CHAP. at one and the same time, with Lothair and Lewis the German suggest that his reputation was such as almost to render him superior to mere political considerations. His allegiance, as a subject, was given to the new emperor, for and Lewis whom, a few years later, we find him compiling a collection His relations to Lothair the Ger man. He is elected arch bishop of Maintz. Influence of the epis at this period. of homilies; but there can be little doubt that his respect and regard for Lewis must have been of a far more genuine character. During his retirement, his acquaintance with the latter ripened into permanent friendship, and his testimony to this prince's high character is perhaps the least open to suspicion of all the tributes that have survived to the moral virtues of the best of the sons of Lewis the Pious. On the death of Otgar, the unanimous voice of the Church, the nobility, and the people elected Rabanus to fill the splendid see of Maintz. The sanction of Lewis the German, in whose realm the city had been included in the division agreed upon at Verdun, was gladly given; Rabanus alone hesitated. It was indeed no slight responsibility to assume, at the age of seventy-one, an office which involved the supervision of the spiritual interests of all Germany, the diocese of Cologne alone excepted. Eventually, however, he acceded to the wish of the electors, and for nine years, until his death in 856, discharged the duties of this onerous dignity. Of one of his earliest measures in this capacity— the part which he took in the condemnation of the ultrapredestinarian views of his former disciple Gotteschalkwe shall have occasion to speak in another chapter. Amid the troubles and disorganisation of these times, copal order Rabanus, in common with the other members of the episcopate, appears as the upholder of law and order, when the civil power was well-nigh helpless. Perhaps at no period in the annals of Western Europe are the bishops of the Church to be found exercising a more remarkable or more considerable influence.1 Interwoven with the three great movements that characterise the age-the decay of 1 Observe the language of Charles the Bald's own minister of state:— 'Verumtamen solito more ad episcopos sacerdotesque rem referunt, ut quocumque divina auctoritas id vertere vellet nutu ipsius, libenti animo praesto adessent. Nithardus, IV 3; Pertz, ii 669. the royal power, the rise of feudalism, and the encroachments of the papacy-their action is nearly always appreciable and often decisive of the immediate result. Theodulfus, Agobard, Hincmar, are men whose power in guiding contemporary opinion and the events of their day can scarcely be matched by that of any three laymen of the time; while Rabanus, working through the hearts and minds of his long array of illustrious disciples, surpasses the former two and yields to Hincmar alone. СНАР. III. CHAP. Alcuin con CHAPTER IV. LUPUS SERVATUS: OR, THE CLASSICS IN THE NINTH CENTURY. THE varied and distinguished activity of Rabanus' different disciples in after life might alone serve to suggest that the influences at Fulda were of a far more inspiring character than those of Tours. To one whom he taught, we cannot doubt that his tolerant views respecting classical literature afforded the opportunity for cultivating a taste which deveLupus and loped into a lifelong passion. In Lupus Servatus-for it is of him that we speak--we have the strongest contrast to Alcuin -the one, lapt in wealth and security, intent mainly on enforcing monastic discipline, and narrowing the limits of learning; the other, amid penury, privation and the oftrecurring demands of military service, and the alarms of invasion, attracted, as by a spell, to the literature which Alcuin shunned, and exhibiting an erudition and enthusiasm not unworthy of the scholars of the Renaissance. trasted. His early education. Lupus was born in the diocese of Sens, early in the ninth century, of a noble family, eminent for its devotion both to the cause of religion and to that of letters.' He was first sent to be educated at Ferrières, where, since Alcuin's death, the abbatship had passed from Sigulfus to Adelbert, and from Adelbert to Aldricus. At Ferrières he received the usual instruction in the subjects of the trivium and quadrivium, and from thence, in the year 830, was sent on by Aldricus (who had, in the meantime, been raised to the archbishopric of Sens) to study theology under Rabanus at Fulda and Fulda. We have already seen that, about this time, Eineducation hard's son, Vussin, was also receiving his education there. 1 Nicholas, Etude sur les lettres de Servat-Loup. Clermont-Ferrand, 1861. His removal to CHAP. IV. Rabanus Einhard often came over from Seligenstadt to see his son, and his attention was attracted to Lupus as a student of more than ordinary promise. He became his literary adviser under and instructor, and, during a six years' residence at Fulda, and Einthe young monk enjoyed the twofold advantage of being hard. taught by the ablest scholar and the most profound theologian of the time. From Fulda he returned to Ferrières, where he was at once appointed to the office of instructor in grammar and rhetoric. For four years Lupus continued to discharge the duties of his post with little interruption from events without, when the death of Lewis the Pious and the treaty of Verdun brought about fresh changes. The double form of the celebrated oath of Strassburg, whereby Lewis and Charles, with their armies, bound themselves to mutual fidelity, typifies the influence at work in the dismembered empire. Modern France appears, dimly emerging from the confusion, separated for ever from the purely Teutonic races, while diverse rule and opposed interests begin to call into existence new national hostilities. Rabanus, as we have before noted, deeply moved by the fate which transferred the temporal allegiance of Fulda to one whom he could not regard as his rightful lord, retired from his abbatship, and his friend Hatto, who had been his fellow-student at Tours, was elected his successor. A like change had already taken place at Ferrières. Odo, who had succeeded Aldricus on the latter's promotion to the archbishopric of Sens, had shewn himself a warm and apparently somewhat indiscreet partisan of Lothair. He was consequently deposed by Charles the Bald, who appointed Lupus in his place. Envy did not fail to attribute to the new abbat a share in his predecessor's disgrace; but from this imputation he would seem to have satisfactorily vindicated himself in a letter which we still possess. The resignation of Rabanus, it will thus be seen, coincided very nearly with Lupus' election; and we find the latter writing on the occasion to his preceptor, and intimating that he would gladly have profited by his advice with respect to his 1 Epist. 21; Migne, cxix 470-2. His return to Ferrières and promo tion to the abbatship. CHAP. IV. Intercourse be tween monastic communities at new duties, but he hears that he is now devoted solely to religious avocations. It is accordingly evident that, though Rabanus and his disciple differed in their political sympathies, their friendship suffered no diminution; and it may be noted as one of the brighter features of the monastic life of this this period. period, that communities bound by widely different ties and interests still often maintained their friendly intercourse unbroken. It is but a few years later, at the very time that national hostility towards Charles was finding such unmistakeable expression at Fulda at the hand of Rudolfus in the Annales, that Lupus, whose loyalty to his monarch admits of no question, is to be found writing to Hatto, the abbat, in terms which imply continued and habitual interchange of good offices.2 Charles the Bald. His lite rary sympathies. Difficulties that at tended his reign. With the accession of Charles the Bald, the influences. that affected learning had undergone a further modification. In his sympathies towards men of letters, the new monarch resembled his grandfather rather than his saintly sire. His fine lofty forehead, destitute of the flowing locks which usually adorned the Frankish noble, bespoke intellectual powers of no common order. Himself an acute metaphysical theologian, he delighted to pitt opponent against respondent over some knotty quaestio. His metrical compositions obtained and deserved a place in the Gallican liturgies. He fostered literature with a care to which we are indebted for more than one important chronicle of contemporary history, while his court was the resort of men of letters of every school. His enemies, who could not deny his mental ability, represented him as unfit for action and cowardly in war—a description scarcely borne out by the facts of his career. Under happier circumstances, we can hardly doubt that Charles would have rendered still more enduring services to letters, but his lot was cast in evil days. Aquitaine rose in insurrection, while on the coasts a yet more formidable 1 'Caeterum audivi sarcinam administrationis vestrae vos deposuisse et rebus divinis solummodo nunc esse intentos, Hattoni vero nostro curam sudoris plenam reliquisse.' Epist. 40. 2 Epist. 86. |