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Such are the things which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found to tell us of the two great heroes of Carolingian poetry.
The model of the Carolingian Emperors was not Augustus but Constantine the Great, the Most Christian ruler who made it his first business to protect the Church against heretic and heathen, to endow her with riches, to enforce her legislation. However his relation to the Pope might be conceived, the Emperor held his office as the first servant of the Church. What then were his practical duties?
Hugh inherited from his ancestors the title of Duke of France, which they had enjoyed as the military representatives of the later Carolingian kings in "France," which was originally a district north of the Seine. Gradually the name France came to be applied to all the dominions which the dukes of France ruled as kings. We shall hereafter speak of the West-Frankish kingdom as France.
The thunderous shouts that acclaimed the prowess of the new Frankish leader were as warlike as those which ever greeted the hoisting of a Carolingian King on the shields of his lieges. Distant nations heard the threatening din and hastened to muster their forces for the fray. As yet only England was at war with the Emperor.
But the numismatic stores of the fortress taken by itself tell quite another story. There, not a coin has been found earlier than Domitian, nor one later than Aurelian, saving a chance find of two Carolingian pieces of Charles the Bald and a modern French piece of Charles the Sixth.
But with the Carolingian dynasty came a new era. Charles Martel, Pepin and Charlemagne aspired to universal monarchy. Not content with France, Northern Spain, Italy and Germany proper, Charlemagne, as we have already seen, recaptured the middle Danube. His successors in Germany, the Saxon, Franconian and Swabian emperors, continued the impulse, but gave it in the main a different direction.
In the ninth century, when England is a prey to the Danes, the Carolingian Court and the great abbeys of Germany are enjoying a vigorous intellectual life, stimulated and enriched by scholars from Italy and from Ireland.
This, as far as we can now see, was the beginning of that Irish learning which has been so widely, yet so vaguely, extolled. Ireland, then, in the late fifth century and the sixth, holds the lamp. Its light passes to England in the middle of the seventh century, and from thence, near the end of the eighth, to the Court of Charlemagne, where it initiates the Carolingian Renaissance.
The "system," if it can be called one, was, as we have said, by no means perfect, but it bridged the historic gap which stretches between the fall of the Carolingian power and the full dawn of the Middle Ages. It saved Europe from anarchy. Its blessings cannot be denied. It helped to foster the love of independence, of self-government, of local institutions, of communal and municipal freedom.
The Frank bishops were frequently appealed to as umpires among the contending Carolingian princes. The growth of the power of the great bishops carried in it the exaltation of the highest bishop of all, the Roman pontiff. A pallium, or mantle, was sent by the Pope to all archbishops on their accession, and was considered to be a badge of the papal authority.
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