MEDIAVAL GERMANY.* Tins book, which relates the most important events
of Ger- man history, from the earliest date of that country becoming known to the civilised nations of Europe down to the over- throw of the Hohenstauffen dynasty in 1268, is the product of conscientious labour and rigid impartiality,—qualities which, however desirable and even essential in a useful history, will, we fear, impair the popularity of the work in the eyes of that toolarge class of readers who require from an author not merely facts but opinions, who are more curious about his theories than his veracity, and, to use the words of Locke, are "content to live on the alms-basket of borrowed and beggarly doctrines." This intellectual laziness has been prolific of evil to individuals and communities, but the really upright and self-respecting student will demand only accurate facts, be- lieving himself competent to form an honest and very probably a sound judgment on men and manners ; and this Mr. Hender- son has enabled him to do. This mode of narrative however, laudable as it is, has its weak side, for it must necessarily lead to a want of vigour and vivacity in the composition, and thoroughly ignore the romantic and chivalrous elements to be found in the annals of every race. Mr. Henderson probably could not, and perhaps would not, describe the Siege of Derry or the fight at the Boyne in the eloquent language of Lord Macaulay; but neither does he appear likely to repre- sent every Tory as a fool or a knave, and every Whig as a self-sacrificing patriot.
We must enter a preliminary caveat against some eccen- tricities of spelling the names of persons and places which we have come upon, and which sometimes render the narrative nearly unintelligible. We certainly do not believe that " Lusitania" is in Germany, and never heard of any " Riehard Cornwallis" at all remarkable in British or Teutonic annals. When we are told that a German Emperor was crowned at " Tribur," we are perplexed, for it cannot be the classic Tibur, which would surely have been named Tivoli ; probably Treves, or, as the Germans prefer to call it, Trier, is meant. These errors have probably arisen from the careless way in which manuscripts were copied, and especially from the habit of contracting long words, and to this our author has directed the reader's attention in his very judicious introduction.
In Hermann, whom the Romans termed Arminius, chief of the Chirusci or Westphalians, we encounter the first champion of Germanic unity ; but nothwithstanding the decisive victory of Winfield, he fell a victim to the jealousy of those powerful chiefs whom our author rather quaintly terms "stem-dukes," apparently meaning Princes who were of the same race as their subjects. The various incursions of German tribes into the Roman territory cannot be looked on as properly belonging to the annals of their country, and the great names of Alaric and Genseric, of Chlodowig and Totilas, come really within the domain of world-history ; the narrative of German nationality cannot be said to begin before the reign of Karl the Great, if even then. If we arrange the history of Mediceval Germany by dynasties, as our author seems to have done, we can form three periods, that of the Karolings, during whose predominance the country cannot be said to have existed as a nation; the Saxon Monarchy ; and that of the Hohenstauffen or Suabian line clown to the defeat of Conradin, the last of his race, at Taglicasozzo in 1268, though the generality of writers carry on the Middle Ages two centuries further. The most remarkable exploits of Karl (if we lay aside the legendary lore handed down by the Archbishop Ttirpin and "married to immortal verse "by Ariosto) were the subjugation of the Lombards and Saxons, the organisation of Bavaria into a province, the overthrow of the marauding Avars, and the • History of German!, in the MidtEe Agee. _By Ernest r lIonderson, AM, Ph.D. London: 13ell and Sons. acquisition of the Imperial crown; but his promotion of legis- lation, art, and literature gives him, in our eyes, a stronger claim to the gratitude of posterity. His predecessor Pepin (a name which Mr. Henderson oddly spells "Pippin ") had granted to the Holy See the Exarchate of Ravenna, and this donation Karl confirmed by a written deed, which subse- quently, by means of a forged interpolation, was held to confer on the Pope the independent sovereignty of all northern Italy, and this fraud was not detected for some centuries. The land-hunger of the medimval priesthood equalled that of a French peasant-proprietor, or an Irish evicted campaigner. Karl made a serious mistake in estab- lishing vassal Kings, while at the same time he claimed the right of legislating for the territories he committed to their charge,—a most unpopular system, the maxim, "the King reigns but does not govern," being unworkable then as it is now. We must, however, approve of his hostility to the slave.trade, and to the degradation of free proprietors into serfage through poverty. He maintained somewhat friendly relations with the English King Offa of Mercia, but our author has not noticed that his reign exhibits the first instance (would that there had not been so many of them !) of foreign interference in the domestic polities of England, solicited too (as has always been the case) by a native of our country. We have no evidence that Karl aimed at universal empire ; though he was ambitious, his ambi- tion seems to have been for the promotion of Christianity and civilisation, and for the permanent union of France, Italy, and Germany. In the last of these countries he found the greatest difficulty, for the Avurs opposed him in the south-east, the Danes in the north, while the Wends, a numerous race which had once extended from the Baltic to the Adriatic, held almost all the eastern portion of what is now the Prussian Kingdom. His capitularies, as the col- lections of edicts are called, contain some wise regulations and many enforcing respect for morality and orthodox faith, which apparently he• deemed identical, but are too often ridiculously scrupulous and minute. For instance, he forbids the dignified clergy to keep fortune-tellers, and nuns to write love-letters. We may well ask whether people who have "entered into religion" ever do such things?
But when the master-hand was removed, the reign of decay, anarchy, and ruin set in, attributable in a great measure to clerical and female influence. Louis the Pious arranged during his lifetime a division of his Empire—a measure fatal to Monarchies, as it is to landed estates—and at once the standard of rebellion was unfurled, while the palace became a hotbed of treachery and intrigue. In 841 a battle at Fontenoy (as Mr. Henderson inaccurately writes the name ; it was really Fontenailles, near Auxerre), followed by the treaty of Verdun, first gave Germany an independent existence under the name of the East Frankish Kingdom. Within twenty years after this date we find trial by jury in force, many cases of the interference of clerical synods for the protection of the peasants against the oppressions of their lords, and the pub- lication of the forged Isidorian Decretals. These documents professed to have emanated from earlier Popes, and asserted the immunity of the persons and properties of the clergy from the authority of lay tribunals, and were often appealed to in disputes between Church and State. In 870, too, we find the two nations quarrelling about the possession of Lorraine, which by the treaty of Mersen was divided on racial and linguistic lines, and the Rhine became "Deutsch. land's Strom aber nioht Deutschland's Grenze."
All energy had now died out of the Karolings, though the heroic names of Arnulf of Kfirsthen and Baldwin Bras-de-fer deserve honourable remembrance, and Conrad, the last of his race, gave n noble example of disinterestedness by devising the succession (as far as it was in his power) to Henry of Saxony, who was the first of Teutonic Monarchs to cultivate friendly relations with England, by marriage with Edith, sister of King Athelstan. He erected castles to oppose the incursions of the Hungarians, Wends, and Normans, around which towns soon sprang up (the working man being quite willing to put himself under the protection of the aristocrat), and also introduced cavalry into his army. His successor, Otto the. Great, succeeded in teaching the " stem-dukes " that loyalty, like honesty, is the best policy, in ruling not only the German but the Roman Church, and in uniting Italy to his dominions. He had. to encounter rebellions, which he crushed, and repeated invasions of the Wends and Hungarians, and it is noteworthy that several rebel chiefs fell fighting in his cause in the vic- torious battles on the Lech and the Havel. This was the age of Roswitha, Abbess of Ganderslaeina, who wrote dramas on religious subjects ; and it should be remembered that Otto founded a Bishopric at Posen, which must therefore have been a portion of the German domain,—an unpleasant fact for the sentimentalists who mourn over the wrongs of Poland. His two immediate successors, both bearing the name of Otto, were men of energy and ruled justly in the main, though dis- quieted by attacks from Poland and Bohemia, as well as by conspiracies and abortive rebellions in which France co- operated. Otto III. deserves our approval for having suppressed the insurrections of the Roman populace, restored the Pope to his legitimate rights, and punished by the axe the dema- gogic tyrant, Crescentius. With him the Saxon line really came to an end, though the claim of relationship was valid enough to secure the election of Henry of Bavaria, This ruler and his successor, Conrad, resisted vigorously, though not very successfully, the Pan-Slavic aspirations of the Poles and Bohemians, made many useful laws, checked the sale of slaves, and introduced something like a Parliament so far, at least, as regards the nobility. By their aid, too, the inferior nobles, or squirearchy, rose to some degree of political consideration. About the time of the accession of Henry III., we find the origin of the Hanseatic League, the "Truce of God," and the commencement of improvements in the eccle- siastical architecture, and soon after Poland and Bohemia submitted to vassalage, though Hungary was independent and hostile.
It was unfortunate for Henry IV., the last of the Bavarian line, that, having ascended the throne at the early age of six, he was brought up by a weak and intriguing mother, Agnes of Poitiers—French marriages seem to have been as unlucky for Germany as they have been to England—and that he lived in the days of the daring and despotic Hildebrand, alias Pope Gregory VII. The rivalry of Church and State culmi- nated in this reign, the Emperor insisting on his right of investiture of Bishops, which the Pope refused to admit, hold- ing that this would be giving a layman the power of appoint- meat, a conclusion we consider a perfect non freguitur. The Pope excommunicated the Emperor, which in the then state of religious belief involved his deposition, and the Emperor in turn deposed the Pope,—proceedings which neither party much regarded at first. By his well-known penitential degradation at Canossa Henry gained a diplomatic victory, but tarnished the German name, and hence Teutonic hostility to Romish pretensions found utterance in the words of the Diet of 1872, now engraved on the marble of Harzburg, "We never will go to Canossa." But the strife broke out again, the Pope bestowed the German crown on two Princes in suc- cession, the Emperor procured the election of an Antipope, and though he carried on the contest with some degree of success, yet nothing like peace was gained until the death of Gregory in 1084. The closing years of Henry's life were chequered by the unnatural rebellion of his son, which was sanctioned, if not instigated, by the Vatican ; he finally abdicated and died in 1106, lamented by the humbler classes to whom he had always been a just and benevolent Sovereign.
The Holy See now declared the investiture of Bishops a sacrament, with which therefore laymen could not interfere, and forbade the clergy to do homage for their estates to any lord paramount, even a monarch, encouraged no doubt by the acquiescence of England and Hungary in these views. Pope Paschal II. proposed as a compromise that the clergy should give up all their landed estates to the Crown and subsist for the future on tithes and pious offerings ; but this the German episcopacy declined to accept, and the measure was equally distasteful to the Barons, who, as tenants, occupied church- lands. Eventually, by the Concordat of Worms, the Crown gave up the right of investiture, reserving only a very modi- fied homage for the landed property of the sees. He died in 1125, and with him ended the Imperial line of Bavaria. The House of Hohenstauffen which rose to power after a protracted struggle in 1139, and ended on the field of Tagliocozzo in 1268, exhibits more monarchs endowed with political ability, daring energy, and, for the times in which they lived, a stricter sense of justice, than any dynasty recorded in history, except perhaps our own Tudors, whom in many points they
seem strongly to resemble. Under their rule commerce was promoted, cities obtained municipal rights and the pewer of self-defence, the Slavic: tribes were converted te Christianity and civilisation, the boundaries of the Empire extended to the eastward, and literature in its poetic form (the earliest it assumes in every country) warmly encouraged. It is sad to reflect that their energies were wasted in an unsuc- cessful struggle with the Papal power, which actually attempted and, for a time at least, succeeded in reducing the Germanic nation to a state of vassalage. The Emperors steadily opposed sacerdotal ambition, but the Popes seem to have sworn a worse than Corsican vendetta against this dynasty, and the terrors of excommunication were too formidable to be resisted by their subjects. The Hohenstauffen rulers had to endure that slow and wearying martyrdom which always falls to the lot of those who are in advance of their age, but the contest was, as our author has truly said, "one of the Titans against the Gods." The two most distinguished of this House are Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick IL, the former of whom maintained a protracted but unsuccessful contest against the grasping ambition of the Votican and the repeated revolts of the Lombard cities he was however more fortunate in curbing the mutinous efforts of the Gaelfic faction, and of the powerful dukes who strove for Home-rule in their domains. That he was on the whole a just and able ruler may be inferred from the legend that he slumbers beneath the crags of HyfElaii.user to awake in some hour of his country's direst peril, like our own Arthur in-
" Glastonhury's hallowed pile Deep nestled in Avanon's isle."
These monarchs endeavoured to carry two important measures, the hereditary succession to the German throne, and the absorption of all Italy under their sway. The former design failed, as the dukes would not part with their electoral dignity ; the latter was impracticable from the difference in the national character and institutions.
Dante has placed Frederick IL in a burning tomb in the Inferno, but not on account of his resistance to Papal aggression, with which the poet would surely have sympathised, but from his scepticism and adoption of Oriental immoralities. Want of space prevents us from dealing with this 'period of history as its importance deserves, but Mr. Henderson's book will be remarkably useful to the earnest student, and, should the style be somewhat recast, may acquire a moderate amount of popularity.
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