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History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

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Title: History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 5

Author: Edward Gibbon

Commentator: Henry Hart Milman


        
Release date: June 7, 2008 [eBook #894]
                Most recently updated: June 22, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/894

Credits: Produced by David Reed, Dale R. Fredrickson and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE — VOLUME 5 ***




Produced by David Reed, Dale R. Fredrickson and David Widger








HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman

Vol. 5

1782 (Written), 1845 (Revised)




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part I.

     Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images.--Revolt Of
     Italy And Rome.--Temporal Dominion Of The Popes.--Conquest
     Of Italy By The Franks.--Establishment Of Images.--Character
     And Coronation Of Charlemagne.--Restoration And Decay Of The
     Roman Empire In The West.--Independence Of Italy.--
     Constitution Of The Germanic Body.

In the connection of the church and state, I have considered the former
as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a salutary maxim,
if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever been held sacred. The
Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the dark abyss of predestination
and grace, and the strange transformation of the Eucharist from the sign
to the substance of Christ's body, I have purposely abandoned to the
curiosity of speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence
and pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected, the
propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic church,
the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the mysterious
controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation. At the head
of this class, we may justly rank the worship of images, so fiercely
disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries; since a question of popular
superstition produced the revolt of Italy, the temporal power of the
popes, and the restoration of the Roman empire in the West.

The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance
to the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may be ascribed to
their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic
law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that
precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the
chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against
the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own
hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had _they_ been endowed
with sense and motion, should have started rather from the pedestal
to adore the creative powers of the artist. Perhaps some recent and
imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe might crown the statues of
Christ and St. Paul with the profane honors which they paid to those of
Aristotle and Pythagoras; but the public religion of the Catholics
was uniformly simple and spiritual; and the first notice of the use of
pictures is in the censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred
years after the Christian Êra. Under the successors of Constantine, in
the peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent bishops
condescended to indulge a visible superstition, for the benefit of
the multitude; and, after the ruin of Paganism, they were no longer
restrained by the apprehension of an odious parallel. The first
introduction of a symbolic worship was in the veneration of the cross,
and of relics. The saints and martyrs, whose intercession was implored,
were seated on the right hand if God; but the gracious and often
supernatural favors, which, in the popular belief, were showered round
their tomb, conveyed an unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims,
who visited, and touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the
memorials of their merits and sufferings. But a memorial, more
interesting than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is the
faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by the arts of
painting or sculpture. In every age, such copies, so congenial to human
feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of private friendship, or
public esteem: the images of the Roman emperors were adored with civil,
and almost religious, honors; a reverence less ostentatious, but more
sincere, was applied to the statues of sages and patriots; and these
profane virtues, these splendid sins, disappeared in the presence of the
holy men, who had died for their celestial and everlasting country.
At first, the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the
venerable pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant,
to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen
proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honors of
the original were transferred to the copy: the devout Christian prayed
before the image of a saint; and the Pagan rites of genuflection,
luminaries, and incense, again stole into the Catholic church. The
scruples of reason, or piety, were silenced by the strong evidence of
visions and miracles; and the pictures which speak, and move, and bleed,
must be endowed with a divine energy, and may be considered as the
proper objects of religious adoration. The most audacious pencil might
tremble in the rash attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the
infinite Spirit, the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the
universe. But the superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint
and to worship the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the
human shape, which, on earth, they have condescended to assume. The
second person of the Trinity had been clothed with a real and mortal
body; but that body had ascended into heaven: and, had not some
similitude been presented to the eyes of his disciples, the spiritual
worship of Christ might have been obliterated by the visible relics and
representations of the saints. A similar indulgence was requisite and
propitious for the Virgin Mary: the place of her burial was unknown;
and the assumption of her soul and body into heaven was adopted by the
credulity of the Greeks and Latins. The use, and even the worship, of
images was firmly established before the end of the sixth century:
they were fondly cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and
Asiatics: the Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of
a new superstition; but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly
entertained by the rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the West. The
bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which peopled the temples
of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or conscience of the Christian
Greeks: and a smooth surface of colors has ever been esteemed a more
decent and harmless mode of imitation.

The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with the
original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the genuine
features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles: the statue of
Christ at Paneas in Palestine was more probably that of some temporal
savior; the Gnostics and their profane monuments were reprobated;
and the fancy of the Christian artists could only be guided by the
clandestine imitation of some heathen model. In this distress, a bold
and dexterous invention assured at once the likeness of the image and
the innocence of the worship. A new super structure of fable was raised
on the popular basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ
and Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly deserted
by our modern advocates. The bishop of CÊsarea records the epistle, but
he most strangely forgets the picture of Christ; the perfect impression
of his face on a linen, with which he gratified the faith of the royal
stranger who had invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city
of Edessa to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance
of the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of five
hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and seasonably
presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and most glorious
exploit was the deliverance of the city from the arms of Chosroes
Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge of the divine promise,
that Edessa should never be taken by a foreign enemy. It is true,
indeed, that the text of Procopius ascribes the double deliverance
of Edessa to the wealth and valor of her citizens, who purchased
the absence and repelled the assaults of the Persian monarch. He was
ignorant, the profane historian, of the testimony which he is compelled
to deliver in the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium
was exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been sprinkled
on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel to the flames
of the besieged. After this important service, the image of Edessa was
preserved with respect and gratitude; and if the Armenians rejected the
legend, the more credulous Greeks adored the similitude, which was not
the work of any mortal pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine
original. The style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how
far their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. "How can we
with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor
the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in heaven,
condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image; He who is
seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a picture, which the
Father has delineated with his immaculate hand, which he has formed in
an ineffable manner, and which we sanctify by adoring it with fear and
love." Before the end of the sixth century, these images, _made without
hands_, (in Greek it is a single word, ) were propagated in the camps
and cities of the Eastern empire: they were the objects of worship, and
the instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult, their
venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the courage, or
repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these pictures, the far
greater part, the transcripts of a human pencil, could only pretend to
a secondary likeness and improper title: but there were some of higher
descent, who derived their resemblance from an immediate contact with
the original, endowed, for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific
virtue. The most ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation
with the image of Edessa; and such is the _veronica_ of Rome, or Spain,
or Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to
his face, and delivered to a holy matron. The fruitful precedent was
speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and martyrs. In
the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features of the Mother of God
were deeply inscribed in a marble column; the East and West have been
decorated by the pencil of St. Luke; and the Evangelist, who was perhaps
a physician, has been forced to exercise the occupation of a painter, so
profane and odious in the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian
Jove, created by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might
inspire a philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic
images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in the last
degeneracy of taste and genius.

The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible
degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as
productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the
eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous
Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that under the mask of
Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers: they
heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant
charge of the Jews and Mahometans, who derived from the Law and the
Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship.
The servitude of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their
authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at Damascus,
and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of reproach the
accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities of Syria, Palestine,
and Egypt had been fortified with the images of Christ, his mother, and
his saints; and each city presumed on the hope or promise of miraculous
defence. In a rapid conquest of ten years, the Arabs subdued those
cities and these images; and, in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts
pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of
these mute and inanimate idols. For a while Edessa had braved the
Persian assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was
involved in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave
and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred years,
the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of Constantinople, for a
ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver, the redemption of two
hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce for the territory of Edessa.
In this season of distress and dismay, the eloquence of the monks was
exercised in the defence of images; and they attempted to prove, that
the sin and schism of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited
the favor, and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols.
But they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational
Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and of the
primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church.
As the worship of images had never been established by any general or
positive law, its progress in the Eastern empire had been retarded, or
accelerated, by the differences of men and manners, the local degrees
of refinement, and the personal characters of the bishops. The splendid
devotion was fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the
inventive genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote
districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred luxury.
Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians maintained, after their
conversion, the simple worship which had preceded their separation; and
the Armenians, the most warlike subjects of Rome, were not reconciled,
in the twelfth century, to the sight of images. These various
denominations of men afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small
account in the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune
of a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with the
powers of the church and state.

Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the Third,
who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne of the East.
He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but his education, his
reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews and Arabs, had inspired
the martial peasant with a hatred of images; and it was held to be
the duty of a prince to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own
conscience. But in the outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years
of toil and danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed
before the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the reformation
of religion, his first steps were moderate and cautious: he assembled a
great council of senators and bishops, and enacted, with their consent,
that all the images should be removed from the sanctuary and altar to a
proper height in the churches where they might be visible to the
eyes, and inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was
impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse impulse of
veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position, the sacred images
still edified their votaries, and reproached the tyrant. He was himself
provoked by resistance and invective; and his own party accused him
of an imperfect discharge of his duty, and urged for his imitation the
example of the Jewish king, who had broken without scruple the brazen
serpent of the temple. By a second edict, he proscribed the existence
as well as the use of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople
and the provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster
was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the Iconoclasts
was supported by the zeal and despotism of six emperors, and the East
and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and
twenty years. It was the design of Leo the Isaurian to pronounce the
condemnation of images as an article of faith, and by the authority of
a general council: but the convocation of such an assembly was reserved
for his son Constantine; and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The debates and
decrees of many provincial synods introduced the summons of the general
council which met in the suburbs of Constantinople, and was composed
of the respectable number of three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of
Europe and Anatolia; for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria
were the slaves of the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the
churches of Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh general
council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six preceding
assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure of the Catholic
faith. After a serious deliberation of six months, the three hundred and
thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree, that
all visible symbols of Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either
blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of
Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of
idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse
to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor. In
their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits of their
temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they intrusted the
execution of their spiritual censures. At Constantinople, as in the
former councils, the will of the prince was the rule of episcopal faith;
but on this occasion, I am inclined to suspect that a large majority of
the prelates sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of
hope and fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it easy for
them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of the labyrinth.
The worship of images was inseparably blended, at least to a pious
fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints and their relics; the holy
ground was involved in a cloud of miracles and visions; and the nerves
of the mind, curiosity and scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of
obedience and belief. Constantine himself is accused of indulging
a royal license to doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the
Catholics, but they were deeply inscribed in the public and private
creed of his bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a
secret horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the faculties
of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the reverence of antiquity;
and the vigor of Europe could disdain those phantoms which terrified the
sickly and servile weakness of the Greeks.

The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the people
by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most ignorant can
perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profanation and downfall
of their visible deities. The first hostilities of Leo were directed
against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and above the gate, of the
palace. A ladder had been planted for the assault, but it was furiously
shaken by a crowd of zealots and women: they beheld, with pious
transport, the ministers of sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed
against the pavement: and the honors of the ancient martyrs were
prostituted to these criminals, who justly suffered for murder and
rebellion. The execution of the Imperial edicts was resisted by frequent
tumults in Constantinople and the provinces: the person of Leo was
endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular enthusiasm was
quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and military power. Of the
Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous islands were filled with images
and monks: their votaries abjured, without scruple, the enemy of Christ,
his mother, and the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and galleys,
displayed their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbor
of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God and the
people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their miracles
were inefficient against the _Greek fire_; and, after the defeat and
conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the
clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year
of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during
his absence, the capital, the palace, and the purple, were occupied by
his kinsman Artavasdes, the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith.
The worship of images was triumphantly restored: the patriarch renounced
his dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments and the righteous claims
of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in ancient, Rome.
Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal mountains; but he descended
at the head of the bold and affectionate Isaurians; and his final
victory confounded the arms and predictions of the fanatics. His long
reign was distracted with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual
hatred, and sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive
or pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal diadem,
they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of martyrdom. In every
act of open and clandestine treason, the emperor felt the unforgiving
enmity of the monks, the faithful slaves of the superstition to which
they owed their riches and influence. They prayed, they preached, they
absolved, they inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine
poured forth a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus,
the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant's head, both in this
world and the next. I am not at leisure to examine how far the monks
provoked, nor how much they have exaggerated, their real and pretended
sufferings, nor how many lost their lives or limbs, their eyes or
their beards, by the cruelty of the emperor. From the chastisement of
individuals, he proceeded to the abolition of the order; and, as it was
wealthy and useless, his resentment might be stimulated by avarice,
and justified by patriotism. The formidable name and mission of the
_Dragon_, his visitor-general, excited the terror and abhorrence of the
_black_ nation: the religious communities were dissolved, the buildings
were converted into magazines, or bar racks; the lands, movables, and
cattle were confiscated; and our modern precedents will support the
charge, that much wanton or malicious havoc was exercised against
the relics, and even the books of the monasteries. With the habit
and profession of monks, the public and private worship of images was
rigorously proscribed; and it should seem, that a solemn abjuration of
idolatry was exacted from the subjects, or at least from the clergy, of
the Eastern empire.

The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; they were
fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the independent zeal of
the Italians. In ecclesiastical rank and jurisdiction, the patriarch
of Constantinople and the pope of Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek
prelate was a domestic slave under the eye of his master, at whose
nod he alternately passed from the convent to the throne, and from
the throne to the convent. A distant and dangerous station, amidst the
Barbarians of the West, excited the spirit and freedom of the Latin
bishops. Their popular election endeared them to the Romans: the public
and private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue; and the
weakness or neglect of the emperors compelled them to consult, both
in peace and war, the temporal safety of the city. In the school of
adversity the priest insensibly imbibed the virtues and the ambition of
a prince; the same character was assumed, the same policy was adopted,
by the Italian, the Greek, or the Syrian, who ascended the chair of St.
Peter; and, after the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and
fortune of the popes again restored the supremacy of Rome. It is agreed,
that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion,
and that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by the heresy of the
Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and third Gregory, in this
memorable contest, is variously interpreted by the wishes of their
friends and enemies. The Byzantine writers unanimously declare, that,
after a fruitless admonition, they pronounced the separation of the
East and West, and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue
and sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still more clearly
expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the papal
triumphs; and as they are more strongly attached to their religion
than to their country, they praise, instead of blaming, the zeal and
orthodoxy of these apostolical men. The modern champions of Rome are
eager to accept the praise and the precedent: this great and glorious
example of the deposition of royal heretics is celebrated by the
cardinals Baronius and Bellarmine; and if they are asked, why the same
thunders were not hurled against the Neros and Julians of antiquity,
they reply, that the weakness of the primitive church was the sole cause
of her patient loyalty. On this occasion the effects of love and hatred
are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who seek to kindle the
indignation, and to alarm the fears, of princes and magistrates,
expatiate on the insolence and treason of the two Gregories against
their lawful sovereign. They are defended only by the moderate
Catholics, for the most part, of the Gallican church, who respect the
saint, without approving the sin. These common advocates of the crown
and the mitre circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule of equity,
Scripture, and tradition, and appeal to the evidence of the Latins, and
the lives and epistles of the popes themselves.




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part II.

Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the emperor Leo, are
still extant; and if they cannot be praised as the most perfect models
of eloquence and logic, they exhibit the portrait, or at least the mask,
of the founder of the papal monarchy. "During ten pure and fortunate
years," says Gregory to the emperor, "we have tasted the annual comfort
of your royal letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your own hand, the
sacred pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers.
How deplorable is the change! how tremendous the scandal! You now accuse
the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you betray your own
impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the
grossness of our style and arguments: the first elements of holy
letters are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a
grammar-school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple
and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn-books at
your head." After this decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual
distinction between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images.
The former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or dÊmons, at
a time when the true God had not manifested his person in any visible
likeness. The latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and
his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles, the innocence
and merit of this relative worship. He must indeed have trusted to the
ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the perpetual use of images,
from the apostolic age, and their venerable presence in the six synods
of the Catholic church. A more specious argument is drawn from present
possession and recent practice the harmony of the Christian world
supersedes the demand of a general council; and Gregory frankly
confesses, than such assemblies can only be useful under the reign of
an orthodox prince. To the impudent and inhuman Leo, more guilty than
a heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience to his
spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. The limits of civil and
ecclesiastical powers are defined by the pontiff. To the former he
appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the sword of justice
is in the hands of the magistrate: the more formidable weapon of
excommunication is intrusted to the clergy; and in the exercise of their
divine commission a zealous son will not spare his offending father:
the successor of St. Peter may lawfully chastise the kings of the earth.
"You assault us, O tyrant! with a carnal and military hand: unarmed and
naked we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host,
that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and
the salvation of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance, I will
despatch my orders to Rome: I will break in pieces the image of St.
Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor Martin, shall be transported in
chains, and in exile, to the foot of the Imperial throne. Would to God
that I might be permitted to tread in the footsteps of the holy Martin!
but may the fate of Constans serve as a warning to the persecutors of
the church! After his just condemnation by the bishops of Sicily, the
tyrant was cut off, in the fullness of his sins, by a domestic servant:
the saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he
ended his banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for the
edification and support of the faithful people; nor are we reduced
to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as you are of
defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may
perhaps expose it to your depredation but we can remove to the distance
of four-and-twenty _stadia_, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and
then--you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the
bond of union, the mediators of peace, between the East and West? The
eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a God
upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy.
The remote and interior kingdoms of the West present their homage to
Christ and his vicegerent; and we now prepare to visit one of their most
powerful monarchs, who desires to receive from our hands the sacrament
of baptism. The Barbarians have submitted to the yoke of the gospel,
while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. These pious
Barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution
of the East. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble,
and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be
spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head!"

The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had been
witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West, who related
with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the emperor. But on the
reception of his proscriptive edict, they trembled for their domestic
deities: the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs,
and saints, were abolished in all the churches of Italy; and a strong
alternative was proposed to the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the
price of his compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his
disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate; and
the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor displays his
confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the powers of resistance.
Without depending on prayers or miracles, he boldly armed against the
public enemy, and his pastoral letters admonished the Italians of their
danger and their duty. At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities
of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their
military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of the
natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused into the
mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence
of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people was devoted to their
father, and even the Lombards were ambitious to share the merit and
advantage of this holy war. The most treasonable act, but the most
obvious revenge, was the destruction of the statues of Leo himself: the
most effectual and pleasing measure of rebellion, was the withholding
the tribute of Italy, and depriving him of a power which he had recently
abused by the imposition of a new capitation. A form of administration
was preserved by the election of magistrates and governors; and so high
was the public indignation, that the Italians were prepared to create an
orthodox emperor, and to conduct him with a fleet and army to the palace
of Constantinople. In that palace, the Roman bishops, the second and
third Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the revolt, and every
attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to seize their persons, and
to strike at their lives. The city was repeatedly visited or assaulted
by captains of the guards, and dukes and exarchs of high dignity or
secret trust; they landed with foreign troops, they obtained some
domestic aid, and the superstition of Naples may blush that her fathers
were attached to the cause of heresy. But these clandestine or open
attacks were repelled by the courage and vigilance of the Romans;
the Greeks were overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an
ignominious death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to
intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna, the several quarters of
the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary feud; in religious
controversy they found a new aliment of faction: but the votaries of
images were superior in numbers or spirit, and the exarch, who attempted
to stem the torrent, lost his life in a popular sedition. To punish this
flagitious deed, and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a
fleet and army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering from the winds
and waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the
neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to depopulate the guilty
capital, and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of Justinian
the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the choice and
execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The women and clergy,
in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in prayer: the men were in arms
for the defence of their country; the common danger had united the
factions, and the event of a battle was preferred to the slow miseries
of a siege. In a hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded
and advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was
victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated to their
ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a multitude of boats;
the waters of the Po were so deeply infected with blood, that during six
years the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river; and the
institution of an annual feast perpetuated the worship of images, and
the abhorrence of the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic
arms, the Roman pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against
the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced a
general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack
the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints: in this
sentence the emperor was tacitly involved, but the vote of a last
and hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that the anathema was yet
suspended over his guilty head. No sooner had they confirmed their own
safety, the worship of images, and the freedom of Rome and Italy, than
the popes appear to have relaxed of their severity, and to have spared
the relics of the Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed
and prevented the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the
Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch
was permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather
than a master; and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne, the
government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the successors
of Constantine.

The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and arts of
Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty years of servitude,
from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By the CÊsars, the triumphs of
the consuls had been annihilated: in the decline and fall of the empire,
the god Terminus, the sacred boundary, had insensibly receded from the
ocean, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to
her ancient territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the
mouth of the Tyber. When the kings were banished, the republic reposed
on the firm basis which had been founded by their wisdom and virtue.
Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two annual magistrates:
the senate continued to exercise the powers of administration and
counsel; and the legislative authority was distributed in the assemblies
of the people, by a well-proportioned scale of property and service.
Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the
science of government and war: the will of the community was absolute:
the rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty thousand
citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band of robbers and
outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of freedom and ambitious of
glory. When the sovereignty of the Greek emperors was extinguished, the
ruins of Rome presented the sad image of depopulation and decay:
her slavery was a habit, her liberty an accident; the effect of
superstition, and the object of her own amazement and terror. The last
vestige of the substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was
obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they
were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of
a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves and
strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious Barbarians. As
often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their most bitter contempt
of a foe, they called him a Roman; "and in this name," says the bishop
Liutprand, "we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever
is perfidious, the extremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that
can prostitute the dignity of human nature." By the necessity of their
situation, the inhabitants of Rome were cast into the rough model of
a republican government: they were compelled to elect some judges in
peace, and some leaders in war: the nobles assembled to deliberate, and
their resolves could not be executed without the union and consent of
the multitude. The style of the Roman senate and people was revived,
but the spirit was fled; and their new independence was disgraced by the
tumultuous conflict of licentiousness and oppression. The want of laws
could only be supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign
and domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop. His
alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and prelates of
the West, his recent services, their gratitude, and oath, accustomed the
Romans to consider him as the first magistrate or prince of the city.
The Christian humility of the popes was not offended by the name of
_Dominus_, or Lord; and their face and inscription are still apparent on
the most ancient coins. Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by
the reverence of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the free
choice of a people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.

In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis enjoyed a
perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and in the exercise of
the Olympic games. Happy would it have been for the Romans, if a similar
privilege had guarded the patrimony of St. Peter from the calamities
of war; if the Christians, who visited the holy threshold, would have
sheathed their swords in the presence of the apostle and his successor.
But this mystic circle could have been traced only by the wand of a
legislator and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible with the
zeal and ambition of the popes the Romans were not addicted, like the
inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and placid labors of agriculture;
and the Barbarians of Italy, though softened by the climate, were far
below the Grecian states in the institutions of public and private life.
A memorable example of repentance and piety was exhibited by Liutprand,
king of the Lombards. In arms, at the gate of the Vatican, the conqueror
listened to the voice of Gregory the Second, withdrew his troops,
resigned his conquests, respectfully visited the church of St. Peter,
and after performing his devotions, offered his sword and dagger, his
cuirass and mantle, his silver cross, and his crown of gold, on the tomb
of the apostle. But this religious fervor was the illusion, perhaps the
artifice, of the moment; the sense of interest is strong and lasting;
the love of arms and rapine was congenial to the Lombards; and both the
prince and people were irresistibly tempted by the disorders of Italy,
the nakedness of Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her new chief. On
the first edicts of the emperor, they declared themselves the champions
of the holy images: Liutprand invaded the province of Romagna, which
had already assumed that distinctive appellation; the Catholics of the
Exarchate yielded without reluctance to his civil and military
power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for the first time into the
impregnable fortress of Ravenna. That city and fortress were speedily
recovered by the active diligence and maritime forces of the Venetians;
and those faithful subjects obeyed the exhortation of Gregory himself,
in separating the personal guilt of Leo from the general cause of the
Roman empire. The Greeks were less mindful of the service, than the
Lombards of the injury: the two nations, hostile in their faith, were
reconciled in a dangerous and unnatural alliance: the king and the
exarch marched to the conquest of Spoleto and Rome: the storm evaporated
without effect, but the policy of Liutprand alarmed Italy with a
vexatious alternative of hostility and truce. His successor Astolphus
declared himself the equal enemy of the emperor and the pope: Ravenna
was subdued by force or treachery, and this final conquest extinguished
the series of the exarchs, who had reigned with a subordinate power
since the time of Justinian and the ruin of the Gothic kingdom. Rome was
summoned to acknowledge the victorious Lombard as her lawful sovereign;
the annual tribute of a piece of gold was fixed as the ransom of each
citizen, and the sword of destruction was unsheathed to exact the
penalty of her disobedience. The Romans hesitated; they entreated; they
complained; and the threatening Barbarians were checked by arms and
negotiations, till the popes had engaged the friendship of an ally and
avenger beyond the Alps.

In his distress, the first Gregory had implored the aid of the hero
of the age, of Charles Martel, who governed the French monarchy with the
humble title of mayor or duke; and who, by his signal victory over the
Saracens, had saved his country, and perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan
yoke. The ambassadors of the pope were received by Charles with decent
reverence; but the greatness of his occupations, and the shortness of
his life, prevented his interference in the affairs of Italy, except
by a friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin, the heir of his
power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of the Roman church;
and the zeal of the French prince appears to have been prompted by
the love of glory and religion. But the danger was on the banks of the
Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine, and our sympathy is cold to the
relation of distant misery. Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the
Third embraced the generous resolution of visiting in person the courts
of Lombardy and France, to deprecate the injustice of his enemy, or to
excite the pity and indignation of his friend. After soothing the public
despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this laborious journey
with the ambassadors of the French monarch and the Greek emperor. The
king of the Lombards was inexorable; but his threats could not silence
the complaints, nor retard the speed of the Roman pontiff, who traversed
the Pennine Alps, reposed in the abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to
grasp the right hand of his protector; a hand which was never lifted
in vain, either in war or friendship. Stephen was entertained as the
visible successor of the apostle; at the next assembly, the field of
March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a devout and warlike
nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant, but as a
conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led by the king in
person. The Lombards, after a weak resistance, obtained an ignominious
peace, and swore to restore the possessions, and to respect the
sanctity, of the Roman church. But no sooner was Astolphus delivered
from the presence of the French arms, than he forgot his promise and
resented his disgrace. Rome was again encompassed by his arms; and
Stephen, apprehensive of fatiguing the zeal of his Transalpine allies
enforced his complaint and request by an eloquent letter in the name and
person of St. Peter himself. The apostle assures his adopted sons, the
king, the clergy, and the nobles of France, that, dead in the flesh,
he is still alive in the spirit; that they now hear, and must obey, the
voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman church; that the Virgin,
the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven,
unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that
riches, victory, and paradise, will crown their pious enterprise, and
that eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they
suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people, to fall into the hands of
the perfidious Lombards. The second expedition of Pepin was not less
rapid and fortunate than the first: St. Peter was satisfied, Rome
was again saved, and Astolphus was taught the lessons of justice
and sincerity by the scourge of a foreign master. After this double
chastisement, the Lombards languished about twenty years in a state
of languor and decay. But their minds were not yet humbled to their
condition; and instead of affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble,
they peevishly harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims,
evasions, and inroads, which they undertook without reflection, and
terminated without glory. On either side, their expiring monarchy was
pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian the First, the genius,
the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne, the son of Pepin; these
heroes of the church and state were united in public and domestic
friendship, and while they trampled on the prostrate, they varnished
their proceedings with the fairest colors of equity and moderation. The
passes of the Alps, and the walls of Pavia, were the only defence of the
Lombards; the former were surprised, the latter were invested, by the
son of Pepin; and after a blockade of two years, Desiderius, the last
of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his capital. Under
the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of their national
laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather than the subjects, of
the Franks; who derived their blood, and manners, and language, from the
same Germanic origin.




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part III.

The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family form
the important link of ancient and modern, of civil and ecclesiastical,
history. In the conquest of Italy, the champions of the Roman church
obtained a favorable occasion, a specious title, the wishes of the
people, the prayers and intrigues of the clergy. But the most essential
gifts of the popes to the Carlovingian race were the dignities of king
of France, and of patrician of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal monarchy of
St. Peter, the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on the
banks of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their
fate. The Franks were perplexed between the name and substance of their
government. All the powers of royalty were exercised by Pepin, mayor
of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title, was wanting to
his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his valor; his friends
were multiplied by his liberality; his father had been the savior of
Christendom; and the claims of personal merit were repeated and ennobled
in a descent of four generations. The name and image of royalty was
still preserved in the last descendant of Clovis, the feeble Childeric;
but his obsolete right could only be used as an instrument of sedition:
the nation was desirous of restoring the simplicity of the constitution;
and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to ascertain his own
rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor and the nobles were bound,
by an oath of fidelity, to the royal phantom: the blood of Clovis was
pure and sacred in their eyes; and their common ambassadors addressed
the Roman pontiff, to dispel their scruples, or to absolve their
promise. The interest of Pope Zachary, the successor of the two
Gregories, prompted him to decide, and to decide in their favor: he
pronounced that the nation might lawfully unite in the same person
the title and authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a
victim of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined
in a monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable to
their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a casuist, the
sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the Merovingian race
disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was exalted on a buckler by the
suffrage of a free people, accustomed to obey his laws and to march
under his standard. His coronation was twice performed, with the
sanction of the popes, by their most faithful servant St. Boniface, the
apostle of Germany, and by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third,
who, in the monastery of St. Denys placed the diadem on the head of his
benefactor. The royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously
applied: the successor of St. Peter assumed the character of a divine
ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord's
anointed; and this Jewish rite has been diffused and maintained by the
superstition and vanity of modern Europe. The Franks were absolved from
their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was thundered against them
and their posterity, if they should dare to renew the same freedom of
choice, or to elect a king, except in the holy and meritorious race of
the Carlovingian princes. Without apprehending the future danger, these
princes gloried in their present security: the secretary of Charlemagne
affirms, that the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of the
popes; and in their boldest enterprises, they insist, with confidence,
on this signal and successful act of temporal jurisdiction.

II. In the change of manners and language the patricians of Rome were
far removed from the senate of Romulus, on the palace of Constantine,
from the free nobles of the republic, or the fictitious parents of
the emperor. After the recovery of Italy and Africa by the arms of
Justinian, the importance and danger of those remote provinces required
the presence of a supreme magistrate; he was indifferently styled the
exarch or the patrician; and these governors of Ravenna, who fill their
place in the chronology of princes, extended their jurisdiction over the
Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss of the Exarchate, the
distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice of their independence.
Yet, even in this act, they exercised the right of disposing of
themselves; and the decrees of the senate and people successively
invested Charles Martel and his posterity with the honors of patrician
of Rome. The leaders of a powerful nation would have disdained a servile
title and subordinate office; but the reign of the Greek emperors
was suspended; and, in the vacancy of the empire, they derived a
more glorious commission from the pope and the republic. The Roman
ambassadors presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of
St. Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner
which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the church
and city. In the time of Charles Martel and of Pepin, the interposition
of the Lombard kingdom covered the freedom, while it threatened the
safety, of Rome; and the _patriciate_ represented only the title, the
service, the alliance, of these distant protectors. The power and policy
of Charlemagne annihilated an enemy, and imposed a master. In his first
visit to the capital, he was received with all the honors which had
formerly been paid to the exarch, the representative of the emperor; and
these honors obtained some new decorations from the joy and gratitude of
Pope Adrian the First. No sooner was he informed of the sudden approach
of the monarch, than he despatched the magistrates and nobles of Rome
to meet him, with the banner, about thirty miles from the city. At the
distance of one mile, the Flaminian way was lined with the _schools_, or
national communities, of Greeks, Lombards, Saxons, &c.: the Roman youth
were under arms; and the children of a more tender age, with palms
and olive branches in their hands, chanted the praises of their great
deliverer. At the aspect of the holy crosses, and ensigns of the saints,
he dismounted from his horse, led the procession of his nobles to the
Vatican, and, as he ascended the stairs, devoutly kissed each step of
the threshold of the apostles. In the portico, Adrian expected him at
the head of his clergy: they embraced, as friends and equals; but in
their march to the altar, the king or patrician assumed the right
hand of the pope. Nor was the Frank content with these vain and empty
demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six years that elapsed between
the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation, Rome, which had
been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his own, to the sceptre of
Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance to his person and family:
in his name money was coined, and justice was administered; and the
election of the popes was examined and confirmed by his authority.
Except an original and self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not
any prerogative remaining, which the title of emperor could add to the
patrician of Rome.

The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these obligations,
and their names are consecrated, as the saviors and benefactors of the
Roman church. Her ancient patrimony of farms and houses was transformed
by their bounty into the temporal dominion of cities and provinces; and
the donation of the Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of
Pepin. Astolphus with a sigh relinquished his prey; the keys and
the hostages of the principal cities were delivered to the French
ambassador; and, in his master's name, he presented them before the tomb
of St. Peter. The ample measure of the Exarchate might comprise all the
provinces of Italy which had obeyed the emperor and his vicegerent;
but its strict and proper limits were included in the territories
of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara: its inseparable dependency was the
Pentapolis, which stretched along the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona,
and advanced into the midland-country as far as the ridges of the
Apennine. In this transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes
have been severely condemned. Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest
should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy for him
to govern without renouncing the virtues of his profession. Perhaps
a faithful subject, or even a generous enemy, would have been less
impatient to divide the spoils of the Barbarian; and if the emperor
had intrusted Stephen to solicit in his name the restitution of the
Exarchate, I will not absolve the pope from the reproach of treachery
and falsehood. But in the rigid interpretation of the laws, every one
may accept, without injury, whatever his benefactor can bestow without
injustice. The Greek emperor had abdicated, or forfeited, his right to
the Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger
sword of the Carlovingian. It was not in the cause of the Iconoclast
that Pepin has exposed his person and army in a double expedition beyond
the Alps: he possessed, and might lawfully alienate, his conquests:
and to the importunities of the Greeks he piously replied that no human
consideration should tempt him to resume the gift which he had conferred
on the Roman Pontiff for the remission of his sins, and the salvation
of his soul. The splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute
dominion, and the world beheld for the first time a Christian bishop
invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice of
magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes, and
the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of the Lombard
kingdom, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto sought a refuge
from the storm, shaved their heads after the Roman fashion, declared
themselves the servants and subjects of St. Peter, and completed, by
this voluntary surrender, the present circle of the ecclesiastical
state. That mysterious circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent,
by the verbal or written donation of Charlemagne, who, in the first
transports of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of
the cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the Exarchate.
But, in the cooler moments of absence and reflection, he viewed, with
an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness of his ecclesiastical
ally. The execution of his own and his father's promises was
respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks and Lombards asserted the
inalienable rights of the empire; and, in his life and death, Ravenna,
as well as Rome, was numbered in the list of his metropolitan cities.
The sovereignty of the Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes;
they found in the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic
rival: the nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest; and in the
disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an ancient
claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived and realized.

Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong, though
ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of sacerdotal
policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and manufacture,
which, according to the occasion, have produced or concealed a various
collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or suspicious, acts, as they
tended to promote the interest of the Roman church. Before the end
of the eighth century, some apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious
Isidore, composed the decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the
two magic pillars of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes.
This memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of
Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the liberality, and
revive the name, of the great Constantine. According to the legend, the
first of the Christian emperors was healed of the leprosy, and purified
in the waters of baptism, by St. Silvester, the Roman bishop; and never
was physician more gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew
from the seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of
founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes the free
and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the provinces of the West.
This fiction was productive of the most beneficial effects. The Greek
princes were convicted of the guilt of usurpation; and the revolt
of Gregory was the claim of his lawful inheritance. The popes were
delivered from their debt of gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the
Carlovingians were no more than the just and irrevocable restitution of
a scanty portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no
longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the successors of
St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the purple and prerogatives
of the CÊsars. So deep was the ignorance and credulity of the times,
that the most absurd of fables was received, with equal reverence, in
Greece and in France, and is still enrolled among the decrees of the
canon law. The emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning
a forgery, that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only
opposition proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the beginning of
the twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the donation of
Constantine. In the revival of letters and liberty, this fictitious deed
was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla, the pen of an eloquent
critic and a Roman patriot. His contemporaries of the fifteenth century
were astonished at his sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and
irresistible progress of reason, that, before the end of the next age,
the fable was rejected by the contempt of historians and poets, and the
tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the Roman church. The popes
themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar; but a
false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign; and, by the same
fortune which has attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the
edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.

While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the
images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the Eastern
empire. Under the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the union of civil and
ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree, without extirpating the
root, of superstition. The idols (for such they were now held) were
secretly cherished by the order and the sex most prone to devotion; and
the fond alliance of the monks and females obtained a final victory over
the reason and authority of man. Leo the Fourth maintained with less
rigor the religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair
and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the heirs of
the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their ancestors. During
the life of her husband, these sentiments were inflamed by danger and
dissimulation, and she could only labor to protect and promote some
favorite monks whom she drew from their caverns, and seated on the
metropolitan thrones of the East. But as soon as she reigned in her own
name and that of her son, Irene more seriously undertook the ruin of the
Iconoclasts; and the first step of her future persecution was a general
edict for liberty of conscience. In the restoration of the monks,
a thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; a thousand
legends were inverted of their sufferings and miracles. By the
opportunities of death or removal, the episcopal seats were judiciously
filled the most eager competitors for earthly or celestial favor
anticipated and flattered the judgment of their sovereign; and the
promotion of her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church. But the decrees
of a general council could only be repealed by a similar assembly: the
Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in possession, and averse to
debate; and the feeble voice of the bishops was reechoed by the more
formidable clamor of the soldiers and people of Constantinople. The
delay and intrigues of a year, the separation of the disaffected troops,
and the choice of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these
obstacles; and the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek
fashion, in the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were
allowed for the consummation of this important work: the Iconoclasts
appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents: the scene was
decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern patriarchs,
the decrees were framed by the president Taracius, and ratified by the
acclamations and subscriptions of three hundred and fifty bishops.
They unanimously pronounced, that the worship of images is agreeable
to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church: but
they hesitate whether that worship be relative or direct; whether the
Godhead, and the figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of
adoration. Of this second Nicene council the acts are still extant; a
curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly.
I shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative merit
of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce with the
dÊmon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to
a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult
the abbot. "Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother in
their holy images, it would be better for you," replied the casuist, "to
enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute, in the city." For the
honor of orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is
somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two councils
of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons. The second of
these assemblies was approved and rigorously executed by the despotism
of Irene, and she refused her adversaries the toleration which at first
she had granted to her friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a
period of thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated
rage and various success, between the worshippers and the breakers of
the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with minute diligence the
repetition of the same events. Nicephorus allowed a general liberty of
speech and practice; and the only virtue of his reign is accused by the
monks as the cause of his temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition
and weakness formed the character of Michael the First, but the saints
and images were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In
the purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an Armenian;
and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were condemned to a
second exile. Their applause would have sanctified the murder of an
impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor, the second Michael,
was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian heresies: he attempted to
mediate between the contending parties; and the intractable spirit
of the Catholics insensibly cast him into the opposite scale. His
moderation was guarded by timidity; but his son Theophilus, alike
ignorant of fear and pity, was the last and most cruel of the
Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the times ran strongly against them; and
the emperors who stemmed the torrent were exasperated and punished by
the public hatred. After the death of Theophilus, the final victory of
the images was achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he
left the guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive.
The fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of her
deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch was commuted
from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two hundred lashes: the
bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the festival of orthodoxy
preserves the annual memory of the triumph of the images. A single
question yet remained, whether they are endowed with any proper and
inherent sanctity; it was agitated by the Greeks of the eleventh
century; and as this opinion has the strongest recommendation of
absurdity, I am surprised that it was not more explicitly decided in the
affirmative. In the West, Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced
the decrees of the Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the
Catholics as the seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy
were docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of
the Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The
churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course
between the adoration and the destruction of images, which they admitted
into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and
useful memorials of faith and history. An angry book of controversy was
composed and published in the name of Charlemagne: under his authority
a synod of three hundred bishops was assembled at Frankfort: they blamed
the fury of the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure
against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their
pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of the
West. Among them the worship of images advanced with a silent and
insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for their hesitation
and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the
reformation, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are
still immersed in the gloom of superstition.




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part IV.

It was after the Nicene synod, and under the reign of the pious Irene,
that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and Italy, by the
translation of the empire to the less orthodox Charlemagne. They were
compelled to choose between the rival nations: religion was not the sole
motive of their choice; and while they dissembled the failings of
their friends, they beheld, with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic
virtues of their foes. The difference of language and manners had
perpetuated the enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from
each other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism
the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty: their
submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a jealous tyrant;
and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the impotence, as well as the
tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The Greek emperors had restored the
images, but they had not restored the Calabrian estates and the Illyrian
diocese, which the Iconoclasts had torn away from the successors of St.
Peter; and Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication
unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. The Greeks were
now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the breath of the
reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious; but a discerning
eye might discern their approaching conversion, from the use, to the
adoration, of images. The name of Charlemagne was stained by the polemic
acrimony of his scribes; but the conqueror himself conformed, with the
temper of a statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In
his four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes
in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb, and
consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined, without
scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman liturgy. Would
prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to renounce their benefactor?
Had they a right to alienate his gift of the Exarchate? Had they power
to abolish his government of Rome? The title of patrician was below
the merit and greatness of Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the
Western empire that they could pay their obligations or secure their
establishment. By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate
the claims of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the
majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be united,
under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and the conquerors of
the West would receive their crown from the successors of St. Peter.
The Roman church would acquire a zealous and respectable advocate; and,
under the shadow of the Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise,
with honor and safety, the government of the city.

Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a wealthy
bishopric had often been productive of tumult and bloodshed. The people
was less numerous, but the times were more savage, the prize more
important, and the chair of St. Peter was fiercely disputed by the
leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the rank of sovereign. The reign of
Adrian the First surpasses the measure of past or succeeding ages; the
walls of Rome, the sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the
friendship of Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly
edified the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space
the virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the next
election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was preferred to the
nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had promoted to the first
dignities of the church. Their acquiescence or repentance disguised,
above four years, the blackest intention of revenge, till the day of a
procession, when a furious band of conspirators dispersed the unarmed
multitude, and assaulted with blows and wounds the sacred person of
the pope. But their enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed,
perhaps by their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of blood,
he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event was improved
to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and tongue, of which he had
been deprived, twice deprived, by the knife of the assassins. From his
prison he escaped to the Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to
his rescue, Charlemagne sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of
Paderborn in Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and bishops,
the guards of his safety and the judges of his innocence; and it was not
without reluctance, that the conqueror of the Saxons delayed till the
ensuing year the personal discharge of this pious office. In his fourth
and last pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the crimes
imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the sacrilegious
attempt against his life was punished by the mild and insufficient
penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas, the last year of the
eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the church of St. Peter; and,
to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had exchanged the simple dress of his
country for the habit of a patrician. After the celebration of the holy
mysteries, Leo suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, and the
dome resounded with the acclamations of the people, "Long life and
victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the great
and pacific emperor of the Romans!" The head and body of Charlemagne
were consecrated by the royal unction: after the example of the CÊsars,
he was saluted or adored by the pontiff: his coronation oath represents
a promise to maintain the faith and privileges of the church; and
the first-fruits were paid in his rich offerings to the shrine of
his apostle. In his familiar conversation, the emperor protested the
ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by
his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the ceremony
must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of Charlemagne reveals
his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged that the Imperial
title was the object of his ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced,
that it was the only adequate reward of his merit and services.

The appellation of _great_ has been often bestowed, and sometimes
deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the title
has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the
addition of _saint_, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint,
by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians
and philosophers of an enlightened age. His _real_ merit is doubtless
enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he
emerged: but the _apparent_ magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged
by an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual
splendor from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice
to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness
of the restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity
is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not
be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various
indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his
bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and
licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected
of loving with too fond a passion. I shall be scarcely permitted to
accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution,
the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain,
and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same
spot, would have something to allege against the justice and humanity of
Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons was an abuse of the
right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and
in the discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry
must be imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his
incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were
not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they
believed him at the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace
nor war, nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy
cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the geography
of his expeditions. But this activity was a national, rather than a
personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a Frank was spent in the chase, in
pilgrimage, in military adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne
were distinguished only by a more numerous train and a more important
purpose. His military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his
troops, his enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms
of Philip, but the _two_ heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed him
their name, their examples, and the companions of their victories. At
the head of his veteran and superior armies, he oppressed the savage or
degenerate nations, who were incapable of confederating for their common
safety: nor did he ever encounter an equal antagonist in numbers, in
discipline, or in arms The science of war has been lost and revived with
the arts of peace; but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege
or battle of singular difficulty and success; and he might behold,
with envy, the Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish
expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the PyrenÊan mountains; and
the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable, and whose valor was
useless, might accuse, with their last breath, the want of skill
or caution of their general. I touch with reverence the laws of
Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a respectable judge. They compose
not a system, but a series, of occasional and minute edicts, for the
correction of abuses, the reformation of manners, the economy of his
farms, the care of his poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished
to improve the laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts,
however feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate
evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government; but
in his institutions I can seldom discover the general views and the
immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives himself for the benefit of
posterity. The union and stability of his empire depended on the life
of a single man: he imitated the dangerous practice of dividing his
kingdoms among his sons; and after his numerous diets, the whole
constitution was left to fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and
despotism. His esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted
him to intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil
jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and degraded
by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the imprudence of his
father. His laws enforced the imposition of tithes, because the dÊmons
had proclaimed in the air that the default of payment had been the cause
of the last scarcity. The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested
by the foundation of schools, the introduction of arts, the works
which were published in his name, and his familiar connection with the
subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate both the
prince and people. His own studies were tardy, laborious, and imperfect;
if he spoke Latin, and understood Greek, he derived the rudiments of
knowledge from conversation, rather than from books; and, in his mature
age, the emperor strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every
peasant now learns in his infancy. The grammar and logic, the music
and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the handmaids of
superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind must ultimately tend
to its improvement, and the encouragement of learning reflects the
purest and most pleasing lustre on the character of Charlemagne. The
dignity of his person, the length of his reign, the prosperity of his
arms, the vigor of his government, and the reverence of distant nations,
distinguish him from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new Êra from
his restoration of the Western empire.

That empire was not unworthy of its title; and some of the fairest
kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a prince, who
reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Hungary.
I. The Roman province of Gaul had been transformed into the name and
monarchy of France; but, in the decay of the Merovingian line, its
limits were contracted by the independence of the _Britons_ and the
revolt of _Aquitain_. Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons
on the shores of the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin
and language are so different from the French, was chastised by the
imposition of tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive
contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by the
forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives. Harsh and
rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious governors, who had
too faithfully copied the mayors of the palace. But a recent discovery
has proved that these unhappy princes were the last and lawful heirs of
the blood and sceptre of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of
Dagobert, of the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to
the duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at the
foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the beginning of
the sixteenth century; and after surviving their Carlovingian tyrants,
they were reserved to feel the injustice, or the favors, of a third
dynasty. By the reunion of Aquitain, France was enlarged to its present
boundaries, with the additions of the Netherlands and Spain, as far
as the Rhine. II. The Saracens had been expelled from France by the
grandfather and father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the
greatest part of Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees.
Amidst their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored
his protection in the diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the
expedition, restored the emir, and, without distinction of faith,
impartially crushed the resistance of the Christians, and rewarded the
obedience and services of the Mahometans. In his absence he instituted
the _Spanish march_, which extended from the Pyrenees to the River Ebro:
Barcelona was the residence of the French governor: he possessed the
counties of _Rousillon_ and _Catalonia_; and the infant kingdoms of
_Navarre_ and _Arragon_ were subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king
of the Lombards, and patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest
part of Italy, a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders
of Calabria. The duchy of _Beneventum_, a Lombard fief, had spread,
at the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But
Arrechis, the reigning duke, refused to be included in the slavery of
his country; assumed the independent title of prince; and opposed his
sword to the Carlovingian monarchy. His defence was firm, his submission
was not inglorious, and the emperor was content with an easy tribute,
the demolition of his fortresses, and the acknowledgment, on his coins,
of a supreme lord. The artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the
appellation of father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and
Benventum insensibly escaped from the French yoke. IV. Charlemagne
was the first who united Germany under the same sceptre. The name of
_Oriental France_ is preserved in the circle of _Franconia_; and the
people of _Hesse_ and _Thuringia_ were recently incorporated with the
victors, by the conformity of religion and government. The _Alemanni_,
so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals and confederates
of the Franks; and their country was inscribed within the modern limits
of _Alsace_, _Swabia_, and _Switzerland_. The _Bavarians_, with a
similar indulgence of their laws and manners, were less patient of a
master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo justified the abolition of
their hereditary dukes; and their power was shared among the counts, who
judged and guarded that important frontier. But the north of Germany,
from the Rhine and beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and Pagan; nor was
it till after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons bowed under
the yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their votaries were
extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of Munster, Osnaburgh,
Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim, and Halberstadt,
define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds of ancient Saxony these
episcopal seats were the first schools and cities of that savage land;
and the religion and humanity of the children atoned, in some degree,
for the massacre of the parents. Beyond the Elbe, the _Slavi_, or
Sclavonians, of similar manners and various denominations, overspread
the modern dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient
marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend the
empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or conversion
of those countries is of a more recent age; but the first union of
_Bohemia_ with the Germanic body may be justly ascribed to the arms of
Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the
same calamities which they had inflicted on the nations. Their rings,
the wooden fortifications which encircled their districts and villages,
were broken down by the triple effort of a French army, that was poured
into their country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains
and along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight
years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the slaughter
of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation submitted the
royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and unknown; and the
treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty years, enriched the
victorious troops, or decorated the churches of Italy and Gaul. After
the reduction of Pannonia, the empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by
the conflux of the Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces
of Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,
accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left the
maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the Greeks. But
these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power
of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to
reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship.
Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the
Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. Their execution
would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were often
wasted in the structure of a cathedral.




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part V.

If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will be seen
that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and west, from the
Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and south, from the duchy
of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the perpetual boundary of Germany
and Denmark. The personal and political importance of Charlemagne
was magnified by the distress and division of the rest of Europe. The
islands of Great Britain and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes
of Saxon or Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian
and Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered the
power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the honor and
support of his alliance, and styled him their common parent, the sole
and supreme emperor of the West. He maintained a more equal intercourse
with the caliph Harun al Rashid, whose dominion stretched from Africa
to India, and accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an
elephant, and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other's person, and language, and religion: but their public
correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote situation left no
room for a competition of interest. Two thirds of the Western empire of
Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and the deficiency was amply supplied
by his command of the inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But
in the choice of his enemies, we may be reasonably surprised that he
so often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the south.
The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the woods and
morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the amplitude of his
title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy and the Saracens from
Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would have insured an easy victory;
and the holy crusade against the Saracens would have been prompted by
glory and revenge, and loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps,
in his expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save
his monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies of
civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future emigrations.
But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of precaution, all
conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be universal, since the
increasing circle must be involved in a larger sphere of hostility. The
subjugation of Germany withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the
continent or islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and
awakened the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of
the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their brethren
of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered with their
piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh the destructive
progress of the Normans, who, in less than seventy years, precipitated
the fall of his race and monarchy.

Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution, the
titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne for
the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy, must have
ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But the association
of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the independent right of monarchy and
conquest, and the emperor seems on this occasion to have foreseen and
prevented the latent claims of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded
to take the crown from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on
his head, as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the
nation. The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in
the subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a lineal
descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes was reduced
to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these hereditary princes,
who were already invested with their power and dominions. The
pious Lewis survived his brothers, and embraced the whole empire
of Charlemagne; but the nations and the nobles, his bishops and his
children, quickly discerned that this mighty mass was no longer inspired
by the same soul; and the foundations were undermined to the centre,
while the external surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or
battle, which consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was
divided by treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial
and fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps, the
Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the Imperial dignity
of Lothaire. In the partition of his share, Lorraine and Arles, two
recent and transitory kingdoms, were bestowed on the younger children;
and Lewis the Second, his eldest son, was content with the realm of
Italy, the proper and sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his
death without any male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his
uncles and cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion
of judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing on
the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of advocate of
the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race no longer exhibited
any symptoms of virtue or power, and the ridiculous epithets of the
_bard_, the _stammerer_, the _fat_, and the _simple_, distinguished
the tame and uniform features of a crowd of kings alike deserving
of oblivion. By the failure of the collateral branches, the whole
inheritance devolved to Charles the Fat, the last emperor of his family:
his insanity authorized the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he
was deposed in a diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by
whose contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the
measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the lords,
usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some preference was
shown to the female or illegitimate blood of Charlemagne. Of the greater
part, the title and possession were alike doubtful, and the merit was
adequate to the contracted scale of their dominions. Those who could
appear with an army at the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in
the Vatican; but their modesty was more frequently satisfied with the
appellation of kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years
may be deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the
establishment of Otho the First.

Otho was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he truly
descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne,
the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their
conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage
of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits
were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the
Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of
the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood
and language it has been tinged since the time of CÊsar and Tacitus.
Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho
acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and
Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho,
the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder:
the marches of Brandenburgh and Sleswick were fortified with German
colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia,
confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious
army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of
Germany. From that memorable Êra, two maxims of public jurisprudence
were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. _That_ the prince, who
was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject
kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the
titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the
hands of the Roman pontiff.

The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the
alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek
emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation
of brother. Perhaps in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name
of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace
and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that
ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a
union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to
suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge
her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers
of the West. The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly
been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national
hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege
of ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and bad
neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia,
the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of
circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp,
on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound
their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at
least the pride, of the Byzantine palace. The Greeks were successively
led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to
fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he
informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of
the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were
repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the
chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the
doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the
genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which
he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious
chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two
empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right
of present possession. But the Greeks soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it was
extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully
saluted the _august_ Charlemagne, with the acclamations of _basileus_,
and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in
the person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed,
"To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and
Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis
the Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation
of rex or _rega_, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His
reply is expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning,
that, both in sacred and profane history, the name of king is synonymous
with the Greek word _basileus_: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed
in a more exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors,
and from the popes, a just participation of the honors of the Roman
purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos;
and their ambassador describes, in lively colors, the insolence of
the Byzantine court. The Greeks affected to despise the poverty and
ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline refused to
prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman emperors.

These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to exercise the
powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the
importance of this prerogative increased with the temporal estate
and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian
aristocracy, the principal members of the clergy still formed a senate
to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop.
Rome was divided into twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was
governed by a cardinal priest, or presbyter, a title which, however
common or modest in its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of
kings. Their number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons
of the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical senate
was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, who
were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia, Porto, VelitrÊ,
Tusculum, PrÊneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, than by their weekly service
in the Lateran, and their superior share in the honors and authority of
the apostolic see. On the death of the pope, these bishops recommended a
successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals, and their choice
was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman people.
But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally
consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously
signified his approbation and consent. The royal commissioner examined,
on the spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till
after a previous scrutiny into the qualifications of the candidates,
that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and confirmed the donations which
had successively enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent
schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor;
and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty
on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most
acceptable to his majesty: his successors anticipated or prevented their
choice: they bestowed the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne
or Bamberg, on their chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might
be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the
interposition of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most
speciously excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor
who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with
blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the
counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful
servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were
insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was
their indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical
patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince,
nor exercise the charity of a priest. The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and
beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of
their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign may
have suggested to the darker ages the fable of a female pope. The
bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare
genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age
of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion; and the
nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged
against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence of Otho the Great. As
John XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the
_soldier_ may not perhaps be dishonored by the wine which he drank,
the blood that he spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious
pursuits of gaming and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence
of distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it
be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise,
that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the
matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for
prostitution, and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the
female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout
act, they should be violated by his successor. The Protestants have
dwelt with malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to
a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than
their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was
reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. That
ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two projects. I.
To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of
election, and forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a
fief or benefice of the church, and to extend his temporal dominion over
the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years,
the first of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the
ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of their
chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial
and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular power,
and finally extinguished by the improvement of human reason.

In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor
the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces which were
lost, as they had been won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were
free to choose a master for themselves; and the powers which had been
delegated to the patrician, were irrevocably granted to the French and
Saxon emperors of the West. The broken records of the times preserve
some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their
edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth
century, was derived from CÊsar to the prÊfect of the city. Between the
arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy
was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor and
Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local
jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their ambition was diverted by
more alluring objects; and in the decay and division of the empire, they
were oppressed by the defence of their hereditary provinces. Amidst the
ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume
the character of her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was
introduced by her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St.
Angelo, which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her
son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was chastised
with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive of a revolution.
"Romans," exclaimed the youth, "once you were the masters of the world,
and these Burgundians the most abject of your slaves. They now reign,
these voracious and brutal savages, and my injury is the commencement
of your servitude." The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of
the city: the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI., was
reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the title of
prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the government of Rome;
and he is said to have gratified the popular prejudice, by restoring the
office, or at least the title, of consuls and tribunes. His son and heir
Octavian assumed, with the pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his
predecessor, he was provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer
for the church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded
with the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans were
impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by the secret
conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho commanded his sword-bearer
not to stir from his person, lest he should be assaulted and murdered
at the foot of the altar. Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor
chastised the revolt of the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The
pope was degraded in a synod; the prÊfect was mounted on an ass, whipped
through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty
were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process
was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. The voice
of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act, the
massacre of the senators, whom he had invited to his table under the
fair semblance of hospitality and friendship. In the minority of his son
Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke,
and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the
condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command of
the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a
conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. In
the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an obstinate siege, till the
unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety: his body was
suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of
the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops,
was besieged three days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful
escape saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator
Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a poison
which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the design of Otho
the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the North, to erect his
throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy.
But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of
the Tyber, to receive their crown in the Vatican. Their absence was
contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended
from the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult
and bloodshed. A faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented
the Romans; and they beheld with pious indignation the succession of
Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and Bohemians, who usurped the purple and
prerogatives of the CÊsars.




Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part VI.

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold
in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to
their inclination and interest. A torrent of Barbarians may pass over
the earth, but an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system
of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in
action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the
extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion;
a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined
army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
different was the situation of the German CÊsars, who were ambitious to
enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial estates were stretched
along the Rhine, or scattered in the provinces; but this ample domain
was alienated by the imprudence or distress of successive princes;
and their revenue, from minute and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely
sufficient for the maintenance of their household. Their troops were
formed by the legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who
passed the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the campaign.
Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential influence of the
climate: the survivors brought back the bones of their princes and
nobles, and the effects of their own intemperance were often imputed to
the treachery and malice of the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the
calamities of the Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on
equal terms with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or
the reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the flame of
industry and freedom; and the generous example was at length imitated by
the republics of Tuscany. In the Italian cities a municipal government
had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were
granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of
erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles.
But their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and
pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising
communities. Each city filled the measure of her diocese or district:
the jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and counts,
was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were persuaded or
compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to embrace the more
honorable character of freemen and magistrates. The legislative
authority was inherent in the general assembly; but the executive powers
were intrusted to three consuls, annually chosen from the three orders
of _captains_, _valvassors_, and commons, into which the republic was
divided. Under the protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture
and commerce were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the
Lombards was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the
bell was rung, or the standard erected, the gates of the city poured
forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their own cause was
soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At the foot of these
popular ramparts, the pride of the CÊsars was overthrown; and the
invincible genius of liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the
greatest princes of the middle age; the first, superior perhaps in
military prowess; the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer
accomplishments of peace and learning.

Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the First
invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a statesman, the
valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant. The recent discovery of
the Pandects had renewed a science most favorable to despotism; and his
venal advocates proclaimed the emperor the absolute master of the lives
and properties of his subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious
sense, were acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue
of Italy was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, which were
multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal officers.
The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the force of his
arms: his captives were delivered to the executioner, or shot from
his military engines; and after the siege and surrender of Milan,
the buildings of that stately capital were razed to the ground, three
hundred hostages were sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were
dispersed in four villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror.
But Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of oppression
was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of Constance, Frederic
subscribed, with some reservations, the freedom of four-and-twenty
cities. His grandson contended with their vigor and maturity; but
Frederic the Second was endowed with some personal and peculiar
advantages. His birth and education recommended him to the Italians;
and in the implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were
attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of
liberty and the church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father
Henry the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son derived an
ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet Frederic the Second
was finally oppressed by the arms of the Lombards and the thunders of
the Vatican: his kingdom was given to a stranger, and the last of his
family was beheaded at Naples on a public scaffold. During sixty years,
no emperor appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by the
ignominious sale of the last relics of sovereignty.

The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate their
chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their design to invest
him with the despotism of Constantine and Justinian. The persons of the
Germans were free, their conquests were their own, and their
national character was animated by a spirit which scorned the servile
jurisprudence of the new or the ancient Rome. It would have been a vain
and dangerous attempt to impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who
were impatient of a magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the
powerful, who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the counts of
the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches or frontiers,
who all united the civil and military authority as it had been delegated
to the lieutenants of the first CÊsars. The Roman governors, who,
for the most part, were soldiers of fortune, seduced their mercenary
legions, assumed the Imperial purple, and either failed or succeeded in
their revolt, without wounding the power and unity of government. If the
dukes, margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in
their claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,
they silently labored to establish and appropriate their provincial
independence. Their ambition was seconded by the weight of their estates
and vassals, their mutual example and support, the common interest
of the subordinate nobility, the change of princes and families, the
minorities of Otho the Third and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the
popes, and the vain pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome.
All the attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace and war,
of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign alliance and
domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by violence, was ratified
by favor or distress, was granted as the price of a doubtful vote or a
voluntary service; whatever had been granted to one could not, without
injury, be denied to his successor or equal; and every act of local or
temporary possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the duke or
count was interposed between the throne and the nobles; the subjects of
the law became the vassals of a private chief; and the standard which
_he_ received from his sovereign, was often raised against him in the
field. The temporal power of the clergy was cherished and exalted by
the superstition or policy of the Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who
blindly depended on their moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of
Germany were made equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and
population, to the most ample states of the military order. As long
as the emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy
these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was maintained
by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and favorites. But in the
quarrel of the investitures, they were deprived of their influence over
the episcopal chapters; the freedom of election was restored, and the
sovereign was reduced, by a solemn mockery, to his _first prayers_, the
recommendation, once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church.
The secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a
superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers. In the
first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to the duchy
or county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it was gradually
obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the lineal succession was
often extended to the collateral or female branches; the states of the
empire (their popular, and at length their legal, appellation) were
divided and alienated by testament and sale; and all idea of a public
trust was lost in that of a private and perpetual inheritance. The
emperor could not even be enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and
extinction: within the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the
vacant fief; and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to
consult either the general or the provincial diet.

After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a monster with
a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates disputed the ruins of
the empire: the lords of innumerable castles were less prone to obey,
than to imitate, their superiors; and, according to the measure of their
strength, their incessant hostilities received the names of conquest
or robbery. Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were shivered
into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But the Italian
cities and the French vassals were divided and destroyed, while the
union of the Germans has produced, under the name of an empire, a
great system of a federative republic. In the frequent and at last the
perpetual institution of diets, a national spirit was kept alive, and
the powers of a common legislature are still exercised by the three
branches or colleges of the electors, the princes, and the free and
Imperial cities of Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories
were permitted to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the
exclusive privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors
were the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three archbishops
of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college of princes and
prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous multitude: they reduced to
four representative votes the long series of independent counts, and
excluded the nobles or equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in
the Polish diets, had appeared on horseback in the field of election.
III. The pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and, in the
progress of society, they were introduced about the same Êra into the
national assemblies of France England, and Germany. The Hanseatic League
commanded the trade and navigation of the north: the confederates of
the Rhine secured the peace and intercourse of the inland country; the
influence of the cities has been adequate to their wealth and policy,
and their negative still invalidates the acts of the two superior
colleges of electors and princes.

It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest light
the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany, which no longer
held, except on the borders of the Rhine and Danube, a single province
of Trajan or Constantine. Their unworthy successors were the counts of
Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor
Henry the Seventh procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and
his grandson Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and
barbarous in the estimation of the Germans themselves. After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or promise
of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the exile and
captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the earth. The death
of his competitors united the electoral college, and Charles was
unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and future emperor; a title
which, in the same age, was prostituted to the CÊsars of Germany and
Greece. The German emperor was no more than the elective and impotent
magistrate of an aristocracy of princes, who had not left him a village
that he might call his own. His best prerogative was the right of
presiding and proposing in the national senate, which was convened at
his summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and the
richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed the Alps
consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of St. Ambrose,
Charles was crowned with the _iron_ crown, which tradition ascribed to
the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted only with a peaceful train;
the gates of the city were shut upon him; and the king of Italy was
held a captive by the arms of the Visconti, whom he confirmed in the
sovereignty of Milan. In the Vatican he was again crowned with the
_golden_ crown of the empire; but, in obedience to a secret treaty,
the Roman emperor immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night
within the walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, whose fancy revived the
visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the ignominious
flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries could observe,
that the sole exercise of his authority was in the lucrative sale of
privileges and titles. The gold of Italy secured the election of his
son; but such was the shameful poverty of the Roman emperor, that
his person was arrested by a butcher in the streets of Worms, and was
detained in the public inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of
his expenses.

From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty of the
same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull, which fixes
the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the style of a sovereign
and legislator. A hundred princes bowed before his throne, and exalted
their own dignity by the voluntary honors which they yielded to their
chief or minister. At the royal banquet, the hereditary great officers,
the seven electors, who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed
their solemn and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne, and
Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and Arles.
The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function with a silver
measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground, and immediately
dismounted to regulate the order of the guests The great steward, the
count palatine of the Rhine, place the dishes on the table. The great
chamberlain, the margrave of Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast,
the golden ewer and basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great
cup-bearer, was represented by the emperor's brother, the duke of
Luxemburgh and Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great
huntsmen, who introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns
and hounds. Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to Germany
alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the preÎminence of
his rank and dignity: he was the first of the Christian princes, the
temporal head of the great republic of the West: to his person the title
of majesty was long appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the
sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The
oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of
Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine, that the
Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth, from the rising
to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error,
but as a heresy, since even the gospel had pronounced, "And there went
forth a decree from CÊsar Augustus, that _all the world_ should be
taxed."

If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus and
Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the two
CÊsars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the mask of
ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength under the
semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious legions, in his
reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and Euphrates to the Atlantic
Ocean, Augustus professed himself the servant of the state and the equal
of his fellow-citizens. The conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed
a popular and legal form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will
was the law of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed
the voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their
master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to administer the
republic. In his dress, his domestics, his titles, in all the offices of
social life, Augustus maintained the character of a private Roman; and
his most artful flatterers respected the secret of his absolute and
perpetual monarchy.




Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part I.

     Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Birth,
     Character, And Doctrine Of Mahomet.--He Preaches At Mecca.--
     Flies To Medina.--Propagates His Religion By The Sword.--
     Voluntary Or Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.--His Death
     And Successors.--The Claims And Fortunes Of All And His
     Descendants.

After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting CÊsars of
Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of Heraclius, on
the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While the state was exhausted
by the Persian war, and the church was distracted by the Nestorian and
Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in
the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome.
The genius of the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the
spirit of his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of
the Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the most
memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and lasting character
on the nations of the globe.

In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and ∆thiopia, the
Arabian peninsula may be conceived as a triangle of spacious but
irregular dimensions. From the northern point of Beles on the Euphrates,
a line of fifteen hundred miles is terminated by the Straits of
Bebelmandel and the land of frankincense. About half this length may be
allowed for the middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez,
from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. The sides of the triangle are
gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a
thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the peninsula
exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or France; but the
far greater part has been justly stigmatized with the epithets of the
_stony_ and the _sandy_. Even the wilds of Tartary are decked, by the
hand of nature, with lofty trees and luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome
traveller derives a sort of comfort and society from the presence of
vegetable life. But in the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of
sand is intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and intense
rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes, the winds,
particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious and even deadly
vapor; the hillocks of sand which they alternately raise and scatter,
are compared to the billows of the ocean, and whole caravans, whole
armies, have been lost and buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits
of water are an object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity
of wood, that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the
element of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which
fertilize the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the
torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty earth: the
rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia, that strike their
roots into the clefts of the rocks, are nourished by the dews of the
night: a scanty supply of rain is collected in cisterns and aqueducts:
the wells and springs are the secret treasure of the desert; and the
pilgrim of Mecca, after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by
the taste of the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt.
Such is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia.
The experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh water, are
sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to the fortunate spots
which can afford food and refreshment to themselves and their cattle,
and which encourage their industry in the cultivation of the palmtree
and the vine. The high lands that border on the Indian Ocean are
distinguished by their superior plenty of wood and water; the air is
more temperate, the fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human
race more numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the
toil of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense and
coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the world. If
it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this sequestered region
may truly deserve the appellation of the _happy_; and the splendid
coloring of fancy and fiction has been suggested by contrast, and
countenanced by distance. It was for this earthly paradise that Nature
had reserved her choicest favors and her most curious workmanship: the
incompatible blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the
natives: the soil was impregnated with gold and gems, and both the
land and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This
division of the _sandy_, the _stony_, and the _happy_, so familiar to
the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and it
is singular enough, that a country, whose language and inhabitants have
ever been the same, should scarcely retain a vestige of its ancient
geography. The maritime districts of _Bahrein_ and _Oman_ are opposite
to the realm of Persia. The kingdom of _Yemen_ displays the limits, or
at least the situation, of Arabia Felix: the name of _Neged_ is extended
over the inland space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the
province of _Hejaz_ along the coast of the Red Sea.

The measure of population is regulated by the means of subsistence;
and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be outnumbered by the
subjects of a fertile and industrious province. Along the shores of the
Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and even of the Red Sea, the _Icthyophagi_,
or fish eaters, continued to wander in quest of their precarious food.
In this primitive and abject state, which ill deserves the name of
society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or
language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Generations and ages might roll away in silent oblivion, and the
helpless savage was restrained from multiplying his race by the wants
and pursuits which confined his existence to the narrow margin of the
seacoast. But in an early period of antiquity the great body of the
Arabs had emerged from this scene of misery; and as the naked wilderness
could not maintain a people of hunters, they rose at once to the more
secure and plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life
is uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
portrait of the modern _Bedoweens_, we may trace the features of their
ancestors, who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt under similar
tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and sheep, to the same
springs and the same pastures. Our toil is lessened, and our wealth
is increased, by our dominion over the useful animals; and the Arabian
shepherd had acquired the absolute possession of a faithful friend and
a laborious slave. Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is
the genuine and original country of the _horse_; the climate most
propitious, not indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness,
of that generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the
English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: the Bedoweens
preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the memory of the
purest race: the males are sold at a high price, but the females are
seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble foal was esteemed among the
tribes, as a subject of joy and mutual congratulation. These horses are
educated in the tents, among the children of the Arabs, with a
tender familiarity, which trains them in the habits of gentleness
and attachment. They are accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their
sensations are not blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the
whip: their powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit:
but no sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their friend
be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop till he has
recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and Arabia, the _camel_ is
a sacred and precious gift. That strong and patient beast of burden can
perform, without eating or drinking, a journey of several days; and a
reservoir of fresh water is preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach
of the animal, whose body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the
larger breed is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds;
and the dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of the
camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and nutritious:
the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: a valuable salt is
extracted from the urine: the dung supplies the deficiency of fuel;
and the long hair, which falls each year and is renewed, is coarsely
manufactured into the garments, the furniture, and the tents of the
Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons, they consume the rare and insufficient
herbage of the desert: during the heats of summer and the scarcity of
winter, they remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of
Yemen, or the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the villages
of Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is a life of
danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or exchange, he may
appropriate the fruits of industry, a private citizen in Europe is in
the possession of more solid and pleasing luxury than the proudest emir,
who marches in the field at the head of ten thousand horse.

Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of Scythia
and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were collected into
towns, and employed in the labors of trade and agriculture. A part of
their time and industry was still devoted to the management of their
cattle: they mingled, in peace and war, with their brethren of the
desert; and the Bedoweens derived from their useful intercourse some
supply of their wants, and some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among
the forty-two cities of Arabia, enumerated by Abulfeda, the most ancient
and populous were situate in the _happy_ Yemen: the towers of Saana, and
the marvellous reservoir of Merab, were constructed by the kings of
the Homerites; but their profane lustre was eclipsed by the prophetic
glories of Medina and Mecca, near the Red Sea, and at the distance from
each other of two hundred and seventy miles. The last of these holy
places was known to the Greeks under the name of Macoraba; and the
termination of the word is expressive of its greatness, which has
not, indeed, in the most flourishing period, exceeded the size and
populousness of Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition,
must have impelled the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising
situation. They erected their habitations of mud or stone, in a plain
about two miles long and one mile broad, at the foot of three barren
mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of the holy well of Zemzem
is bitter or brackish; the pastures are remote from the city; and grapes
are transported above seventy miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame
and spirit of the Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous
among the Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labors
of agriculture, and their position was favorable to the enterprises of
trade. By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance only of forty miles,
they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and that
Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples of Mahomet.
The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the Peninsula to Gerrha
or Katif, in the province of Bahrein, a city built, as it is said,
of rock-salt, by the ChaldÊan exiles; and from thence with the native
pearls of the Persian Gulf, they were floated on rafts to the mouth of
the Euphrates. Mecca is placed almost at an equal distance, a month's
journey, between Yemen on the right, and Syria on the left hand. The
former was the winter, the latter the summer, station of her caravans;
and their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the
tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets of
Saana and Merab, in the harbors of Oman and Aden, the camels of the
Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics; a supply of
corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of Bostra and Damascus;
the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and riches in the streets of
Mecca; and the noblest of her sons united the love of arms with the
profession of merchandise.

The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of praise
among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy transform this
singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in favor of the posterity
of Ismael. Some exceptions, that can neither be dismissed nor eluded,
render this mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is superfluous; the
kingdom of Yemen has been successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the
Persians, the sultans of Egypt, and the Turks; the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the Roman
province of Arabia embraced the peculiar wilderness in which Ismael and
his sons must have pitched their tents in the face of their brethren.
Yet these exceptions are temporary or local; the body of the nation has
escaped the yoke of the most powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris
and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of
Arabia; the present sovereign of the Turks may exercise a shadow of
jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship of a
people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to attack. The
obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the character and
country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, their intrepid valor had
been severely felt by their neighbors in offensive and defensive war.
The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in
the habits and discipline of a pastoral life. The care of the sheep and
camels is abandoned to the women of the tribe; but the martial youth,
under the banner of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to
practise the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long
memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its perpetuity
and succeeding generations are animated to prove their descent, and to
maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds are suspended on the
approach of a common enemy; and in their last hostilities against the
Turks, the caravan of Mecca was attacked and pillaged by fourscore
thousand of the confederates. When they advance to battle, the hope of
victory is in the front; in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their
horses and camels, who, in eight or ten days, can perform a march of
four or five hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret
waters of the desert elude his search, and his victorious troops
are consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an
invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the heart
of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the Bedoweens are not
only the safeguards of their own freedom, but the barriers also of the
happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote from war, are enervated by the
luxury of the soil and climate. The legions of Augustus melted away
in disease and lassitude; and it is only by a naval power that the
reduction of Yemen has been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected
his holy standard, that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire;
yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the mountains; and
the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget his distant country and
his unfortunate master. The historians of the age of Justinian represent
the state of the independent Arabs, who were divided by interest or
affection in the long quarrel of the East: the tribe of _Gassan_ was
allowed to encamp on the Syrian territory: the princes of _Hira_ were
permitted to form a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins
of Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but
their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity
capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these roving
barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they learned to
see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of Rome and of Persia.
From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian tribes were confounded by the
Greeks and Latins, under the general appellation of Saracens, a name
which every Christian mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and
abhorrence.




Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part II.

The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in some
degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the prerogatives
of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or gratitude, or fortune,
has exalted a particular family above the heads of their equals. The
dignities of sheick and emir invariably descend in this chosen race; but
the order of succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or
aged of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though important,
office of composing disputes by their advice, and guiding valor by their
example. Even a female of sense and spirit has been permitted to command
the countrymen of Zenobia. The momentary junction of several tribes
produces an army: their more lasting union constitutes a nation; and
the supreme chief, the emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their
head, may deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly
name. If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly
punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been accustomed to
a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is free, their steps are
unconfined, the desert is open, and the tribes and families are held
together by a mutual and voluntary compact. The softer natives of Yemen
supported the pomp and majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave
his palace without endangering his life, the active powers of government
must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The cities of
Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or rather the
substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of Mahomet, and his lineal
ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic transactions as the princes of
their country; but they reigned, like Pericles at Athens, or the
Medici at Florence, by the opinion of their wisdom and integrity;
their influence was divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was
transferred from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the
tribe of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of
the people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded to
obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient Arabs is the
clearest evidence of public freedom. But their simple freedom was of a
very different cast from the nice and artificial machinery of the Greek
and Roman republics, in which each member possessed an undivided share
of the civil and political rights of the community. In the more simple
state of the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons
disdains a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is
fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and sobriety; the
love of independence prompts him to exercise the habits of self-command;
and the fear of dishonor guards him from the meaner apprehension of
pain, of danger, and of death. The gravity and firmness of the mind is
conspicuous in his outward demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and
concise; he is seldom provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of
stroking his beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of
his own importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and
his superiors without awe. The liberty of the Saracens survived their
conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and familiar language
of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to persuade and edify the
congregation; nor was it before the seat of empire was removed to the
Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted the proud and pompous ceremonial of
the Persian and Byzantine courts.

In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that render
them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to narrow or enlarge,
to mollify or exasperate, the social character. The separation of the
Arabs from the rest of mankind has accustomed them to confound the ideas
of stranger and enemy; and the poverty of the land has introduced a
maxim of jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich and
fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the human
family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might recover, by
fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which he had been unjustly
deprived. According to the remark of Pliny, the Arabian tribes are
equally addicted to theft and merchandise; the caravans that traverse
the desert are ransomed or pillaged; and their neighbors, since the
remote times of Job and Sesostris, have been the victims of their
rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween discovers from afar a solitary
traveller, he rides furiously against him, crying, with a loud voice,
"Undress thyself, thy aunt (_my wife_) is without a garment." A ready
submission entitles him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor,
and his own blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in
legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are branded
with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous band assume the
character of lawful and honorable war. The temper of a people thus armed
against mankind was doubly inflamed by the domestic license of rapine,
murder, and revenge. In the constitution of Europe, the right of peace
and war is now confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much
smaller, list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity
and renown, might point his javelin against the life of his countrymen.
The union of the nation consisted only in a vague resemblance of
language and manners; and in each community, the jurisdiction of
the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time of ignorance which
preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles are recorded by tradition:
hostility was imbittered with the rancor of civil faction; and the
recital, in prose or verse, of an obsolete feud, was sufficient to
rekindle the same passions among the descendants of the hostile tribes.
In private life every man, at least every family, was the judge and
avenger of his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs
the insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their _beards_,
is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a contemptuous word, can be
expiated only by the blood of the offender; and such is their patient
inveteracy, that they expect whole months and years the opportunity of
revenge. A fine or compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians
of every age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law of
retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the head
of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty person, and
transfers the penalty to the best and most considerable of the race
by whom they have been injured. If he falls by their hands, they are
exposed, in their turn, to the danger of reprisals, the interest and
principal of the bloody debt are accumulated: the individuals of
either family lead a life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may
sometimes elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled.
This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in every
private encounter some decent equality of age and strength, of numbers
and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of four, months, was
observed by the Arabs before the time of Mahomet, during which their
swords were religiously sheathed both in foreign and domestic hostility;
and this partial truce is more strongly expressive of the habits of
anarchy and warfare.

But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is encompassed
by the most civilized nations of the ancient world; the merchant is the
friend of mankind; and the annual caravans imported the first seeds
of knowledge and politeness into the cities, and even the camps of the
desert. Whatever may be the pedigree of the Arabs, their language is
derived from the same original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and
the ChaldÊan tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects; but each, after their own, allowed a just preference
to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia, as well as
in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement of
manners; and her speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand
of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to
the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites
were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic
letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the
banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by
a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the freeborn
eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was sharp, their fancy
luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious, and their more elaborate
compositions were addressed with energy and effect to the minds of their
hearers. The genius and merit of a rising poet was celebrated by
the applause of his own and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was
prepared, and a chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying
the pomp of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and
husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had now
appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised his voice
to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile tribes resorted
to an annual fair, which was abolished by the fanaticism of the first
Moslems; a national assembly that must have contributed to refine and
harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty days were employed in the exchange,
not only of corn and wine, but of eloquence and poetry. The prize
was disputed by the generous emulation of the bards; the victorious
performance was deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and
we may read in our own language, the seven original poems which were
inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of Mecca. The
Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age; and if they
sympathized with the prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues,
of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valor was
the darling theme of their song; and when they pointed their keenest
satire against a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of
reproach, that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny.
The same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated
by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The ferocious
Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or
hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honor and to
enter their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful: he shares the
wealth, or the poverty, of his host; and, after a needful repose, he
is dismissed on his way, with thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with
gifts. The heart and hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a
brother or a friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public
applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion and
experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of Mecca, was
entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive application was
made to the three who were deemed most worthy of the trial. Abdallah,
the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant journey, and his foot was in
the stirrup when he heard the voice of a suppliant, "O son of the uncle
of the apostle of God, I am a traveller, and in distress!" He instantly
dismounted to present the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison,
and a purse of four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword,
either for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman.
The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master was
asleep: but he immediately added, "Here is a purse of seven thousand
pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and here is an order,
that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;" the master, as soon as
he awoke, praised and enfranchised his faithful steward, with a gentle
reproof, that by respecting his slumbers he had stinted his bounty.
The third of these heroes, the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was
supporting his steps on the shoulders of two slaves. "Alas!" he replied,
"my coffers are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce
them." At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along the wall
with his staff. The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian
virtue: he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at the
prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the
spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice; they
proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence.

The religion of the Arabs, as well as of the Indians, consisted in
the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a primitive and
specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sky display
the visible image of a Deity: their number and distance convey to a
philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye, the idea of boundless space:
the character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem
incapable of corruption or decay: the regularity of their motions may
be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or
imaginary, influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and
its inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of
astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs was
a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they
steered by the guidance of the stars: their names, and order, and daily
station, were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween;
and he was taught by experience to divide, in twenty-eight parts, the
zodiac of the moon, and to bless the constellations who refreshed, with
salutary rains, the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs
could not be extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical
powers were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the
resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he
might serve his master in another life; and the invocation of departed
spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and
power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the
Barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth,
of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe,
each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and
the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has
bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine
antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the Christian Êra; in describing
the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus has remarked,
between the Thamudites and the SabÊans, a famous temple, whose superior
sanctity was revered by _all_ the Arabians; the linen or silken veil,
which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a
pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the
time of Mahomet. A tent, or a cavern, might suffice for the worship of
the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its
place; and the art and power of the monarchs of the East have been
confined to the simplicity of the original model. A spacious portico
encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba; a square chapel, twenty-four
cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high: a door and a
window admit the light; the double roof is supported by three pillars
of wood; a spout (now of gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well
Zemzen is protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of
Koreish, by fraud and force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba:
the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal descents to the
grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence
he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their
country. The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in
the last month of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with
a long train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the
house of God. The same rites which are now accomplished by the faithful
Mussulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the
idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments: seven
times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black
stone: seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven
times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was
achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels,
and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each
tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship:
the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols
of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the
statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.
But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the devotion of the ruder
ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert
were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone of Mecca,
which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From
Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the
votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming,
in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts.
The life of a man is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public
calamity: the altars of Phnicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have
been polluted with human gore: the cruel practice was long preserved
among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by
the tribe of the Dumatians; and a royal captive was piously slaughtered
by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most
painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention,
was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of
Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the
equivalent of a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs,
like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh;
they circumcised their children at the age of puberty: the same customs,
without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently
transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously
conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices
of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the
habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice
congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient
on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.




Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part III.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of
conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land
where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they
professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and
Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In
a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by
the science of the ChaldÊans and the arms of the Assyrians. From the
observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of
Babylon deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored
the seven gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets,
and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes
of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the
twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were
represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were
dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice
each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their
pilgrimage. But the flexible genius of their faith was always ready
either to teach or to learn: in the tradition of the creation, the
deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their
Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last
remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the
territory of Bassora. The altars of Babylon were overturned by the
Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were revenged by the sword of
Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke;
and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of
idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert.
Seven hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy Land
in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to
liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the cities, and castles
in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts were confounded with
the children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark of
circumcision. The Christian missionaries were still more active and
successful: the Catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects
whom they oppressed, successively retired beyond the limits of the
Roman empire; the Marcionites and ManichÊans dispersed their _fantastic_
opinions and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes
of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite and
Nestorian bishops. The liberty of choice was presented to the tribes:
each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private religion: and the
rude superstition of his house was mingled with the sublime theology of
saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of faith was inculcated
by the consent of the learned strangers; the existence of one supreme
God who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who has
often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and
prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs
acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; and it was
habit rather than conviction that still attached them to the relics of
idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people of the _Book_; the
Bible was already translated into the Arabic language, and the volume
of the Old Testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable
enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased
to discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth and
promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his
pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed,
with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams and
traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny of the
Christians, who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their adversary.
His descent from Ismael was a national privilege or fable; but if the
first steps of the pedigree are dark and doubtful, he could produce many
generations of pure and genuine nobility: he sprung from the tribe of
Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs,
the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The
grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy
and generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with the
supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality of the
father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen was
subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was
provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy
city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A
treaty was proposed; and, in the first audience, the grandfather of
Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. "And why," said Abrahah,
"do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I
have threatened to destroy?" "Because," replied the intrepid chief, "the
cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and _they_ will defend
their house from injury and sacrilege." The want of provisions, or
the valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful
retreat: their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight
of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the
deliverance was long commemorated by the Êra of the elephant. The glory
of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness; his life was
prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years; and he became the
father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah
was the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first
night, when he consummated his marriage with Amina, of the noble race of
the Zahrites, two hundred virgins are said to have expired of jealousy
and despair. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of
Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, four years after the death of
Justinian, and two months after the defeat of the Abyssinians, whose
victory would have introduced into the Caaba the religion of the
Christians. In his early infancy, he was deprived of his father, his
mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and,
in the division of the inheritance, the orphan's share was reduced to
five camels and an ∆thiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace
and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide
and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year, he entered into the
service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded
his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage
contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual love of
Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe
of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty
camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. By this
alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his
ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his domestic
virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, he assumed the title of
a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.

According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished
by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised,
except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator
engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They
applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing
eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that
painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced
each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he
scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his
country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified
by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca:
the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views; and
the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal
benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive; his wit easy
and social; his imagination sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and
decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and,
although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first
idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an
original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the
bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia;
and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice
of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence,
Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his youth had never been instructed
in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted
him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of
existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our
mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man
was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political
and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian
_traveller_. He compares the nations and the regions of the earth;
discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds,
with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves
to unite under one God and one king the invincible spirit and primitive
virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest, that,
instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the
two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra
and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied
the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as
soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty
and superficial excursions, the eye of genius might discern some objects
invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be
cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language
must have checked his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life
or writings of Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the
limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world,
the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of devotion
and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in
his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the
tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some
useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of
hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian,
and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the
composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but
solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes
the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was
addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of
Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from the arms of Cadijah: in
the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of
fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind
of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of _Islam_, he preached
to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a
necessary fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the
apostle of God.

It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned nations
of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism, their simple
ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and worship of the true
God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not easily be reconciled with
the standard of _human_ virtue: his metaphysical qualities are darkly
expressed; but each page of the Pentateuch and the Prophets is an
evidence of his power: the unity of his name is inscribed on the first
table of the law; and his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible
image of the invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the
faith of the Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the
spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet will
not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of Mecca or Medina
adored Ezra as the son of God. But the children of Israel had ceased to
be a people; and the religions of the world were guilty, at least in the
eyes of the prophet, of giving sons, or daughters, or companions, to the
supreme God. In the rude idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest
and audacious: the Sabians are poorly excused by the preÎminence of the
first planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy; and in
the Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the
imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh century
had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism: their public and
private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the
temples of the East: the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud
of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration;
and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of
Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess.
The mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation _appear_ to contradict the
principle of the divine unity. In their obvious sense, they introduce
three equal deities, and transform the man Jesus into the substance of
the Son of God: an orthodox commentary will satisfy only a believing
mind: intemperate curiosity and zeal had torn the veil of the sanctuary;
and each of the Oriental sects was eager to confess that all, except
themselves, deserved the reproach of idolatry and polytheism. The creed
of Mahomet is free from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a
glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected
the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational
principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die,
that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish. In the Author of the
universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an infinite
and eternal being, without form or place, without issue or similitude,
present to our most secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of
his own nature, and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual
perfection. These sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the
prophet, are firmly held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical
precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic theist might
subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans; a creed too sublime,
perhaps, for our present faculties. What object remains for the fancy,
or even the understanding, when we have abstracted from the unknown
substance all ideas of time and space, of motion and matter, of
sensation and reflection? The first principle of reason and revolution
was confirmed by the voice of Mahomet: his proselytes, from India to
Morocco, are distinguished by the name of _Unitarians_; and the danger
of idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The
doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is strictly
embraced by the Mahometans; and they struggle, with the common
difficulties, _how_ to reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom
and responsibility of man; _how_ to explain the permission of evil under
the reign of infinite power and infinite goodness.

The God of nature has written his existence on all his works, and his
law in the heart of man. To restore the knowledge of the one, and
the practice of the other, has been the real or pretended aim of
the prophets of every age: the liberality of Mahomet allowed to his
predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself; and the chain
of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam to the promulgation
of the Koran. During that period, some rays of prophetic light had
been imparted to one hundred and twenty-four thousand of the elect,
discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace; three
hundred and thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission
to recall their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four
volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six legislators of
transcendent brightness have announced to mankind the six successive
revelations of various rites, but of one immutable religion. The
authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and
Mahomet, rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever hates
or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. The
writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of
the Greeks and Syrians: the conduct of Adam had not entitled him to the
gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts of Noah were
observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the proselytes of the
synagogue; and the memory of Abraham was obscurely revered by the
Sabians in his native land of ChaldÊa: of the myriads of prophets, Moses
and Christ alone lived and reigned; and the remnant of the inspired
writings was comprised in the books of the Old and the New Testament.
The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated and embellished in the
Koran; and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing their
own belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride. For the
author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught by the prophet to
entertain a high and mysterious reverence. "Verily, Christ Jesus, the
son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed unto
Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him; honorable in this world, and in
the world to come, and one of those who approach near to the presence
of God." The wonders of the genuine and apocryphal gospels are profusely
heaped on his head; and the Latin church has not disdained to borrow
from the Koran the immaculate conception of his virgin mother. Yet Jesus
was a mere mortal; and, at the day of judgment, his testimony will
serve to condemn both the Jews, who reject him as a prophet, and the
Christians, who adore him as the Son of God. The malice of his enemies
aspersed his reputation, and conspired against his life; but their
intention only was guilty; a phantom or a criminal was substituted on
the cross; and the innocent saint was translated to the seventh heaven.
During six hundred years the gospel was the way of truth and salvation;
but the Christians insensibly forgot both the laws and example of
their founder; and Mahomet was instructed by the Gnostics to accuse the
church, as well as the synagogue, of corrupting the integrity of the
sacred text. The piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance
of a future prophet, more illustrious than themselves: the evangelical
promise of the _Paraclete_, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name,
and accomplished in the person, of Mahomet, the greatest and the last of
the apostles of God.




Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part IV.

The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and
language: the discourse of a philosopher would vibrate without effect
on the ear of a peasant; yet how minute is the distance of _their_
understandings, if it be compared with the contact of an infinite and a
finite mind, with the word of God expressed by the tongue or the pen of
a mortal! The inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and
evangelists of Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise of
their reason and memory; and the diversity of their genius is strongly
marked in the style and composition of the books of the Old and New
Testament. But Mahomet was content with a character, more humble, yet
more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran, according
to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal; subsisting in the
essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of light on the table of
his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume of silk and gems, was
brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under
the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched on the most important
errands; and this trusty messenger successively revealed the chapters
and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead of a perpetual and perfect
measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at
the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the emergencies
of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the
saving maxim, that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any
subsequent passage. The word of God, and of the apostle, was diligently
recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of
mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast into a
domestic chest, in the custody of one of his wives. Two years after the
death of Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by
his friend and successor Abubeker: the work was revised by the caliph
Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various editions
of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of a uniform and
incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet
rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously
challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page;
and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable
performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout
Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is
delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of
comparing the productions of human genius. The harmony and copiousness
of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel: he will
peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and
precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea,
which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds.
The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but
his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book
of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same
language. If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man
to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or
the Philippics of Demosthenes? In all religions, the life of the founder
supplies the silence of his written revelation: the sayings of Mahomet
were so many lessons of truth; his actions so many examples of virtue;
and the public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and
companions. At the end of two hundred years, the Sonna, or oral law,
was fixed and consecrated by the labors of Al Bochari, who discriminated
seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five genuine traditions, from a
mass of three hundred thousand reports, of a more doubtful or spurious
character. Each day the pious author prayed in the temple of Mecca,
and performed his ablutions with the water of Zemzem: the pages were
successively deposited on the pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle;
and the work has been approved by the four orthodox sects of the
Sonnites.

The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus had been
confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was repeatedly urged,
by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to produce a similar evidence of
his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume
of his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a
conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by
the demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of
vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs
and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and aggravate
the guilt of infidelity But the modest or angry tone of his apologies
betrays his weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal
established, beyond suspicion, the integrity of the Koran. The votaries
of Mahomet are more assured than himself of his miraculous gifts; and
their confidence and credulity increase as they are farther removed from
the time and place of his spiritual exploits. They believe or affirm
that trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by stones; that
water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry, cured the sick,
and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a camel complained
to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of its being poisoned;
and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally subject to the
apostle of God. His dream of a nocturnal journey is seriously described
as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious animal, the Borak,
conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem: with his
companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and
received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets,
and the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh heaven,
Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the veil of unity,
approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a cold that
pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was touched by the hand
of God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he again
descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, returned to Mecca, and
performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand
years. According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a national
assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless word
split asunder the orb of the moon: the obedient planet stooped from her
station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the Caaba,
saluted Mahomet in the Arabian tongue, and, suddenly contracting her
dimensions, entered at the collar, and issued forth through the sleeve,
of his shirt. The vulgar are amused with these marvellous tales; but the
gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of their master,
and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation. They might speciously
allege, that in preaching the religion it was needless to violate the
harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery may be excused
from miracles; and that the sword of Mahomet was not less potent than
the rod of Moses.

The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
superstition: a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven
with the essence of the Mosaic law; and the spirit of the gospel had
evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of Mecca was
tempted by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to sanctify the rites
of the Arabians, and the custom of visiting the holy stone of the
Caaba. But the precepts of Mahomet himself inculcates a more simple and
rational piety: prayer, fasting, and alms, are the religious duties of a
Mussulman; and he is encouraged to hope, that prayer will carry him half
way to God, fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms
will gain him admittance. I. According to the tradition of the nocturnal
journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with the Deity, was
commanded to impose on his disciples the daily obligation of fifty
prayers. By the advice of Moses, he applied for an alleviation of this
intolerable burden; the number was gradually reduced to five; without
any dispensation of business or pleasure, or time or place: the devotion
of the faithful is repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the afternoon, in
the evening, and at the first watch of the night; and in the present
decay of religious fervor, our travellers are edified by the profound
humility and attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness is the key
of prayer: the frequent lustration of the hands, the face, and the body,
which was practised of old by the Arabs, is solemnly enjoined by the
Koran; and a permission is formally granted to supply with sand the
scarcity of water. The words and attitudes of supplication, as it is
performed either sitting, or standing, or prostrate on the ground, are
prescribed by custom or authority; but the prayer is poured forth in
short and fervent ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted
by a tedious liturgy; and each Mussulman for his own person is invested
with the character of a priest. Among the theists, who reject the use
of images, it has been found necessary to restrain the wanderings of
the fancy, by directing the eye and the thought towards a _kebla_,
or visible point of the horizon. The prophet was at first inclined to
gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem; but he soon returned to
a more natural partiality; and five times every day the eyes of the
nations at Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are devoutly turned to the holy
temple of Mecca. Yet every spot for the service of God is equally pure:
the Mahometans indifferently pray in their chamber or in the street. As
a distinction from the Jews and Christians, the Friday in each week is
set apart for the useful institution of public worship: the people is
assembled in the mosch; and the imam, some respectable elder, ascends
the pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon. But the
Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and the
independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on the
ministers and the slaves of superstition. II. The voluntary penance
of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their lives, was odious to
a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow of abstaining from
flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared, that he would suffer
no monks in his religion. Yet he instituted, in each year, a fast of
thirty days; and strenuously recommended the observance as a discipline
which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary exercise
of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During the month
of Ramadan, from the rising to the setting of the sun, the Mussulman
abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and baths, and perfumes;
from all nourishment that can restore his strength, from all pleasure
that can gratify his senses. In the revolution of the lunar year, the
Ramadan coincides, by turns, with the winter cold and the summer heat;
and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst with a drop
of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The
interdiction of wine, peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits,
is converted by Mahomet alone into a positive and general law; and a
considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command, the use
of that salutary, though dangerous, liquor. These painful restraints
are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine, and eluded by the hypocrite;
but the legislator, by whom they are enacted, cannot surely be accused
of alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual appetites.
III. The charity of the Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and
the Koran repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and
indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mahomet,
perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of
charity: the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property,
as it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or
merchandise; but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law, unless he
bestows a _tenth_ of his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him
of fraud or extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is
enlarged to a _fifth_. Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since
we are forbid to injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may
reveal the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts
he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties, of Islam, are
guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman
is devoutly fixed on the event of th

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