may well believe, was fired with this vision of imperial sway and the renewal of a title around which clustered so many memories of success and glory.

But the outcome of Otto's restoration of the Roman Empire was good neither for Italy nor for Germany. It became the

rule, henceforth, that the man whom the German nobles chose as their king had a claim, also, to the Italian crown and the

Ultimate results of the

imperial title. The efforts of the German kings to make good this claim led to their constant interference in the affairs of Italy. They treated that country as a conquered province which had no right to a national life and an independent government under its own rulers. At the same time they neglected Germany

coronation

and failed to keep their powerful territorial lords in subjection. Neither Italy nor Germany, in consequence, could become a unified, centralized state, such as was formed in France and England during the later Middle Ages.

-

The empire of Charlemagne, restored by Otto the Great, came to be called in later centuries the "Holy Roman Empire." The title points to the idea of a world monarchy The Holy - the Roman Empire - and a world religion - Roman Roman Christianity-united in one institution. Empire This magnificent idea was never fully realized. The popes and emperors, instead of being bound to each other by the closest ties, were more generally enemies than friends. A large part of medieval history was to turn on this conflict between the Empire and the Papacy.1

111. The Anglo-Saxons in Britain, 449-839 A.D.

Britain

From the history of Continental Europe we now turn to the history of Britain. That island had been overrun by the Germanic barbarians after the middle of the fifth Anglo-Saxon century. They are commonly known as Anglo- conquest of Saxons, from the names of their two principal peoples, the Angles and Saxons. The Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain was a slow process, which lasted at least one hundred and fifty years. The invaders followed the rivers into the interior and gradually subdued more than a half of what is now England, comprising the fertile plain district in the southern and eastern parts of the island.

Though the Anglo-Saxons probably destroyed many flourishing cities and towns of the Romanized Britons, it seems likely that the conquerors spared the women, with whom Nature of they intermarried, and the agricultural laborers, the conquest whom they made slaves. Other natives took refuge in the hill regions of western and northern Britain, and here their descendants still keep up the Celtic language and traditions. The Anglo-Saxons regarded the Britons with contempt, naming them Welsh, a word which means one who talks gibberish. 1 See pages 455-462. 2 See page 246.

The antagonism between the two peoples died out in the course of centuries; conquerors and conquered intermingled; and an English nation, partly Celtic and partly Germanic, came into being.

The Anglo-Saxons started to fight one another before they ceased fighting their common enemy, the Britons. Throughout

Horn of Ulphus (Wulf) in the cathedral of York. The old English were heavy drinkers, chiefly of ale and mead. The evening meal usually ended with a drinking bout.

The seven kingdoms in Britain

the seventh and eighth centuries, the Anglo-Saxon states were engaged in almost constant struggles, either for increase of territory or for supremacy. The kingdoms farthest east Kent, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia — found their expansion checked by other kingdoms -Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex - which grew up in the interior of the island. Each of these three stronger states gained in turn the leading place.

Egbert and the suprem

acy of

The beginning of the supremacy of Wessex dates from the reign of Egbert. He had lived for some years as an exile at the court of Charlemagne, from whom he must have learned valuable lessons of war and statesmanship. Wessex, 802- After returning from the Continent, Egbert became king of Wessex and gradually forced the rulers of the other states to acknowledge him as overlord. Though Egbert was never directly king of all England, he began the work of uniting the Anglo-Saxons under one government. His descendants have occupied the English throne to the present day.

839 A.D.

When the Germans along the Rhine and the Danube crossed the frontiers and entered the western provinces, they had

Britain

already been partially Romanized. They understood enough of Roman civilization to appreciate it and to desire to preserve Anglo-Saxon it. it. The situation was quite different with the Anglo-Saxons. Their original home lay in a part of Germany far beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and remote from the cultural influences of Rome. Coming to Britain as barbarians, they naturally introduced their own language, laws, and customs wherever they settled. Much of what the Anglo-Saxons brought with them still lives in England, and from that country has spread to the United States and the vast English colonies beyond the seas. The English language is less indebted to Latin than any of the Romance languages,1 and the Common law of England owes much less to Roman law than do the legal systems of Continental Europe. England, indeed, looks to the Anglo-Saxons for some of the most characteristic and important elements of her civilization.

for

Preparation
Christianity

112. Christianity in the British Isles

The Anglo-Saxons also brought to Britain their heathen faith. Christianity did not come to them until the close of the sixth century. At this time more or less intercourse had sprung up between the people of Kent, lying nearest to the Continent, and the Franks in Gaul. Ethelbert, the king of Kent, had even married the Frankish princess, Bertha. He allowed his Christian wife to bring a bishop to her new home and gave her the deserted church of St. Martin at Canterbury as a place of worship. Queen Bertha's fervent desire for the conversion of her husband and his people prepared the way for an event of first importance in English history - the mission of Augustine. The pope at this time was Gregory I, better known, from his services to the Roman Church, as Gregory the Great.

Mission of Augustine, 597 A.D.

The

kingdom of Kent, with its Christian queen, must have seemed to him a promising field for missionary enterprise. Gregory, accordingly, sent out the monk Augustine with forty companions to carry the Gospel to

1 See page 208.

See page 350.