BOOKS.

THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE"

Mn. BRYCE has expanded a good " Arnold " essay into a most valuable monograph. Very learned, over full of facts and dates, and printed in the way which of all ways most deters the sub- scriber to circulating libraries, his hook will perhaps find few readers, but those who begin it will place it on their shelves as one of the very few volumes which add something definite and considerable to human knowledge. Not that it is very original.

The whole lecture contains but one thought, and that one which Mr. Bryce did not discover, but then the thought is the long-forgotten key to mediseval history, and it is worked out with a completeness, a rotundity of design which gives it a new position even in the minds of those cognizant of its existence. It is not of course the more valuable for the style in which it is expressed, any more than a diamond is the better for its setting, but the setting shows the diamond, and Mr. Bryce's style is the one of all others best suited to illuminate grave theory, the style which gives no impression of the writer, but only of the light which the friction of many facts has begotten in his mind. It is the style of De Tocqueville, and of' De Tocqueville when dis- cussing the tendencies of the administration of France before the Revolution, the style which befits a man careless of the impres- sion he makes, and anxious only to convey to others that com- plete and as it were easy insight with which complete knowledge has invested himself. One sees that style employed occasionally by geologists when certain of a particular law. They know they must prove every point, and consequently cumber their pages with isolated proofs, yet the central conviction is so strong that the whole is welded together into a narrative as clear as if the writer had felt the climate which produced the phenomena be accumulates. We can quote but one example, but it is in its way nearly a perfect illustration of the eloquence which is not eloquence, but simply poxer of statement begotten by strong imagination upon wide and various knowledge. Mr. Bryce is describing the greatest incident of the Middle Ages, the corona- tion of Karl, chief of the Franks, as Emperor of the West, re- presentative of the Empire suspended by the anarchy of three centuries

On the spot where now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the buildings of the modern city—the spot which tradition had hallowed as that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the oldest and the stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less like than was this basilica to those Northern cathedrals, shadowy, fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of medkeval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness, its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman charac- ter. From the transept a flight of stops led up to the high altar underneath the great arch, the arch of triumph, as it was called; behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising tier above tier around its walls ; in the midst, high above the rest, and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the bishop's throne, itself the curate chair of some forgotten magistrate. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles, who had exchanged his simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman patrician, knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem of the Czesars, then bent in obeisance before him the church rang to the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of the world, s Karol° Augusto a Doo coronato magno et pacific° imperatori vita et victoria.' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without, was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modern history begins."

The theory which Mr. Bryce has set himself to demonstrate and which we believe to be demonstrable, is that Europe throughout the Middle Ages believed the Roman Empire not only to be in existence, but to be indestructible. To the moderns, reading history by an accumulated light, and aware of the sequence of vast multitudes of facts, it seems that the Empire perished with the triumph of the "barbarians," that when Honorius fled to Ravenna its power finally departed, and that when Odoacer ordered Augustulus to descend into obscurity even its simulacrum, the appearance which had so long survived the reality, came to an end. That, says Mr. Bryce, was not the idea of those who registered that act. They not only did not think the Empire at an end, but they believed it indestructible. The German and Gothic tribes had advanced within its borders slowly and during many generations only to be filled

s The Holy Roman Empire. By Janes Bryce, B.A. London sad Ctrabridge: Mlit• Milun and Co.

with awe of the imperial majesty. To them Rome meant civilization and order, and they had adopted order and civilization. The existence of a power somewhere on earth which should weigh equally on all mankind, which should create and enforce a system of law higher than human will, which could when necessary suspend that law and be to the human race a visible embodiment of Providence, was to them part of the order of nature, a necessary feature in the divine government. No other system was compatible with the order which races scarcely emerged from barbarism, just adopting the creed, and the law, and the city life of the "conquered," or rather recolonized world, regarded with wondering admira- tion. An Empire supposed an Emperor of whose theoretic position Mr. Bryce draws a brilliant but not over-coloured picture.

"Placed in the midst of Europe, the Emperor was to bind its tribes into one body, reminding them of their common faith, their common blood, their common interests in each other's welfare. And he was therefore above all things, professing indeed to be upon earth the re- presentative of the Prince of Peace, bound to listen to complaints, and redress the injuries inflicted by sovereigns or people upon each other ; to punish offenders against the public order of Christendom ; to main- tain through the world, looking down as from a serene height upon the schemes and quarrels of meaner potentates, that supreme good without which neither arts, nor letters nor the gentler virtues of life, can rise and flourish. The mediaeval Empire was in its essence what the modern despotisms that mimic it profess themselves • the Empire was Peace ; the oldest and noblest title of its head was 'imperator paciticus.' And that he might be the peace-maker, he must be the expounder of justice and the author of its concrete embodiment, positive law ; chief legis- lator and supreme judge of appeal, like his predecessor the compiler of the Corpus Jung, the one and only source of all legitimate authority. In this sense, as governor and administrator, not as owner, is he, in the words of the jurists, lord of the world ; since it is by him alone that the idea of pure right, acquired not by force but by legitimate de- volution from those whom God Himself had stit up, is expressed. To find an external and positive basis for that idea is a problem which it has at all times been more easy to evade than to solve, and one peculiarly distressing to those who could neither explain the phenomena of society by reducing it to its original principles, nor inquire his- torically how its existing arrangements had grown up. Hence the attempt to represent human government as an emanation from Divine,—a view from which all similar but far less logically consistent doctrines of divine right which have prevailed in later times are copied. Having such an origin, the rights of the Emneror exist irre- spective of their actual exercise, and no voluntary abandonment, not even an express grant, can impair them."

The imperial authority might be suspended by the violence of men as the divine government might be impeded by human sin, but it was nevertheless a reality, an ideal towards which all men were bound to look, and hope, and strive. °dower when he abolished Augustulus did not even try to abolish his office. He simply transferred it to the Emperor of the East. declaring not that the Imperial power was a mistake, but only its division into two. The countries ruled by separate Kings held themselves still part of the old Empire, their rulers accepted and. eveu fought for titles from the rulers of Constantinople, issued coins asserting their own subjection, and in all times of difficulty or triumph sought to propitiate or to dictate to the only legiti• mate authority, the Vicegerent of Heaven at Byzantium. When therefore Karl the Great was elected Emperor by the people and Senate of Rome, whose mouth-piece only the Tope claimed to be, Europe only considered that the Empire which always existed had at last regained its Emperor, the officer who expressed her strength, her justice, and her impartiality, who would govern and protect all countries and classes alike, and who could declare war without provocation in virtue of his inherent and indefeasi- ble right to the submission of mankind.

"It was not the sovereignty of the city that Charles obtained in 800; that his father had already held as patrician and he had constantly exercised in the same capacity ; it was the headship of the world, believed to appertain of right to the lawful Roman Emperor, whether he reigned on the Bosphorus, the Tiber, or the Rhine. A new title was not invented to serve the Pope's ambitious ends and gratify Frankish vanity, but the act of 364, and again of 476, was rescinded. The Empire became again what it had been before Diocletian, the place of the deposed Constantine VI. being legally filled up by a new Emperor, chosen by the people of the imperial city and crowned by their bishop. And hence in all the annals of the time and of many succeeding centuries Charles, sixty-eighth from Augustus, succeeds without a break to Constantine sixty-seventh. That his imperial power was theoretically irrespective of place is clear from his own words and acts and from all the monuments of that time. He would not indeed have dreamt of treating the free Franks as Justinian had treated slavish Asiatics, nor would the warriors who followed his stand- ard have brooked such an attempt. Yet even to German eyes his position must have been altered by the halo of vague splendour which now surrounded him ; for all, even the Saxon and the Slave, had heard of Rome's glories, an revered the name of Czesar. . . . . Ruling the world by the gift of God, and the transmitted rights of Augustus, he renews the original aggressive movement of the Empire ; the civilized world has subdued her conqueror, and now arms him against savagery and heathendom. Hence the wars, not more of the sword than of the cross, against Saxons, Avars, Slaves, Danes, Spanish

Arabs, where monasteries are fortresses and baptism the badge of sub- mission. The overthrow of the Irmensaul in the first Saxon campaign sums up the changes of seven centuries. The Romauized Teuton des- troys the monument of his country's victory and fredom, for it is also the emblem of paganism and barbarism. The work of Arminius is undone by his successor."

The power of the Emperors passed away though the succession was maintained, but the theory remained unbroken till the Hohen- staufen once again united idea and fact. In the year 900 Otho of Germany was elected by the people of Rome, still speaking through their Bishop, "Lord of the World," in which capacity he claimed and exercised sovereignty over the clergy as full as over

his feudal retainers, over Italy as complete as over his German subjects. His rights indeed were illimitable, for he was the suc- cessor of the Csesars, whose first claim was to be solati a legibus,

and his power was backed by the vague, almost superstitious, feeling among the commonalty that there was in it something of

sacredness,—something higher than the mere feudal claim. "More, too, than the royal could have done did the imperial name invite the sympathy of the commons. For in all, however ignorant of its history, however unable to comprehend its func- tions, there yet lived a feeling that it was in some mysterious

way consecrated to Christian brotherhood and equality, to peace and to law, to the restraint of the strong and the defence of the helpless." His son, Otho, was as full of belief in himself and his own position as Pio Nono now is.

"Otto laboured in his great project in a spirit almost mystic. He had an intense religious belief in the Emperor's duties to the world— in his proclamations he calls himself Servant of the Apostles," Servant of Jesus Christ' —together with the ambitions antiquarianism of a fiery imagination, kindled by the memorials of the glory and power he represented. To exclude the claims of the Greeks he used the title &manor= Iniperator,' instead of the simple Itnperator ' of his predecessors. His medals bear the legend Restauratio Romani Imperii;' even the commonwealth, despite the results that name had produced under Alberic and Crescentius, was to be re-established. He built a palace on the Aventine' appointed a patrician and a prefect to represent this government in the capital; sought to make Justinian's . law the sole code there at least, since he could not yet establish it throughout his realm; introduced into the simple German Court the ceremonious magnificence of Byzantium. His father's wish to draw Italy and Germany more closely together he followed up by giving the chancellorship of both countries to the same Churchman, by main- taining a strong force of Germans in Italy, and by taking his Italian retinue with him through the Transalpine lands. How far these brilliant and far-reaching plans were capable of realization, had their author lived to attempt it, can be but guessed at."

The effort in which Otho failed his successors did not realize, but time dignity lasted 800 years, still recognized as the first of earthly powers, still allowed an unquestioned precedence of

etiquette, still exercising alone on earth the power of changing rulers into kings,—the Prussian king-ship was not "recognized in

Europe," but granted by the father of Maria Theresa, and needed no other recognition,—until in an evil hour for his House Francis II. exchanged his universal title of Kaiser of Rome for the local- ized dignity of Emperor of Austria.

It may seem very useless to prove that a title admittedly often without power was the central object of European politics for a series of ages, but the belief in the existence of time Empire had two very real and visible effects. It enabled any sovereign who could obtain his election to that rank, either from a tacit vote of the Roman people as Charlemagne did, or from a decree of the Pope as spokesman of that people as the Hohenstaufen did, or by the vote of the German electors who assumed that people's functions as Charles V. and his descendants did, to put forward pretensions which were limited only by his physical power, yet which did not shock the imagination of mankind. The Emperor was by right Lord of the World, could create, for example, by fiat a commune in a country in which he had not a soldier or a subject, could decree that Charles the Bold should be a King without reference to Charles's suzerain, could appoint a pope or preside of indefeasible right in a Council of Christendom. If he had not the power to maintain his right, violent persons with local authority defied it, but if he had the power all jurisdiction save his at once legally ceased. In the weakest hour of the medimval Empire the presence of time Emperor terminated legally all sub-

ordinate secular power, whether of pope, or king, or duke, or reigning bishop, or even free city. The chance of obtaining such a dignity became the guiding star of all great princes, stirred all

little ones to the incessant watch which subsequently became systematized in the theory of the balance of power. The Empire

had in fact all the rights " Europe " now claims, but made legal and expressed in an individual person. The second_ consequence was the growth of the strange idea called in a more conscious age time unity of Christendom as a visible Church. Mr. Bryce endeavours to show, and we think shows, that the idea of a Church

visible, practically co-extensive with Christendom, theoretically co-extensive with the world, and guided by a single head, arose from the readiness of men to apply to things spiritual the single order of government of which they conceived in things temporal. The age held truth to be one, and entitled to bind into one body all who held it, and the age could bold no abstract ideas.

"It was not exactly a want of faith in the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the universe alone; it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind to realize the idea as an idea and live in it; it was the tendency to see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the essential ceremony ; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these ; which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of the direct action of angels and devils ; which expressed the strivings of the soul after purity by the search for the Sangreal : which in the Crusades sent myriads to win by earthly arms the se- pulchre at Jerusalem of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole fabric of media3val Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible Church. Such a Church could be in no wise local or limited. To acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have appeared to those men as it must always appear when scrutinized, contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a tem- porary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties."

The ideal of men was the Empire, the unity of Christendom under one temporal head, acting through but unlimited by every variety oflocal power, and one spiritual head, acting through but un- lim ted by every variety o f priest. The secular head could be deposed or elected by the Roman people could their will be ascertained, the spiritual head by the consensus of Christendom could that majestic unity be got together in council. Of course the secular head said it was greater than the spiritual, and the spiritual maintained its own prior claim, and either won in turn, but the mass of the people believed all through that both headships were legitimate, and both deserving of all the obedience they could enforce.

That, not the modern independence of nationalities, is the cardinal thought of the middle ages, without which no student of those times comprehends their meaning. Mr. Bryce has expounded that idea with a power of language and a singleness of design of which we have given a most faint reflection, but which will leave on every Treader of his over-crowded pages an ineffaceable impression.