INTRODUCTION OUTLINES OF AN ESSAY ON THE UNITY OF THE LATIN AND TEUTONIC NATIONS, AND THEIR COMMON DEVELOPMENT

AT THE BEGINNING OF HIS success, not long after the migration of nations had commenced, Athaulf, King of the Visigoths, conceived the idea of gothicising the Roman world, and making himself the Caesar of all; he would maintain the Roman laws. If we understand him aright, he first intended to combine the Romans of the West (who, though sprung of many and diverse tribes, had, after a union that had lasted for centuries, at length become one realm and one people) in a new unity with the Teutonic races. He afterwards despaired of being able to effect this; but the collective Teutonic nations at last brought it about, and in a still wider sense than he had dreamed of. It was not long before Lugdunensian Gaul became not, it is true, a Gothland, but a Lugdunensian Germania. Eventually the purple of a Caesar passed to the Teutonic races in the person of Charlemagne. At length these likewise adopted the Roman law. In this combination six great nations were formed—three in which the Latin element predominated, viz. the French, the Spanish, and the Italian; and three in which the Teutonic element was conspicuous, viz. the German, the English, and the Scandinavian.

Each of these six nationalities was again broken up into separate parts; they never formed one nation, and they were almost always at war among themselves. Wherein, then, is their unity displayed? Wherein is it to be perceived? They are all sprung from the same or a closely allied stock; are alike in manners, and similar in many of their institutions: their internal histories precisely coincide, and certain great enterprises are common to all. The following work, which is based upon this conception, would be unintelligible, were not the latter explained by a short survey of those external enterprises which, arising as they do from the same spirit, form a progressive development of the Latin and Teutonic life from the first beginning until now.

These are the migration of nations, the Crusades, and the colonization of foreign countries.

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The migration of nations founded the unity of which we speak. The actual event, the movement itself, proceeded from the Germans; but the Latin countries were not merely passive. In exchange for the arms and the new public life which they received, they communicated to the victors their religion and their language. Reccared had, indeed, to become a Catholic before mutual intermarriage between the Visigoths and the Latin peoples could be legally permitted in Spain. But, after this, the races and their languages became completely blended. In Italy the communities of Lombard and Roman extraction, in spite of their original separation, became so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to distinguish the component elements of each. It is clear what great influence the bishops exercised upon the founding of France; and yet they were at first purely of Latin origin. It is not until the year 556 a.d. that we meet with a Frankish bishop in Paris.

Now, although in these nations we find that both elements in a short time became welded and blended together, the case was very different with the Anglo-Saxons, the implacable foes of the Britons, from whom they adopted neither religion nor language, as well as with the other Teutons in their German and Scandinavian homes. Yet even these were not finally able to resist Latin Christianity and a great part of Latin culture. Between both divisions of this conglomeration of peoples there was formed a close community of kindred blood, kindred religion, institutions, manners, and modes of thought. They successfully resisted the influence of foreign races. Among those nations which besides them had taken part in the migration of peoples, it was chiefly the Arabs, Hungarians, and Slavs who threatened to disturb, if not to destroy them. But the Arabs were averted by the complete incompatibility of their religion; the Hungarians were beaten back within their own borders; and the neighbouring Slavs were at last annihilated or subjected.

What can knit together individuals or nations into closer relationship than a participation in the same destiny, and a common history? Among the internal and external occurrences of these earlier times, the unity of one particular event can almost be perceived. The Germanic nations, possessors from time immemorial of a great country, take the field, conquer the Roman empire of the West, and, more than this, keep what they have got. About the year 530 we find them in possession of all the countries extending from the cataracts of the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine and across to the Tweed, and all the land from Hallin Halogaland to that Baetica, from which the Vandals take their name, and across the sea to where the Atlas range sinks down into the desert. As long as they were united, no one was able to wrest these territories from them; but their isolation, and the opposition between Arian and Catholic doctrines, led first to the destruction of the Vandals. The loss that was caused by the fall of the Ostrogothic empire was to a certain extent retrieved by the Lombards when they occupied Italy—not entirely, for never at any time were they complete masters of Italy, to say nothing of Sicily or Illyria, as the Goths were;—but it was owing to these Lombards, who first destroyed the Heruli and Gepidæ, but thereupon left their hereditary and their conquered settlements to a Sarmatian people, that the Danube was lost almost up to its sources. A fresh loss was the destruction of the Thuringian kingdom. The irruption of the Slavs far into the country lying to the west of the Elbe is probably not unconnected with this. But the greatest danger was threatened by the Arabs. They took Spain at a dash; invaded France and Italy; and, had they won a single battle more, the Latin portion at least of our nations might have been doomed. What could be expected when Franks and Lombards, Franks and Saxons, Angles and Danes lived in deadly enmity? Let us not forget that the founding of the Papacy and the Empire warded off this danger.

If I may be allowed to state my own convictions, the real power of the Papacy—that which has really endured—was not established before the seventh century. It was not until then that the Anglo-Saxons recognized in the Pope, from whom their conversion immediately proceeded, their true patriarch, took to them a primate of his appointment, and paid him tribute. It was from England, that Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, went forth. Not only on being made Archbishop of Mainz, did he swear allegiance, sincere devotion, and assistance to St. Peter and his successors, but the other bishops also swore to remain until death subject to the Roman Church, and to keep the ordinances of Peter’s successors. He did yet more. For a hundred years before his day not a single letter can be found from the Pope of Rome, addressed to the Frankish clergy, so independent were the latter. Boniface, on Pipin’s incentive, brought them also into subjection; and the metropolitan bishops whom he instituted received the pallium from Rome. These were the three nations of which, with the Lombards, Christendom consisted in the West after the Spanish disaster. Charlemagne also freed the Pope from the enmity of the Lombards; he made him the Frankish Patrician, so that he ceased dating his bulls by the years of the reigns of the Greek emperors, and drew him completely into the sphere of the newly founded world. Thus did the Pope become the ecclesiastical head of the Latin and Teutonic nations. He became so at the very time when the Arabs became powerful and gained ground; his new dignity assuaged the enmity of the hostile races, and effected a material reconciliation between them. But they were only able to cope with the enemy, when relying on the power of the Pipins and the empire of Charlemagne.

Merit is due to Charlemagne for having united all the Latino-Germanic nations of the Continent, in so far as they were Christians, or were becoming so.—Egbert, moreover, who made the heptarchy of the Angles a monarchy, was his disciple—for having given them a constitution suited alike for war and peace, and for having taught them to advance again against their enemies along the Danube, to the east of the Saale and Elbe, and across the Pyrenees. But all had not yet been done. There appeared on one side, on every frontier, the Hungarians, in irresistible numbers, on horseback, and armed with bows and arrows; and simultaneously on the other, on every coast, the Normans, both Vikings and Askemans, alike daring by sea and land. But at this very time the empire of Charlemagne perished through the mistakes made by his successors, whose nicknames almost invariably record their follies, so that the danger was renewed. It may be said that the migration of nations did not cease before these movements had been repressed. The Hungarians were driven back, and became Christians; and at the same time the contiguous Slavonic nations became Christian also. All of them long vacillated between the Roman and the Greek form of worship before—and this was doubtless due to the influence of the Teutonic emperors—they decided for the former. It cannot be said that these peoples belong also to the unity of our nations; their manners and their constitution have ever severed them from it. At that time they never exercised any independent influence, they only appear either subservient or antagonistic; they receive, so to speak, only the ebb of the tide of the general movements. But the Normans, of Germanic origin, were drawn into the circle...