they would have been but for his powerful impress. His work survived in the more progressive elements of the states into which his empire was dismembered. It was in the lands over which the sovereignty of Charlemagne had extended, that the feudal system had its most conspicuous development. The germs of the system, no doubt, were earlier than the age of the great Carlovingian. In the disorders which followed close upon his relinquishment of the sceptre, a great impetus was given to its growth. The act of Charles the Bald in 877, in making the government of the counties hereditary, thus converting these districts into great fiefs, decidedly favored its complete ascendency. In the tenth century, feudalism appears as the dominant régime. Its essential characteristic was the grant, by a superior, of property or privilege, under the condition of service. Primarily the grant consisted of lands, upon which the holder exercised more or less of the rights of sovereignty; and service was principally discharged in rendering military aid to the patron or suzerain. In course of time, however, a variety of rights and privileges, as well as landed estates, passed under the feudal tenure. The relation of lord and vassal was held not only by the lay nobles, but also by prelates and abbots; not only by individuals, but also by cities and towns. It was a kind of neighborhood system, which was rapidly promoted by the absence of a strong central government. After Charlemagne, the next illustrious patron of Christian civilization was Alfred the Great of England, a name that will suffer no eclipse when placed beside that of any prince of the period. He moved indeed in - a much narrower circle than did the ambitious restorer of the Roman Empire. In intellectual force and daring very likely he was not his equal. But he was more than his equal in the highest and finest traits. In purity of life and symmetry of character he bore a title to lasting reverence and affection such as Charlemagne was never able to earn. He gained the heart of England for all time, and an Englishman must exercise self-restraint not to kindle to eloquence as he mentions his name. "Alfred," says Green, "was the noblest, as he was the most complete, embodiment of all that is great, all that is lovable, in the English temper. He combined as no other man has ever combined its practical energy, its patient and enduring force, its profound sense of duty, the reserve and self-control that steadies in it a wide outlook and a restless daring, its temperance and fairness, its frank geniality, its sensitiveness to affection, its poetic tenderness, its deep and passionate religion. Religion, indeed, was the groundwork of Alfred's character. Everywhere throughout his writings that remain to us, the name of God, the thought of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But he was no mere saint. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, his temper took no touch of asceticism. His rare geniality, a peculiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color and charm to his life. A sunny frankness and openness of spirit breathes in the pleasant chat of his books, and what he was in his books he showed himself in his daily converse."1 1 History of the English People. Alfred came to the throne (871) at a time of great national peril and distress. The inroads made by the Danes in the closing years of the preceding century had been followed by new and greater invasions, until at length they seemed ready to gain complete mastery over England. In this crisis the valor and patience of Alfred came to the rescue. He inspired the hearts of the people with his own hopefulness, met the enemy in battle after battle, and saved the country from the yoke of their dominion. He was not able, indeed, to expel the Danes; but he held them in check, and laid the foundation for that work of his successors by which the strangers became incorporated into the English people, instead of taking its place or reducing it to a subordinate rank. England, it is true, came in time to have its Danish sovereign; but Canute and those of his house who succeeded him for a brief interval brought about no ascendency of the Danes in England at large. They were Danish rulers over an English people. But the sword was by no means the only weapon with which Alfred served his people. He had a care to provide them with improved laws, and with new means of religious and intellectual training. He beheld with. grief the gross ignorance which had been settling upon the nation since the Northern pirates had begun to lay the torch to cloister and church. Teachers were called in from abroad. Nor did the King stop with patronizing instructors: he turned instructor himself, and wrought diligently at the translator's task, rendering into English for the benefit of the unlearned the work of Boëthius on the Consolation of Philosophy, the Pastoral of Pope Gregory, the Universal History of Orosius, and the His tory of the Anglo-Saxon Church by Beda. In fine, we see in Alfred a consecration of princely talents that has rarely been equalled in the history of royalty. The Norman conquest effected a great revolution in the political and social state of England, and had also an important bearing upon its ecclesiastical affairs. But the effects of the Norman ascendency may better be considered in the following period. Germany presents us next with an example of illustrious sovereigns. On the deposition of Charles the Fat in 888, Germany returned to the status of a separate realm which had been assigned to her in the treaty of Verdun in 843. The first of her rulers were of no special note. But with the introduction of the Saxon house, in 919, came men who knew how to add honor to the imperial dignity. The most distinguished in this line of rulers were the first two, Henry the Fowler and Otho I. The former won the gratitude of Europe by the effectual check which he put upon the inroads of the Hungarians. The latter in ambition and personal force recalled the image of Charlemagne. No less than the mighty Frank he aimed to restore the Roman Empire. Having consolidated his rule in Germany, he pushed on into Italy, received the imperial crown from the hand of the Pope, exercised his pleasure in filling the papal office, and established his supremacy over a large part of the peninsula. He may be regarded as the chief founder of the power which before the expiration of the next century was to match arms with the papacy. Three rulers followed him from the Saxon house; namely, Otho II., Otho III., and Henry II. Then came (1024) the Franconian house, represented by Conrad II., Henry III., Henry IV., and Henry V. THIS CHAPTER V. CONTROVERSIES. "HIS period presents no such fruitful activity in the sphere of doctrine as appeared in the preceding. As it was the darkest and most confused of the Christian ages, so it was the least competent and the least disposed to accord a searching attention to the problems of the faith. While there were some men of fair sholarship, such as John of Damascus and Photius in the East, Isidore of Seville, Beda, Alcuin, and Rabanus Maurus in the West, these had more of the spirit and talent of the compiler than of the energetic and original thinker. In John Scotus Erigena alone do we behold. any outburst of speculative genius; and his writings, with their manifold aberrations from the commonly accepted system of belief, were rather a warning to men to bridle their thoughts, than an encouragement to give them a loose rein. Still the age had its controversies. Two of these, the Monothelite and the Iconoclastic, were on a scale which made them great public events. They fall therefore properly within the scope of this work. We may also devote a few words to points in dispute between the East and the West, to the local controversies of the West, and to those heretical sects which were regarded as quite without the pale of Catholic Christianity. |