by Will Durant
In 1159 the Zhupan (Chieftain) Stephen Nemanya brought the various Serb clans and districts under one rule, and in effect founded the Serb kingdom, which his dynasty governed for 200 years. His son Sava served the nation as archbishop and statesman, and became one of its most revered saints. The country was still poor, and even the royal palaces were of wood; it had a flourishing port, Ragusa (now Dubrovnik), but this was an independent city-state, which in 1221 became a Venetian protectorate. During these centuries Serbian art, Byzantine in origin, achieved a style and excellence of its own. In the monastery church of St. Panteleimon at Nerez (c. 1164) the murals reveal a dramatic realism unusual in Byzantine painting, and anticipate by a century some methods of treatment once thought original to Duccio and Giotto. Amid these and other Serbian murals of the twelfth or thirteenth century appear royal portraits individualized beyond any known Byzantine precedent.15 Medieval Serbia was moving toward a high civilization when heresy and persecution destroyed the national unity that might have withstood the Turkish advance. Bosnia, too, after its medieval zenith under the Ban (King) Kulin (1180–1204), was weakened by religious disputes; and in 1254 it fell subject to Hungary.
After the death of Stephen I (1038) Hungary was disturbed by pagan Magyar revolts against the Catholic kings, and by the efforts of Henry III to annex Hungary to Germany. Andrew I defeated Henry; and when the Emperor Henry IV renewed the attempt King Geza I frustrated it by giving Hungary to Pope Gregory VII and receiving it back as a papal fief (1076). During the twelfth century rivals for the kingship nurtured feudalism by large grants of land to nobles in return for support; and in 1222 the nobility was strong enough to draw from Andrew II a “Golden Bull” remarkably like the Magna Carta that King John of England had signed in 1215. It denied the heritability of feudal fiefs, but promised to summon a diet every year, to imprison no noble without a trial before the “count palatine” (i.e., a count of the imperial palace), and to levy no taxes upon noble or ecclesiastical estates. This royal edict, named from its golden case or seal, constituted for seven centuries a charter of liberty for the Hungarian aristocracy, and enfeebled the Hungarian monarchy precisely at a time when the Mongols were preparing for Europe one of the greatest crises in its history.
We may judge the extent of the Mongol reach and grasp when we note that in 1235 Ogadai, the Great Khan, sent out three armies—against Korea, China, and Europe. The third army, under Batu, crossed the Volga in 1237, 300,000 strong—no undisciplined horde but a force rigorously trained, ably led, and equipped not only with powerful siege engines but with novel firearms whose use the Mongols had learned from the Chinese. In three years these warriors laid waste nearly all southern Russia. Then Batu, as if unable to conceive of defeat, divided them into two armies: one marched into Poland, took Cracow and Lublin, crossed the Oder, and defeated the Germans at Liegnitz (1241); the other, under Batu, surmounted the Carpathians, invaded Hungary, met the united forces of Hungary and Austria at Mohi, and so overwhelmed them that medieval chroniclers, never moderate with figures, estimated the Christian dead at 100,000, and the Emperor Frederick II reckoned the Hungarian casualties as “almost the whole military force of the kingdom.”16 Here, by the inexorable irony of history, defeated and victors were of one blood; the fallen nobility of Hungary were descendants of the Mongol Magyars who had ravaged the land three centuries before. Batu took Pesth and Esztergom (1241), while a body of Mongols crossed the Danube and pursued the Hungarian King Bela IV to the Adriatic shore, burning and destroying wildly on the way. Frederick II vainly called upon Europe to unite against the menace of conquest by Asia; Innocent IV vainly tried to woo the Mongols to Christianity and peace. What saved Christianity and Europe was simply the death of Ogadai, and the return of Batu to Karakorum to participate in the election of a new khan. Never in history had there been so extensive a devastation—from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic and the Baltic Seas.
Bela IV returned to ruined Pesth, repeopled it with Germans, moved his capital across the Danube to Buda (1247), and slowly restored his country’s shattered economy. A newborn nobility organized again the great ranches and farms on which servile herdsmen and tillers produced food for the nation. German miners moved down from the Erz Gebirge, and extracted the rich ores of Transylvania. Life and manners were still rude, tools were primitive, houses were wattled huts. Amid the confusion of races and tongues, across the hostile divisions of classes and creeds, men sought their daily bread and gain, and restored that economic continuity which is the soil of civilization.
V. THE BORDER STATES
As, in a limitless universe, any point may be taken as center, so, in the pageant of civilizations and states, each nation, like each soul, interprets the drama of history or life in terms of its own role and character. North of the Balkans lay another medley of peoples—Bohemians, Poles, Lithuanians, Livonians, Finns; and each, with life-giving pride, hung the world upon its own national history.
In the earlier Middle Ages the Finns, distant relatives of the Magyars and the Huns, dwelt along the upper Volga and Oka. By the eighth century they had migrated into the hardy, scenic land known to outsiders as Finland, and to Finns as Suomi, the Land of Marsh. Their raids upon the Scandinavian coasts induced the Swedish King Eric IX to conquer them in 1157. At Uppsala Eric left a bishop with them as a germ of civilization; the Finns killed Bishop Henry, and then made him their patron saint. With quiet heroism they cleared the forests, drained the marshes, channeled their “10,000 lakes,”17 gathered furs, and fought the snow.
South of the Gulf of Finland the same ax- and spadework was accomplished by tribes akin to the Finns—Borussians (Prussians), Esths (Estonians), Livs (Livonians), Litva (Lithuanians), and Latvians or Letts. They hunted, fished, kept bees, tilled the soil, and left letters and arts to the less vigorous posterity for whom they toiled. All but the Estonians remained pagan till the twelfth century, when the Germans brought Christianity and civilization to them with fire and sword. Finding that Christianity was being used by the Germans as a means of infiltration and domination, the Livonians killed the missionaries, plunged into the Dvina to wash off the stain of baptism, and returned to their native gods. Innocent III preached a crusade against them; Bishop Albert entered the Dvina with twenty-three men-of-war, built Riga as his capital, and subjected Livonia to German rule (1201). Two religious-military orders, the Livonian Knights and the Teutonic Knights, completed the conquest of the Baltic states for Germany, carved out vast holdings for themselves, converted the natives to Christianity, and reduced them to serfdom.18 Heartened by this success, the Teutonic Knights advanced into Russia, hoping to win at least its western provinces for Germany and Latin Christianity; but they were defeated on Lake Peipus (1242) in one of the innumerable decisive battles of history.
Around these Baltic states surged an ocean of Slavs. One group called itself Polanie—“people of the fields”—and tilled the valleys of the Warthe and the Oder; another, the Mazurs, dwelt along the Vistula; a third, the Pomorzanie (“by the sea”), gave its name to Pomerania. In 963 the Polish prince Mieszko I, to avoid conquest by Germany, confided Poland to the protection of the popes; thenceforth Poland, turning its back upon the semi-Byzantine Slavdom of the East, cast in its lot with western Europe and Roman Christianity. Mieszko’s son Boleslav I (992–1025) conquered Pomerania, annexed Breslau and Cracow, and made himself the first King of Poland. Boleslav III (1102–39) divided the kingdom among his four sons; the monarchy was weakened; the aristocracy parceled the land into feudal principalities, and Poland fluctuated between freedom and subjection to Germany or Bohemia. In 1241 the Mongol avalanche came down upon the land, took Cracow, the capital, and leveled it to the ground. As the Asiatic flood receded a wave of German immigration swept into western Poland, leaving there a strong admixture of German language, laws, and blood. At the same time (1246) Boleslav V welcomed Jews fleeing from pogroms in Germany, and encouraged them to develop commerce and finance. In 1310 King Wenceslas II of Bohemia was elected King of
Poland, and united the two nations under one crown.
Bohemia and Moravia had been settled by Slavs in the fifth and sixth centuries. In 623 a Slavic chieftain, Samo, freed Bohemia from the Avars, and established a monarchy that died with him in 658. Charlemagne invaded the land in 805, and for an unknown period Bohemia and Moravia were parts of the Carolingian Empire. In 894 the Přemysl family brought both lands under their enduring dynasty; but the Magyars ruled Moravia for half a century (907–57), and in 928 Henry I made Bohemia subject to Germany. Duke Wenceslas I (928–35) brought prosperity to Bohemia despite this intermittent dependency. He had been given a thoroughly Christian upbringing by his mother, St. Ludmilla; and he did not cease to be a Christian when he became a ruler. He fed and clothed the poor, protected orphans and widows, gave hospitality to strangers, and bought freedom for slaves. His brother tried to assassinate him as lacking the vices desirable in a king; Wenceslas struck him down with his own hand, and forgave him; but other members of the conspiracy murdered the King on his way to Mass on September 25, 935. The day is annually celebrated as the feast of Wenceslas, Bohemia’s tutelary saint.
Warlike dukes succeeded him. From their strategic castle and capital at Prague, Boleslav I (939–67) and II (967–99) and Bratislav I (1037–55) conquered Moravia, Silesia, and Poland; but Henry III forced Bratislav to evacuate Poland and resume the payment of tribute to Germany. Ottokar I (1197–1230) freed Bohemia, and became its first king. Ottokar II (1253–78) subjected Austria, Styria, and Carinthia. Eager to develop industry and a middle class as counterweights to a rebellious nobility, Ottokar II encouraged German immigration, until nearly all the towns of Bohemia and Moravia were predominantly German.19 The silver mines of Kutna Hora became the ground of Bohemia’s prosperity, and the goal of her many invaders. In 1274 Germany declared war against Ottokar; his nobles refused to support him; he surrendered his conquests, and kept his throne only as a German fief. But when the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg interfered in the internal affairs of Bohemia, Ottokar raised a new army and fought the Germans at Dürnkrut; again deserted by the nobles, he plunged into the thickest ranks of the enemy and died in desperate combat.
Wenceslas II (1278–1305) won peace by renewed vassalage, and laboriously restored order and prosperity. With his death the Přemyslid dynasty came to an end after a rule of 500 years. The Bohemians, the Moravians, and the Poles were the only survivors of the Slav migration that had once filled eastern Germany to the Elbe; and they were now subject to the German power.
VI. GERMANY
The victor in the historic contest over lay investiture was the aristocracy of Germany—the dukes, lords, bishops, and abbots, who, after the defeat of Henry IV, controlled a weakened monarchy, and developed a centrifugal feudalism that in the thirteenth century deposed Germany from the leadership of Europe.
Henry V (1106–1125), having overthrown his father, continued his father’s struggle against barons and popes. When Paschal II refused to crown him emperor except on surrender of the right to lay investiture, he imprisoned Pope and cardinals. When he died the nobility overthrew the principle of hereditary monarchy, ended the Franconian dynasty, and made Lothair III of Saxony king. Thirteen years later Conrad III of Swabia began the Hohenstaufen dynasty, the most powerful line of kings in German history.
Duke Henry of Bavaria rejected the electors’ choice, and was supported by his uncle Welf, or Guelf; now flared up that strife between “Guelf” and “Ghibelline” which was to have so many forms and issues in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.* The Hohenstaufen army besieged the Bavarian rebels in the town and fortress of Weinsberg; there, says an old tradition, the rival cries “Hi Welf!” and “Hi Weibling!” established the names of the warring groups; and there (says a pretty legend), when the victorious Swabians accepted the surrender of the town on the understanding that the women alone were to be spared, and were to be allowed to depart with whatever they could carry, the sturdy housewives marched forth with their husbands on their backs.20 A truce was called in 1142, when Conrad went on crusade; but Conrad failed and returned in disgrace. The House of Hohenstaufen seemed stamped with disgrace when its first outstanding figure reached the throne.
Friedrich (“Lord of Peace”) or Frederick I (1152–90) was thirty when chosen king. He was not imposing—a small, fair-skinned man with yellow hair, and a red beard that won him in Italy the name of Barbarossa. But his head was clear and his will was strong; his life was spent in labors for the state; and though he suffered many defeats, he brought Germany again to the leadership of the Christian world. Carrying in his veins the blood of both the Hohenstaufens and the Welfs, he proclaimed a Landfried, or Peace of the Land, conciliated his enemies, quieted his friends, and sternly suppressed feuds, disorder, and crime. His contemporaries described him as genial, and ever ready with a winning smile; but he was a “terror to evildoers,” and the barbarism of his penal laws advanced civilization in Germany. His private life was justly praised for decency; however, he divorced his first wife on grounds of consanguinity, and married the heiress of the count of Burgundy, winning a kingdom with his bride.
Anxious for papal coronation as emperor, he promised Pope Eugenius III aid against the rebellious Romans and the troublesome Normans in return for the imperial ointment. Arrived at Nepi, near Rome, the proud young king met the new pontiff, Hadrian IV, and omitted the customary rite by which the secular ruler held the pope’s bridle and stirrup and helped him to dismount. Hadrian reached the ground unaided, and refused Frederick the “kiss of peace,” and the crown of empire, until the traditional ritual should be performed. For two days the aides of Pope and King disputed the point, hanging empire on protocol; Frederick yielded; the Pope retired and made a second entry on horseback; Frederick held the papal bridle and stirrup, and thereafter spoke of the Holy Roman Empire in the hope that the world would consider the emperor, as well as the pope, the vicegerent of God.
His imperial title made him also King of Lombardy. No German ruler since Henry IV had taken this title literally; but Frederick now sent to each of the northern Italian cities a podesta to govern it in his name. Some cities accepted, some rejected, these alien masters. Loving order more than liberty, and perhaps anxious to control the Italian outlets of German trade with the East, Frederick set out in 1158 to subdue the rebellious towns, which loved liberty more than order. He summoned to his court at Roncaglia the learned legists who were reviving Roman law at Bologna; he was pleased to learn from them that by that law the emperor held absolute authority over all parts of the Empire, owned all property in it, and might modify or abrogate private rights whenever he thought it desirable for the state. Pope Alexander III, fearing for the temporal rights of the papacy, and citing the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne, repudiated these claims, and, when Frederick insisted on them, excommunicated him (1160). The cries of Guelf and Ghibel-line now passed into Italy to denote respectively the supporters of the Pope and those of the Emperor. For two years Frederick besieged obdurate Milan; capturing it at last he burned it to the ground (1162). Angered by this ruthlessness, and galled by the exactions of the German podestas, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Ferrara, Mantua, Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Piacenza, Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Milan formed the Lombard League (1167). At Legnano, in 1176, the troops of the League defeated Frederick’s German army, and forced him to a six years’ truce. A year later Emperor and Pope were reconciled; and at Constance Frederick signed (1183) a treaty restoring self-government to the Italian cities. These in return recognized the formal suzerainty of the Empire and magnanimously agreed to provision Frederick and his retinue on his visits to Lombardy.
Defeated in Italy, Frederick triumphed everywhere else. He successfully asserted the imperial authority over Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. He reasserted over the German clergy, in practice if not in words, all the rights of appointment that Henry IV had claimed, and won the support of that clergy even against the popes.21 Germany, glad to woo him from Italy, basked in the splendor of his
power, and gloried in the knightly pageantry of his coronations, his marriages, and his festivals. In 1189 the old Emperor led 100,000 men on the Third Crusade, perhaps hoping to unite East and West in a Roman Empire restored to its ancient scope. A year later he was drowned in Cilicia.
Like Charlemagne he had drunk too deeply of the Roman tradition; he had exhausted himself in the effort to revive a dead past. Admirers of monarchy mourned his defeats as victories for chaos; devotees of democracy celebrate them as stages in the development of freedom. Within the limits of his vision he was justified; Germany and Italy were sinking into a licentious disorder; only a strong imperial authority could put an end to feudal feuds and municipal wars; order had to pave the way before a rational liberty could grow. In the later weakness of Germany, loving legends formed about Frederick I; what the thirteenth century imagined of his grandson was in time applied to Barbarossa: he was not really dead, he was only sleeping in the Kyffhauser Mountain in Thuringia; his long beard could be seen growing through the marble that covered him; some day he would wake up, shrug the earth from his shoulders, and make Germany again orderly and strong. When Bismarck forged a united Germany a proud people saw in him Barbarossa risen triumphantly from the tomb.22
Henry VI (1190–7) almost realized his father’s dream. In 1194, with the help of Genoa and Pisa, he conquered southern Italy and Sicily from the Normans; all Italy but the Papal States submitted to him; Provence, Dauphiné, Burgundy, Alsace, Lorraine, Switzerland, Holland, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland were united under Henry’s rule; England acknowledged itself his vassal; the Almohad Moors of Africa sent him tribute; Antioch, Cilicia, and Cyprus asked to be included in the Empire. Henry eyed France and Spain with unsated appetite, and planned to conquer Byzantium. The first detachments of his army had already embarked for the East when Henry, aged thirty-three, succumbed to dysentery in Sicily.