The Mediaeval Mind (Vol. 1&2). Henry Osborn Taylor
abdicated and retired to a monastery;[233] and Pippin became sole ruler, and at last formally king, anointed by Boniface under the direction of the Pope in 752. After this, Boniface, withdrawing from the direction of the Church, turned once more to satisfy his heart’s desire by going on a mission among the heathen Frisians, where he crowned a great life with a martyr’s death.
Thus authoritatively, supported by Rome and the Frankish monarchy, Christianity was presented to the Germans. It carried suggestions of a better order and some knowledge of Latin letters. The extension of Roman Catholic Christianity was the aim of Boniface first and last and always. But a Latin education was needed by the clergy to enable them to understand and set forth this some-what elaborated and learned scheme of salvation. Boniface and his coadjutors had no aversion to the literary means by which a serviceable Latin knowledge was to be obtained, and their missionary and reorganizing labours necessarily worked some diffusion of Latinity.
The Frankish secular power which had supported Boniface, advanced to violent action when Charlemagne’s sword bloodily constrained the Saxons to accept his rule and Christianity, the two inseverable objects which he tirelessly pursued. Nor could this ruler stay his mighty hand from the government of the Church within his realm. With his power to appoint bishops, he might, if he chose, control its councils. But apparently he chose to rule the Church directly; and his, and his predecessors’ and successors’ Capitularies (rather than Conciliar decrees) contain the chief ecclesiastical legislation for the Frankish realm.
In its temporalities and secular action the Church was the greatest and richest of all subjects; it possessed the rights of lay vassals and was affected with like duties.[234] But in ritual, doctrine, language and affiliation, the Frankish Church made part of the Roman Catholic Church. It used the Roman liturgy and the Latin tongue. The ordering of the clergy was Roman, and the regulation of the monasteries was Romanized by the adoption of the Benedictine regula. Within the Church Rome had triumphed. Prelates were vassals of the king who had now become Emperor; and the great corporate Church was subject to him. Nevertheless, this great corporate institution was Roman rather than Gallic or Frankish or German. It was Teuton only in those elements which represented ecclesiastical abuses, for example, the remaining irregularities of various kinds, the lay and martial habits of prelates, and even their appointment by the monarch. These were the elements which the Church in its logical Roman evolution was to eliminate. Charlemagne himself, as well as his lesser successors, strove just as zealously to bring the people into obedience to the Church as into obedience to the lay rulers. While the Carolingian rule was strong, its power was exerted on behalf of ecclesiastical authority and discipline; and when the royal administration weakened after Charlemagne’s death, the Church was not slow to revolt against its temporal subjection to the royal power.
But the Church, in spite of Latin and Roman affinities, strove also to come near the German peoples and speak to them in their own tongues. This is borne witness to by the many translations from Latin into Frankish, Saxon, or Alemannish dialects, made by the clergy. Christianity deeply affected the German language. Many of its words received German form, and the new thoughts forced old terms to take on novel and more spiritual meanings. To be sure these German dialects were there before Christianity came, and the capacities of the Germans acquired in heathen times are attested by the sufficiency of their language to express Christian thought. Likewise the German character was there, and proved its range and quality by the very transformation of which it showed itself capable under Christianity. And just as Christianity was given expression in the German language, which retained many of its former qualities, so many fundamental traits of German character remained in the converted people. Yet so earnestly did the Germans turn to Christianity, and such draughts of its spirit did they draw into their nature, that the early Germanic re-expression of it is sincere, heartfelt, and moving, and illumined with understanding of the Faith.
These qualities may be observed in the series of Christian documents in the German tongues commencing in the first years of Charlemagne’s reign. They consist of baptismal confessions of belief, the first of which (cir. 769) was composed for heathen Saxons just converted by the sword, and of catechisms presenting the elements of Christian precept and dogma. The earliest of the latter (cir. 789), coming from the monastery at Weissenburg in Alsace, contains the Lord’s Prayer, with explanations, an enumeration of the deadly sins according to the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian. Further, one finds among these documents a translation of the De fide Catholica of Isidore of Seville, and of the Benedictine regula; also Charlemagne’s Exhortatio ad plebem Christianam, which was an admonition to the people to learn the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. There are likewise general confessions of sins. Less dependent on a Latin original is the so-called Muspilli, a spirited description in alliterative verse of the last times and the Day of Judgment.
German qualities, however, express themselves more fully in two Gospel versions, the first the famous Saxon Heliand (cir. 835), (which follows Tatian’s “Harmony”); the second the somewhat later Evangelienbuch of Otfrid the Frank. They were both composed in alliterative verse, though Otfrid also made use of rhyme.[235] The martial, Teutonic ring of the former is well known. Christ is the king, the disciples are His thanes whose duty is to stand by their lord to the death; He rewards them with the promised riches of heaven, excelling the earthly goods bestowed by other kings. In the “betrayal” they close around their Lord, saying: “Were it thy will, mighty Lord of ours, that we should set upon them with the spear, gladly would we strike and die for our Lord.” Out broke the wrath of the “ready swordsman” (snel suerdthegan)[236] Simon Peter; he could not speak for anguish to think that his lord should be bound. Angrily strode the bold knight before his lord, drew his weapon, the sword by his side, and smote the nearest foe with might of hands. Before his fury and the spurting blood the people fled fearing the sword’s bite.
The Heliand has also gentler qualities, as when it calls the infant Christ the fridubarn (peace-child), and pictures Mary watching over her “little man.” But German love of wife and child and home speak more clearly in Otfrid’s book. Although a learned monk, his pride of Frankish race rings in his oft-quoted reasons for writing theotisce, i.e. in German: Why shall not the Franks sing God’s praise in Frankish tongue? Forcible and logical it is, although not bound by grammar’s rules. Yes, why should the Franks be incapable? they are brave as Romans or Greeks; they are as good in field and wood; wide power is theirs, and ready are they with the sword. They are rich, and possess a good land, with honour. They can guard their own; what people is their equal in battle? Diligent are they also in the Word of God. Otfrid is quite moving in his sympathetic sense of the sorrow of the Last Judgment, when the mother from child shall be parted, the father from son, the lord from his faithful thane, friend from friend—all human kind. Deep is the mystic love and yearning with which he realizes Heaven as one’s own land: there is life without death, light without darkness, the angels and eternal bliss. We have left it—that must we bewail always, banished to a strange land, poor misled orphans. The antithesis between the fremidemo lant (fremdes land) of earth, and the heimat, the eigan lant of Heaven, which is home, real home, is the keynote strongly felt and movingly expressed.
BOOK II
THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES
CHAPTER X
CAROLINGIAN PERIOD: THE FIRST STAGE IN THE APPROPRIATION OF THE PATRISTIC AND ANTIQUE
With the conversion of Teuton peoples and their introduction to the Latin culture accompanying the new religion, the factors of mediaeval development came at last into conjunction. The mediaeval development was to issue from their combined action, rather than from the singular nature of any one of them.[237] Taking up the introductory theme concerning the meeting of these forces, we followed the Latinizing of the West resulting from the expansion of the Roman