The Historians' History of the World 07

Charles performed this task with a wisdom and greatness of soul that will ever be astonishing. Mighty and successful as are his deeds of arms, his fame as lawgiver nevertheless shines with a far brighter radiance through the history of mankind. Above the personal and national laws, which had in part first been codified by his direction, he established by his capitularies—edicts and enactments which he either promulgated upon his own decision or upon the counsel of the imperial assemblies—a general law of the empire, a body of legislation of the most comprehensive sort, which not only regulated the great affairs of the entire body politic but even descended to local conditions, in order to adjust them to the whole. He carried through in good part the undertaking so long despaired of—of subjugating the defiant, liberty-loving Germanic races to a constitution, of making them serve the ideal of the state. A gigantic step in the development of the German spirit was taken through the legislation of Charles, and it must not be thought that because it was a first and therefore rude and awkward attempt it was born of a barbaric spirit.

If we rightly regard the highest art of the lawgiver as consisting in the ability to perceive with a keen eye every germ of moral life that he meets with in the customs and institutions of his people, and so to care for it that the most beautiful fruit of which it is capable will be obtained from it, then Charles was one of the greatest lawgivers the world has ever seen. No native impulse of the Germanic character was allowed by him to die; every one on the contrary was placed under cultivation, ennobled, and made capable of producing more splendid flowers and more useful fruit. As the Frankish political system in general, aside from its ecclesiastical elements, rested primarily on a Germanic basis, so too above all it was Germanic elements that were made use of in the political creation of Charles. The content of his laws, aside from the theocratic admixtures, is thoroughly German, although the capitularies as well as the national laws were written in Latin. In a certain sense the entire past of the Germanic nations flows into these laws, their whole future life flows from them. The Romans called the laws of the Twelve Tables the source of their entire political organisation; with equal right the Germans, indeed all the nations of Europe, could say the same of the laws of Charles. With veneration and holy awe one opens the capitularies of the great emperor, which combined form a legislative work that had a fruitful effect upon many centuries. The image of the Carlovingian state is here presented to our eyes with vivid actuality; we see how great things were accomplished and the highest striven for.

The strongest agency in holding the empire together was the Roman Catholic church; it disseminated one faith, one moral law, like religious institutions over nations that had previously been distinct from one another in language, customs, and laws, and enclosed them in its ingenious compact organisation as with a fine-meshed net. Church councils and imperial assemblies generally met together, and in the latter the voice of the clergy possessed the most weighty influence. The bishops were regarded as the most skilful agents in all political negotiations, they enjoyed a respect equal to that of counts. Like the temporal nobles, they were rich landowners, often led their retainers to war in person, and not seldom exchanged the crosier for the sword. Though the clergy had formerly been almost exclusively of Roman origin, now many Germans also devoted themselves to the clerical estate; sermons were preached in the German language, religious books were translated into German. In this way the clergy approached nearer to the peculiar character of the Germanic peoples, but did not on that account serve the universal aims of their estate and of the empire any the less effectively, especially since the compact union of the church had in recent times been rather strengthened than weakened.