section 19 Europe and the faith this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Europe and the Faith by Hiller Bellach section 19 chapter five what happened in Britain I have now carried this study through four sections my object in writing it is to show that the Roman Empire never perished but was only transformed that the Catholic Church which in its maturity it accepted caused it to survive and was in that origin of Europe and has since remained the soul of one Western civilization in the first chapter I sketched the nature of the Roman Empire in the second the nature of the church within the Roman Empire before that civilization in its maturity accepted the faith in the third I attempted to lay before the reader that transformation and material decline it was also a survival which has erroneously been called the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth I presented a picture of what society must have seemed to an onlooker just after the crisis of that transformation and at the entry into what are called the Dark Ages the beginnings of the modern European nation which have superficially differentiated from the old unity of Rome I could wish that space had permitted me to describe a hundred other contemporary things which would enable the reader to seize both the magnitude and the significance of the great change from pagan to Christian times I should in particular have dwelt upon the transformation of the European mind with its increasing gravity its ripening contempt for material things and its resolution upon the ultimate fate of the human soul which it has now firmly concluded to be personally immortal and subject to a conscious destiny this doctrine of personal immortality is the prime mark of the European and stamps his leadership upon the world its original seat long before history begins lay perhaps in Ireland later in Britain certainly reduced to definition either in Britain or in Gaul it increasingly influenced Greece and even had some influence upon the Jews before the Romans subdued them but it remained an opinion an idea looming in the dark until it was seen strong and concrete in the full light of the Catholic Church oddly enough Mohammed who in most things reacted towards weakness of flesh and spirit adopted this Western doctrine fully it provided his system with its vigor everywhere is that doctrine of immortality the note of superior intelligence and will especially in its contrast with thin pantheism and negations of Asia everywhere does it accompany health and decision it's only worthy counterpart equally European but rare uprooted and private is the bold affirmation of complete and final death the transformation of the Roman Empire then in the fourth century and the fifth was eventually its preservation in peril a full decay by its acceptation of the faith to this I might have attached the continued carelessness for the plastic arts and for much in letters the continued growth and holiness and all that salting as it were which preserved civilization and kept it whole until after the long sequestration of the dark ages it should discover an opportunity for a Bible my space has not permitted me to describe these things I must turn a once to the last and what is for my readers the chief of the historical problems presented by the beginning of the dark ages that problem is the fate of Britain the importance of deciding what happened in Britain when the central government of Rome failed does not lie in the fact that an historical conclusion one way or the other can affect the truth European civilization is still one whether men see that unity or no the Catholic Church is still the soul of it whether men know it or do not know it but the problem presented by the fate of Britain at that critical moment when the provinces of the Roman Empire became independent of any common secular control as this practical importance that those who read it wrongly and who provide their readers with a full solution as the Protestant German school and their copiers in English Freeman green and the rest of done those who talk of the coming of the English the Anglo Saxon conquest and the rest not only furnish arguments against the proper unity of our European story but also produce a warped attitude in the mind such men as are deceived by false accounts of the fate of Britain at the entry into the dark ages take for granted many other things historically untrue their presumptions confuse or conceal much else that is historical truth for instance the character of the Normans and even contemporary and momentous truth before our eyes today for instance the Gulf between Englishman impressions they not only render an Englishman ignorant of his own nation and therefore of himself they also render all men ignorant of Europe for knowledge of Britain in the period 500 to 700 as in the period 1530 to 1630 is the test of European history and if you are wrong on these two points you're wrong on the whole a man who desires to make out that the empire that is the European civilization was conquered by barbarians cannot today and the light of modern research prove his case in Gaul in Italy in Spain or in the valley of the Rhine the old German thesis of a barbaric conquest upon the continent possibly when modern history was child has necessarily been abandoned in its maturity but that thesis still tries to make out a plausible case when it speaks of Britain because so much of the record here is lost that there is more room for make believe and having made it out the tale of a German and barbaric his fels result will powerfully affect modern and immediate conclusions upon our common civilization upon our institutions and their nature and in particular upon the faith and its authority in Europe for if Britain be something other than England if what we now know is not original to this island but is of northern German barbarism in race and tradition if in the breakdown of the Roman Empire Britain was the one exceptional province which really did become a separate barbaric thing cut off at the roots from the rest of civilization then those who desire to believe that the institutions of Europe are of no universal effect that the ancient laws of the empire as on property and marriage were local and in particular that the reformation was the revolt of a race and of a strong and conquering race against the decaying traditions of Rome as something to stand on it does not indeed help them to prove that our civilization is bad or that the faith is untrue but it permits them to despair of or to despise the unity of Europe and to regard the present Protestant world as something which is destined to supplant that unity such a point of view is wrong historically as it is wrong in morals it will find no basis of military success in the future any more than it has in the past footnote I wrote and first printed these words in nineteen twelve I leave them standing with greater force in nineteen twenty it must ultimately break down if ever it should attempt to put into practice its theory of superiority in barbaric things but meanwhile as a self-confident theory it can do harm and definitely great by warping a great section of the European mind bidding it refer its character to imaginary barbaric origins so divorcing it from the majestic spirit of western civilization the north German to tonic school of false popular history can create its own imagery past and led to such a figment the authority of antiquity and of lineage to show how false this modern school of history has been but also what opportunities ahead for advancing its thesis is the object of what follows Britain be it remembered is today the only part of the roman world in which a conscious antagonism to the ancient and permanent civilization of Europe exists the northern germanies and scandinavia which have had since the reformation a religious agreement with all that is still politically powerful in britain lay outside the old civilization they would not have survived the sism of the sixteenth century had britain resisted the sism when we come to deal with the story of reformation in britain we shall see how the strong popular resistance to the reformation nearly overcame that small wealthy class which used the religious excitement of an active minority as an engine to obtain material advantage for themselves but as a fact in britain the popular resistance to the reformation failed a violent and almost universal persecution directed in the main by the wealthier classes against the religion of the english populace and the wealth which endowed it just happened to succeed a little more than a hundred years the newly enriched had won the battle by the year sixteen hundred the faith of the british masses had been stamped out from the high lands to the channel it is our business to understand that this phenomena the moral severance of britain from europe was a phenomena of the sixteenth century and not of the fifth and that britain was in no way predestined by race or tradition to so lamentable and tragic a loss let us state the factors in the problem the main factor in the problem is that the history of great britain from just before the middle of the fifth century say the years 420 to 445 until the landing of st agustin in 597 is a blank it is of the first importance to the student of the general history in europe to seize this point it is true of no other roman western province and the truth of it has permitted a vast amount of empty assertion most of it recent and nearly all of it as demonstrably as it is obviously created by a religious bias when there is no proof or record men can imagine almost anything and the anti-catholic historians have stretched imagination to the last possible limit in filling this blank with whatever could tell against the continuity of civilization it is the business of those who love historic truth to get rid of speculations as of so much rubbish and to restore to the general reader the few certain facts upon which you can solidly build let me repeat that had britain remained true to the unity of europe in that unfortunate oppression of the 16th century which ended in the loss of the faith had the populace stood firm or been able to succeed in the field and under arms or to strike terror into their oppressors by an efficient revolt in other words had the england of the tutors remained Catholic the solution of this ancient problem of the early dark ages would present no immediate advantage nor perhaps with the problem interest men even academically england would now be one with europe as she had been for a thousand years before the uprooting of the reformation but as things are the need for correction is immediate and its success of momentous effect no true historian even though he should most bitterly resent the effect of catholicism upon the european mind can do other than come back what was until quite recently the prevalent teaching with regard to the fate of britain when the central government of the empire decayed i will first deal with the evidence such as it is which has come down to us upon the fate of britain during the fifth and sixth centuries and next consider the conclusions to which that's evidence should lead the end of section 19 section 20 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org europe and the faith by hill air bellach section 20 chapter 5 continued the evidence when we have to deal with the gap in history and though none in western european history is so strangely empty as this yet there are very many minor ones which enable us to reason from their analogy two methods of bridging the gap are present to the historian the first is research into such rare contemporary records as may illustrate the period the second is the parallel of what has happened elsewhere in the same case or better still when that is possible the example of what was proceeding in similar places and under similar circumstances at the same time and there is a third thing both of these methods must be submitted to the criterion of common sense more thorough and more absolute than the evidence of fuller periods for when you have full evidence even of a thing extraordinary you must admit its truth but when there is little evidence guesswork comes in and common sense is the correction of guesswork if for instance i learn as i can learn from contemporary records and from the witness of men still living that the battle of gettysburg infantry advanced so boldly as to bayonet gunners at their guns i must believe it although the event is astonishing if i learn as i can learn that a highly civilized and informed government like that of the french in 1870 entering into a war against a great rival had only the old muzzle loading cannon when their enemies were already equipped with modern breech loading pieces i must accept it on overwhelming evidence in spite of my astonishment when even the miraculous appears in a record if its human evidence is multiple converging and exact i must accept it or deny the value of human evidence but when i am dealing with a period or an event for which evidence is lacking or deficient and obviously it is a sound criterion of criticism to accept the probable and not to presuppose the improbable common sense and general experience are nowhere more necessary than in their application whether at a court of law or in the study of history to those problems whose difficulty consists in the absence of direct proof footnote for instance there is no contemporary account mentioning london during the last half of the fifth and nearly all the sixth century green freeman stubs say making it up as they go along that london sees to exist disappeared then they assert after a long period of complete abandonment it was laboriously cleared by a totally new race of men and as laboriously rebuilt on exactly the same site the thing is not physically impossible but it is so exceedingly improbable that common sense laughs at it remembering all this let us first set down what is positively known from record with regard to the fate of britain in the 150 years of the gap we began by noting that there were many groups of german soldierry in britain before the pirate raids and that the southwest was whether on account of earlier pirate raids or on account of sacks and settlers the descendants of roman soldiers called the sacks and shore long before the imperial system broke down next we turn to documents there is exactly one contemporary document professing to tell us anything at all of what happened within this considerable period exactly one document set down by a witness and that document is almost valueless for our purpose it bears the title day exidio britana liber querilis saint gildes a monk was its author the exact date of its compilation is a matter of dispute necessarily so for the whole of that time is quite dark but it is certainly not earlier than 545 so it was written 100 years after the beginning of that darkness which covers british history for 150 years most of the roman regulars had been called away for a continental campaign in 410 they had often so left the island before but this time the troops sent out on expedition did not return britain was visited in 429 and 447 by men who left records it was not until 597 that saint augustin landed saint augustin landed only 50 years at the mouse after gildes wrote his liber querilis whereas the snapping of the links between the continent and southeastern britain had taken place at least 100 years before well it so happens that this book is as i have called it almost valueless for history it is good in morals its author complains as all just men must do in all times of the wickedness of powerful men and of the vices of princes it is a homily the motive of it is not history but the reformation of morals in all matters extending to more than a lifetime before that of the writer in all matters that is on which he could not obtain personal evidence he is hopelessly at sea is valuable only as giving us the general impression of military and social struggles as they struck a monk who desired to make them the text of a sermon he vaguely talks of saxon auxiliaries from the north sea being hired in the traditional roman manner by some prince in roman britain to fight savages who had come out of the highlands of scotland and were raiding he says this use of new auxiliaries began after the third consulship of atheists whom he calls agitius that is after 446 ad he talks still more vaguely of the election of local kings to defend the island from the excesses of these auxiliaries he is quite as much concerned with the incursions of robber bands of irish and scotch into the civilized roman province as he is with a few saxon auxiliaries who were thus called in to supplement the arms of the roman provincials he speaks only of a handful of these auxiliaries three boatloads but he is so vague and ill instructed on the whole of this early period a hundred years before his time that one must treat his account of the transaction as half legendary he tells us that more numerous companies followed and we know what that means in the case of the roman auxiliaries throughout the empire a few thousand armed men he goes on to say that these auxiliaries mutining for pay another parallel to what we should expect from the history of all the previous hundred years all over europe threatened to plunder the civil population then comes one sentence of rhetoric saying how they ravaged the countryside's in punishment for our previous sins until the flames of the tumult actually licked the western ocean it is all and there is much more just like what we have read in the rhetoric of the lettered man on the continent who watched the comparatively small but destructive bands of barbarian auxiliaries in revolt with their accompaniment of escaped slaves and local ne'er-do-wells crossing gall and pillaging if we had no record of the continental troubles but that of some one religious man using a local disaster as the opportunity for a moral discourse historians could have talked of gall exactly as they talk of britain on the sole authority of saint gildus all the exaggeration to which we are used to in continental records is here the gleaming sword and the flame crackling the destruction of cities which afterwards quietly continue an unbroken life and all the rest of it we know perfectly well that on the continent similar language was used to describe the predatory actions of little bodies of barbarian auxiliaries actions calamitous and tragic no doubt but not universal and in no way finally destructive of civilization it must not be forgotten that saint gildus also tells us of the return home of many barbarians with plunder which is again what we should have expected but at the end of this account he makes an interesting point which shows that even if we had nothing but his written record to judge by the barbarian pirates had got some sort of foothold on the eastern coast of the island for after describing how the romano british of the province organized themselves under one ambrosius or alienus and stood their ground he tells us that sometimes the citizen that is the roman and the civilized men sometimes the enemy were successful down to the thorough defeat of some raiding body or other of the pagans at an unknown place which he calls mans bananicus this decisive action he also tells us took place in the year of his own birth now the importance of this last point is that gildus after that day can talk of things which he really knew let anyone who reads this page recall a great event contemporary with or nearly following his own birth and see how different is his knowledge of it from his knowledge of that which came even a few years before this is so today with all the advantages of full record how much greater would be the contrast between things really known and hearsay when there was none this defeat of the pagan pirates at mount bayden gildus calls the last but not the least slaughter of the barbarians and though he probably wrote in the west of britain yet we know certainly from his contemporary evidence that during the whole of his own lifetime up to the writing of his book a matter of some 44 years there was no more serious fighting in other words we are certain that the little pagan courts settled on the east coast of britain were balanced by a remaining mass of declining roman civilization elsewhere and that there was no attempt at anything like expansion or conquest from the east westward for this state of affairs remember we have direct contemporary evidence during the whole lifetime of a man and up to within it most 50 years perhaps less from the day when saint augustin landed in kent and restored record and letters to the east coast we have more rhetoric and more homilies about the deserted cities and the wickedness of men and the evil life of the kings but that you might hear at any period all we really get from gildus is one the confused tradition of a rather heavy predatory raid conducted by barbaric auxiliaries summoned from across the northern sea in true roman fashion to help a roman province against uncivilized invaders scotch and irish two which is most important the obtaining by these auxiliary troops or their rulers though in small numbers it is true of political power over some territory within the island three the early cessation of any racial struggles or conflict between christian and pagan or between barbarian and roman even of so much as would strike a man living within the small area of britain and the confinement of the new little pagan pirate courts to the east coast during the whole of the first half of the sixth century here let us turn the light of common sense onto these most imperfect confused and few facts which gildus gives us what sort of thing would a middle-aged man writing in the decline of letters and with nothing but poor and demonstrably distorted verbal records to go by sat down with regard to a piece of warfare if a that man were among and a man of peace b his object were obviously not history but a sermon on morals and c the fighting was between the catholic faith which was all in all to the man of his time and pagans obviously he would make all he could of the old and terrified legends of the time long before his birth he would get more precise as his birth approached though always gloomy and exaggerating the evil and he would begin to tell us precise facts with regard to the time he could himself remember well all we get from sing gildus is the predatory incursions of pagan savages from scotland and island long long before he was born a small number of auxiliaries called in to help the roman provincials against these the permanent settlements of these auxiliaries in some quarter or other of the island we know from other evidence that it was the east and southeast coast and d what is of capital importance because it is really contemporary the settling down of the whole matter apparently during gildus own lifetime in the 6th century from say 500 a d or earlier to say 545 or later end of section 20 section 21 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org europe and the faith by hillar bellock section 21 chapter 5 continued i have devoted so much space to this one writer whose record would hardly count in a time where any sufficient historical document existed because his book is absolutely the only one contemporary piece of evidence we have upon the pirate or saxon rating of britain footnote the single sentence in prosper is insignificant and what is more demonstrably false as it stands there are interesting fragments about it in the various documents known to us collectively today as the anglo-saxon chronicle but these documents were compiled many hundreds of years afterwards and had nothing better to go on than saint gildus himself and possibly a few vague legends now we happen to have in this connection a document which though not contemporary must be considered as evidence of a kind it is sober and full written by one of the really great men of catholic and european civilization written in the spirit of wide judgment and written by a founder of history the venerable bt true the venerable bt's ecclesiastical history was not produced until 300 years after the first raids of these predatory bands not until nearly 200 years after saint gildus and not until 140 years after reading and writing and the full tide of roman civilization had come back to eastern britain with saint augustin but certain fundamental statements of his are evidence thus the fact that the venerable bt takes for granted permanent pirate settlements established as regular if small states all the way along the north sea coast from the northern part of britain in which he wrote brought down to the central south by south hampton water is a powerful or a rather conclusive argument in favor of the existence of such states sometime before he wrote it is not credible that a man of this weight would write as he does without solid tradition behind him and he tells us that the settlers on this coast of britain came from three lowland frisian tribes german and danish called saxons jutes and angles the first name saxon was at that time the name of certain pirates inhabiting two or three small islands on the coast between the elbe and the rome footnote the name has retained a vague significance for centuries and is now attached to a population largely slavonic and holy protestant south of berlin hundreds of miles from its original seat talami puts these sactions 200 years earlier just beyond the mouth of elbe the romans knew them as scattered pirates in the north sea irritating the coast of gall in britain for generations the name later spread to a large island confederation but that was the way with german tribal names the german tribal names do not stand for fixed races or even provinces but for chance agglomerations which suddenly rise and as suddenly disappear the local term saxon in the fifth and sixth century had nothing to do with the general term saxon applied to all northwest of the germany's 200 years and more afterwards these pirates then provided small bands of fighting men under chieftains who founded small organized governments north of the tames estuary at the head of south anton water and on the sussex coast when they may or may not have found but more probably did find existing settlements of their own people already established as colonies by the romans the chiefs very probably captured the roman fiscal organization of the place but seemed rapidly to have degraded society by their barbaric incompetence they learned no new language but continued to talk that of their original seat on the continent which language was split up into a number of local dialects each of which was a mixture of original german and adopted greek latin and even Celtic words of the jutes we know nothing there is a mass of modern guesswork about them valueless like all such stuff we must presume that they were an insignificant little tribe who sent out a few mercenaries for hire but they had the advantage of sending out the first for the handful of mercenaries whom the roman british called into camp were by all tradition juteish the venerable bd also bears witness to an isolated juteish settlement in the meon valley near south ampton water comparable to the little german colonies established by the romans at bayou and normandy and near reniz the angles were something more definite they held that corner of land where the neck of denmark joins the main land of germany this we know for certain there was a considerable immigration of them enough to make their departure noticeable in the sparsely populated heaths of their district and to make bd record the traveler's tale that their barren country still looked depopulated how many boat worlds of them however may have come we have of course no sort of record we only know from our common sense that the number must have been insignificant compared with the local free and slave population of a rich roman province their chiefs got hold of the land far above the tames estuary and scattered spots all up the east coast of britain as far as the first of fourth there are no other authorities there is no other evidence save saint gildes a contemporary and 200 years after him 300 after the first event bd a mass of legend and worst nonsense called the historia bretonum exists indeed for those who consult it but it has no relation to historical science nor any claim to rank as evidence as we have it it is centuries late and it need not concern serious history even for the existence of arthur to which it is the principal witness popular legend is a much better guide as to the original dates of the various statements in the history of bretonum those dates are guesswork the legendary narrative as a whole though very ancient in its roots dates only from a period subsequent to charlemagne much more than a century later than bd and time far less cultured the life of saint germanus who came and preached in britain after the roman legions had left is contemporary and deals with events 60 years before saint gildes birth it would be valuable if it told us anything about the pirate settlements on the coast whether these were but the confirmation of older roman sacks and garrisons or roman agricultural colonies or what but it tells us nothing about them we know that saint germanus dealt in a military capacity with picks and scots an ordinary barbarian trouble but we have no hint at sacks and settlements saint germanus was last in britain in 447 and it is good negative evidence that we hear nothing during that visit of any real trouble from the sacks and pirates who at that very time might be imagined if legend were to be trusted to be establishing their power in kent that ends the list of witnesses that is all our evidence footnote on such a body of evidence less than a morning's reading did green build up for popular sale his romantic making of england to sum up so far as recorded history is concerned all we know is this that probably some but certainly only a few of the roman regular forces were to be found garrisoned in britain after the year 410 that in the roman armies there had long been sacks and and other german auxiliaries some of whom could naturally provide civilian groups and that roam even planted agricultural colonies of auxiliaries permanently within the empire that the south and east coast were known as the sacks and shore even during imperial times that the savages from scotland and ireland disturbed the civilized province cruelly that scattered pirates who had troubled the southern and eastern coast for two centuries joined the scotch and irish ravaging bands that some of these were taken in as regular auxiliaries on the old roman model somewhere about the middle of the fifth century the conventional date is 445 that has happened in many another roman province the auxiliaries mutinied for pay and did a good deal of bad looting and ravaging finally that the ravaging was checked and that the pirates were thrown back upon some permanent settlements of theirs established during these disturbances along the eastern most and southern most coasts their numbers must have been very small compared with the original population no town of any size was destroyed now it is most important in the face of such a paucity of information to seize three points first that the ravaging was not appreciably worse either in the way it is described or by any other criterion than the troubles which the continent suffered at the same time and which as we know did not there destroy the continuity or unity of civilization secondly that the sparse raiders pagan as were also some few of those on the continent an incapable of civilized effort obtained as they did upon the continent notably upon the left bank of the rye little plots of territory which they held and governed for themselves and in which after a short period the old roman order decayed in the incapable hands of the newcomers but thirdly and upon all this the rest will turn the position which these less civilized and pagan small courts happened permanently to hold were positions that cut the link between the roman province of britain and the rest of what had been the united roman empire this last matter not numbers not race is the capital point in the story of britain between 447 and 597 the uncivilized man happened by a geographical accident to have cut the communications of the island with his sister provinces of the empire he was numerically as insignificant racially as unproductive and as ill provided with fruitful or permanent institutions as his brethren on the rye or the danube but on the rye and the danube the empire was abroad if a narrow fringe of it was ruined it was no great matter only retreat of a few miles those c communications between britain and europe were narrow and the barbarian had been established across them the circulation of men goods and ideas was stopped for 150 years because the small pirate settlements mixed perhaps with barbarian settlements already established by the empire had by the gradual breakdown of the roman ports destroyed communication with europe from south ampton water right north to beyond the tames it seems certain that even the great town of london whatever its commercial relations kept up no official or political business beyond the sea the pirates had not gone far inland but with no intention of conquest only of loot or continued establishment they had snapped the bond by which britain lived such is the direct evidence and such our first conclusion on it but of indirect indications of reasonable supposition and comparison between what came after the pirate settlements and what had been before there is much more by the use of this secondary matter added to the direct evidence one can fully judge both the limits and the nature of the misfortune that overtook britain after the central roman government failed and before the roman missionaries who restored the province to civilization had landed we may then arrive at a conclusion and know what that britain was to which the faith returned with st augustin when we know that we shall know what britain continued to be until a catastrophe of the reformation the end of section 21 section 22 europe and the faith this is a libre vox recording all libre vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit librevox.org europe and the faith by hill air bellock section 22 chapter 5 continued i say that apart from the direct evidence of st gildes and the late but respectable traditions gathered by the venerable bd the use of other and indirect forms of evidence permits us to be certain of one or two main facts and a method about to be described will enable us to add to these a half dozen more the whole may not be sufficient indeed to give us a general picture of the time but it will prevent us from falling into any radical error with regard to the place of britain in the future unity of europe when we come to examine that unity as it re arose in the middle ages partly preserved partly reconstituted by the catholic church the historical method to which i elude and to which i will now introduce the reader may properly be called that of limitations we may not know what happened between two dates but if we know pretty well how things stood for some time before the earlier date and for some time after the later one then we have two jumping off places as it were from which to build our bridge of speculation and deduction as to what happened in the unexplored gap of time between suppose every record of what happened in the united states between 1862 and 1880 to be wiped out by the destruction of all but one insufficient document and supposing a fairly full knowledge to survive of the period between the declaration of independence in 1862 and a tolerable record to survive of the period between 1880 and the present year further let there be ample traditional memory and legend that a civil war took place that the struggle was a struggle between north and south and that its direct and violent financial and political effects were felt for over a decade the student hampered by the absence of direct evidence might make many errors in detail and might be led to assert as probably true things at which contemporary would smile but by analogy with other contemporary countries by the use of his common sense and his knowledge of human nature of local climate of other physical conditions and of the motives common to all men he would arrive at a dozen or so general conclusions which would be just what came after the gap would correct the deductions he had made from his knowledge of what came before it what came before the gap would help to correct false deductions drawn from what came after it his knowledge of contemporary life in europe let us say or in western territories which the war did not reach between 1862 and 1880 would further correct his conclusions if he were to confine himself to the most general conclusions he could not be far wrong he would appreciate the success of the north and how much that success was due to numbers he would be puzzled perhaps by the different positions of the abolitionist theory before and after the war but he would know that the slaves were freed in the interval and he would rightly conclude that their freedom had been a direct historical consequence and a contemporary effect of the struggle he would be equally right in rejecting any theory of the colonization of the southern states by northerners he would note the continuity of certain institutions the non-continuity of others in general if he were to state first what he was sure of secondly what he could fairly guess his brief summary though very incomplete would not be off the rails of history he would not be employing such a method to produce historical nonsense as so many of our modern historians have done in their desire to prove the english people german and barbaric in their origins this much being said let me carefully set down what we know with regard to britain before and after the bad gap in our records the unknown 150 years between the departure of saint germanus and the arrival of zane augustin we know that before the bulk of roman regulars left the country in 410 britain was an organized roman province therefore we know that it had regular divisions with a town as the center of each many of the towns forming the seas of the bishops we know that official records were kept in latin and that latin was the official town we further know that the island at this time had four generations past suffered from incursions of northern barbarians in great numbers over the scottish border and from piratical raids of seafarers some irish others germanic dutch and danish in origin in much less numbers for the amount of men and provisions conveyorable across a wide sea in small boats is highly limited within four years of the end of the sixth century nearly 200 years after the cessation of a regular roman government missionaries priests from the continent acting on a roman episcopal commission land in britain from that moment writing returns and our chronicle begins again what do they tell us first that the whole island is by that time broken up into a number of small and warring districts secondly that these numerous little districts each under its petty king or prince fall into two divisions some of these petty kings and courts are evidently christian Celtic speaking and by all their corporate tradition inherit from the old roman civilization the other petty kings and courts speak various teutonic dialects that is dialects made up of jargon and of original german words and latin words mixed the population of the little settlements under these eastern knights spoke apparently for the most part the same dialects as their courts thirdly we find that these courts and their subjects are not only mainly of this speech but also in the mass pagan there may have been relics of catholicism among them but at any rate the tiny courts and petty kinglets were pagan and teutonic in speech fourthly the divisions between these two kinds of little states were such that the decayed christians were when saint augustin came roughly speaking in the west and center of the island the pagans on the coast of the south and the east all this tallies with the old and distorted legends and traditions as it does with the direct story of gildus and also whatever of real history may survive in the careful compilation of legend and tradition made by the venerable bd the first definite historical truth which we derive from this use of the method of limitation is of the same sort as that to which the direct evidence of gildus leads us a series of settlements had been affected upon the coasts of the northern sea and the eastern part of the channel from let us say dorseture or its neighborhood right up to the first the fourth they have been affected by the north sea pirates and their foothold was good now let us use this method of limitations for matters a little less obvious and ask first what were the limits between these two main groups of little confused and warring districts secondly how far was either group coherent thirdly what had survived in either group of the older order and fourthly what novel thing had appeared during the darkness of this century and a half or two centuries footnote a century and a half from the very last roman evidence the visit of saint germanus in 447 to the landings of saint augustin exactly 150 years later 597 nearly two centuries from the withdrawal of the expeditionary roman army to the landing of saint augustin 410 to 597 taking these four points seriatum one further inland than about a days march from the sea or from the estuaries of rivers we have no proof of the settlement of the pirates or the formation by them of local governments it is impossible to fix the boundaries in such a chaos but we know that the most of the country of kent and the sea coast of sussex also all within a rating distance of south anthan water and of the hamshire avon the maritime part of east anglia and of linkinshire so far as we can judge the east riding of yorkshire durham the coastal parts of at least northumberland and the lotheans were under numerous pagan kinglets whose courts taught this mixture of german and latin words called teutonic dialects what of the midlands the region was a welter and a welter of which we can tell very little indeed it formed a sort of march or borderland between the two kinds of courts those of the kinglets and chieftains who still preserved the tradition of civilization and those of the kinglets who had lost that tradition this mixed borderland tended apparently to coalesce the facts of which we have to judge are very few under one chief it was later known not under a germanic or Celtic name but under the low latin name of mercia that is the borderland to the political aspect of this line of demarcation i will return in a moment two as to the second question what kind of cohesion was there between the western and the eastern sets of these vague and petty governments the answer is that the cohesion was of the loosest in either case certain fundamental habits differentiated east from west language for instance and much more religion before the coming of saint augustin all the western and probably most of the central kinglets were christians the kinglets on the eastern coast pagan there was a tendency in the west apparently to hold together for common interests but no longer to speak of one head but note this interesting point the west felt at some sort of common bond called itself the kimmery and only concerned the mountain land it did not include a carefully distinguished itself from the christians of the more fertile midlands south and east which it called loggins along the east coast there was a sort of tradition of common headship very nebulous indeed but existent men talked of chiefs of britain brett wall does a word the first part of which is obviously roman the second part of which may be germanic or Celtic or anything and which we may guess to indicate a titular headship but and this must be especially noted there was no conscious or visible cohesion among the little courts of the east and southeast coasts there was no conscious and deliberate continued pagan attack against the western christians as such in the end of the sixth century when saint augustin landed and no western Celtic christian resistance organized as such to the chieftains scattered along the eastern coast each kinglet fought with each pagan with pagan christian with christian christian and pagan in alliance against pagan and christian in alliance and the cross divisions were innumerable you have petty kings on the eastern coast with Celtic names you have sacks and allies in Celtic courts you have western christian kings winning battles on the coast of the north sea and eastern kings winning battles nearly as far west as the cavern etc etc i have said that it is of capital importance to appreciate this point that the whole thing was a chaos of little independent districts all fighting in a hodgepodge and not a clash of warring races or tongs it is difficult for us with our modern experience of great and highly conscious nations to conceive such a state of affairs when we think of fighting and war we cannot but think of one considerable conscious nation fighting against another similar nation and this modern habit of mind has misled the past upon the nature of britain at the moment when civilization re-entered the south and east of the island with saint augustin maps are published with guesswork boundaries showing the frontiers of the anglo-saxon conquest at definite dates and modern historians are fond of talking of the limits of that conquest being extended to such and such points there were no frontiers there was no conquest either way of east over west or west over east there were no extending limits of eastern for western rule there was no advance to chester no conquest of the district of bath there were no battles near bath and battles near chester the loot of a city a counter raid by the westners and all the rest of it but the talk of a gradual anglo-saxon conquest is an anachronism the end of section 22 section 23 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org europe and the faith by hillar bellach section 23 chapter 5 continued the men of the time would not have understood this language for indeed it has no relation to the facts of the time the kinglid who could gather his men from a day's march around his court in a lower tames valley fought against the kinglid who could gather his men from a day's march around his stronghold at canterbury a pagan teutonic speaking eastern kinglid would be found allied with a christian Celtic speaking western kinglid and his christian followers and the allies would march indifferently against another christian or another pagan there was indeed later a westward movement in language and habit which i shall mention there was the work of the church so far as warfare goes there was no movement westward or eastward fighting went on continually in all directions from a hundred separate centers and if there are reliable traditions of an eastern pagan kinglid commanding some mixed host once reaching so far west as to raid the valley of wiltshire even and another raiding to the d so there are historical records of a western christian kinglid reaching and raiding the eastern settlements right down to the north sea at bamboorow three now to the third point what had survived of the old order in either half of this anarchy of roman government of roman order of true roman civilization of that palladium of which we spoke in a previous chapter nothing had anywhere survived the disappearance of the roman taxing and judicial machinery is the mark of britain's great wound it differentiates the fate of britain from that of gall the west of britain had lost this roman tradition of government just as much as the east the pict and scott footnote the scott's that is the irish were of course of a higher civilization than the other raiders of britain during this dark time the catholic church reached them early they had letters and the rest long before augustin came to britain and the north sea pirates since they could not read or write or build or make a road or do anything appreciably useful interrupted civilized life and so starved it the raids did more to break up the old roman society than did internal decay the western chieftains who retained the roman religion had thoroughly lost the roman organization of society before the year 600 the roman language probably only really familiar in the towns seemed to have gone the roman method of building has certainly gone in the west the learned could still write but they must have done so most bearingly if we are to judge by the absence of any remains the church in some truncated and star form survived indeed in the west it was the religion to which an imperial fragment cut off from all other roman populations might be expected to cling paganism seems to have died out in the west but the mutilated catholicism that had taken its place became provincial, ill-instructed, and out of touch with europe we may guess though it is only guesswork that its chief ailment came from the spiritual fervor ill-disciplined but vivid of britany and of ireland what had survived in the eastern part of britain on the coast and up the estuaries of the navigable rivers perhaps in patches the original language it is a question whether dramatic dialects had not been known in eastern britain along before the departure of the roman legions but anyhow if we suppose the main speech of the east to have been Celtic and latin before the pirate raids then that main speech had gone so perhaps altogether certainly for the most part had religion so certainly had the arts reading and writing and the rest overseas commerce had certainly dwindled but to what extent we cannot tell it is not credible that it wholly disappeared but on the other hand there's very little trace of connection with southern and eastern britain in the sparse continental records of this time lastly and perhaps most important the old bishoprics had gone when saint gregory sent saint augustin and his missionaries to refound the old seas of britain his original plan of that refounding had to be wholly changed he evidently had some old imperial scheme before him in which he conceived of london the great city as the metropolis and the lesser towns as suffragan to its sea but facts were too strong for him he had to restore the church in the coasts that cut off britain from europe and in doing so he had to deal with a ruin tradition was lost and britain is the only roman province in which this very great break and the continuity of the bishoprics is to be discovered one thing did not disappear and that was the life of the towns of course a roman town in the sixth or seventh century was not what it had been in the fourth or fifth but it is remarkable that in all this wearing away of the old roman structure its framework which was and is municipal remained if we can stop the principal towns reappearing when the light of history returns to britain with saint augustin's missionaries we find that all of them are roman in origin what is more important we find that the proportion of surviving roman towns centuries later when full records exist is even larger than it is in other provinces of the empire which we know to have preserved the continuity of civilization exeter perhaps norwich chester vanchester lancaster carlyle york canterbury lincoln rochester newcastle colchester bath winchester chichester clouster syrencester lychester old salisbury great london itself these pegs upon which the web of roman civilization was stretched stood firm through the confused welter of wars between all these petty chieftains north sea pirate welsh and cumbrian and pennine highlander irish and scotch there was a slow growth of suburbs and some substitution of new suburban sites for old city sites as at southampton portsmouth crystal huntington etc it is what you find all over europe but there was no real disturbance of this scheme of towns until the industrial revolution of modern times came to diminish the almost immemorial importance of the roman cities and to supplant their economic functions by the huge aggregations of the potteries the midlands south lancashire the coal fields and the modern ports the student of this main problem in european history the fate of britain must particularly note the phenomena here described it is the capital point of proof that roman britain though suffering grievously from england saxon scotch and irish raids and though cut off for a time from civilization did survive those who prefer to think of england as a colony of barbarians in which the european life was destroyed have to suppress many a truth to conceive many an absurdity in order to support their story but no absurdity of theirs is worse than the fiction they put forward with regard to the story of the english towns it was solemnly maintained by the oxford school and its german masters that these great roman towns one after the other were first utterly destroyed by the pirates of the north sea then left in ruins for generations and then reoccupied through some sudden whim by the newcomers it needs no historical learning to laugh at such a fancy but historical learning makes it even more impossible than it is laughable certain rare towns of course decayed in the course of centuries the same is true for that matter of spain and gall in idli some few here as many as in spain and gall in idli may have been actually destroyed in the act of war there is tradition of something of the sword at pivency the old port of andorita in sussex and for some time a forgery lent the same distinction to roxeter under the reckon a great number of towns again as in every other province of the empire naturally diminished with the effect of time dorchester on the tames for instance seems to have been quite a large place for centuries after the first troubles with the pirates though today is only a village but it did not decay as a result of war sundry small towns became smaller still some few sank to hamlets as generation after generation of change passed over them but we find just the same thing in picardy and the ruslan in lombardy in aquitaine what did not happen in britain was a subversion of the roman municipal system again the unwalled settlement outside the wall town often grew at the expense of the municipality within the walls i have given hunting done as an example of this and there is st albans and cambridge but these also have their parallels in every other province in the west even in distant africa you find exactly the same thing you find it in the northern suburb of roman paris itself that suburb turns into the head of the medieval town yet paris is perhaps the best example of roman continuity in all europe the seaports naturally changed in character and often in actual sight especially upon the flat and therefore changeable eastern shores and that is exactly what you find in similar circumstances throughout the tidal waters of the continent there is not the shadow or the trace of any widespread destruction of the roman towns in britain on the contrary there is as much or more than elsewhere in the empire the obvious fact of their survival the phenomena is the more remarkable when we consider first that the names of roman towns given above do not pretend to be a complete list one may add immediately from memory the southern doorchester dover donkester et cetera and secondly that we have but a most imperfect list remaining of the towns in roman britain common method among those who belittle the continuity of our civilization is to deny a roman origin to any town in which roman remains do not happen to have been noted as yet by antiquarians but even under that test we can be certain that windsor lose a rundle dorking and 20 others were seats of roman habitation though the remaining records of the first or four centuries tell us nothing of them but in nine cases out of 10 the mere absence of catalog roman remains proves nothing the soil of towns is shifted and reshifted continually generation after generation the antiquary is not stationed at every digging of a foundation or sinking of a well or laying of a drain or paving of a street his methods are of recent establishment we have lost centuries of research and even with all our modern interests in such matters the antiquary is not informed once in a hundred times of chance discoveries unless perhaps they be of coins when moreover we consider that for 1500 years this turning and returning of the soil has been going on within the municipalities it is ridiculous to affirm that such a place as oxford for instance a town of importance in the later dark ages had no roman root simply because the modern antiquary is not yet possessed of any roman remains recently discovered in it there may have been no town here before the fifth century but it is unlikely one further point must be noticed before we leave this prime matter had there been any considerable destruction of the roman towns in britain large and small we should expect it where the pirate raids fell earliest and most fiercely we should expect to find the towns near the east and the south coast to have disappeared the historical truth is quite opposite the garrison of andorita indeed and of andorita alone pavancy was if we may trust a vague phrase written 400 years later massacred in war but lincoln york nuke sel cult sister london dover canibary rochester chichester porchester winchester the very principal examples of survival are all of them either right on the eastern and southern coast or within a day striking distance of it as to decay the great garrison center of the second legion in the heart of the country which the pirate raiders never reached has sunk to be little carillon upon us just as surely as doorchester on the tames far away from the eastern coast has decayed from a town to a village and just as surely as rich bro an island right on the pirate coast itself has similarly decay as with destruction so with decay there is no increasing proportion as we go from west eastward towards the pirate settlements the end of section 23 section 24 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org europe and the faith by hill air bellach section 24 chapter 5 continued but the point need not be labored the supposition that the roman towns disappeared is no longer tenable and the wonder is how so astonishing an assertion could have lived for even a generation the roman town survived and with them britain though maimed for now for the last question what novel things had come into britain with this breakdown of the central imperial authority in the fifth and sixth centuries to answer that is of course to answer the chief question of all and it is the most difficult of all to answer i've said that presumably on the south and east the language was new there were numerous germanic troops permanently in britain before the legions disappeared there was a constant intercourse with germanic auxiliaries there were probably colonies half military half agricultural some have even thought that belgic tribes whether in gall or britain spoke to tonic dialects but it is safer to believe from the combined evidence of the place names and of later traditions that there was a real change in the common talk of most men within a march of the eastern sea or the estuaries of its rivers this change in language if it occurred and we must presume it did though it is not absolutely certain for there may have been a large amount of mixed german speech among the people before the roman soldiers departed this change of language i say is the chief novel matter the decay of religion means less for when the pirate raids began though the empire was already officially christian at its heart the church had only just taken firm route in the outlying parts the institutions which arose in britain everywhere when the central power of rome decayed the meetings of our men to decide public affairs money compensation for injuries the organizing of society by hundreds etc were common to all europe nothing but ignorance can regard them as imported into britain or into ireland or britany for that matter by the pirates of the north sea they are things native to all our european race when it lives simply a little knowledge of europe will teach us that there was nothing novel or peculiar in such customs they appear universally among the iberians as among the kelts among the pure germans beyond the rye the mixed francs and vatavians upon the delta of that river and the lowlands of the shelt and the muse even among the untouched roman populations everywhere you get as the dark ages approach in advance the meetings of armed men in council the chief then assisted in his government by such meetings the weaponed assent or dissent of the great men in conference the division of the land and people into hundreds the fine for murder and all the rest of it any man who says and most men of the last generation said it that among the changes of the 200 years gap was the introduction of novel institutions peculiar to the germans is speaking in ignorance of the european unity and of that vast landscape of our civilization which every true historian should however dimly possess the same things talked of in a mixture of german and latin terms between the pool harbor and the bass rock were talked of in Celtic terms from the start to Glasgow the chroniclers wrote them down in latin terms alone everywhere from the Sahara to the grampians and from the Adriatic to the Atlantic the very basques who were assumed to begin the resistance of christian them against the mohammedan in spain spoke of them in basque terms but the actual things the institutions for which all these various latins basque german and Celtic words stood the blood fine the scale of money reparation for injury division of society into hundreds the council advising the chief etc were much the same throughout the body of europe they will always reappear wherever men of our european race are thrown into small warring communities avid of combat jealous of independence organized under a military aristocracy and reverent of custom everywhere and particularly in britain the imperial measurements survived the measurements of land the units of money and of length and weight were all roman and nowhere more than in eastern britain during the dark ages lastly let the reader consider the curious point of language no more striking simulacrum of racial unity can be discovered than a common language or set of languages but it is a simulacrum and a simulacrum only it is neither a proof nor a product of true unity language passes from conqueror to conquered from conquered to conqueror almost indifferently convenience accident and many a mysterious force which the historian cannot analyze propagates it or checks it gall thickly populated organized by but few garrisons of roman soldiers and one army corps of occupation learns to talk latin universally almost within living memory of the roman conquest yet two corners of gall the one fertile and rich the other baron amorica and the basque islands never except latin africa though thoroughly colonized from idli and penetrated with italian blood as gall never was retains the punic speech century after century to the very ends of the roman rule 700 years after the fall of carthage 400 after the end of the roman republic spain conquered and occupied by the mohammedan and settled in very great numbers by a highly civilized oriental race talks today a latin only just touched by arabic influence lombardy gallic in blood and with a strong intrusion of repeated germanic invasions very much larger than ever britain had has lost all trace of gallic accent and even in language save in one or two alpine valleys and of german speech retains nothing but a few rare and doubtful words the plain of hungary and the carpathian mountains are a tessellated pavement of language quite dissimilar mongolian titanic slob the balkan states have not upon their westward nor european side but at their extreme opposite limit a population which continues the memory of the empire in its speech and the vocabulary of the romanians is not the greek of bizantium which civilized them but the latin of rome the most implacable of mohammedans now under french rule in algears speak and have spoken for centuries not arabic in any form but berber and the same speech reappears beyond a wide belt of arabic in the far desert to the south the irish a people in permanent contrast to the english yet talk in the main the english tongue french canadians accepting politically unity with britain retain their tongue and reject english look where we will we discover in regard to language something as incalculable as the human will and as various as human instinct the deliberate attempt to impose it has nearly always failed sometimes it survives as the result of a deliberate policy sometimes it is restored as a piece of national protest bohemian as example sometimes it catches on naturally and runs for hundreds of miles covering the most varied peoples and even the most varied civilizations with a common veil now the roman towns were not destroyed the original population was certainly not destroyed even in the few original settlements of saxon and angles in the sea and the river shores of the east such civilization as the little courts of the pirate chieftains maintained was degraded roman or it was nothing but the so-called anglo-saxon language the group of half german footnote i say half german lest the reader should think by the use of the word german or teutonic that the various dialects of this sort including those of the north sea pirates were something original uninfluenced by rome it must always be remembered that with their original words and roots was mixed an equal mass of superior words learned from the civilized men of the south in the course of the many centuries during which germans had served the romans as slaves and in arms and had met their merchants dialects which may have taken root before the withdrawal of the roman legions in the east of britain and which at any rate were well rooted there a hundred years after stood ready for one of two fates either it would die out and be replaced by dialects half keltec half latin vocabulary or it would spread westward that the teutonic dialects of the eastern kinglets should spread westward might have seemed impossible the unlettered barbarian does not teach the littered civilized man the pagan does not mold a christian it is the other way about yet in point of fact that happened why before we answer that question let us consider another point side by side with the entry of civilization through the roman missionary priests in kent there was going on a missionary effort in the north of the ireland of britain which effort was irish it had various keltec dialects for its common daily medium though it was of course roman in ritual at the altar the keltec missionaries had they alone been in the field would have made us all keltec speaking today but it was the direct mission from roman that won and this for the reason that it had behind it the full tide of europe letters order law building schools re-entered england through kent not through northumberland where the irish were preaching even so the spread westward of a letterless and starved set of dialects from the little courts of the eastern coast from canterbury and bamburo and so forth would have been impossible but for a tremendous accident saint augustin after his landing proposed to the native british bishops that they should help in the conversion of the little pagan kinlets and their courts on the eastern coast they would not they had been cut off from europe for so long that they had become warped they refused communion the peaceful roman mission coming just at the moment when the empire had recovered idly and was fully restoring itself was thrown back on the eastern courts it used them it backed their tongues their arms their tradition the terms of roman things were carefully translated by the priests into the titanic dialects of these courts the advance of civilization under the missionaries recapturing more and more of the province of britain proceeded westward from the courts of the eastern kinlets the schools the official world all was now turned by the weight of the church against the survival of the Celtic tongues and in favor of the eastern titanic ones once civilization had come back by way of the south and east principally through the natural gate of kent and through the straits of dover which had been blocked so long this tendency of the eastern dialects to spread as the language of an organized clerical officialdom and of its courts of law was immediately strengthened it soon and rapidly swamped all but the western hills but of the colonization of the advance of a race there was none what advanced was the roman organization once more and with it the dialects of the courts it favored what we know then of britain when it was re-civilized we know through latin terms or through the half german dialects which ultimately and much later merge into what we call anglo-saxon and historic king of succsex bears a Celtic name but we read of him in latin then in the titanic tongues and his realm however feeble the proportion of oversea blood in it bears an oversea label for its court the south saxon the mythical founder of wessex bears a Celtic name kurdick but we read of him if not in latin then in anglo-saxon not a cantrip but a hundred is the term of social organization in england when it is re-civilized not an egliwiz but a church footnote this word church is a good example of what we mean by teutonic dialect it is straight from the Mediterranean the native german word for a temple if they had got so far as to have temples for we know nothing of their religion is lost is the name of a building in which the new civilization hears mass the ruler whatever his blood or the blood of his subjects is a sinning not a reg or a prince his house and court are a hall footnote and hall is again a roman word adopted by the Germans not a plaz we get our whole picture of renovated britain after the church is restored colored by this half german speech but the britain we see thus colored is not barbaric it is a christian britain of mixed origin of ancient municipalities cut off for a time by the pirate occupation of the south and east but now reunited with the one civilization whose root is in Rome the end of section 24 section 25 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org europe and the faith by hill air bellach section 25 chapter 5 concluded this clear historical conclusion sounds so novel today that i must emphasize and confirm it western europe in the sixth seventh and eighth centuries was largely indifferent to our modern ideas of race of nationality they knew nothing it was concerned with the maintenance of the catholic church especially against the outer pagan this filled the mind this drove all the mastering energies of the time the church that is all the acts of life but especially record and common culture came back into britain which had been cut off it reopened the gate it was refused aid by the christian whom it relieved it decided for the courts of the south and the east taught them organization and carried their dialects with it through the island which it gradually recovered for civilization we are now in a position to sum up our conclusions upon the matter britain connected with the rest of civilization by a narrow and precarious neck of sea travel over the straits of dover had in the last centuries of roman rule often furnished great armies to usurpers or imperial claimants sometimes leaving the island almost bare of regular troops but with each return of peace these armies also had returned and the rule of the central roman government over britain had been fairly continuous until the beginning of the fifth century at that moment in 410ad the bulk of the trained soldiers again left upon a foreign adventure but the central rule of rom was then breaking down these regulars never returned though many auxiliary troops may have remained at this moment when every province of the west was subject to disturbance and to the overrunning of barbarian bands small but destructive britain particularly suffered scotch irish and german barbarians looted her on all sides these last the saxon pirates brought in as auxiliaries in the roman fashion may already have been settled in places upon the eastern coast their various half german dialects may have already been common upon those coasts but at any rate after the breakdown of the roman order detached communities under little local chiefs arose the towns were not destroyed neither the slaves nor for that matter the greater part of the free population fell but wealth declined rapidly in the chaos as it did throughout western europe and side by side with this ruin came the replacing of the roman official language by a welter of Celtic and of half german dialects in a mass of little courts the new official roman religion certainly at the moment of the breakdown the religion of a small minority almost or wholly disappeared in the eastern pirate settlements the roman language similarly disappeared in the many small principalities of the western part of the island they reverted to their original Celtic dialects there was no boundary between the hodgepodge of little german speaking territories on the east and the little Celtic territories on the west there was no more than a vague common feeling of west against east or east against west all fought indiscriminately among themselves after a time which could be covered by two long lives during which decline had been very rapid and as noticeable in the west as in the east throughout the island the full influence of civilization returned with the landing in 597 of saint augustin and his missionaries sent by the pope but the little pirate courts of the east happened to have settled on coasts which occupied the gateway into the island it was thus through them that civilization had been cut off and it was through them that civilization came back on this account one the little kingdoms tended to coalesce under the united discipline of the church two the united british civilization so forming was able to advance gradually westward across the island three though the institutions of europe were much the same wherever roman civilization had existed and had declined though the councils of magnets surrounding the kings the assemblies of armed men the division of land and the people into hundreds and the rest of it were common to europe these things were given over a wider and wider area of grit eastern half german names because it was through the courts of the eastern kinglets that civilization had returned the kinglets of the east as civilization grew were continually fed from the continent strengthened with ideas institutions arts and the discipline of the church thus did they politically become more and more powerful until the whole island except the cornish peninsula wales and the northwestern mountains was more or less administered by the courts which had had their roots in the eastern coasts and rivers and which spoke dialects cognate to those beyond the north sea while the west cut off from this latin restoration decayed in political power and saw its Celtic dialects shrink in area by the time that this old roman province of britain rearises as an ordered christian land in the eighth century its records are kept not only in latin but in the court anglo-saxon dialects by far the most important being that of winchester many place names and the general speech of its inhabitants have followed suit and this superficial but a very vivid change is the chief outward change in the slow transformation that has been going on in britain for 300 years 450 to 500 to 750 to 800 britain is reconquered for civilization and that easily it is again an established part of the european unity with the same sacraments the same morals and all those same conceptions of human life as bound europe together even more firmly than the old central government of rome had bounded and within this unity of civilized christendom england was to remain for 800 years the end of section 25 the end of chapter 5 section 26 europe and the faith this is the libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org europe and the faith by hilare bellach section 26 chapter 6 the dark ages so far we have traced the fortunes of the roman empire that is of european civilization and of the catholic church with which that civilization was identified from the origins both of the church and of the empire to the turning point of the fifth century we have seen the character of that turning point there was a gradual decline in the power of the central monarchy and increasing use of auxiliary barbarian troops in the army upon which roman society was founded until it last in the years from 400 to 500 a.d authority though roman in every detail of its form gradually ceased to be exercised from rome or constantanocle but fell imperceptibly into the hands of a number of local governments we have seen that the administration of these local governments usually devolved on the chief officers of the auxiliary barbarian troops who were also as a rule their chieftains by some kind of inheritance we have seen that there was no considerable infiltration of barbarian blood no invasions in our modern sense of the term or rather no successful ones no blotting out of civilization still less any introduction of new institutions or ideas drawn from barbarism the coast regions of eastern britain the strongest example of all for there the change was most severe were reconquered for civilization and for the faith by the efforts of saint augustin africa was recaptured for the direct rule of the empire so was idly and the south of spain at the end of the seventh century that which was in the future to be called prismdom and which is nothing more than the roman empire continuing though transformed is again reunited what followed was a whole series of generations in which the forms of civilization were set and crystallized in a few very simple traditional and easily appreciated types the whole standard of europe was lowered to the level of its fundamentals as it were the primary arts upon which we depend for our food and drink and raiment and shelter survived intact the secondary arts reposing upon these failed and disappeared almost in proportion to their distance from fundamental necessities of our race history became no more than a simple chronicle letters in the finer sense almost ceased 400 years more were to pass before europe was to reawaken from this sort of sleep into which her spirit had retreated and the passage from full civilization of rome through this period of simple and sometimes barbarous things is properly called the dark ages it is of great importance for anyone who would comprehend the general story of europe to grasp the nature of those half hidden centuries they may be compared to a lake into which the activities of the old world flowed and stirred and then were still and from which in good time the activities of the middle ages properly so-called were again to flow again one may compare the dark ages to the leaf soil of a forest they are formed by the disintegration of antique fluorescence they are the bed from which new fluorescence shall spring it is a curious phenomena to consider this hibernation or sleep this rest of the stuff of europe at least want to consider the flux and reflux of civilization is something much more comparable to a pulse than to a growth it makes us remember that rhythm which is observed in all forms of energy it makes us doubt that mere progress from simplicity to complexity which used to be affirmed as the main law of history the contemplation of the dark ages affords a powerful criticism of that superficial theory of social evolution which is among the intellectual plagues of our own generation much more is the story of europe like the waking and sleeping of a mature man than like any indefinite increase in the aptitudes and powers of a growing body though the prime characteristic of the dark ages is one of recollection and though they are chiefly marked by this note of europe sinking back into herself very much more must be known of them before we have the truth even in its most general form i will put in the form of a category or list the chief points which we must bear in mind in the first place the dark ages were a period of intense military action christendom was besieged from all around it was held like a stronghold and in those centuries of struggle its institutions were molded by military necessities so that christendom has ever since had about it the quality of a soldier there was one unending series of attacks pagan and mohammedan from the north and from the east and from the south attacks not comparable to the older raids of external hordes eager only to enjoy civilization within the empire small in number and yet ready to accept the faith and customs of europe the barbarian incursions of the fifth and sixth centuries at the end of the united roman empire had been of this lesser kind the mighty struggles of the eighth ninth and especially the tenth centuries of the dark ages were a very different matter had the military institutions of europe failed in that struggle our civilization would have been wiped out and indeed at one or two critical points as in the middle of the eighth against the mohammedan and at the end of the ninth century against the northern pirates all human judgment would have decided that europe was doomed in point of fact as we shall see in a moment europe was just barely saved it was saved by the sword and by the intense christian ideal which nerved the sword arm but it was only just barely saved the first assault came from islam a new intense and vividly anti-christian thing arose in a moment as it were out of nothing out of the hot sands to the east and spread like a fire it consumed all the levant it arrived at the doors of the west this was no mere rush of barbarism the mohammedan world was as cultured as our own in its first expansion it maintained a higher and an increasing culture while ours declined and its conquest where it conquered us was the conquest of something materially superior for the moment over the remaining arts and traditions of christian europe just at the moment when britain was finally one back to europe and when the unity of the west seemed to be recovered though its life had fallen to so much lower a plane we lost north africa it was swept from end to end in one title rush by that new force which aimed fiercely at our destruction immediately afterward the first mohammedan force crossed the straits of gibraltar and in a few months after its landing the whole of the spanish peninsula that strong rock as it had seemed of ancient roman culture the hard iberian land crumbled politically at least and right up to the pyrenees asia had it in its grip in the mountain valleys alone and especially in the tangle of highlands which occupies the northwestern corner of the spanish square individual communities of soldiers held out from these the gradual reconquest of spain by christendom was to proceed but for the moment they were crowded and penned upon the esterian hills like men fighting against a wall even gall was threatened a mohammedan host poured up into its very center far beyond portiers halfway to tours luckily it was defeated but muslim garrisons continued to hold out in the southern districts in the northern fringes of the pyrenees and along the shoreline of the narbanese and province southern italy was raided and partly occupied the islands of the Mediterranean fell against this sudden successful spring which had lopped off half of the west the dark ages and especially the french of the dark ages spent a great part of their military energy the knights of northern spain and the chiefs of the unconquered valleys recruited their forces perpetually from gall beyond the pyrenees and the northern valley of the ebro the high plains of castile and leone were the training grounds of the european valor for 300 years the basks were the unyielding basis of all the advance this mohammedan swoop was the first and most disastrously successful of the three great assaults next came the scandinavian pirates their descent was a purely barbaric thing not numerous but since pirates can destroy much with small numbers for centuries unexhausted they harried all the rivers and coasts of britain of gall and of the netherlands they appeared in the southern seas and their efforts seemed indefatigable britain especially where the raiders bore the local name of danes suffered from a ceaseless pillage and these new enemies had no attraction to the roman land save loot they merely destroyed they refused our religion had they succeeded they would not have mingled with us but would have ended us both in northern gall and in britain their chieftains acquired something of a foothold but only after the perilous moment in which their armies were checked they were tamed and constrained to accept the society they had attacked this critical moment when europe seemed doomed was the last generation of the ninth century france had been harried up to the gates of paris britain was so rated that its last independent king elford was in hiding both in britain and gall christendom triumphed and in the same generation paris stood a successful siege and the family which defended it was destined to become the royal family of all france at the inception of the middle ages elford of wessex in the same decade recovered south england in both provinces of christendom the situation was saved the chiefs of the pirates were baptized and though northern barbarism remained a material menace for another hundred years there was no further danger of our destruction finally less noticed by history but quite as grievous and needing a defense as gallant was the pagan advance over the northern german plain and up the valley of the danube all the frontier of christendom upon this line from augsburg to the lech to the course of the elbe and the north sea was but a line of fortresses and continual battlefields it was but recently organized land until the generations before the year 800 there was no civilization beyond the rine saved the upper danube partially reclaimed and a very scanty single extension up the valley of the lower main but charlemagne with vast gallic armies broke into the barbaric germanies right up to the elbe he compelled them by arms to accept religion letters and arts he extended europe to these new boundaries and organized them as a sort of rampart in the east a thing the roman empire had not done the church was the cement of this new belt of defense the imperfect population of which were evangelized from ireland and britain it was an experiment this creation of the germanies by western culture this spiritual colonization of a march beyond the limits of the empire it did not completely succeed as the reformation proves but it had at least the strength in the century after charlemagne it's founder to save the eastern attack upon christendom the end of section 26 section 27 europe and the faith this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libra vox.org europe and the faith by hilare bellach section 27 chapter 6 continued the attack was not racial it was pagan slov mixed with much that was left to pagan german even mongol its character was the advance of the savage against the civilized man and it remained apparel two generations longer than the peril which gall in britain had staved off from the north this then is the first characteristic to be remembered of the dark ages the violence of the physical struggle and the intense physical effort by which europe was saved the second characteristic of the dark ages proceeds from this first military one it may be called feudalism briefly it was this the passing of the actual government from the hands of the old roman provincial centers of administration into the hands of each small local society and its lord on such a basis there was a reconstruction of society from below these local lords associating themselves under greater men and these again holding together in great national groups under a national overlord in the violence of the struggle through which christendom passed town and village valley and castle had often to defend itself alone the great roman landed estates with their masses of dependents and slaves under a lord or owner had never disappeared the descendants of these roman gallic british owners formed the fighting class of the dark ages and in this new function of theirs perpetually lifted up to be the sole depositories of authority in some small imperiled countryside they grew to be nearly independent units for the purposes of cohesion that family which possessed most estates in a district tended to become the leader of it whole provinces were thus formed and grouped and the beggar sentiments of a larger unity expressed themselves by the choice of some one family one of the most powerful in every county who would be the overlord of all the other lords great and small side by side with this growth of local independence and of voluntary local groupings went the transformation of the old imperial nominated offices to hereditary and personal things account for instance was originally a commies or companion of the emperor the word dates from long before the breakup of the central authority of rome account later was a great official a local governor and a judge the viceroy of a large district a french county and english shire his office was revocable like other official appointments he was appointed for a season first at the emperors later at the local king's discretion to a particular local government in the dark ages the count becomes hereditary he thinks of his government as a possession which his son should rightly have after him he bases his right to his government upon the possession of greatest states within the area of that government in a word he comes to think of himself not as an official at all but as a feudal overlord and all society and the remaining shadow of central authority itself agrees with him the second note then of the dark ages is the gradual transition of christian society from a number of slave owning rich landed proprietors taxed and administered by a regular government to a society of fighting nobles and their descendants organized upon a basis of independence and in a hierarchy of lord and overlord and supported no longer by slaves in the villages but by half free serfs or villains later an elaborate theory was constructed in order to rationalize this living and real thing it was pretended by a legal fiction that the central king owned nearly all the land that the great overlords held their land of him the lesser lords holding theirs hereditarily of the overlords and so forth this idea of holding instead of owning though it gave an easy machinery for confiscation in time of rebellion was legal theory only and so far as men's views of property went a mere form the reality was what i have described the third characteristic of the dark ages was the curious fixity of morals of traditions of the forms of religion and of all that makes up social life we may presume that all civilization originally sprang from a soil in which the custom was equally permanent we know that in the great civilizations of the east and enduring fixity of form is normal but in the general history of europe it has been otherwise there has been a perpetual flux in the outward form of things in architecture in dress and in the statement of philosophy as well though not in its fundamentals in this mobile surface of european history the dark ages form a sort of island of changelessness there is an absence of any great heresies in the west and save in one or two names an absence of speculation it was as though men had no time for any other activity but the ceaseless business of arms and the defense of the west consider the life of charlemagne who is the central figure of those centuries it is spent almost entirely in the saddle one season finds him upon the elbe the next upon the pyrenees one Easter he celebrates in northern gall another in rome the whole story is one of perpetual marching and a blows parrying here thrusting there upon all the boundaries of isolated and besieged christendom he will attend to learning but the ideal of learning is repetitive and conservative its passion is to hold what was not to create or expand in anxious and sometimes desperate determination to preserve the memory of a great but have forgotten past is the business of his court which dissolves just before the worst of the pagan assault as it is the business of alfred who arises a century later just after the worst assault has been finally repelled religion during these centuries settled and consolidated as it were an enemy would say that it petrified a friend that it was enormously strengthened by pressure but whatever the metaphor chosen the truth indicated will be this that the catholic faith became between the year 601 thousand utterly one with europe the last vestiges of the antique and pagan civilization of the Mediterranean were absorbed a habit of certitude and a fixity even in the details of thought was formed in the european mind it is to be noted in this connection that geographically the center of things had somewhat shifted with the loss of spain and of northern africa the mohammedan rating of southern idli and the islands the Mediterranean was no longer a vehicle of western civilization but the frontier of it rome itself might now be regarded as a frontier town the eruption of the barbarians from the east along the danube had singularly cut off the latin west from constantanople and from all the high culture of its empire therefore the center of that which resisted in the west the geographical nucleus of the island of christendom which was besieged all round was france and in particular northern france northern idli the germanese the pyrenees and the upper valley of the ebro were essentially the marches of gall gall was to preserve all that could be preserved of the material side of europe and also of the european spirit and therefore the new world when it arose with its gothic architecture its parliaments its universities and in general its spring of the middle ages was to be a gallic thing the fourth characteristic of the dark ages was a material one and was that which would strike our eyes most immediately if we could transfer ourselves in time and enjoy a physical impression of that world this characteristic was derived from what i have just been saying it was this material counterpart of the moral immobility or steadfastness of the time it was this that the external forms of things stood quite unchanged the semi-circular arch the short stout pillar occasionally but rarely the dome these were everywhere the mark of architecture there was no change nor any attempt at change the arts were saved but not increased and the whole of the work that men did with their hands stood fast in mere tradition no new town arises if one is mentioned oxford for instance for the first time in the dark ages whether in britain or in gall one may fairly presume a roman origin for it even though there be no actual mention of it handed down from roman times no new roads were laid the old roman military system of highways was kept up and repaired though kept up and repaired with a declining vigor the wheel of european life had settled to one slow rate of turning not only were all these forms enduring they were also few and simple one type of public building and of church one type of writing everywhere recognizable one type of agriculture with very few products to differentiate it alone remained the end of section 27