by Will Durant
The Valkyries—“Choosers of the Slain”—were empowered to decree the death date of each soul. Those men who died basely were thrust down into the realms of Hel, the goddess of the dead; those who died in battle were led by the Valkyries to Valhalla—“Hall of the Chosen”; there, as favorite sons of Odin, they were reincarnated in strength and beauty to spend their days in manly battle and their nights in drinking ale. But (says late Norse mythology) the time came when the Jotuns—monstrous demons of disorder and destruction—declared war upon the gods, and fought with them to mutual extinction. In this Twilight of the Gods all the universe fell to ruin: not merely sun and planets and stars, but, at the last, Valhalla itself, and all its warriors and deities; only Hope survived—that in the movement of slow time a new earth would form, a new heaven, a better justice, and a higher god than Odin or Thor. Perhaps that mighty fable symbolized the victory of Christianity, and the hardy blows that two Olafs struck for Christ. Or had the Viking poets come to doubt—and bury—their gods?
It was a marvelous mythology, second only to the Greek in fascination. The oldest form in which it has come down to us is in those strange poems to which error has given the name of Edda.* In 1643 a bishop discovered in the Royal Library of Copenhagen a manuscript containing some old Icelandic poems; by a double mistake he called them the Edda of Saemund the Wise (c. 1056-1133), an Icelandic scholar-priest. It is now generally agreed that the poems were composed in Norway, Iceland, and Greenland by unknown authors at unknown dates between the eighth and twelfth centuries, that Saemund may have collected, but did not write, them, and that Edda was not their name. But time sanctions error as well as theft, and compromises by calling the poems the Poetic or Elder Edda. Most of them are narrative ballads of the old Scandinavian or Germanic heroes or gods. Here for the first time we meet with Sigurd the Volsung and other heroes, heroines, and villains destined to take more definite form in the Volsungasaga and the Nibelungenlied. The most powerful of the Edda poems is the Voluspa, wherein the prophetess Völva describes with somber and majestic imagery the creation of the world, its coming destruction, and its ultimate regeneration. In quite different style is “The High One’s Lay,” in which Odin, after meeting all sorts of conditions and men, formulates his maxims of wisdom, not always like a god:
Much too early I came to many places, or too late; the beer was not yet ready, or was already drunk.67 … The best drunkenness is when everyone after it regains his reason.68 … In a maiden’s words none should place faith, nor in a woman’s; for guile has been laid in their breasts;69 … this I experienced when I strove to seduce that discreet maiden; … nor of that damsel gained I aught.70 … At eve the day is to be praised, a sword after it is tested, a woman after she is cremated.71… Of the words that a man speaks to another he often pays the penalty72 … the tongue is the bane of the head.73 Even in three words quarrel not with a worse man; often the better man yields, when the worse strikes.74… He should rise early who covets another’s property or wife.75 … Moderately wise should a man be, not over-wise…. Let no man know his destiny beforehand; thus will his mind be most free from care…A wise man’s heart is seldom glad.76 … One’s home is best, small though it be77 … best is one’s hearth, and the sight of the sun.78
Probably the poems of the Elder Edda were preserved by word of mouth until the twelfth century, when they were put into writing. In the Viking Age letters were runes, as in north Germany and Anglo-Saxon England; these twenty-four symbols (literally, “mysteries”) constituted an alphabet roughly formed on Greek and Latin cursive scripts. Literature, however, could in that age dispense with letters; minstrel skalds composed, memorized, recited, and orally transmitted their lays of the Teutonic gods, and of that “Heroic Age” (from the fourth to the sixth century) when the Germanic peoples spread their power over Europe. Sturluson and others preserved some fragments of the lays, and the names of many skalds. The most famous of these was Sigvat Thordarsson, who served St. Olaf as court poet and candid counselor. Another, Egil Skallagrimsson (900-83), was the leading figure of his time in Iceland—a mighty warrior, an individualistic baron, a passionate poet. In his old age he lost his youngest son by drowning, and was about to kill himself with grief when his daughter persuaded him to write a poem instead. His Sonartorrek (“The Loss of the Son”) is a defiant denunciation of the god, whom he blames for the death; he regrets that he cannot find Odin and fight him as he has fought other enemies. Then a softer mood comes, as he reflects that the gods have given him not only sorrow but the gift of poesy; reconciled, he resolves to live, and resumes his high seat in the councils of his country.79
The literature of Scandinavia in this period doubtless exaggerates the violence of Viking society, as journalism and history, luring the reader with the exceptional, miss the normal flow of human life. Nevertheless the hard conditions of early Scandinavia compelled a struggle for existence in which only men of the toughest fiber could survive; and a Nietzschean ethic of unscrupulous courage rose out of ancient customs of feud and revenge and the lawless piracy of ungoverned seas. “Tell me what faith you are of,” one Viking asked of another. “I believe in my own strength,” was the reply.80 Gold Harald wanted the throne of Norway, and proposed to get it by force. His friend Haakon advised him: “Consider with thyself what thou art man enough to undertake; for to accomplish such a purpose requires a man bold and firm, who will stick at neither good nor evil to accomplish what is intended.”81Some of these men found such pleasure in battle as almost anesthetized their wounds; some went into a battle frenzy known as berserksgangr—“the berserk’s way”; the berserkers—“bear-shirters”—were champions who rushed into combat without shirts of mail, and fought and howled like animals, bit their shields in fury, and then, the battle over, fell into a coma of exhaustion.82 Only the brave would enter Valhalla; and all sins would be forgiven to him who died for his group in war.
So trained in hardship and wild games, the “men of the fjords” rowed out and conquered kingdoms for themselves in Russia, Pomerania, Frisia, Normandy, England, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Italy, and Sicily. These ventures were not invasions by masses of soldiery like the Moslem hijad or the Magyar flood; they were the reckless sallies of mere handfuls of men, who thought all weakness criminal and all strength good, who hungered for land, women, wealth, and power, and felt a divine right to share in the fruits of the earth. They began like pirates and ended like statesmen; Rollo gave a creative order to Normandy, William the Conqueror to England, Roger II to Sicily; they mingled their fresh blood of the north, like an energizing hormone, with that of peoples made torpid by rural routine. History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.
VI. GERMANY: 566–1106
1. The Organization of Power
The Norse irruptions were the final phase of those barbarian invasions that had stemmed from Germany five centuries before, and had shattered the Roman Empire into the nations of Western Europe. What had become of the Germans who had remained in Germany?
The exodus of great tribes—Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Franks, Lombards—left Germany underpopulated for a time; the Slavic Wends moved westward from the Baltic states to fill the vacuum; and by the sixth century the Elbe was the ethnic, as it is at present the political, frontier between the Slavic and the Western world. West of the Elbe and the Saale were the surviving German tribes: Saxons in north central Germany, East Franks along the lower Rhine, Thuringians between them, Bavarians (once Marcomanni) along the middle Danube, and Swabians (once Suevi) along and between the upper Rhine and upper Danube, and along the eastern Jura and the northern Alps. There was no Germany, only German tribes. Charlemagne for a time gave them the unity of conquest, and the essentials of a common order; but the collapse of the Carolingian Empire loosened these bonds; and until Bismarck tribal consciousness and local particularism fought every centralizing influence, and weakened a people uncomfortably shut in by enemies, the Alps
, and the sea.
The Treaty of Verdun (843) had in effect made Louis or Ludwig the German, grandson of Charlemagne, the first king of Germany. The Treaty of Mersen (870) gave him additional territory, and defined Germany as the land between the Rhine and the Elbe, plus part of Lorraine, and the bishoprics of Mainz, Worms, and Speyer. Louis was a statesman of the first order, but he had three sons; and on his death (876) his realm was divided among them. After a decade of chaos, during which the Northmen raided the Rhine cities, Arnulf, illegitimate offspring of Louis’ son Carloman, was elected king of “East Francia” (887), and drove back the invaders. But his successor, Louis “the Child” (899-911), proved too young and weak to hold back the Magyars, who ravaged Bavaria (900), Carinthia (901), Saxony (906), Thuringia (908), and Alemannia (909). The central government failed to protect these provinces; each had to provide its own defense; the provincial dukes organized armies by giving lands in fief to retainers who paid in military service. The forces so raised gave the dukes virtual independence of the crown, and established a feudal Germany. On the death of Louis the nobles and prelates, successfully claiming the right of choosing the king, gave the throne to Conrad I, Duke of Franconia (911-18). Conrad spent himself in strife with Duke Henry of Saxony, but had the wit to recommend Henry as his successor. Henry I, called “the Fowler” because of his love of hunting, drove back the Slavic Wends to the Oder, fortified Germany against the Magyars, defeated them in 933, and prepared, by his patient labors, for the achievements of his son.
Otto I the Great (936-73) was the Charlemagne of Germany. He was twenty-four at his accession, but was already a king in bearing and ability. Sensing the value of ceremony and symbolism, he persuaded the dukes of Lorraine, Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria to act as his attendants in his solemn coronation at Aachen by Archbishop Hildebert. Later the dukes rebelled against his growing power, and induced his younger brother Henry to join in a plot to depose-him; Otto discovered and suppressed the conspiracy, and forgave Henry, who conspired again and was again forgiven. The subtle King gave new duchies to his friends and relatives, and gradually subordinated the dukes; later monarchs would not inherit his resolution and skill, and much of medieval Germany was consumed in conflicts between feudalism and royalty. In this contest the German prelates sided with the King, and became his administrative aides and counselors, sometimes his generals. The King appointed bishops and archbishops as he named other officials of the government; and the German Church became a national institution, only loosely attached to the papacy. Using Christianity as a unifying force, Otto fused the German tribes into a powerful state.
On the urging of his bishops, Otto attacked the Wends, and sought to convert them to Christianity by the sword. He compelled the king of Denmark and the dukes of Poland and Bohemia to accept him as their feudal suzerain. Aspiring to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire, he welcomed the invitation of Adelaide, the pretty widow of King Lothaire of Italy, to rescue her from the indignities to which she had been subjected by the new King Berengar II. Otto combined politics deftly with romance: he invaded Italy, married Adelaide, and allowed Berengar to retain his kingdom only as a fief of the German crown (951). The Roman aristocracy refused to acknowledge a German as emperor and therefore as master of Italy; now began a contest that would last for three centuries. The rebellion of his son Ludolf and his son-in-law Conrad called Otto back to Germany, lest in trying to become emperor he should cease to be king. When the Magyars again invaded Germany (954), Ludolf and Conrad welcomed them, and supplied them with guides. Otto put down the rebellion, forgave Ludolf, reorganized his army, and so decisively defeated the Magyars at the Lechfeld, near Augsburg (955), that Germany won a long period of security and peace. Otto now devoted himself to internal affairs—restored order, suppressed crime, and for a time created a united Germany, the most prosperous state of its time.
Imperial opportunity returned when Pope John XII appealed for his aid against Berengar (959). Otto invaded Italy with a strong force, entered Rome peaceably, and was crowned Roman Emperor of the West by John XII in 962. The Pope, regretting this action, complained that Otto had not fulfilled a promise to restore the Ravenna exarchate to the papacy. Otto took the extreme step of marching into Rome, summoning a synod of Italian bishops, and persuading it to depose John and make a layman Pope as Leo VIII (963). The papal territory was now confined to the duchy of Rome and the Sabine region; the rest of central and northern Italy was absorbed into a Holy Roman Empire that became an appanage of the German crown. From these events German kings would conclude that Italy was part of their inheritance; and the popes would conclude that no man could become Roman emperor of the West except by papal coronation.
Otto, nearing death, forestalled disorder by having his son Otto II crowned coemperor by Pope John XIII (967); and he secured as his son’s wife The ophano, daughter of Romanus II the Byzantine Emperor (972); Charlemagne’s dream of a marital union of the two empires was transiently made real. Then, old in deeds but still only sixty years of age, Otto passed away (973), and all Germany mourned him as its greatest king. Otto II (973-83) spent himself in efforts to add southern Italy to his realm, and died prematurely in the attempt. Otto III (983-1002) was then a boy of three; his mother Theophano and his grandmother Adelaide ruled as regents for eight years. Theophano, in her eighteen years of influence, brought something of Byzantine refinement to the German court, and stimulated the Ottoman renaissance in letters and arts.
At the age of sixteen (996) Otto III began to rule in his own name. Influenced by Gerbert and other churchmen, he proposed to make Rome his capital, and unite all Christendom under a restored Roman Empire, ruled jointly by emperor and pope. The nobles and populace of Rome and Lombardy interpreted the plan as a conspiracy to establish a German-Byzantine rule over Italy; they resisted Otto, and established a “Roman Republic”; Otto suppressed it, and executed its leader Crescentius. In 999 he made Gerbert Pope; but the twenty-two years of Otto’s life, and the four years of Gerbert’s papacy, proved too brief for the implementation of his policy. Half a saint but in some measure a man, Otto fell in love with Stephania, widow of Crescentius; she consented to be his mistress and poisoner; the young king, feeling death in his veins, became a weeping penitent, and died at Viterbo at the age of twenty-two.83
Henry II (1002-24), last of the Saxon line of German kings, labored to restore the power of the monarch in Italy and Germany, where the reigns of two boys had strengthened the dukes and emboldened neighboring states. Conrad II (1024-39), beginning the Franconian or Salian line of emperors, pacified Italy, and added to Germany the kingdom of Burgundy or Aries. Needing funds, he sold bishoprics for sums so large that his conscience irked him; he swore never again to take money for an ecclesiastical appointment, and “almost succeeded in keeping his oath.”84 His son Henry III (1039-56) brought the new empire to its zenith. On the “Day of Indulgence,” at Constance in 1043, he offered pardon to all those who had injured him, and exhorted his subjects to renounce all vengeance and hatred. For a decade his preaching and example—perhaps also his power—reduced the feuds of the dukes, and co-operated with the contemporary “Truce of God” to bring a brief golden age to Central Europe. He patronized learning, founded schools, and completed the cathedrals of Speyer, Mainz, and Worms. But he was no saint pledged to eternal peace. He warred with Hungary till it recognized him as its feudal suzerain. He deposed three rival claimants to the papacy, and appointed two successive popes. In all Europe no other power equaled his. In the end he pushed his authority to an extreme that aroused opposition among both the prelates and the dukes, but he died before the storm, and bequeathed to Henry IV a hostile papacy and a troubled realm.
Henry was four when crowned king at Aachen, six at his father’s death. His mother and two archbishops served as regents till 1065; then the fifteen-year-old boy was declared of age, and found himself vested with an imperial power that must have turned any youthful head. He came naturally to believe in absolute monarchy, and sought to
rule accordingly; soon he was at odds or war with one or another of the great nobles who had in his helplessness almost dismembered his realm. The Saxons resented the taxes laid upon them, and refused to restore the crown lands that he claimed; for fifteen years (1072-88) he fought an intermittent war with them; when he defeated them in 1075 he compelled their whole force, including its proudest nobles and its martial bishops, to walk disarmed and barefoot between the files of his army, and lay their act of surrender at his feet. In that same year Pope Gregory VII issued a decree against lay investiture—the appointment of bishops or abbots by laymen. Henry, standing on the precedents of a century, never doubted his right to make such appointments; he fought Gregory for ten years in diplomacy and war, and literally to the death, in one of the bitterest conflicts in medieval history. The rebellious nobles of Germany took advantage of the quarrel to strengthen their feudal power, and the humiliated Saxons renewed their revolt. Henry’s sons joined the opposition; and in 1098 the Diet of Mainz declared Henry V king. The son took the father prisoner, and compelled him to abdicate (1105); the father escaped, and was forming a new army when he died at Liége, in the fifty-seventh year of his age (1106). Pope Paschal II could not grant Christian burial to an unrepentant excommunicate; but the people of Liége, defying Pope and King, gave Henry IV a royal funeral, and buried him in their cathedral.
2. German Civilization: 566–1106
Through these five centuries the labor of men and women tilling the soil and rearing children conquered Germany for civilization. The forests were fearfully immense, harbored wild animals, impeded communication and unity; nameless heroes of the woodland felled the trees—perhaps too recklessly. In Saxony the struggle against the self-regenerating forest and the infectious marsh went on for a thousand years, and only the thirteenth century gave man the victory. Generation after generation the hardy, hearty peasants pushed back the beasts and the wilderness, tamed the land with mattock and plow, planted fruit trees, herded flocks, tended vines, and consoled their loneliness with love and prayer, flowers and music and beer. Miners dug salt, iron, copper, lead, and silver from the earth; manorial, monastic, and domestic handicraft wedded Roman to German skills; trade flowed ever more busily over the rivers and into the North and Baltic Seas. At last the great campaign was won; barbarism still lurked in the laws and the blood; but the gap had been spanned between the tribal chaos of the fifth century and the Ottonian renaissance of the tenth. From 955 to 1075 Germany was the most prosperous country in Europe, rivaled only by that northern Italy which had received law and order from German kings. Old Roman towns like Trier, Mainz, and Cologne carried on; new cities grew around the episcopal seats at Speyer, Magdeburg, and Worms. About 1050 we begin to hear of Nuremberg.