Part 11 (1/2)
”You have often exhorted me to love the Senate, to accept cordially the legislation of the Emperors, to weld together all the members of Italy.
Then, if you wish thus to form my character by your counsels, how can you exclude me from your august peace? I may plead, too, affection for the venerable city of Rome, from which none can separate themselves who prize that unity which belongs to the Roman name.
”We have therefore thought fit to direct the two Amba.s.sadors who are the bearers of this letter to visit your most Serene Piety, that the transparency of peace between us, which from various causes hath been of late somewhat clouded, may be restored to-its former brightness by the removal of all contentions. For we think that you, like ourselves, cannot endure that any trace of discord should remain between two Republics which, under the older Princes, ever formed but one body, and which ought not merely to be joined together by a languid sentiment of affection, but strenuously to help one another with their mutually imparted strength. Let there be always one will, one thought in the Roman kingdom. ... Wherefore, proffering the honourable expression of our salutation, we beg with humble mind that you will not even for a time withdraw from us the most glorious charity of your Mildness, which I should have a right to hope for even if it were not granted to others.
(The change from We to I, which here occurs in the original, is puzzling.)
”Other matters we have left to be suggested to your Piety verbally by the bearers of this letter, that on the one hand this epistolary speech of ours may not become too prolix, and on the other that nothing may be omitted which would tend to our common advantage”.
The letter which I have attempted thus to bring before the reader is one which almost defies accurate translation. It is an exceedingly diplomatic doc.u.ment, full of courtesy, yet committing the writer to nothing definite. The very badness of his style enables Ca.s.siodorus to envelop his meaning in a cloud of words from which the Qustor of Anastasius perhaps found it as hard to extract a definite meaning then, as a perplexed translator finds it hard to render it into intelligible English now. It is certainly difficult to acquit Ca.s.siodorus of the charge of a deficient sense of humour, when we find him putting into the mouth of his master, who had so often marched up and down through Thrace, ravaging and burning, these solemn praises of ”Tranquillity”.
And when we read the fulsome flattery which is lavished on Anastasius, the almost obsequious humbleness with which the great Ostrogoth, who was certainly the stronger monarch of the two, prays for a renewal of his friends.h.i.+p, we may perhaps suspect either that the ”illiteratus Rex” did not comprehend the full meaning of the doc.u.ment to which he attached his signature, or that Ca.s.siodorus himself, in his later years, when, after the death of his master, he republished his ”Various Letters”, somewhat modified their diction so as to make them more Roman, more diplomatic, more slavishly subservient to the Emperor, than Theodoric himself would ever have permitted.
One other act of this Emperor must be noticed, as ill.u.s.trating the subject of the last chapter. When Clovis returned in triumph from the Visigothic war (508) he found messengers awaiting him from Anastasius, who brought to him some doc.u.ments from the Imperial chancery which are somewhat obscurely described as ”Codicils of the Consuls.h.i.+p”. Then, in the church of St. Martin at Tours he was robed in a purple tunic and _chlamys,_ and placed apparently on his own head some semblance of the Imperial diadem. At the porch of the basilica he mounted his horse and rode slowly through the streets of the city to the other chief church, scattering largesse of gold and silver to the shouting mult.i.tude. ”From that day”, we are told, ”he was saluted as Consul and Augustus”.
The name of Clovis does not, like that of Theodoric, appear in the _Fasti_ of Imperial Rome, and what the precise nature of the consuls.h.i.+p conferred by the ”codicils” may have been, it is not easy to discover.[110] But there is no doubt that the authority which Clovis up to this time had exercised by the mere right of the stronger, over great part of Gaul, was confirmed and legitimised by this spontaneous act of the Augustus at Constantinople, nor that this eager recognition of the royalty of the slayer of Alaric was meant in some degree as a demonstration of hostility against Alaric's father-in-law, with whom Anastasius had not then been reconciled.
[Footnote 110: Perhaps the simplest explanation is that Clovis was not ”Consul ordinarius”, but ”Consul suffectus”. Junghans suggests that he was Proconsul of one or more of the Gaulish provinces, and Gaudenzi, accepting this idea, is inclined to call him Proconsul of Narbonese Gaul.]
The coalition of Eastern Emperor and Frankish King boded no good to Italy. Perhaps could the eye of Anastasius have pierced through the mists of seven future centuries, could he have foreseen the insults, the extortions, the cruelties which a Roman Emperor at Constantinople was to endure at the hands of ”Frankish” invaders,[111] he would not have been so eager in his wors.h.i.+p of the new sun which was rising over Gaul from out of the marshes of the Scheldt.
[Footnote 111: In the Fourth Crusade, 1203.]
The remainder of the life of Clovis seems to have been chiefly spent in removing the royal compet.i.tors who were obstacles to his undisputed sway over the Franks. Doubtless these were kings of a poor and barbarous type, with narrower and less statesmanlike views than those of the founder of the Merovingian dynasty; but the means employed to remove them were hardly such as we should have expected from the eldest Son of the Church, from him who had worn the white robe of a catechumen in the baptistery at Rheims. His most formidable compet.i.tor was Sigebert, king of the Ripuarian Franks, that is the Franks dwelling on both banks of the Rhine between Maintz and Koln, in the forest of the Ardennes and along the valley of the Moselle. But Sigebert, who had sent a body of warriors to help the Salian king in his war against the Visigoths, was now growing old, and among these barbarous peoples age and bodily infirmity were often considered as to some extent disqualifications for kings.h.i.+p. Clovis accordingly sent messengers to Cloderic, the son of Sigebert, saying: ”Behold thy father has grown old and is lame on his feet. If he were to die, his kingdom should be thine and we would be thy friends”. Cloderic yielded to the temptation, and when his father went forth from Koln on a hunting expedition in the beech-forests of Hesse, a.s.sa.s.sins employed by Cloderic stole upon him in his tent, as he was taking his noon-tide slumber, and slew him. The deed being done, Cloderic sent messengers to Clovis saying: ”My father is dead and his treasures are mine. Send me thy messengers to whom I may confide such portion of the treasure as thou mayest desire”. ”Thanks”, said Clovis, ”I will send my messengers, and do thou show them all that thou hast, yet thou thyself shalt still possess all”. When the messengers of Clovis arrived at the palace of the Ripuanan, Cloderic showed them all the royal h.o.a.rd. ”And here”, said he, pointing to a chest, ”my father used to keep his gold coins of the Empire”. (In hanc arcellolam solitus erat pater meus numismata auri congerere.) ”Plunge thy hand in”, said the messenger, ”and search them down to the very bottom”. The King stooped low to plunge his hand into the coins, and while he stooped the messenger lifted high his battle-axe and clove his skull. ”Thus”, says the pious Gregory, who tells the story, ”did the unworthy son fall into the pit which he had digged for his own father”.
When Clovis heard that both father and son were slain, he came to the same place (probably Colonia) where all these things had come to pa.s.s and called together a great a.s.sembly of the Ripuarian people. ”Hear”, he said, ”what hath happened. While I was quietly sailing down the Scheldt, Cloderic, my cousin's son, practised against his father's life, giving forth that I wished him slain, and when he was fleeing through the beech-forests he sent robbers against him, by whom he was murdered. Then Cloderic himself, when he was displaying his treasures, was slain by some one, I know not whom. But in all these things I am free from blame.
For I cannot shed the blood of my relations: that were an unholy thing to do. But since these events have so happened, I offer you my advice if it seem good to you to accept it. Turn you to me that you may be under my defence”. Then they, when they heard these things, shouted approval and clashed their spears upon their s.h.i.+elds in sign of a.s.sent, and raising Clovis on a buckler proclaimed him their king. And he receiving the kingdom and the treasures of Sigebert added the Ripuanans to the number of his subjects. ”For”, concludes Gregory, Bishop of Tours, to whom we owe the story of this enlargement of the dominions of his hero, ”G.o.d was daily laying low the enemies of Clovis under his hand and increasing his kingdom, because he walked before him with a right heart and did those things which were pleasing in his eyes”.
This ideal champion of orthodoxy in the sixth century then proceeded to clear the ground of the little Salian kings, his nearer relatives and perhaps more dangerous compet.i.tors. Chararic had failed to help him in his early days against Syagrius. He was deposed: the long hair of the Merovingians was shorn away from his head and from his son's head, and they were consecrated as priest and deacon in the Catholic Church.
Chararic wept and wailed over his humiliation, but his son, to cheer him, said, alluding to the loss of their locks: ”The wood is green, and the leaves may yet grow again. Would that he might quickly perish who has done these things!” The words were reported to Clovis, who ordered both father and son to be put to death, and added their h.o.a.rds to his treasure, their warriors to his host.
Chararic had not gone forth to the battle against Syagrius, but Ragnachar of Cambray had given Clovis effectual help in that crisis of his early fortunes. However Ragnachar, by his dissolute life and his preposterous fondness for an evil counsellor named Farro, had given great offence to the proud Franks, his subjects. Just as James I. said of the forfeited estates of Raleigh: ”I maun hae the land, I maun hae it for Carr”, so Ragnachar said whenever anyone offered him a present, or whenever a choice dish was brought to table: ”This will do for me and Farro”. Clovis learned and fomented the secret discontent. He sent to the disaffected n.o.bles amulets and baldrics of copper-gilt--which they in their simplicity took for gold,--inviting them to betray their master. The secret bargain being struck, Clovis then moved his army towards Cambray. The anxious Ragnachar sent scouts to discover the strength of the advancing host. ”How many are they?” said he on their return. ”Quite enough for thee and Farro”, was the discouraging and taunting reply: and in fact the soldiers of Ragnachar seem to have been beaten as soon as the battle was set in array. With his hands bound behind his back, Ragnachar and his brother Richiar were brought into the presence of Clovis. ”Shame on thee”, said the indignant king, ”for humiliating our race by suffering thy hands to be bound. It had been better for thee to die--thus”, and the great battle-axe descended on his head. Then turning to Richiar, he said: ”If thou hadst helped thy brother, he would not have been bound”; and his skull too was cloven with the battle-axe. Before many days the traitorous chiefs discovered the base metal in the ornaments which had purchased their treason, and complained of the fraud. ”Good enough gold”, said Clovis, ”for men who were willing to betray their lord to death”; and the traitors, trembling for their lives under his frown and fierce rebuke, were glad to leave the matter undiscussed.
Thus in all his arguments with the weaker creatures around him the Frankish king was always right. It was always they, not he, who had befouled the stream. In this, shall I say, shameless plausibility of wrong, the founder of the Frankish monarchy was a worthy prototype of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon.
Having slain these and many other kings, and extended his dominions over the whole of Gaul, he once, in an a.s.sembly of his n.o.bles, lamented his solitary estate. ”Alas, I am but a stranger and a pilgrim, and have no kith or kin who could help me if adversity came upon me”. But this he said, not in real grief for their death, but in guile, in order that if there were any forgotten relative lurking anywhere he might come forth and be killed. None, however, was found to answer to the invitation.[112]
[Footnote 112: We are reminded of the well-known story of Marshal Narvaez on his death-bed. ”My son”, said the confessor, ”it is necessary that you should with all your heart grant forgiveness to your enemies”.
”Ah, that is easy”, said the dying man, ”I have shot them all”.]
Like all his family, Clovis was short-lived, though not so conspicuously short-lived as many of his descendants. He died at forty-five, in the year 511, five years after the battle of the Campus Vogladensis. He was buried (511) in the Church of the Holy Apostles at Paris, and his kingdom, consolidated with so much labor and at the price of so many crimes, was part.i.tioned among his four sons. The aged Emperor Anastasius survived his Frankish ally seven years, and died in the eighty-ninth year of his age, 8th July, 518. His death was sudden, and some later writers averred that it was caused by a thunderstorm, of which he had always had a peculiar and superst.i.tious fear. Others declared that he was inadvertently buried alive, that he was heard to cry out in his coffin, and that when it was opened some days after, he was found to have gnawed his arm. But these facts are not known to earlier and more authentic historians, and the invention of them seems to be only a rhetorical way of putting the fact that he died at enmity with the Holy See.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COPPER COIN OF ANASTASIUS FORTY NUMMI.]
CHAPTER XII.
ROME AND RAVENNA.
Theodoric's visit to Rome--Disputed Papal election--Theodoric's speech at the Golden Palm--The monk Fulgentius--Bread-distributions--Races in the Circus--Conspiracy of Odoin--Return to Ravenna--Marriage festivities of Amalaberga--Description of Ravenna--Mosaics in the churches--S.
Apollinare Dentro--Processions of virgins and martyrs--Arian baptistery--So-called palace of Theodoric--Vanished statues.