The ecclesiastics must have been almost more than men, certainly far beyond their time, to have resisted the temptation of what would seem innocent or beneficent fraud, to overawe or to control the ignorant barbarian.

The good Bishop Gregory of Tours is himself concerned in an affair in which the violence and religious fears of King Chilperic singularly contrast with the subtlety of the ecclesiastics. Chilperic sends a letter to St. Martin of Tours requesting the Saint to inform him whether he might force Meroveus out of the sanctuary. It will hardly be doubted that he received an answer; and that the majesty of the sanctuary suffered no loss. St. Martin of Tours was the great oracle of the FrankoLatin kingdoms: kings flock to his shrine to make their offerings, to hear his judgments. No two cities in the north of France approached, not even the royal residences, the two great ecclesiastical capitals, Rheims and Tours. Lands and wealth were poured at the feet of the Church. Dagobert bestowed twenty-seven hamlets or towns on the monastery of St. Denys. His son bestowed on St. Remaclus of Tongres twelve square leagues in the forest of Ardennes. The Church of Rheims possessed vast territories, some of which it may have received from the careless and lavish bounty of Clovis himself; much more, by a pious anachronism, was made to rest on that ancient and venerable tenure."

h Michelet writes in his flashing way, "Ce que Delphes était pour la Grèce."

i Gesta Dagobert. c. 35.

clergy are considered as co-legislators with the Teutonic kings and people.

m Vit. S. Sigebert. Austras., c. 4. Script. Franc. See the curious passage This subject is resumed when the in Frodoard, quoted by Michelet.

CHAPTER III.

THEODORIC THE OSTROGOTH.

THE Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy shows the earliest, and not the least noble, form of this new society, Ostrogothic formed out of the yet unfused elements of the Latin kingdom. and Teutonic races. To the strong opposition between the barbarian and Roman parts of the community was added the almost stronger contrast of religious difference. The Sovereign of Italy, the civil monarch of the Papal diocese, was an Arian.

a

Theodoric's invasion of Italy was the migration of a people, not the inroad of an army. His Goths were accompanied by their wives and children, with all the moveable property which they had possessed in their settlements in Pannonia. Theodoric had extorted from the gratitude and the fears of the Eastern Emperor, if not a formal grant of the kingdom of Italy, a permission to rescue the Roman West from the dominion of Odoacer. The Herulian king, after two great battles, and a siege of three years in Ravenna, wrested from Theodoric a peace, by the terms of which the Herulian and the Gothic monarchs were to reign over Italy in joint sovereignty. Odoacer. Such treaty could not be lasting. Odoacer, either the victim of treachery, or his own treacherous designs but anticipated by the superior craft and more subtle intelligence of Theodoric, was assassinated at a banquet. The Herulians were dispossessed of the third portion of the lands which they had extorted from the Roman pro

Compare, on the number of the Gothic invaders, Sartorius, Essai sur l'Etat Civil et Physique des Peuples d'Italie sous le Gouvernement des Goths, note, page 242.

The most probable view of this transaction is, that the Herulian chieftains, impatient of the equal dominion

of the Goths, had organised a formidabl insurrection, of which Odoacer, possibly not an accomplice, was nevertheless the victim. The Byzantine writers, Procopius, Marcellinus, betray their hatred. Ennodius and Cassiodorus of course favour Theodoric. Gibbon declares against him.

prietors, and dispersed, some into Gaul, some into other A.D. 493-526. parts of the Empire. The Gothic followers of Theodoric took their place, and Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, commenced a reign of thirty-three years, in which Italy reposed in peace under his just, and vigorous, and parental administration.

Throughout the conquest, and the establishment of the Gothic kingdom, the increasing power and importance of the Christian ecclesiastics forces itself upon the attention. They are ambassadors, mediators in treaties, decide the wavering loyalty or instigate the revolt of cities. Even before the expiration of the Empire, Glycerius abdicates the throne, and retires to the bishopric of Salona, not, it should seem, from any strong religious vocation, or weariness of political intrigue. He is afterwards

Bishops employed.

concerned in the murder of another of his shortlived successors, the Emperor Nepos, and is promoted, as the reward of his services, to the Archbishopric of Milan. Epiphanius, the Bishop of Pavia, bears to Theodoric at Milan the surrender and offer of allegiance from that great city. John, the Bishop, was employed by Odoacer to negotiate the treaty of Ravenna. Before this time, whenever a difficult negotiation occurred, Epiphanius was persuaded to undertake it. He had been ambassador from Ricimer to Anthemius, from Nepos to Euric the Visigoth. Theodoric admired the dignified beauty and esteemed the saintliness of character in the Catholic Epiphanius, and perhaps intended that his praises of the bishop should be heard in Pavia, where, from his virtues and charities, he enjoyed unbounded popularity: "Behold a man whose peer cannot be found throughout the West: he is the great bulwark of Pavia ;-to his care I may entrust my wife and children, and devote myself entirely to war. Epiphanius was permitted to plead the cause of the Herulians who had risen in arms in the north of Italy after the death of Odoacer. The eloquence of the bishop arrested the inexorable vengeance or justice of Theodoric. He was employed even on a more apostolic mission to rescue from slavery those who had been sold or had fled into Procop. 1. i. c. i. p. 9, Edit. Bonn.

"d

d Ennodii Vita Epiphan.

slavery beyond the Alps. Gundobald the Burgundian and his chieftains melted at the persuasive words of Epiphanius, who entered Pavia at the head of 6000 bondslaves, rescued by his influence from slavery. Epiphanius made a third journey to Ravenna, to obtain a remission of taxes in favour of his distressed people.*

The Ostrogothic kingdom was an intermediate state between the Roman Empire and the barbarian Union of the monarchies. It was the avowed object of races Theodoric to fuse together the Teutonic vigour with the Roman civilisation, to alloy the fierceness of the Gothic temperament with the social culture of Italy. The Romans still held many of the chief civil offices. Liberius, Symmachus, Boethius, Cassiodorus, were the ministers of the Gothic king. Yet the two elements of the society had no tendency to assimilation or union; the justice and wisdom of the king might mitigate, he could not reconcile, this discord, which could only be finally extinguished by years of mutual intercourse, by intermarriages, and above all by perfect community of religious faith. The Gothic and the Roman races stood apart in laws, in usages, in civil position, as well as in character. Possessors, by the right of conquest, of the one-third of the lands in Italy, of which they exacted the surrender, and for which they tacitly engaged to protect the whole from foreign invasion, the Goths settled as an armed aris- very impertocracy among a people who seemed content to feci.

Ennodius says of Epiphanius,-"Delectamur jure Romano vivere quos "Inter dissidentes principes solus esset, armis vindicamus. Nobis propoqui pace frueretur amborum."-p. 1011. situm est, Deo juvante, sic vivere, ut He even overawed the fierce Rugians, at subjecti se doleant nostrum dominium one time masters of Pavia. tardius acquisisse."-iii. 43. But the most clear and distinct indication of his views is in the formula for the appointment of the Count of the Goths: “Unum vos amplectatur vivendi votum, quibus unum esse constat imperium." The anonym. Vales. says that the poor Roman (miser) affected to be a Goth, the rich (utilis) Goth to be a Roman.

"li semper fuerint (Gothi, sc.) in laudis medio constituti, ut et Romanorum prudentiam caperent, et virtutem gentium possiderent. Consuetudo

nostra feris mentibus inseratur donec truculentus animus vivere velle consuescat."-Cassiod. Var. Epist. iii. 23. In another passage he exhorts the Goths to put on the manners of the toga, and to cast off those of barbarism, “Intelligite homines non tam corporeâ vi quam ratione præferri."-Lib. iii. Epist. 17. When he invaded Gaul, Theodoric declared himself the protector of the Romans:

8 "Vos autem Romani magno studio Gothos diligere debetis, qui in pace numerosos vobis populos faciunt, et universam rempublicam per bella defendunt."--Cassiod. vii. 3.

Division of lands.

purchase their security at the price of one-third of their possessions. This transfer was carried on with nothing of the violence and irregularity of plunder or confiscation, but with the utmost order and equity. It was, in truth, but a new form of the law of conquest, which Rome had enforced, first upon Italy, afterwards on the world. Nor was it an obsolete and forgotten hardship, the expulsion. of a free, and flourishing, and happy peasantry from their paternal homesteads, and hereditary fields; they were only like those more partial no doubt, but more cruel ejectments, when the conquering Triumvir, during the later republic, confiscated whole provinces, and apportioned them among his own soldiery." The followers of Odoacer had already, if not to so great an extent, enforced the same surrender, and the Goth only expelled the Herulian from his newly acquired estate. Large tracts in Italy were utterly desolate and uncultivated--almost the whole under imperfect culture.' This, in the best times of the Roman aristocracy, had been the natural and recorded consequence of the vast estates accumulated by one proprietor, and cultivated by slaves or at best by poor métayers, and was now aggravated by the general ruin of that aristocracy, the difficulty of maintaining slaves, and the effects of long warfare. This revolution at least assisted in breaking up these overgrown properties, combining as it did with constant alienations to the Church, and afterwards to monasteries. Agriculture in Italy received a new impulse, the more necessary, as it ceased to command foreign resources. The harvests of the East, and of Egypt and Libya, had long been assigned to the main

k

h Theodoric considered that he had succeeded to the right of the Roman people in apportioning land: he prohibited the forcible entrance upon farms without authority.

i "Vides universa Italiæ loca originariis viduata cultoribus." Read the whole speech of Theodoric to Epiphanius of Pavia on the desolation especially of Liguria. Ennod. Vit. p. 1014. "Latifundia perdidere Italiam," the axiom of all the Roman economists.

It is curious that most of these edicts prohibit exportation. See Lib. i. 31, 34,

35 (a strange document in point of style). Lib. ii. 12, is a prohibition of the export of bacon, an important article of food; 20 gives orders to send corn from Ravenna to Liguria, which was suffering famine. The Gothic army in Gaul was supported by the province, not from Italy (iii. 41, 2), and during a famine Southern Italy and Sicily relieved Gaul (iv. 5, 7). On the other hand, Theodoric endeavoured to obtain corn from Spain for the supply of Rome; but it seems the dealers had found a better market in Africa (v. 35).