Chapter IV: Part II: Voyage and Discovery 337 (3)

Narses, as soon as he was assured of success, paid them liberally for their services and sent them back to their own people; but the Lombards had learned to love the sunny climate and the vines growing out of doors, and were soon discontented with their bleaker homeland. They waited therefore until Narses, whom they knew and feared, was dead; and then, under the leadership of Alboin, their king, crossed over the Alps and invaded North Italy. They did not come in such tremendous strength as the Ostrogoths in the past, nor were the imperial troops powerless to stand against them: indeed, the two forces were so balanced that, while the Lombards succeeded in establishing themselves in the province of Lombardy, to which they gave their name, with Pavia as its capital, the representatives of the Emperor still held the coast-line on both sides, also Ravenna, Naples, Rome, and other principal towns.

This Lombard inroad, the last of the great Barbarian invasions of Italy, was by far the most important in its effects. For one thing, two hundred years were to pass before the power of the new settlers was seriously shaken; and therefore, even the fact that they were pagans and imposed their own laws ruthlessly on the Italians could not keep the races from gradually intermingling. In time the higher civilization conquered, and the fair-haired Teutons learned to worship the Christian God, forgot their own tongue, and adopted the customs and habits they saw around them. The Italians, on their part, in the course of their struggles with the Lombards became trained in the art of war they had almost forgotten. By the eighth century the fusion was complete.

Another very interesting and important result of the Lombard invasion was that the prolonged duel between Barbarians and Greeks prevented the development of any common form of government. There might in time emerge an Italian race, but there could be no Italian nation so long as towns and provinces were dominated by rulers whose policy and ambitions were utterly opposed. The _Exarch_ of Ravenna claimed, in the name of the Emperor at Constantinople, to collect taxes from and administer the whole peninsula, but in practice he often ruled merely the strip of land round his city cut off from other Greek officials by Lombard dukes. He would be able to communicate by sea with the important towns on or near the coast, such as Naples, but so irregularly that their governments would tend to grow every year more independent of his control. In Rome, for instance, there was not only the Senate with its traditions of government, but the Pope, who even more than the Senate had become the protector and adviser of his fellow citizens.

[Sidenote: Pope Gregory ‘the Great’]

We have seen how Leo ‘the Great’ persuaded Attila the Hun to withdraw when his armies threatened the very gates of Rome, while later he went on a like though unavailing mission to Genseric the Vandal. It was acts like these that won recognition for the Papacy amongst other rulers; and more than any of the Popes before him, Gregory ‘the Great’, who ascended the chair of Peter in A.D. 590, built up the foundations of this authority.

A Roman of position and wealth, Gregory had become in middle age a poor monk, giving all his money to the poor and disciplining himself by fasting and penance. He is remembered best in England to-day for the interest he showed in the fair-haired Angles in the Roman slave-market. ‘They have Angels’ faces, they should be fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven.’ His comment he followed up by a petition that he might sail as a missionary to the northern island from which these slaves came; and, when instead he was sent on an embassy to Constantinople, he did not forget England in the years that passed, but after he became Pope, chose St. Augustine to go and convert the heathen King of Kent. In this way southern England was christianized and brought into touch with the life of Western Europe.

‘A great Pope,’ it has been said, ‘is always a missionary Pope.’ Gregory had the true missionary’s enthusiasm, and his writings, all of them theological, bear the stamp of St. Augustine of Hippo’s ardent spirit enforced with a faith absolutely assured and unbending. Besides being instrumental in converting England, Gregory during his pontificate saw the Arian Church in Spain reconciled to the Catholic, while he succeeded in winning the Lombard king to Christianity and friendship.

It was little wonder that the people of Rome, who had been at war with these invaders for long years, looked up to the peace-maker not only as their spiritual father but also as a temporal ruler. Had he not fed them when they were starving, declaring that it was thus the Church should use her wealth? Had he not raised soldiers to guard the walls and sent out envoys to plead the city’s cause against her enemies? There was no such practical help to be obtained from the Exarchs of Ravenna, talk as they might about the glories of Constantinople. Thus Romans argued, and Gregory, who knew the real weakness of Constantinople, was able to disregard the imperial viceroys when he chose, a policy of independence followed by his successors.

Since the Lombard kingdom had split up into a number of duchies each with its own capital, Italy, in the early Middle Ages, tended to become a group of city states, each jealous of its neighbours and ambitious only for local interests. This provincial influence was so strong that it has lasted into modern times. An Englishman or a Frenchman will claim his country before thinking of the particular part from which he comes, but it is more natural for an Italian to say first ‘I am Roman,’ or ‘Neapolitan,’ or ‘Florentine,’ as the case may be. It is only by remembering this difference that Italian history can be read aright.

_Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._

A.D.
The Emperors Valentian and Valens 364
Battle of Adrianople 378
The Emperor Theodosius 379-95
Vandal Invasion of Africa 441
Battle of Chalons 451
Huns invade Italy 452
Pope Leo I ‘the Great’ 440

VI

THE RISE OF THE FRANKS

The historian Tacitus, whose description of the German tribes we have already quoted, had told the people of Gaul that, unless these same Germans were kept at bay by the Roman armies on the Rhine frontier, they would ‘exchange the solitude of their woods and morasses for the wealth and fertility of Gaul’. ‘The fall of Rome,’ he added, ‘would be fatal to the provinces, and you would be buried in the ruins of that mighty fabric.’

This prophetic warning proved only too true when Vandal and Visigoth, Burgundian, Hun, and Frank forced the passage of the Rhine, and swept in irresistible masses across vineyards and cornfields, setting fire to those towns and fortresses that dared to offer resistance. The Vandal migration was but a meteor flash on the road to Spain and North Africa; while on the battle-field of Chalons the Huns were beaten back and carried their campaign of bloodshed to Italy: but the other three tribes succeeded in establishing formidable kingdoms in Gaul during the fifth and sixth centuries.

At the head of the Visigoths rode Athaulf, brother-in-law of Alaric, unanimously chosen king by the tribe on the death of that mighty warrior.[1] Instead of continuing the campaign in South Italy, Athaulf had made peace with the Emperor Honorius and married his sister, thus gaining a semi-royal position in the eyes of Roman citizens.

‘I once aspired,’ he said frankly, ‘to obliterate the name of Rome and to erect on its ruins the dominion of the Goths, but ... I was gradually convinced that laws are essentially necessary to maintain and regulate a well-constituted state.... From that moment, I proposed to myself a different object of glory and ambition; and it is now my sincere wish that the gratitude of future ages should acknowledge the merits of a stranger, who employed the sword of the Goths, not to subvert, but to restore and maintain the prosperity of the Roman Empire.’

Fortified by such sentiments and the benediction of the Emperor, who was glad to free Italy from his brother-in-law’s presence, Athaulf succeeded, after a short struggle, in establishing a Visigothic kingdom in southern Gaul, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Bay of Biscay. This, under his successors, was enlarged until it embraced the whole of the province of Aquitania, with Toulouse as its capital, as well as both slopes of the Pyrenees.

The Burgundians, another German tribe, had, in the meanwhile, built up a middle kingdom along the banks of the Rhone. Years of intercourse with the Romans had done much to civilize both their manners and thoughts, and they were quite prepared to respect the laws and customs that they found in Gaul so long as they met with no serious opposition to their rule. The fact that both Burgundians and Visigoths were Arians raised, however, a fatal barrier between conquerors and conquered, and did more than anything else to determine that ultimate dominion over the whole of Gaul should be the prize of neither of these races, but of a third Teutonic tribe, the Salian Franks, whom good fortune placed beyond the influence of heresy.

[Sidenote: The Franks]

The Franks were a tall, fair-haired, loose-limbed people, who, emerging from Germany, had settled for a time in the country we now call Belgium. Like their ancestors, they worshipped Woden and other heathen gods of the Teutons, while in their Salic law we see much to recall the German customs described by Tacitus five centuries before.

The king was no longer elected by his people, for his office had become hereditary in the House of Meroveus, one of the heroes of the race. No woman, even of the Merovingian line, might succeed to the throne, nor prince whose hair had been shorn, since with the Franks flowing locks were a sign of royalty. Yet, in spite of the king’s new position, the old spirit of equality had not entirely disappeared. The assembly of freemen, still held once a year, had degenerated into a military review: but the warriors thus collected could demand that the coming campaign should meet with their approval. When a battle was over and victory obtained, the lion’s share of the booty did not fall to the king, but the whole was divided by lot.

A great part of the Salic law was really a tariff of violent acts, with the fine that those who had committed them must pay, so much for shooting a poisoned arrow, even if it missed its mark; so much for wounding another in the head, or for cutting off his nose, or his great toe, or, worst of all, for damaging his second finger, so that he could no longer draw the bowstring.

The underlying principle of this code was different from that of the Roman law, which set up a certain standard of right, inflicting penalties on those who fell short of it. Thus the Roman citizen who murdered or maimed his neighbour would be punished because he had dared to do what the state condemned as a crime. The Frank, in a similar case, would be fined by the judges of his tribe, and the money paid as compensation to the person, or the relations of the person, whom he had wronged: the idea being, not to appease the anger of the state, but to remove the resentment of the injured party.

For this purpose each Frank had his _wergeld_, literally his ‘worth-gold’ or the sum of money at which, according to his rank, his life was valued, beginning with the nobles of the king’s palace and descending in a scale to the lowest freeman. When the Franks left Belgium and advanced, conquering, into northern Gaul, they also fixed _wergelds_ for their Roman subjects; but rated them at only half the value of their own race. The _wergeld_ of a Frankish freeman was two hundred gold pieces, of a Roman only one hundred.

By the beginning of the sixth century, when the Franks were well established in Gaul, the management of their important tribal affairs had passed entirely into the hands of the nobles surrounding the king. These bore such titles as _Major Domus_ or ‘Mayor of the Palace’, at first only a steward, but later the chief minister of the crown; the ‘Seneschal’ or head of the royal household; the ‘Marshal’ or Master of the Stables; the ‘Chamberlain’ or chief servant of the bedchamber.

[Sidenote: Clovis, King of the Franks]

The most famous of the Merovingian kings, as the descendants of Merovius were called, was Clovis, who established the Frankish capital at Paris. He and his tribe, though pagans, were on friendly terms with the Roman inhabitants of northern Gaul, and especially with some of the Catholic clergy. When Clovis sacked the town of Soissons he tried to save the church plate, and especially a vase of great beauty that he knew St. Remi, Bishop of Reims, highly valued. ‘Let it be put amongst my booty,’ he said to his soldiers, intending to give it to the bishop later; but one of them answered him insolently, ‘Only that is thine which falls to thy share by lot,’ and with his axe he shivered the vase into a thousand pieces.

Clovis concealed his fury at the moment, but he did not forget, and a year afterwards, when he was reviewing his troops, he noticed the same man who had opposed his will. Stepping forward, he tore the fellow’s weapons from his grasp and threw them on the ground, saying, ‘No arms are worse cared for than thine!’ The soldier stooped to pick them up, and Clovis, raising his battle-axe high in the air, brought it down on the bent head before him with the comment, ‘Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons!’

Clovis married a Christian princess, Clotilda, a niece of the Burgundian king, and, at her request, he allowed their eldest child to be baptized, but for a long time he refused to become a Christian himself. One day, however, when in the midst of a battle in which his warriors were so hard pressed that they had almost taken to flight, he cried aloud--‘Jesus Christ, thou whom Clotilda doth call the Son of the Living God ... I now devoutly beseech thy aid, and I promise if thou dost give me victory over these my enemies ... that I will believe in thee and be baptized in thy name, for I have called on my own gods and they have failed to help me.’

Shortly afterwards the tide of battle turned, the Franks rallied, and Clovis obtained a complete victory. Remembering his promise, he went to Reims, and there he and three thousand of his warriors were received into the Catholic Church. ‘Bow thy head low,’ said St. Remi who baptized the King, ‘henceforth adore that which thou hast burned and burn that which thou didst formerly adore.’

When he became a Catholic, Clovis had no idea that he had altered the whole future of his race, for to him it seemed merely that he had fulfilled the bargain he had made with the Christian God. He did not change his ways, but pursued his ambitions as before, now by treachery and now by force. It was his determination to make himself supreme ruler over all the Franks, and in the case of another branch, the Ripuarians, he began by secretly persuading their heir to the kingly title, the young prince Chloderic, to kill his father and seize the royal coffers.

Chloderic, fired by the idea of becoming powerful, did so and wrote exultingly to Clovis, ‘My father is dead and his wealth is mine. Let some of thy men come hither, and that of his treasure which pleaseth them I will send thee.’

Ambassadors from the Salians duly arrived, and Chloderic led them secretly apart and showed them his money, running his hand through the pieces of gold that lay on the surface of the coffer. The men begged him to thrust his arm in deep that they might judge how great his wealth really was, and as he bent to do so, one of them struck him a mortal wound from behind. Then they fled. Thus by treachery died both father and son; but Clovis unblushingly denied to the Ripuarian Franks that he had been in any way responsible.

‘Chloderic murdered his father, and he hath been assassinated by I know not whom. I am no partner in such deeds, for it is against the law to take the life of relations. Nevertheless, since it has happened, I offer you this advice, that you should put yourselves under my protection.’

The Ripuarian Franks were without a leader, and like all barbarians they worshipped success; so, believing that Clovis would surely lead them to victory, they raised him on their shields and hailed him as king.

‘Each day God struck down the enemies of Clovis under his hand,’ says Bishop Gregory of Tours, describing these events, ‘and enlarged his kingdom, because he went with an upright heart before the Lord and did the things that were pleasing in His sight.’ It is startling to find a bishop pass such a verdict on a career of treachery and murder, the more that Gregory of Tours was no cringing court-flatterer but a priest with a high sense of duty who dared, when he believed it right, to oppose some of the later Frankish kings even at the risk of his life. Yet it must be remembered that a sense of honour was not understood by barbarians, except in a very crude form. They believed it was clever to outwit their neighbours, while to murder them was so ordinary as to excite little or no comment, save the infliction of a _wergeld_ if the crime could be brought home. Centuries of the civilizing influence of Christianity were needed before the men and women of these fierce tribes could accept the Christian principles of truth, justice, and mercy in anything like their real spirit.

The Romans in Gaul had almost given up expecting anything but brutality from their invaders if they aroused their enmity, and therefore welcomed even the smallest sign of grace. Thus the protection that Clovis afforded to the Catholic Church, after her years of persecution, blinded their eyes to many of his vices.

When Clovis had made himself master of the greater part of northern Gaul, he determined to strike a blow at the Visigoths in the south. ‘It pains me,’ he said to his followers, ‘to see Arians in a part of Gaul. Let us march against these heretics with God’s aid and gain their country for ourselves.’

Probably he was sincere in his dislike of heresy, but it was a politic attitude to adopt, for it meant that wherever he and his warriors marched they would find help against the Burgundians and Visigoths amongst the orthodox Roman population. It seemed to the latter that Clovis brought with him something of the glory of the vanished Roman Empire, kept alive by the Catholic Church and now revived through her in this her latest champion.

In a fierce battle near Poitiers, Clovis defeated the Visigoths and drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving them merely narrow strips of territory along the Mediterranean seaboard and on either slope of the Pyrenees. He also fought against the Burgundians and, though he was not so successful, reduced them temporarily to submission. When he died, at the age of forty-five, he was master of three-quarters of Gaul, and had stamped the name of his race for ever on the land he had invaded.

His work of conquest was continued by his successors and reached its zenith in the time of King Dagobert, who lived at the beginning of the seventh century. Dagobert has been called ‘the French Solomon’, because, like the Jewish king, he was world-famed for his wisdom and riches. Not content with maintaining his power over Gaul to the west of the Rhine, he fought against the Saxon and Frisian tribes in Germany and forced them to pay tribute. At last his Empire stretched from the Atlantic to the mountains of Bohemia; the Duke of Brittany, who had hitherto remained independent of the Franks, came to offer his allegiance, while the Emperor of Constantinople sought a Frankish alliance.

A chronicler of the day, speaking of Dagobert, says, ‘He was a prince terrible in his wrath towards traitors and rebels. He held the royal sceptre firmly in his grasp, and like a lion he sprang upon those who would foment discord.’

Another account describes his journeys through his kingdom, and how he administered justice with an even hand, not altogether to the joy of tyrannical landowners. ‘His judgements struck terror into the hearts of the bishops and of the great men, but it overwhelmed the poor with joy.’

In the troublous years that were to come his reign stood out in people’s minds as an age of prosperity, but already, before the death of the king, this prosperity had begun to wane. Luxury sapped the vigour of a once-powerful mind and body, and the authority that ‘the French Solomon’ relaxed in his later years through self-indulgence was never regained by his successors.

With the contemptuous title ‘The Sluggard Kings’ the last rulers of the Merovingian line have passed down to posterity. Few were endowed with any ability or even ambition to govern, the majority died before they had reached manhood looking already like senile old men; and the power that should have been theirs passed into the hands of the Mayors of the Palace who administered their demesnes. On state occasions, indeed, they were still shown to their subjects, as they jolted to the place of assembly in a rough cart drawn by oxen; but the ceremony over, they returned to their royal villas and insignificance. ‘Nothing was left to the king save the name of king, the flowing locks, the long beard. He sat on his throne and played at government, gave audiences to envoys, and dismissed them with the answers with which he had been schooled.’

[Sidenote: The Carolingians]

It was a situation that could only last so long as the name ‘Meroveus’ retained its spell over the Franks; but the day came when the spell was broken, and a race of stronger fibre, the Carolingians, usurped the royal title. The heads of this family had for generations held the office of ‘Mayor of the Palace’ in the part of Gaul between the Meuse and the Lower Rhine, then called Austrasia. It was their duty to administer the royal demesnes in this large district, that is, to see that the laws were obeyed, to superintend the cultivation of the soil, and to collect a share of the various harvests as a revenue for the king.

This was more important work than it may sound to modern ears; for in the early Middle Ages the majority of people, unlike men and women to-day, lived in the country. Ever since the decay of the Roman Empire, when the making of roads was neglected and the imperial grain-fleets disappeared from the Mediterranean, the problem of carrying merchandise and food from one part of Europe to another had grown steadily more acute. As commerce and industry languished, towns ceased to be centres of population and became merely strongholds where the neighbourhood could find refuge when attacked by its enemies. People preferred to spend their ordinary life in villages in the midst of fields, where they could grow corn and barley, or keep their own sheep and oxen, and if the crops failed or their beasts were smitten by disease a whole province might suffer starvation.

The Mayor of the Palace must guard the royal demesnes, as far as possible, from the ravages of weather, wolves, or lawless men, for the King of the Franks, as much as any of his subjects, depended on the harvests and herds for his prosperity rather than on commerce or manufactures. By the end of the seventh century the Mayors of Austrasia had ceased to interest themselves merely in local affairs and had begun to extend their authority over the whole of France. Nominally, they acted in the name of the Merovingian kings, but once when the throne fell vacant they did not trouble to fill it for two years. The Franks made no protest: it was to their mayors, not to their kings, that they now turned whether in search of good government or daring national exploits.

The Carolingian Charles ‘Martel’, Charles ‘the Hammer’, was a warrior calculated to arouse their profound admiration. ‘He was a Herculean warrior,’ says an old chronicle, ‘an ever-victorious prince ... who triumphed gloriously over other princes, and kings, and peoples, and barbarous nations: in so much that, from the Slavs to the Frisians and even to the Spaniards and Saracens, there were none who rose up against him that escaped from his hand, without prostrating themselves in the dust before his empire.’

It was Charles Martel who saved France from falling under the yoke of the Saracens, a race of Arabian warriors who, crossing from Africa at the Strait of Gibraltar, subdued in one short campaign three-quarters of Spain. Describing the first great victory over the Gothic King Rodrigo at Guadalete, the Governor of Africa wrote to his master the Caliph, ‘O Commander of the Faithful, these are no common conquests; they are like the meeting of the nations on the Day of Judgement.’

Puffed up with the glory they had gained, the Saracens, who were followers of the Prophet Mahomet, believed that they had only to advance for Christian armies to run away; and over the Pyrenees they swept in large bands, seizing first one stronghold on the Mediterranean coast and then another. Before this invasion Charles Martel had been engaged in a quarrel with the Duke of Aquitaine, but now they hastily made friends and on the field of Poitiers joined their forces to stem the Saracen tide. So terrible was the battle, we are told, that over three hundred thousand Saracens fell before the Frankish warriors ‘inflexible as a block of ice’. The number is almost certainly an exaggeration, and so also is the claim that the victors, by forcing the remnant of the Mahometan army to retreat towards the Pyrenees in hasty flight, saved Europe for Christianity. Even had the decision of the battle been reversed, the Moors would have found the task of holding Spain in the years to come quite sufficient to absorb all their energies. Indeed, their attacks on Gaul were, from the first, more in the nature of gigantic raids than of invasions with a view to settlement, though at the time their ferocity made them seem of world-wide importance.

Thus it was only natural that the Mayor of the Palace, to whom the victory was mainly due, became the hero of Christendom. The Pope, who was at that time trying to defend Rome from the King of the Lombards, sent to implore his aid; but Charles knew that his forces had been weakened by their struggle with the Saracens and dared not undertake so big a campaign.

[Sidenote: Pepin, King of the Franks]

Some years later his son, Pepin ‘the Short’ (751-68), who had succeeded him, received the suggestion with a different answer. Pepin, as his nickname shows, was short in stature, but he was powerfully built and so strong that with a single blow of his axe he once cut off the head of a lion. Energetic and shrewd, he saw a way of turning the Pope’s need of support against the Lombards to his own advantage. He therefore sent Frankish ambassadors to Rome to inquire whether it was not shameful for a land to be governed by kings who had no authority. The Pope, who was anxious to please Pepin, replied discreetly, ‘He who possesses the authority should doubtless possess the title also.’

This was exactly what the Mayor of the Palace had expected and wished, and the rest of the story may be told in the words of the old Frankish annals for the year 751: ‘In this year Pepin was named king of the Franks with the sanction of the Popes, and in the city of Soissons he was anointed with the holy oil ... and was raised to the throne after the custom of the Franks. But Childeric, who had the name of king, was shorn of his locks and sent into a monastery.’

The last of the Merovingians had vanished into the oblivion of a cloister, and Pepin the Carolingian was ruler of France. With the Pope’s blessing he had achieved his ambition, and fortune soon enabled him to repay his debt, mainly, as it happened, at another’s expense.

In the last chapter we described the effect of the Lombard invasion of Italy, and how that Teutonic race sank its roots deep in the heart of the peninsula, leaving a Greek fringe along the coasts that still considered itself part of the Eastern Empire. Rome in theory belonged to this fringe, but in reality the Popes hated the imperial authority almost as much as the aggressions of Lombard king and dukes, and struggled to free themselves from its yoke.

When Pepin, his own ambition satisfied, turned his attention to the Pope’s affairs, the Lombards had just succeeded in over-running the Exarchate of Ravenna, the seat of the imperial government in Italy. Collecting an army, the King of the Franks crossed the Alps without encountering any opposition, marched on Pavia, the Lombard capital, and struck such terror into his enemies that, almost without fighting, they agreed to the terms that he dictated.

Legally, he should have at once commanded the restoration of the Exarchate to the Empire, but there was no particular reason why Pepin should gratify Constantinople, while he had a very strong inclination to please Rome. He therefore told the Lombards to give the Exarchate to Stephen II, who was Pope at that time, and this they faithfully promised to do; but, as he turned homewards, they began instead to oppress the country round Rome, preventing food from entering the city and pillaging churches.

[Sidenote: The Temporal Power of the Papacy]

Pepin was very angry when he heard the news. Once more he descended on Italy, and this time the Lombards were compelled to keep their word, and the Papacy received the first of its temporal possessions, ratified by a formal treaty that declared the exact extent of the territory and the Papal rights over it. This was an important event in mediaeval history, for it meant that henceforward the Pope, who claimed to be the spiritual head of Christendom, would be also an Italian prince with recognized lands and revenues, and therefore with private ambitions concerning these. It would be his instinct to distrust any other ruler in the peninsula who might become powerful enough to deprive him of these lands; while he would always be faced, when in difficulties, by the temptation to use his spiritual power to further purely worldly ends. On the way in which Popes dealt with this problem of their temporal and spiritual power, much of the future history of Europe was to depend.

Pepin, in spite of his shrewdness, had no idea of the troubles he had sown by his donation. Well pleased with the generosity he had found so easy, with the title of ‘Patrician’ bestowed on him by the Pope, and perhaps still more by the spoils that he and his Franks had collected in Lombardy, he left Italy, and was soon engaged in other campaigns nearer home against the Saracens and rebellious German tribes. In these he continued until his death in 768.

VII

MAHOMET

Christianity, first preached by humble fishermen in Palestine, had become the foundation of life in mediaeval Europe. Some three hundred years after Constantine the Great had made this possible another religion, ‘Islam’, destined to be the rival of Christianity, was also born in the East, in Arabia, a narrow strip of territory lying between the Red Sea and miles of uninhabitable desert.

On the sea-coast of Arabia were some harbours, inland a few fertile oases, where towns of low, white stone houses and mud hovels had sprung into being; but from the very nature of the soil and climate the Arabs were not drawn to manufacture goods or grow corn. Instead they preferred a wanderer’s life, to tend the herds of horses or sheep that ranged the peninsula in search of water and pasturage, or if more adventurous to guard the caravans of camels that carried the silks and spices of India to Mediterranean seaports. These caravans had their regular routes, and every merchant a band of armed men to protect his goods and drive off robbers along the way. Only in the ‘Sacred Months’, the time of the sowing of seeds in the spring and at the autumn harvest, were such convoys of goods safe from attack; for then, and then only, every Arab believed, according to the traditions of his forefathers, that peace was a duty, and that a curse would fall on him who dared to break it.

The Arab, like all Orientals, was superstitious. He worshipped ‘Allah’, the all supreme God, but he accepted also a variety of other gods, heavenly bodies, spirits and devils, stones and idols. One of the most famous Arabian sanctuaries was a temple at Mecca called the ‘Ka’bah’, where a black stone had been built into the wall that pilgrims would come from long distances to kiss and worship. Amongst the youths of the town who saw this ceremony and himself took part in the religious processions was an orphan lad, Mahomet (576-632), brought up in the house of his uncle, Abu Talib.

[Sidenote: The Young Mahomet]

Mahomet was handsome and strong: he had looked after sheep on the edge of the desert, taken part in tribal fights, and from the age of twelve wandered with caravans as far as the sea-coast. What distinguished him from his companions was not his education, nor any special skill as a warrior, but his quickness of observation, his tenacious memory, and his gift for bending others to his will. Unable to read, he could only gain knowledge by word of mouth, and wherever he went, amongst the colonies of the Jews who were the chief manufacturers in the towns, or lying beside the camp fires of the caravans at night, he would keep his ears open and store up in his mind all the tales that he heard. In this way he learned of the Jewish religion and a garbled version of Christianity. Soon he knew the stories of Joseph and of Abraham and some of the sayings of Christ, and the more he thought over them the more he grew to hate the idol worship of the Arabs round him.

When he was twenty-five Mahomet married a rich widow, Khadijah, whose caravan he had successfully steered across the desert; and in this way he became a man of independent means, possessing camels and horses of his own. Khadijah was some years older than Mahomet, but she was a very good wife to him, and brought him not only a fortune but a trust and belief in his mission that he was to need sorely in the coming years. To her he confided his hatred of idol-worship, and also to Abu Bakr, the wealthy son of a cloth merchant of Mecca, who had fallen under his influence. Mahomet declared that God, and later the Angel Gabriel, had appeared to him in visions and had given him messages condemning the superstitions of the Arabs.

‘There is but one God, Allah ... and Mahomet is His Prophet.’

This was the chief message, received at first with contempt but destined to be carried triumphant in the centuries to come right to the Pyrenees and the gates of Vienna.

The visions, or trances, during which Mahomet received his messages, afterwards collected in the sacred book, the Koran, are thought by many to have been epileptic fits. His face would turn livid and he would cover himself with a blanket, emerging at last exhausted to deliver some command or exhortation. Later it would seem that he could produce this state of insensibility at will and without much effort, whenever questions were asked, indeed, in answering which he required divine guidance. Much of the teaching in the Koran was based, like Judaism or Christianity, on far higher ideals than the fetish worship of the Arabs: it emphasized such things as the duty of almsgiving, the discipline that comes of fasting, the necessity of personal cleanliness, while it forbade the use of wine, declaring drunkenness a crime.

With regard to the position of women the Koran could show nothing of the chivalry that was to develop in Christendom through the respect felt by Christians for the mother of Christ and for the many women martyrs and saints who suffered during the early persecutions. Moslems were allowed by the Koran to have four wives (Mahomet permitted himself ten), and these might be divorced at their husband’s pleasure without any corresponding right on their part. On the other hand the power of holding property before denied was now secured to women, and the murder of female children that had been a practice in the peninsula was sternly abolished.

As the years passed more and more ‘Surahs’, or chapters, were added to the Koran, but at first the Prophet’s messages were few and appealed only to the poor and humble. When the Meccans, told by Abu Bakr that Mahomet was a prophet, came to demand a miracle as proof, he declared that there could be no greater miracle than the words he uttered; but this to the prosperous merchants seemed merely crazy nonsense. When he went farther, and, acting on what he declared was Allah’s revelation, destroyed some of the local idols, contempt changed to anger; for the inhabitants argued that if ‘Ka’bah’ ceased to be a sanctuary their trade with the pilgrims who usually came to Mecca would cease.

For more than eight years, while the Prophet maintained his unpopular mission, his poorer followers were stoned and beaten, and he himself shunned. Perhaps it seems odd that in such a barbarous community he was not killed; but though Arabia possessed no government in any modern sense, yet a system of tribal law existed that went far towards preventing promiscuous murder. Each man of any importance belonged to a tribe that he was bound to support with his sword, and that in turn was responsible for his life. If he were slain the tribe would exact vengeance or demand ‘blood money’ from the murderer. Now the head of Mahomet’s tribe was Abu Talib, his uncle, and, though the old man refused to accept his nephew as a prophet, he would not allow him to be molested.

In spite of persecution the number of believers in Mahomet’s doctrines grew, and when some of those who had been driven out of the city took refuge with the Christian King of Abyssinia and were treated by him with greater kindness than the pagan Arabs, the Meccans at home became so much alarmed that they adopted a new policy of aggression. Henceforward both Mahomet and his followers, the hated ‘Moslems’, or ‘heathen’ as they were nicknamed in the Syriac tongue, were to be outlaws, and no one might trade with them or give them food.

In an undisciplined community like an Arabian town such an order would not be strictly kept, and for three years Mahomet was able to defy the ban, but every day his position grew more precarious and the sufferings of his followers from hunger and poverty increased. During this time too both Khadijah and Abu Talib died, and the Prophet, almost overwhelmed with his misfortunes, was only kept from doubting his mission by the faith and loyalty of those who would not desert him.

Weary of trying to convert Mecca he sent messengers through Arabia to find if there were any tribe that would welcome a prophet, and at last he received an invitation to go to Yathrib. This was a larger town than Mecca, farther to the north, and was populated mainly by Jewish tribes who hated the Arabian idol-worshippers and welcomed the idea of a teacher whose views were based largely on Jewish traditions.

[Sidenote: The Hijrah]

In 622, therefore, Mahomet and his followers fled secretly from Mecca to Yathrib, later called Medinah or ‘the city of the Prophet’; and this date of the ‘Hijrah’ or ‘Flight’, when the new religion broke definitely with old Arab traditions, was taken as the first year of the Moslem calendar, just as Christians reckon their time from the birth of Christ. Here in Medinah was built the first mosque, or temple of the new faith, a faith christened by its believers Islam, a word meaning ‘surrender’, for in surrender to Allah and to the will of his Prophet lay the way of salvation to the Moslem Garden of Paradise.

So beautiful to the Arab mind were the very material luxuries and pleasures with which Mahomet entranced the imagination of believers that in later years his soldiers would fling themselves recklessly against their enemies’ spears in order to gain Paradise the quicker. The alternative for the unbeliever was Hell, the everlasting fires of the Old Testament that so terrified the minds of mediaeval Christians; and between Paradise and Hell there was no middle way.

The Jews in Medinah were, like Mahomet, worshippers of one God, but they soon showed that they were not prepared to accept this wandering Arab as Jehovah’s final revelation to man. They demanded miracles, sneered at the Koran, which they declared was a parody of their own Scriptures, and took advantage of the poverty of the refugees to drive hard bargains with them. At length it became obvious that the Moslems must find some means of livelihood or else Medinah, like Mecca, must be left for more friendly soil.

Pressed by circumstances Mahomet evolved a policy that was destined to overthrow the tribal system of government in Arabia. Mention has been made already of the caravans of camels that journeyed regularly from south to north of the peninsula, bearing merchandise. Many of these caravans were owned by wealthy Meccans, whose chief trade route passed quite close by the town of Medinah, and they were protected and guarded by members of the tribe of Abu Talib and of other families whose relations were serving with the Prophet.

At first, when Mahomet commanded that these caravans should be attacked and looted, his followers looked aghast, for the sacredness of tribes from attack by kinsmen was a tradition they had inherited for generations. Their Prophet at once proved to them by a message from Allah that a new relationship had been formed stronger than the ties of blood, namely, the bond of faith, and that to the believer the unbeliever, whether father or son, was accursed. In the same way, when the first marauding expeditions were unsuccessful because the caravans attacked were too well guarded, Mahomet explained away the ‘Sacred Months’ and chose in future that very time for his warriors to descend upon unsuspecting merchants.

[Sidenote: Battle of Badr]

The Meccans, outraged by what they somewhat naturally considered treachery, soon dispatched some thousand men, determined to make an end of the Prophet and his followers; and at Badr, not very far from the coast on the trade route between the two towns, this large force encountered three hundred Moslems commanded by Mahomet. It is difficult to gain a clear impression of the battle, for romance and legend have rendered real details obscure; but, either by superior generalship, the valour and discipline of the Moslems as compared to the conduct of their forces, or, as was later stated, through the agency of angels sent by Allah from Heaven, the vastly more numerous Meccan force was utterly put to rout.

Moslems refer to the battle of Badr as ‘the Day of Deliverance’, for though, not long afterwards, they in their turn were defeated by the Meccans, yet never again were they to become mere discredited refugees. Success pays, and, with the victory of Badr as a tangible miracle to satisfy would-be converts, Mahomet soon gained a large army of warriors, whom his personality moulded into obedience to his will.

The Jews who had mocked him had soon cause to repent, for Mahomet, remembering their jibes and the petty persecution to which they had subjected his followers, adopted a definitely hostile attitude towards them. Taking advantage of the reluctance with which these Jews had shared in the defence of Medinah and in the throwing-up of earthworks to protect it, when the Meccans came to besiege it in the year 5 of the new calendar, Mahomet as soon as the siege was raised obtained his revenge. Those Jews of the city who still refused to recognize him as a Prophet were slaughtered, their wives and children sold into slavery. The teaching and ritual of the Koran also, once carefully based on the Scriptures of Israel, began to cast off this influence, and where of old Mahomet had commanded his followers to look towards Jerusalem in their prayers, he now bade them kneel with their faces towards Mecca.

In this command may be seen his new policy of conciliation towards his native town; for Mahomet recognized that in the city of Mecca lay the key to the peninsula, and he was determined to establish his power there, if not by force then by diplomacy. After some years of negotiation he persuaded those who had driven him into exile not so much of the truth of his teaching as of the certainty that his presence would bring more pilgrims than ever before to visit the shrine of Ka’bah.

In A.D. 630 he entered Mecca in triumph, and the worship of Islam was established in the heart of Arabia. As a concession to the Meccans, divine revelation announced that the sacred black stone built into the temple wall had been hallowed by Abraham, and was therefore worthy of veneration.

Instead of a general scheme of revenge only two of Mahomet’s enemies were put to death; and it is well to remember that, judged by the standards of his age and race, the Prophet was no lover of cruelty. In his teaching he condemned the use of torture, and throughout his life he was nearly always ready to treat with his foes rather than slay them. Those amongst his enemies who refused him recognition as a Prophet while willing to acknowledge him as a ruler were usually allowed to live in peace on the payment of a yearly ransom divided amongst the believers; but in cases where he had met with an obstinate refusal or persistent treachery, as from the Jews of Medinah, Mahomet would put whole tribes to the sword.

In 632 the Prophet of Islam died, leaving a group of Arabian tribes bound far more securely together by the faith he had taught them than they could have been by the succession of any royal house. ‘Though Mahomet is dead, yet is Mahomet’s God not dead.’

While Mahomet was still an exile at Medinah it is evident that he already contemplated the idea of gaining the world for Islam. ‘Let there be in you a nation summoning unto good,’ says the Koran, and in token of this mission the Prophet, in the years following his Arabian victories, sent letters to foreign rulers to announce his ambition. Here is one to the chief of the Copts, a Christian race living in Egypt:

‘In the name of Allah ... the Merciful.

‘From the Apostle of Allah to ..., Chief of the Copts. Peace be
upon him who follows the guidance. Next I summon thee with the
appeal to Islam: become a Moslem and thou shalt be safe. God shall
give thee thy reward twofold. But if thou decline then on thee is
the guilt of the Copts. O ye people of the Book come unto an equal
arrangement between us and you that we should serve none save God,
associating nothing with Him, and not taking one another for Lords
besides God,--and if ye decline, then bear witness that we are
Moslems.’

[Sidenote: The Kingdom of Persia]

Similar letters were sent to Chosroes, King of Persia, and to Heraclius, the Christian Emperor at Constantinople. The former tore the letter in pieces contemptuously, for at that time his kingdom extended over the greater part of Asia; Jerusalem, once the pride of the Eastern Empire, had fallen into his grasp; while his armies were besieging Constantinople itself. A letter that he himself penned to the Christian Emperor shows his overweening pride, and the depths into which Byzantium had fallen in the public regard:

‘Chosroes, Greatest of Gods, and Master of the whole earth, to
Heraclius, his vile and insensate slave. Why do you still refuse to
submit to our rule and call yourself a king? Have I not destroyed
the Greeks? You say that you trust in your God. Why has he not
delivered out of my hand Caesarea, Jerusalem, Alexandria? and shall
I not also destroy Constantinople? But I will pardon your faults if
you will submit to me, and come hither with your wife and children,
and I will give you lands, vineyards, and olive groves, and look
upon you with a kindly aspect. Do not deceive yourself with vain
hope in that Christ, who was not even able to save himself from the
Jews, who killed him by nailing him to a cross. Even if you take
refuge in the depths of the sea I shall stretch out my hand and
take you, so that you shall see me whether you will or no.’

Christendom was fortunate in Heraclius. Instead of contemplating either despair or surrender, he called upon the Church to summon all Christians to his aid, and by means of the gold and silver plate presented to him as a war loan by the bishops and clergy, and in command of a large army of volunteers, he beat back the Persians from the very gates of his capital. Not content with a policy of defence, he next invaded Asia, and at the battle of Nineveh utterly destroyed the hosts of Chosroes. The fallen King, deposed by his subjects, was forced to take refuge in the mountains, and later was thrown into a dungeon where he died of cold and starvation.

Had the reign of Heraclius ended at this date, it would be remembered as a glorious era in the history of Constantinople; but unfortunately for his fame another foe was to make more lasting inroads on his Empire, already weakened by the Persian occupation.

When the Emperor (610-41), like Chosroes, received Mahomet’s letter, he is said to have read it with polite interest. It seemed to him that this fanatic Arab, who hated the Jews as much as the Christians did, might turn his successful sword not only against them but against the Persians. In this surmise Heraclius was right, for under Abu Bakr, now Caliph, or ‘successor’, of Mahomet, since the Prophet had left no son, the Moslems invaded Persia.

Unfortunately for Heraclius, they were equally bent on an aggressive campaign against the Christian Empire. ‘There is but one God, Allah!’ With this test, by which they could distinguish friend from foe, the Arab hosts burst through the gate of Syria, and at Yermuk encountered the imperial army sent by Heraclius to oppose them. The Greeks fought so stubbornly that at first it seemed that their disciplined valour must win. ‘Is not Paradise before you?... Are not Hell and Satan behind?’ cried the Arab leader to his fanatical hordes, and in response to his words they rallied, broke the opposing lines by the sudden ferocity of their charge, and finally drove the imperial troops in headlong flight.

[Sidenote: Mahometan Victories]

After the battle of Yermuk Syria fell and Palestine was invaded. In 637 Jerusalem became a Moslem town, with a mosque standing where once had been the famous temple of Solomon. Mahomet had declared Jerusalem a sanctuary only second in glory to Mecca; and his followers with a toleration strange in that age left under Christian guardianship the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre and other sacred sites.

After Syria, Palestine; after Palestine, Egypt and the north African coast-line. The dying Heraclius heard nothing but the bitter news of disaster, and after his death the quarrels of his descendants increased the feebleness of Christian resistance. A spirit of unity might have carried the Moslem banners to the limits of the Eastern Empire, but in 656 the Caliph Othman was murdered, and the civil war that ensued enabled the Christian Emperor, Constans II, to negotiate peace. He had lost Tripoli, Syria, Egypt, and the greater part of Armenia to his foes, who had also succeeded in establishing a naval base in the Mediterranean that threatened the islands of Greece herself. In the north his borders were overrun by Bulgar and Slav tribes, while in Italy the Lombards maintained a perpetual struggle against his viceroy, the Exarch of Ravenna.