Mediaeval and modern history . those reli-gious, intellectual, and social bonds which were never afterwardssevered. From his time on, as it has been concisely expressed,there was a Western Christendom. 79. Division of the Empire; the Treaty of Verdun (843).— Like the kingdom of Alexander and that of many anothergreat conqueror, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to piecessoon after his death. His scepter was the bow of Ulysses whichcould not be drawn by any weaker hand. Charlemagne was followed by his son Lewis, surnamed thePious (814-840). Upon his death fierce contention broke outafresh a
Mediaeval and modern history . those reli-gious, intellectual, and social bonds which were never afterwardssevered. From his time on, as it has been concisely expressed,there was a Western Christendom. 79. Division of the Empire; the Treaty of Verdun (843).— Like the kingdom of Alexander and that of many anothergreat conqueror, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to piecessoon after his death. His scepter was the bow of Ulysses whichcould not be drawn by any weaker hand. Charlemagne was followed by his son Lewis, surnamed thePious (814-840). Upon his death fierce contention broke outafresh among his surviving sons, Lewis, Charles, and Lothair,and myriads of lives were sacrificed in the unnatural , by the famous Treaty of Verdun (843), the Empire wasdivided as follows : to Lewis was given the part east of the Rhine,the nucleus of the later Germany; to Charles, the part west of theRhone and the Meuse, one day to become France; and toLothair, the narrow central strip between these, stretching across. RENEWAL OF THE EMPIRE BY OTTO I 69 Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and includingthe rich lands of the lower Rhine, the valley of the Rhone, andItaly. To Lothair also was given the imperial title. This treaty is celebrated, not only because it was the first greattreaty among the European states, but also on account of itsmarking the divergence from one another, and in some sense theorigin, of two of the great nations of modern Europe, — TeutonicGermany and Romanic France. As shown by the celebratedbilingual oath of Strassburg,^ there had by this time grown upin Gaul, through the mixture of the provincial Latin with Ger-man elements, a new speech, which was to grow into the Frenchtongue, — the firstborn of the Romance languages.^ After this dismemberment of the dominions of Charlemagnethe annals of the different branches of the Carolingian familybecome intricate, wearisome, and uninstructive. A fate as darkand woeful as that which, accor
Size: 1245px × 2008px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubje, booksubjectmiddleages
