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NOTE. The whole series of French monarchs has been divided into three races. The first or Merovingians began with Clovis, 481-750; the second or Carlovingians with Pepin, 751-987; the third or Capetians with Hugh Capet, 987, to which belongs the reigning family of Bourbon-Orleans.

BRUNEHAUT AND FREDEGONDE.-Clotaire, at his death, 561, left four sons, Sigebert I. king of Ostrasia,* Chilperic I. king of Soissons, Caribert of Paris, and Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy. The elements of discord arising from this partition were increased by the death of Caribert, whose estates were dismembered by his three brothers. The inequality of the shares occasioned a brief civil war, which terminated in the reconciliation of the inimical princes, and the double marriage of Sigebert with Brunehaut, and Chilperic with Gualsinda daughter of the Visigoth Athanagild. But the King of Soissons having put his wife to death that he might be united to her domestic, the sanguinary Fredegonde, Brunehaut swore to avenge her sister, and to punish the woman who had usurped her place. These hostile feelings gave rise to an intestine war, which, during half a century, desolated France, and filled the royal house with crimes. The Ostrasians defeated the Neustrians at all points, and shut up Chilperic in Tournay. But an emissary of Fredegonde murdered Sigebert at the very moment he was proclaimed king of Neustria. The former prince regained his kingdom; Brunehaut was detained a prisoner, and her young son Childebert, removed from the vengeance of Fredegonde, was taken back to Ostrasia, when the leudes or nobles were seizing on the government, 575.

Gontran, desirous of arresting the encroachments of Chilperic, adopted Childebert II., who forgot this kindness, and formed an alliance with the King of Soissons, Peace was, nevertheless, concluded; but Fredegonde, to reign without control, procured the murder of her husband in 584, and governed under the name of her infant son, Clotaire II. The usual disorders and wars ensued, when, to arrange their discordant interests, and to prevent fresh troubles, Gontran, Childebert, and Brunehaut, in concert with their chief officers, drew up the famous treaty of Andelot, by which the King of Burgundy was confirmed in his succession to the ruler of Ostrasia. Childebert did not long enjoy his uncle's inheritance; his two sons,

* Ostrasia (commonly written Austrasia) or East France (Oster-reich), was a province adjacent to the Rhine; Neustria, or New France, containing the kingdoms of Paris, Soissons, and Orleans, extended from Ostrasia to the Loire. A third division, Lorraine, the kingdom of Lothaire (Lotharii regnum), lay between. the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Scheldt.

K

Theodebert II. and Thierry II., 596, separated Ostrasia and Burgundy, so lately united.

Frank Laws.

The Salic laws are supposed to have been drawn up, about 421, by command of a monarch of the Salian Franks. The Ripuarian Franks, dwelling on the bank (ripa) of the Rhine, had also their code; and the Burgundians their law of Gundebald, 502. By the first and most ancient of these laws, which may serve as a specimen of the rest, homicide was punished with fines varying from 50 to 600 pieces of gold. Questions of right and wrong were decided by judicial combats-a practice still subsisting in the modern duel. The conquered territory was equitably divided among the victors; not in perpetuity, but yearly, on the condition of bearing arms in the common cause. Thus arose the peculiarity by which females were prohibited from inheriting landed estates, and, by a forced interpretation of its clauses, the crown of France can never descend but to a male heir. The prisoners of war became slaves; the descendants of the haughty Romans were condemned to cultivate the fields and tend the cattle of their masters, who exercised over them a power of life and death, and made them a subject of traffic.t

SPAIN.

At the commencement of the fifth century, Spain had been invaded by the Suevi, Vandals, and Alans, who inflicted every where the most frightful ravages, so that we hear of the natives being compelled to feed on human flesh. The Suevi and Vandals occupied the ancient Galicia, comprising Old Castile and Leon; hence arose the kingdom of the Suevi under Hermanric, A. D. 409. The Alans were spread over Lusitania, while another Vandal tribe took possession of Bætica; the Tarraconensis alone at this time belonging to the Romans. Ataulphus, after the settlement of the Visigoths in France in 412, crossed the Pyrenees two years later, and became the founder of the Gothic monarchy in Spain; but he was unable to subdue these various savage hordes, being stopped in his career by the hand of an assassin, 415. Wallia, having been proclaimed king, continued the plans of his predecessor, and forced the Alans to seek refuge among the Vandals. The Suevi were threatened in their turn, but obtained favourable conditions of peace, and were allowed to remain in the north-west of the peninsula. Wallia's services were rewarded by part of Aquitaine, with the city of Toulouse, which was during the greater part of a century the Visigoth capital. Theodoric, the next monarch, was killed in battle against Attila at Châlons, 451.

The Salic code begins with the following elaborate eulogy on the people by whom it was formed:-"Gens Francorum inclyta, auctore Deo condita, fortis in armis, firma pacis fædere, profunda in consilio, corpore nobilis et incolumis, candore et formâ egregiâ, audax, velox, aspera," &c.

† See Guizot, History of French Civilisation, p. 333, &c.

By Thorismond the frontiers of the kingdom were extended to the Loire, 456; while Euric, the murderer of his brother, expelled the Romans from Spain, and added to his possessions Berry and Auvergne, ceded to him by the Emperor Julius Nepos, and Provence, which he obtained from Odoacer, 477. Such was the power of this monarch, that he received ambassadors from the Franks and Burgundians, from the Ostrogoths encamped in Pannonia, from Odoacer king of Italy, and from the Persian monarch. Under his son and successor Alaric II. the Goths lost, by the defeat near Poitiers in 507, all Gaul with the exception of Septimania. Gesalic, his natural son, was deposed by Theodoric the Great, the father-in-law of Alaric, who declared himself guardian of his grandchild Amalaric. This monarch reigned from 526 to 531; and by his outrageous behaviour to his wife Clotilda, daughter of Clovis, drew upon himself the vengeance of the Franks. Under Recarede, 586, all the people with their sovereign entered the bosom of the Catholic church, and allowed such privileges and influence to the bishops that the national assemblies soon became little more than ecclesiastical synods. About 570, the Suevi also embraced the Christian faith.

BRITAIN.

HEPTARCHY.—The Jutes and Saxons, having once obtained a footing in Britain, were speedily followed by numerous tribes of adventurers; and in a short time England was divided into seven kingdoms, called the Saxon Heptarchy,* which frequently acknowledged the sovereignty of one ruler, called Bret-walda-sovereign of Britain. The ancient inhabitants did not yield without resistance. King Arthur, who died in 542, ruled over the Cornish Britons, and from his successful struggles against the invaders, became one of the favourite subjects of poetry and romance. The numerous colonies that emigrated to Armorica, to which they gave the name of Bretagne, spread his renown still more widely. But in spite of the services rendered to his countrymen, he was not without enemies among them; the title of king reducing him to the necessity of drawing his sword against the Britons almost as frequently as against the Saxon invaders. He fell mortally wounded in battle against his own nephew, and was buried at Glastonbury. As the circumstances of his death were not

*This term conveys an erroneous idea, as at no one period were there seven distinct and independent kingdoms.-See Palgrave and Turner,

generally known, his re-appearance was long expected; and for several ages the credulous people in their distress looked for the interposition of their brave deliverer.

SAINT AUGUSTINE.—About A. n. 560, the Anglo-Saxon occupation of a great part of Britain was completed, bringing with it the most terrible disasters to the native population. The ferocious conquerors extirpated the arts and religion of the inhabitants, and endeavoured by a promiscuous slaughter to depopulate the country. The language was entirely changed; civilisation perished; and the people were fast relapsing into their original barbarism, when Gregory I. was induced to send missionaries to convert the Saxons to Christianity, and to establish the supremacy of Rome, 596. St Augustine failed in obtaining the submission of the native clergy to his church, but succeeded in extending the faith throughout all the Saxon tribes. Ethelbert, king of Kent, was baptized, chiefly at the suggestion of his wife Bertha, who was a Christian, and the majority of the enslaved inhabitants professed the same belief. From the British islands issued, in the seventh and eighth centuries, those courageous preachers who perfected in Germany the work commenced by Saint Rupert, bishop of Salzburg. Columba, Kilian, Wilfrid, Willebrod, and Swibert, were the precursors of Winifrid (Boniface), the great apostle of Germany. Winifrid was born in Devonshire, and after extending the temporal as well as spiritual limits of the church, the good bishop, with fifty of the companions of his labour, was put to death at Dokkum, in Friesland, 755.

THE CHURCH.

Among the chief conquests of evangelical truth during this period must be reckoned the conversion of the Franks and Saxons. The particulars of the former event have been already given; and to understand fully the account of the latter it will be necessary to subjoin a few remarks. The Anglo-Saxon conquest did not entirely obliterate the Christian faith which had been planted in Britain in the time of Tertullian and Origen, and had seen Alban, its proto-martyr, perish in the persecution of Diocletian. At the council of Arles in 314, the Bishops of York and London were present; but war and the influx of barbarians had produced the usual result, which was corrected by the mission of St Augustine. The Vandals in Spain, the Burgundians in Gaul, and the Lombards in Italy abandoned Arianism; nevertheless heresy was still flourishing, particularly in the Eastern Empire, where the authority of the coun

cils was exerted in vain. Three writings, known as the Three Chapters, had been published in the time of Nestorius in favour of his heretical opinions. Two of the authors had been present at the synod of Chalcedon; and the third being dead, they had united with their colleagues in condemning the doctrines of Eutyches. The Eutychians, in the hope of weakening the authority of that council, endeavoured to procure the condemnation of the three chapters; but, after numerous debates, another convocation was summoned at Constantinople, which censured all works really pernicious, and thus avoided any attack upon the assembly at Chalcedon. Its decisions were obeyed with the respect due to the learned men who drew them up, and by common consent the synod was regarded as the fifth general council.

GREGORY I. THE GREAT.-This celebrated pope was sprung from a distinguished family; his grandfather Felix had filled St Peter's chair before him, and saints were reckoned among the number of his female relatives. While nuncio at the Byzantine court, he boldly assumed a tone of independence, which his subsequent conduct did not belie. Being raised to the pontificate in 590, during more than fourteen years he assiduously watched over and advanced the interests of the church. Pelagius the Infallible had preceded him in 578; but Gregory, far from assuming any presumptuous title, even reproved the Greek patriarch (John the Faster) for calling himself the œcumenical or universal bishop, condemning it as devilish, humbly styling himself the servant of the servants of God. He revised the liturgy, arranged the various details of the religious ceremonies, and introduced the celebrated chant which bears his name. He established the ecclesiastical system by determining in a fixed manner the proper ritual, the division of parishes, the calendar of festivals, the service and costume of the priests and deacons, and, finally, by arranging all the imposing orders of the Romish ceremonial. On the other hand, he is said to have burnt the Palatine library, and warred against the arts by destroying the temples and mutilating the statues which the Goths had spared.

BENEDICTINES.-In A. D. 527, St Benedict of Nursia, in the Apennines, founded twelve convents near Subiaco in the neighbourhood of Rome, and next year the celebrated monastery of Mount Cassino, in the territory of Naples. Before his time, each fraternity had its peculiar customs; he created the real statutes of the order. His simple and edifying rule, besides

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