had one of those natures which are entirely unfit to bear responsibility, and are only happy when placed under the rule of a stronger will than their own. Lewis had before him the problems that had taxed his father's iron nerve,-the task of ruling each of the nations that dwelt beneath the Frankish sceptre in the way that it needed, with the additional trial of being sorely

vexed by the incursions of the Danes, whose first ravages Charles the Great had hardly lived to see. Enough was there to occupy his every moment, even had he been a man of ability. But he chose to add to his troubles the needless trial of a disputed succession and a spasmodic civil war. The main feature of his reign of twenty-six years is the weary tale of his unwise dealing with his undutiful sons, and of the evils that ensued therefrom.

The great realm which now fell to Lewis had been built up in despite of three main difficulties-the enormous extent of the conquered lands, and the slowness of communication between them, the national differences between the various peoples which inhabited them, and the old Teutonic custom which favoured the partition of a kingdom among all the sons of its ruler, just as if it were a private heritage. The first two dangers had not proved fatal. The personal energy and neverending travels of Charles the Great had vanquished space and time. Racial divergences were less formidable than might have been expected, for true national feeling was not yet fully developed in Western Europe. It was neither the enormous extent of the Frankish empire nor the heterogeneous character of its inhabitants that proved the direct cause of its ruin, but the baleful practice of the partition of heritages among all the heirs of the reigning sovereign. Hitherto the empire had been fortunate in escaping the consequences of this evil. Charles the Hammer had broken up his realm, but the voluntary abdication of the elder Carloman had ere long reunited the Neustrian and Austrasian lands. Pippin, again, had divided his kingdom, but the co-heir, whose survival would have thwarted the life-work of Charles the Great, died young. And in the next generation, too, death had stripped the king of all his lawful issue save one, and Lewis the Pious received an undivided heritage.

But Lewis, unhappily for himself and for the empire, had already three half-grown sons when he succeeded to the empire, and was destined to see a fourth reach manhood ere

he died. The custom of partition was now destined to have a fair trial and develop to its utmost extent.

Lewis was at Doué, in his kingdom of Aquitaine, when he received the news of the death of his aged father. Making such speed as he could, he arrived at Aachen after a journey of thirty days, and took possession of the reins of power. Without sending for the Pope to assist at his coronation, he celebrated his accession by taking the imperial crown off the altar in the cathedral of his capital city, and placing it on his own head, while the assembled counts and bishops shouted Vivat Imperator Ludovicus! The magnates also saluted him by the title of 'the Pious,' an appellation which he placed upon his coins, on whose other side appeared the legend, 'Renovatio Regni Francorum.' The 'renewing' of the kingdom found its first expression in the expulsion from office of the ministers who had administered affairs during the declining years of Charles the Great. Lewis came to Aachen with his own trusted servants at his back, and was determined not to put himself in the hands of his father's favourites. There had been much in his father's life and court which his own scrupulous conscience could not approve. As a man who led a singularly virtuous life himself, he could not abide the bishops and abbots who had connived at his father's immoralities. The Frankish court, though teeming with ecclesi- Lewis the astics, had not been a model of soberness or chastity, and the old emperor himself had not set the best of examples. Lewis was determined that this should

cease.

Accession of

Pious.

The moment that he was firmly seated on the throne the new monarch dismissed from his court his sisters, whose life had been nothing less than scandalous during his father's later years. Their paramours were banished or imprisoned-one was even deprived of his eyes. His next step was to send away the three chief ministers of Charles the Great. The Chancellor Helisachar, Abbot of St. Maximin, was relegated

PERIOD I.

2 B