ISLAMIC LAW; ISLAMIC INSTITUTIONS; MOHAMMED.) Results of the Barbarian Invasions.—In the midst of the old population, no longer accustomed to the practice of arms, a new population of barbarian warriors settled down and preserved, until the 9th century, its own family system, its customs of property and legal process. The reaction of these new comers differed according to the conditions of the country in which they had settled. In the Mediterranean countries, which had not been de populated, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths were absorbed into the Roman inhabitants without leaving any trace. The countries bor dering Germany, devastated and depopulated from the 3rd to the 5th century, were re-populated by the Germans, who brought with them customs of much greater simplicity and a great deal of natural energy. The re-population of Gaul to the north of the Loire by the Franks, of Britain by the Saxons and the Angles of north Italy by the Lombards, made these countries, which took their names (France, England, Lombardy) the centres of a new European civilization during the middle ages.
The Lombard invasion, by suppressing the rule of the empire over central Italy, isolated Rome, where the pope, Gregory the Great, 590-604, became the master of the city, obtained a prac tically independent political power, and by sending missionaries to England began to spread his spiritual domination over distant lands. The rupture between the Western Church and the icono clast Eastern emperors was the final step towards the elevation of the pope to the position of a sovereign prince.
His son, Pepin, called to the help of the pope against the Lombards, delivered the land round the city, and made a donation of it to the pope, which was the foundation of the temporal power of the papacy. He took the title of king of the Franks and was consecrated by the pope in a coronation ceremony—a precedent which gave rise to the custom which has been followed by all the sovereigns of Europe throughout the centuries.
Pepin's son, Charles, called the Great (q.v.), who gave his name to the Carolingian dynasty, conquered the Lombard kingdom and subdued the Saxons. He extended his rule over the greater part of western Europe, from the Ebro in Spain to the Elbe in Germany. He kept the way of life, the dress and the language of the Franks, and resided for choice at Aix-la-Chapelle, in the German-speaking country. But, having gone to Rome to establish order after a ris ing against the pope, he allowed himself to be proclaimed emperor and to be crowned by the pope (800) . There were from that time two emperors—an emperor of the East and an emperor of the West.
Charlemagne reorganized the Government by exacting obedience from the local magnates who exercised the functions of dukes and counts, and by giving official power to the prelates (bishops and abbots). He established a compulsory tithe on all produce of the soil for the benefit of the clergy; and created a joint Government of the secular and clerical authorities, which from that time gov erned both the subjects of the king and the members of the Church. This system of Government spread itself over the whole of Europe, and has been called "the union of the throne and the altar." In the 8th century education had fallen so low that the clergy themselves, the sole guardians of the Roman culture, could write nothing but a kind of barbarous Latin in an almost illegible script ; Ireland alone maintained in its convents the tradition of classical study. Charlemagne gathered round him the most learned men from Britain, Italy and Gaul; his court became a centre of learn ing, where literary works were produced of little intrinsic value and of a low intellectual content. But this "renaissance" revived the study of the Latin language and of the most celebrated Latin authors, and the recopying of the manuscripts of their works. Schools established in abbeys and bishoprics for monks and clerks revived the teaching of the Roman schools of the later Roman empire. This was the origin of the teaching, common to the whole of Europe, founded on the trivium (q.v.)—grammar, rhetoric, logic—and reducing to a few elementary rudiments the sciences of the quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music. Finally, the Carolingian renaissance regenerated style, which had become degraded. The clerks henceforward produced their works, their letters and official deeds in correct Latin. Script became beautifully legible, in the form of the Carolingian minuscule, which has been perpetuated in our European printed characters.
The Dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire.—The Frankish kings, having become emperors, did not abandon the Frankish custom of dividing up their lands among their sons. The empire of Charlemagne was divided by the Treaty of Verdun, 843, between his three grandsons. Charles received the country be tween the Pyrenees and the Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone ; Louis the country to the east of the Rhine ; shares corresponding roughly to France and Germany. Lothair, the eldest, received along with the title of emperor, the Lombard kingdom (Italy) and the belt between France and Germany. His share underwent a further partition; the territory between the North sea and Switzer land fell to his son, Lothair II., who gave it his name, Lotharingia (see LORRAINE). The Treaty of Mersen, 87o, divided this terri tory between the kings of France and Germany, and it has re mained for more than ten centurie$ a bone of contention between France and Germany.
Even before the Carolingian family was extinct, the title of em peror had lapsed, and the title of king was in dispute in France, Italy and Germany between the families of lords powerful enough to secure recognition from the other chief lords of the country. It cannot be said that the monarchy became elective, for recogni tion did not take the form of a regular election. In the region be tween France and Italy, it would happen that a prince, sometimes two princes, would take the title of king without making it possible to say that there were exactly two kingdoms, for the titles were purely personal and were not attached to a fixed territory. In the same way, in Spain the Christian warrior chiefs coming from the mountains of the Asturias and the Pyrenees, took the title of king when they occupied the districts that had been evacuated since the 9th century by the Moors ; sometimes they transmitted the royal title to several sons, with the result that Spain became divided into numerous kingdoms, each of which was no bigger than a province.
Alfred the Great (q.v.) accomplished, at the end of the 9th cen tury in England, a task analogous to, though less great than that of Charlemagne. He extended his authority over all the English peoples who had not been conquered by the Danes. He sought the aid of the clergy in the work of government and set up clerical schools for the teaching of Latin.