animation. I shall only quote a passage from an elegiac poem of three hundred and seventy-one verses, about the departure of Galsuinthe, sister of Brunehault, from Spain, her arrival in France, her marriage with Chilperic, and her deplorable end; I select the lamentations of Galsuinthe, her mother, wife of Athanagilde; she sees her daughter about to quit her, embraces her, looks at her, embraces her again, and cries:

66

Spain, so full of inhabitants, and too confined for a mother, land of the sun, become a prison to me, although thou extendest from the country of Zephyr to that of the burning Eous, from Tyrhenia to the ocean-although thou sufficest for numerous nations, since my daughter is not longer here, thou art too narrow for me. Without thee, my daughter, I shall be here as a foreigner and wanderer, and, in my native country, at once a citizen and an exile. I ask, what shall these eyes look at which everywhere seek my daughter? ... Whatever infant plays with me will be a punishment; thou wilt weigh upon my heart in the embraces of another: let another run, step, seat herself, weep, enter, go out, thy dear image will always be before my eyes. When thou shalt have quitted me, I shall hasten to strange caresses, and, groaning, I shall press another face to my withered breast; I shall dry with my kisses the tears of another child; I shall drink of them; and may it please God that I may thus find some refreshment for my devouring thirst! Whatever I do, I shall be tormented, no remedy can console me; I perish, O Galsuinthe, by the wound which comes to me from thee! I ask what dear hand will dress, will ornament thy hair? Who, when I shall not be there, will cover thy soft cheeks with kisses? will warm thee in her bosom, who carry thee on her knees, surround thee with her arms? Alas! when thou shalt be without me, thou wilt have no mother. For the rest, my sad heart charges thee at the time of thy departure; be happy, I implore thee; but leave me: go: farewell: send through the air some consolation to thy impatient mother; and, if the wind bears me any news, let it it be favorable."

Who

The subtlety and affectation of bad rhetoric are to be found in this passage; but its emotion is sincere, and the expression ingenious and vivid. Many pieces of Fortunatus have the same merits.

'Fortun. Carm., 1. vi., No 7; Bib. Pat,, vol. x., p. 562.

I shall prosecute this inquiry no further; I think I have fully justified what I said in commencing: sacred literature is not there; the habits, and even the metrical forms of the dying pagan literature, are clearly stamped upon them. Ausonius is more elegant, more correct, more licentious than Fortunatus; but, speaking literally, the bishop is a continuation of the consul; Latin tradition was not dead; it had passed into the Christian society; and here commences that imitation which, amid the universal overthrow, unites the modern to the ancient world, and, at a later period, will play so considerable a part in all literature.

We must pause: we have just studied the intellectual state of Frankish Gaul from the sixth to the eighth century. This study completes for us that of the development of our civilization during the same period, that is, under the empire of the Merovingian kings. Another epoch, stamped with the same character, began with the revolution which raised the family of the Pepins to the throne of the Franks. In our next lecture I shall attempt to describe the revolution itself; and we shall then enter into the new paths which it forced France to take.

32*

NINETEENTH LECTURE.

The causes and the character of the revolution which substituted the Carlovingians for the Merovingians-Recapitulation of the history of civilization in France under the Merovingian kings-The Frankish state in its relations with the neighboring nations-The Frankish state in its internal organization-The aristocratical element prevailed in it, but without entirety or regularity-The state of the Frankish church-Episcopacy prevails in it, but is itself thrown into decay— Two new powers arise-1st. The Austrasian Franks-Mayors of the palace-The family of the Pepins-2. Papacy-Circumstances favorable to its progress-Causes which drew and united the Austrasian Franks to the popes-The conversion of the Germans beyond the Rhine-Relations of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, on the one hand with the popes, on the other, with the mayors of the palace of Austrasia-Saint Boniface-The popes have need of the Austrasian Franks against the Lombards-Pepin-le-Bref has need of the pope to make himself king-Their alliance and the new direction which it impressed upon civilization-Conclusion of the first part of the

course.

We have arrived at the eve of a great event, of the revolution which threw the last of the Merovingians into a cloister, and carried the Carlovingians to the throne of the Franks. It was consummated in the month of March, 752, in the semi-lay and semi-ecclesiastical assembly held at Soissons, where Pepin was proclaimed king, and consecrated by Boniface, archbishop of Mayence. Never was a revolution brought about with less effort and noise; Pepin possessed the power: the fact was converted into right; no resistance was offered him; no protest of sufficient importance to leave a trace in history. Everything seemed to remain the same; a title, merely, was changed. Yet there can be no doubt but that a great event was thus accomplished; there can be no doubt but that this change was the indication of the end of a particular social state, of the commencement of a new state, a crisis, a veritable epoch in the history of French civilization.

It is the crisis that I wish to bring before you at present. I wish to recapitulate the history of civilization under the Merovingians, to indicate how it came to end in such a result, and to represent the new character, the new direction which

it was obliged to take under the Carlovingians, by plainly setting forth the transition and its causes.

Civil society and religious society are evidently the twofold subject of this recapitulation. We have studied them separately, and in their relations; we shall so study them in the period upon which we are about to enter. It is necessary that we should know exactly at what point they had each arrived at the crisis which now occupies us, and what was their reciprocal situation.

I commence with civil society. From the opening of this course, we have been speaking of the foundation of modern states, and in particular of the Frank state. We marked its origin at the reign of Clovis ; it is even by concession that we are permitted not to go farther back, not to go to Pharamond. Let it be understood, however, that even in the epoch at which we have arrived, at the end of the Merovingian race, there was nothing established which the Franko-Gaulish society had, nothing invested with a somewhat stable and general form, that no principle prevailed in it so completely as to regulate it; that neither within nor without did the Frankish state exist; that in Gaul there was no state at all.

What do we mean by a State? a certain extent of territory having a determinate centre, fixed limits, inhabited by men who have a common name, and live involved, in certain respects, in the same destiny. Nothing like this existed in he middle of the eighth century, in what we now call France.

You know how many kingdoms had there alternately appeared and disappeared. The kingdoms of Metz, Soissons, Orleans, Paris, had given place to the kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia, Burgundy, Aquitaine, incessantly changing masters, frontiers, extent, and importance; reduced at length to two, the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria, even these two had nothing stable or regular, their chiefs and their limits continually varied; the kings and the provinces continually passed from one to the other; so that even in the interior of the territory occupied by the Frankish population, no political association had any consistency or firmness.

The external frontiers were still more uncertain. On the east and north the movement of the invasion of the German nations continued. The Thuringians, the Bavarians, the Allemandi, the Frisons, the Saxons, incessantly made efforts to pass the Rhine, and take their share of the territory which the Franks occupied. In order to resist them, the Franks

crossed the Rhine; they ravaged, at several times, the countries of the Thuringians, the Allemandi, and the Bavarians, and reduced these nations to a subordinate condition, doubtless very precarious, and incapable of exact definition. But the Frisons and Saxons escaped this semi-defeat, and the Austrasian Franks were forced to maintain an incessant warfare against them, which prevented their frontiers from gaining the least regularity on this side.

On the west, the Britons and all the tribes established in the peninsula known under the name of Armorica, kept the frontiers of the Neustrian Franks in the same state of uncertainty.

In the south, in Provence, Narbonnese, and Aquitaine, it was no longer from the movement of the barbarous and half wandering colonies that the fluctuation proceeded; but there was fluctuation. The ancient Roman population incessantly labored to regain its independence. The Franks had conquered, but did not fully possess these countries. When their great incursions ceased, the towns and country districts rebelled, and confederated in order to shake off the yoke. A new cause of agitation and instability was joined to their efforts. Mohammedanism dates its rise from the 16th of July, 622; and at the end of the same century, or at least at the commencement of the eighth, it inundated the south of Italy, nearly the whole of Spain, the south of Gaul, and made on this side a still more impetuous effort than that of the German nations on the borders of the Rhine. Thus, on all points, on the north, the east, the west, and the south, the Frankish territory was incessantly invaded, its frontiers changed at the mercy of incessantly repeated incursions. Upon the whole, there can be no doubt but that, in this vast extent of country, the Frankish population dominated; it was the strongest, the most numerous, the most established; but still it was without territorial consistency, without political unity; as distinct frontier nations, and under the point of view of the law of nations, the state, properly so called, did not exist.

Let us enter into the interior of the Gaulo-Frankish society; we shall not find it any more advanced; it will offer us no greater degree of entirety or fixedness.

You will recollect that, in examining the institutions of the German nations before the invasion, I showed that they could not be transplanted into the Gaulish territory, and that the free