A new Empire
A History of Europe by Henri Pirenne
University Books, first published 1938 but written during the Great War
Book Two
The Carolingian Epoch
Chapter III
The Restoration of the Empire in the West
2. The Empire
p86 ...the power of Charlemagne [Pirenne says Charles gave himself the name "Great," but it is my understanding (from Gibbon?) that it was Church history that added "Great" to the names of individuals who benefited the Church] extended to all countries and all peoples that recognized in the Pope of Rome the Vicar of Christ and the head of the Church. Outside this area was the barbaric world of paganism, the hostile world of Islam, and the old Byzantine Empire: Christian, indeed, but marked by a highly capricious orthodoxy, which was centering itself more and more upon the Patriarch of Constantinople, and ignoring the Pope... Is it surprising that under these circumstances the idea presented itself to the Papacy of profiting by so favorable a conjunction to reconstitute the Roman Empire? -- but a Roman Empire whose head, crowned by the Pope in the name of God, would owe his power only to the Church, and would exist only to aid the Church in its mission: an Empire which, not being of secular origin, would owe nothing to men, and would not; properly speaking, be a State, but would be conterminous with the community of the faithful, whose temporal organization it would be, directed and inspired by the spiritual authority of the successor of St. Peter... The authority of the Pope and that of the Emperor, while remaining distinct one from the other, would nevertheless be as closely associated as the soul with the flesh in the body. What St. Augustine had desired would be accomplished. The terrestrial State would be but the preparation for the journey to the Celestial City...
p88 ...the Pope alone could dispose of the Imperial crown.
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...in order that the spiritual and the temporal power should not encroach upon each other... it was necessary that they should be associated, and that they should... keep step in a spirit of intimate and absolute confidence. But charged, as they were, the one with the government of men's souls, and the other with the government of their bodies, who was to indicate the exact limits of their competence?... if the Imperial idea brought the State into the Church, it also brought the Church into the State. And what would happen when the successor of St. Peter felt it incumbent upon him to intervene in the civil government, to correct or guide it?
p89 ...Charles extended his solicitude to the material needs of the clergy... He showered donations upon sees and monasteries... and he made the tithe compulsory throughout the Empire... The so-called Carolingian Renaissance was as the poles removed from the Renaissance properly so-called. There was nothing in common between the two, apart from a renewal of intellectual activity. The true Renaissance, purely secular, steeped itself in the ideas of the classical authors. The Carolingian Renaissance, exclusively ecclesiastical and Christian, regarded the classic authors merely as models of style...
p90 ...The intimate alliance of Church and State was yet another reason why Latin should become the language of the lay administration... without the use of Latin administration by the written word would have been impossible. The Requirements of the State necessitated the use of Latin; it became, and it was destined to remain for centuries, the language of politics and of business, and also the language of science.
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p92 Charles... abandoned the coining of gold, which had become too rare in the West to keep mints at work. Henceforth only silver monies were minted; and the ratio which he fixed between them continued in use all over Europe until the adoption of the metric system, and is still current in the British Empire...
Chapter IV
Economic and Social Organization
1. The Disappearance of the Cities and of Commerce
p94 ...In the Roman Empire the cities constituted... the very basis of the State... The country was merely the territory attached to the city; it had no independent existence; it produced only for the city and was ruled by the city. Wherever the Roman State was established it founded cities and set them up as administrative centers... the same word, civitas, was employed to denote the city and the province. And this state of affairs continued until the end of the Byzantine Empire.
...
p95 ...until the middle of the 7th century the Western ports of the Mediterranean were still assiduously frequented by Syrian and Jewish merchants. In the time of Gregory of Tours a Jewish colony of some importance existed at Clermont-Ferrand. The papyrus employed in the Merovingian chancellery was imported from Sicily... But these relations with the Byzantine world came to an end once the preponderance of Islam made it impracticable for Christian traders to risk themselves beyond the waters of Greece and Southern Italy... And just as the Mediterranean was in the power of the Musulmans, so the North Sea was traversed only by the ships of the Scandinavians. [Finally!]... Its [the Carolingian Empire's] only ports -- Quentovic, at the mouth of the Canche, [where Etaples is now, south of Boulogne-sur-Mer] and Duurstede -- still maintained a certain degree of commercial activity until the 9th century, when they were devastated by the Normans, after which they lapsed into complete decadence. From the 8th century onwards Europe existed for three hundred years without any intercourse with the countries overseas.
p96 ...apart from a few local industries, such as the weaving of cloth, which still survived in Flanders, there was an almost total failure of industrial activity, and money no longer circulated.
...Rome seemed lost within the vast circuit which the wall of Aurelian described about what was left of the city. In 848 Pope Leo, to guard against a sudden attack, caused the inhabited portions on the left bank of the Tiber to be enclosed (the "Leonine city" [includes the Vatican]), and turned the tomb of the Emperor Hadrian into a fortress.
p97 In Gaul... the kings... lived all the year round on their domains, passing from one to the other as they emptied the barns and granaries... the administration, on losing its urban character, became nomadic instead of sedentary.
Ruined and depopulated though they were, the cities had not lost all their significance... they remained the centers of the religious organization. ...in the heart of a purely agricultural society, something of the municipal character of the ancient State was preserved by the Church. It was owing to the Church that the cities did not disappear altogether...
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