Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England
- Автор: Harding Samuel B.
- Год: 1909
- Язык: английский
- Год: Heritage History
- Жанр: История
Электронная книга - «Greek Gods- Rome- Middle Ages- England». Краткое содержание книги:
Greek Gods and Heroes
City of the Seven Hills
The Story of the Middle Ages
The Story of England
Gregory was born of a noble and wealthy Roman family. When he inherited his fortune he gave it all to found seven monasteries, and he himself became a monk in one of these. There he lived a severe and studious life. At length, against his own wishes, he was chosen by the clergy and people to be Pope. This was in the very midst of the Dark Ages. The Lombards had just come into Italy, and everything was in confusion. Everywhere cities were ruined, churches burned, and monasteries destroyed. Farms were laid waste and left uncultivated; and wild beasts roamed over the deserted fields. For twenty-seven years, Gregory wrote, Rome had been in terror of the sword of the Lombards. "What is happening in other countries," he said, "we know not; but in this the end of the world seems not only to be approaching, but to have actually begun." The rulers that the Eastern Emperors set up in Italy, after it had been recovered from the East-Goths, either could not or would not help. And to make matters worse, famine and sickness came, and the people died by hundreds.
So Gregory was obliged to act not only as the bishop of Rome, but as its ruler also. He caused processions to march about the city, and prayers to be said, to stop the sickness. He caused grain to be brought and given to the people, so that they might no longer die of famine. He also defended the city against the Lombards, until a peace could be made. In this way a beginning was made of the rule of the Pope over Rome, which did not come to an end until the year 1871.
Gregory was not only bishop of Rome, and ruler of the city. He was also the head of the whole Western Church, and was constantly busy with its affairs.
Before he was chosen Pope, Gregory was passing through the market-place at Rome, one day, and came to the spot where slaves—white slaves—were sold. There he saw some beautiful, fair-haired boys.
"From what country do these boys come?" he asked.
"From the island of Britain," was the answer.
"Are they Christians?"
"No," he was told; "they are still pagans."
"Alas!" exclaimed Gregory, "that the Prince of Darkness should have power over forms of such loveliness."
Then he asked of what nation they were.
"They are Angles," replied their owner.
"Truly," said Gregory, "they seem like angels, not Angles. From what province of Britain are they?"
"From Deira," said the man naming a kingdom in the northern part of the island.
"Then," said Gregory, making a pun in the Latin, "they must be rescued de ira [from the wrath of God]. And what is the name of their king?"
"Aella," was the answer.
"Yea," said Gregory, as he turned to go, "Alleluia must be sung in the land of Aella."
At first Gregory planned to go himself as missionary to convert the Angles and Saxons. In this he was disappointed; but when he became Pope he sent a monk named Augustine as leader of a band of missionaries. By their preaching, Christianity was introduced into the English kingdoms, and the English were gradually won from the old German worship of Woden and Thor.
Gregory also had an important part in winning the West-Goths and Lombards from Arianism to the true faith. In all that he did Gregory's action seemed so wise and good that men said he was counselled by the Holy Spirit; and in the pictures of him the Holy Spirit is always represented, in the form of a dove, hovering about his head.
Gregory has been called the real father of the Papacy of the Middle Ages. This is no small praise, for the Papacy, in those dark ages, was of great service to Christendom. In later ages, popes sometimes became corrupt; and at last the Reformation came, in which many nations of the West threw off their obedience. But in the dark days of the Middle Ages, all the Western nations looked up to the Pope as the head of the Church on earth, and the influence of the popes was for good. There was very little order, union, and love for right and justice in the Middle Ages, as it was; but no one can imagine how much greater would have been the confusion, the lawlessness, and the disorder without the restraining influence of the Papacy.
Rise of the Franks
The West-Goths, the Burgundians, the Vandals, the East-Goths, and the Lombards, all helped in their own way to make Europe what it is to-day; yet none of them succeeded in founding a power that was to last as a separate state. Their work was largely to break down the rule of the Western Empire. The building up of a new state to take its place was to be the work of another people, the FRANKS.
The Franks were the earliest of all the Germanic invaders to fix themselves in the Roman province of Gaul, but they were the last to establish a power of their own in that land.
Gaul, in the five hundred years that had passed since its conquest by Julius Caesar, had become more Roman even than Italy itself. In its long rule by foreigners, however, it had decayed in strength. The spirit of patriotism had died out; the people in the latter days of the Empire had been ground down by oppressive taxation; so it no more than the other provinces was able to offer resistance to the barbarians.
A hundred years before the West-Goths crossed the Danube, bands of the Franks had been allowed to cross the Rhine, from their homes on the right bank of that river, and to establish themselves as the allies or subjects of Rome on the western bank. There they had dwelt, gaining in numbers and in power, until news came of the deeds of Alaric. When the Vandals, Burgundians, and other Germanic tribes sought to cross the Rhine, the Franks on the left bank resisted them, but their resistance had been overcome.
FRANKS CROSSING THE RHINE
Then the Franks also set out to build up a power of their own within the Roman territory. Gradually they occupied what is now northern France, together with Belgium and Holland. When the Huns swept into Gaul, the Franks had fought against them, side by side with the Romans and West-Goths. And when Attila was defeated and had retired, the Franks were allowed to take possession of certain cities in the valley of the Rhine which the Huns had won from the Romans.
So, by the time that Odoacer overthrew the last of the Roman Emperors of the West, the Franks had succeeded in getting a good footing in the Empire. But they were yet far from strong as a people. They were still heathen, and they had not yet learned, like the Goths, to wear armor or fight on horseback. They still went to war half-naked, armed only with a barbed javelin, a sword, and an ax or tomahawk. They were not united, but were divided into a large number of small tribes, each ruled over by its own petty king.
ARMS OF THE FRANKS.
Besides all this, they had many rivals, even in Gaul itself. In the southern part of that land, reaching across the Pyrenees and taking in nearly the whole of Spain was the kingdom of the West-Goths. In the southeastern part was the kingdom of the Burgundians. In the central part, the region that included the river Seine, a Roman officer named Syagrius still ruled, though the last of the Emperors of the West had fallen. And to the East of Gaul, were tribes who still remained on German soil—the Thuringians, some tribes of the Saxons, and the Allemanians.
It was mainly due to one man that the Frankish power was not overcome, but instead was able to overcome all its enemies. This man was Clovis, the King of one of the little bands of the Franks. Five years after the fall of Rome, he had succeeded his father as King of his tribe. Though he was only sixteen years of age at that time, he soon proved himself to be one of the ablest, but alas, one of the craftiest and cruelest leaders of this crafty and cruel people. In the thirty years that he ruled, he united all the Franks under his own rule; he greatly improved the arms and organization of the army; he extended their territory to the South, East, and West; and he caused his people to be baptized as Christians.