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A.D. 643, 76 years after Alboin came into Italy. The cause, he says,
was the continual wearying of the poor, and the superfluous
exactions, and even violence, of the strong against those who were
weak. They are the 'laws of our fathers, as far as we have learnt
them from ancient men, and are published with the counsel and consent
of our princes, judges, and all our most prosperous army,' i.e. the
barons, or freemen capable of bearing arms; 'and are confirmed
according to the custom of our nation by garathinx,' that is, as far
as I can ascertain from Grimm's German Law, by giving an earnest,
garant, or warrant of the bargain.
Among these Lombards, as among our English forefathers, when a man
thingavit, i.e. donavit, a gift or bequest to any one, it was
necessary, according to law CLXXII., to do it before gisiles,
witnesses, and to give a garathinx, or earnest, of his bequest--a
halm of straw, a turf, a cup of drink, a piece of money--as to this
day a drover seals his bargain with a shilling, and a commercial
traveller with a glass of liquor. Whether Rothar gave the garathinx
to his barons, or his barons to him, I do not understand: but at
least it is clear from the use of this one word that the publication
of these laws was a 'social contract'--a distinct compact between
king and people. From all which you will perceive at once that these
Lombards, like all Teutons, were a free people, under a rough kind of
constitutional monarchy. They would have greeted with laughter the
modern fable of the divine right of kings, if by that they were
expected to understand that the will of the king was law, or that the
eldest son of a certain family had any God-given ipso-facto right to
succeed his father. Sixteen kings, says the preface, had reigned
from Agilmund to Rothar; and seven times had the royal race been
changed. That the king should belong to one of the families who
derived their pedigree from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural,
succeed his father, were old rules: but the barons would, as all
history shews, make little of crowning a younger son instead of an
elder, if the younger were a hero, and the elder an 'arga'--a lazy
loon; and little, also, would they make of setting aside the whole
royal family, and crowning the man who would do their business best.
The king was, as this preface and these laws shew, the commander in
chief of the exercitus, the militia, and therefore of every free man
in the state; (for all were bound to fight when required). He was
also the supreme judge, the head of the executive, dispenser and
fountain of law: but with no more power of making the law, of
breaking the law, or of arbitrarily depriving a man of his property,
than an English sovereign has now; and his power was quamdiu se bene
gesserit, and no longer, as history proves in every page.
The doctrine of the divine right of kings as understood in England in
the seventeenth century, and still in some continental countries,
was, as far as I can ascertain, invented by the early popes, not for
the purpose of exalting the kings, but of enslaving them, and through
them the nations. A king and his son's sons had divine 'right to
govern wrong' not from God, but from the vicar of God and the
successor of St. Peter, to whom God had given the dominion of the
whole earth, and who had the right to anoint, or to depose,
whomsoever he would. Even in these old laws, we see that new idea
obtruding itself. 'The king's heart,' says one of them 'is in the
hand of God.' That is a text of Scripture. What it was meant to
mean, one cannot doubt, or by whom it was inserted. The
'Chancellor,' or whoever else transcribed those laws in Latin, was,
of course, a cleric, priest or monk. From his hand comes the first
hint of arbitrary power; the first small blot of a long dark stain of
absolutism, which was to darken and deepen through centuries of
tyranny and shame.
But to plead the divine right of kings, in a country which has thrown
off its allegiance to the pope, is to assert the conclusion of a
syllogism, the major and minor premiss of which are both denied by
the assertor. The arguments for such a right drawn from the Old
Testament, which were common among the high-church party from James
I. to James II. and the Nonjurors, are really too inconsequent to
require more than a passing smile. How can you prove that a king has
the power to make laws, from the history of the Jewish nation, when
that very history represents it all through as bound by a primaeval
and divinely revealed law, to which kings and people were alike
subject? How can you prove that the eldest son's eldest son has a
divine right to wear the crown as 'God's anointed,' when the very
persons to whom that title is given are generally either not eldest
sons, or not of royal race at all? The rule that the eldest son's
eldest son should succeed, has been proved by experience to be in
practice a most excellent one: but it rests, as in England, so in
Lombardy, or Spain, or Frankreich of old time, simply upon the
consent of the barons, and the will of the thing or parliament.
There is a sentimental admiration of 'Imperialism' growing up now-a-
days, under the pretentious titles of 'hero-worship,' and 'strong
government;' and the British constitution is represented as a clumsy
and artificial arrangement of the year 1688. 1688 after Christ?
1688 before Christ would be nearer the mark. It is as old, in its
essentials, as the time when not only all the Teutons formed one
tribe, but when Teutons and Scandinavians were still united--and when
that was, who dare say? We at least brought the British constitution
with us out of the bogs and moors of Jutland, along with our smock-
frocks and leather gaiters, brown bills and stone axes; and it has
done us good service, and will do, till we have carried it right
round the world.
As for these Lombard kings, they arose on this wise. After Alboin's
death the Lombards were for ten years under dukes, and evil times
came, every man doing what was right in his own eyes; enlarging their
frontier by killing the Roman landholders, and making the survivors
give them up a portion of their lands, as Odoacer first, and the
Ostrogoths next, had done. At last, tired of lawlessness, dissension
and weakness, and seemingly dreading an invasion from Childebert,
king of the Franks, they chose a king, Autharis the son of Cleph, and
called him Flavius, by which Roman title the Lombard kings were
afterwards known. Moreover, they agreed to give him (I conclude only
once for all) the half of all their substance, to support the
kingdom. There were certain tributes afterwards paid into the king's
treasury every three years; and certain fines, and also certain
portions of the property of those who died without direct heirs, seem
to have made up the revenue. Whereon, Paul says, perfect peace and
justice followed.
Now for the laws, which were reduced into writing about sixty years
afterwards. The first thing that you will remark about these laws,
is that duel, wager of battle under shield, 'diremptio causae per
pugnam sub uno scuto,' is the earliest form of settling a lawsuit.
If you cannot agree, fight it out fairly, either by yourself or per
campionem, a champion or kemper man, and God defend the right. Then
follows 'faida,' blood-feud, from generation to generation. To stop
which a man is allowed to purge himself by oath; his own and that of
certain neighbours, twelve in general, who will swear their belief in
his innocence. This was common to the northern nations, and was the
origin of our trial by jury. If guilty, the offender has to pay the
weregeld, or legal price, set upon the injury he has inflicted. When
the composition is paid, there is an end of the feud; if after taking
the composition the plaintiff avenges himself, he has to pay it back.
Hence our system of fines.
This method of composition by fines runs through all the Teutonic
laws; and makes the punishment of death, at least among freemen, very
rare.
Punishments by stripes, by imprisonment, or by cruel or degrading
methods, there are none. The person of a freeman is sacred, 'Vincire
et verberare nefas,' as Tacitus said of these Germans 600 years
before.
The offences absolutely punishable by death seem to be, treason
against the king's life; cowardice in battle; concealment of robbers;
mutinies and attempts to escape out of the realm; and therefore
(under the then military organization) to escape from the duty of
every freeman, to bear arms in defence of the land.
More than a hundred of these laws define the different fines, or
'weregelds,' by which each offence is to be compounded for, from 900
solidi aurei, gold pieces, for a murder, downwards to the smallest
breach of the peace. Each limb has its special price. For the loss
of an eye, half the price of the whole man is to be paid. A front
tooth is worth 16s., solidi aurei; their loss being a disfigurement;
but a back tooth is worth only 8s. A slave's tooth, on the other
hand, is worth but 4s.; and in every case, the weregeld of a slave is
much less than that of a freeman.
The sacredness of the household, and the strong sense of the
individual rights of property, are to be remarked. One found in a
'court,' courtledge (or homestead), by night (as we say in old
English), may be killed. You know, I dare say, that in many Teutonic
and Scandinavian nations the principle that a man's house is his
castle was so strongly held that men were not allowed to enter a
condemned man's house to carry him off to execution; but if he would
not come out, could only burn the house over his head. Shooting, or
throwing a lance into any man's homestead, costs 20s. 'Oberos,' or
'curtis ruptura,' that is, making violent entry into a man's
homestead, costs 20s. also. Nay, merely to fetch your own goods out
of another man's house secretly, and without asking leave, was
likewise punished as oberos.
So of personal honour. 'Schelte' or insult, for instance, to call a
man arga, i.e. a lazy loon, is a serious offence. If the defendant
will confess that he said it in a passion, and will take oath that he
never knew the plaintiff to be arga, he must still pay 12s.; but if
he will stand to his word, then he must fight it out by duel, sub uno
scuto.
The person, for the same reason, was sacred. If a man had lain in
wait for a freeman, 'cum virtute et solatio,' with valour and
comfort, i.e. with armed men to back him, and had found him standing
or walking simply, and had shamefully held him, or 'battiderit,'
committed assault and battery on him, he must pay half the man's
weregeld; the 'turpiter et ridiculum' being considered for a freeman
as half as bad as death. Here you find in private life, as well as
in public, the vincire et verberare nefas.
If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of gold, he need but
to commit the offence of 'meerworphin,' a word which will puzzle you
somewhat, till you find it to signify 'mare warping,' to warp, or
throw one's neighbour off his mare or horse.
A blow with the closed fist, again, costs three shillings: but one
with the open hand, six. The latter is an insult as well as an
injury. A freeman is struck with the fist, but a slave with the palm
of the hand. Breaking a man's head costs six solidi. But if one had
broken his skull, then (as in the Alemannic laws) one must pay twelve
shillings, and twelve more for each fracture up to three--after which
they are not counted. But a piece of bone must come out which will
make a sound when thrown into a shield twelve feet off; which feet
are to be measured by that of a man of middle stature. From which
strange law may be deduced, not only the toughness of the Lombard
brain-pan, but the extreme necessity of defining each particular, in
order to prevent subsequent disputes, followed up by a blood-feud,
which might be handed down from father to son. For by accepting the
legal fine, the injured man expressly renounced his primaeval right
of feud.
Then follow some curious laws in favour of the masters of Como,
Magistri Comacenes, who seem to have been a guild of architects,
perhaps the original germ of the great society of free-masons--
belonging, no doubt, to the Roman population--who were settled about
the lake of Como, and were hired, on contract, (as the laws
themselves express,) to build for the Lombards, who of course had no
skill to make anything beyond a skin-tent or a log-hall.
Then follow laws against incendiaries; a fine for damage by
accidental house-fire, if the offender have carried fire more than
nine feet from the hearth; a law against leaving a fire alight on a
journey, as in the Australian colonies now. Then laws to protect
mills; important matters in those days, being unknown to the Lombards
before their entrance into Italy.
Then laws of inheritance; on which I shall remark, that natural sons,
if free, are to have a portion of their father's inheritance; but
less than the legitimate sons: but that a natural son born of a
slave remains a slave, 'nisi pater liberum thingaverit.' This cruel
law was the law of Rome and of the Church; our Anglo-Saxon
forefathers, to their honour, held the reverse rule. 'Semper a
patre, non a matre, generationis ordo texitur.' Next, it is to be
remarked, that no free woman can live in Lombardy, or, I believe, in
any Teutonic state, save under the 'mundium' of some one. You should
understand this word 'mund.' Among most of the Teutonic races,
women, slaves, and youths, at least not of age to carry arms, were
under the mund of some one. Of course, primarily the father, head of
the family, and if he died, an uncle, elder brother, &c. The married
woman was, of course, under the mund of her husband. He was
answerable for the good conduct of all under his mund; he had to pay
their fines if they offended; and he was bound, on the other hand, to
protect them by all lawful means.
This system still lingers in the legal status of women in England,
for good and evil; the husband is more or less answerable for the
wife's debts; the wife, till lately, was unable to gain property
apart from her husband's control; the wife is supposed, in certain
cases of law, to act under the husband's compulsion. All these, and
many others, are relics of the old system of mund for women; and that
system has, I verily believe, succeeded. It has called out, as no
other system could have done, chivalry in the man. It has made him
feel it a duty and an honour to protect the physically weaker sex.
It has made the woman feel that her influence, whether in the state
or in the family, is to be not physical and legal, but moral and
spiritual; and that it therefore rests on a ground really nobler and
deeper than that of the man. The modern experiments for emancipating
women from all mund, and placing them on a physical and legal
equality with the man, may be right, and may be ultimately
successful. We must not hastily prejudge them. But of this we may
be almost certain; that if they succeed, they will cause a wide-
spread revolution in society, of which the patent danger will be, the
destruction of the feeling of chivalry, and the consequent
brutalization of the male sex.
Then follow laws relating to marriage and women, of which I may
remark, that (as in Tacitus' time), the woman brings her dowry, or
'fader fee,' to her husband; and that the morning after the wedding
she receives from him, if he be content with her, her morgen gap, or
morning gift; which remains her own private property, unless she
misbehaves.
The honour of women, whether in fact or merely in fame, is protected
by many severe laws, among which I shall only notice, that the
calling a free woman 'striga' (witch) is severely punishable. If any
one does so who has the mund of her, except her father or brother, he
loses his mund.
On the whole, woman's condition seems inferior to man's on some
points: but superior on others. e.g. A woman's weregeld--the price
of her life--is 1200 solidi; while the man's is only 900. For he can
defend himself, but she cannot. On the other hand, if a man kill his
wife, he pays only the 1200 solidi, and loses her dowry: but if she
kill him, she dies.
Again. If a free man be caught thieving, up to the amount of 20
siliquae, beans, i.e. one gold piece--though Pope Gregory makes the
solidus (aureus) 24 siliquae--he replaces the theft, and pays 80
solidi, or dies; and a slave one half, or dies.
But if a free woman is taken in theft, she only replaces it; for she
has suffered for her wrong-doing, and must lay it to her own shame,
that she has tried to do 'operam indecentem,' a foul deed. And if an
aldia or slave-woman steals, her master replaces the theft, and pays
40 solidi, minus the value of the stolen goods--and beats her
afterwards, I presume, if he chooses.
And now concerning slaves, who seem to have been divided into three
classes.
The Aldius and Aldia, masculine and feminine, who were of a higher
rank than other slaves.
The Aldius could marry a free woman, while the slave marrying a free
woman is punishable by death; and, as experimentum crucis, if an
Aldius married an Aldia or a free woman, the children followed the
father. If he married a slave, the children followed the mother, and
became slaves of his lord.
The Aldius, again, may not sell his lord's land or slaves, which
indicates that he held land and slaves under his lord.
What the word means, Grimm does not seem to know. He thinks it
synonymous with 'litus,' of whom we hear as early as Tacitus' time,
as one of the four classes, nobles, freemen, liti, slaves; and
therefore libertus, a freedman. But the word does not merely mean,
it appears, a slave half freed by his master; but one rather
hereditarily half free, and holding a farm under his lord.
Dio, however, is said to be an old German word for a slave; and it is
possible that aldius (a word only known, seemingly, in Lombardy) may
have signified originally an old slave, an old Roman colonus, or
peasant of some sort, found by the conquerors in possession of land,
and allowed to retain, and till it, from father to son. We, in
England, had the same distinction between 'Laet,' or 'villains'
settled on the land, glebae adscripti, and mere thralls or theows,
slaves pure and simple. No doubt such would have better terms than
the mere mancipia--slaves taken in war, or bought--for the simple
reason, that they would be agriculturists, practised in the Roman
tillage, understanding the mysteries of irrigation, artificial
grasses, and rotation of crops, as well as the culture of vines,
fruit, and olives.
Next to them you have different sorts of slaves; Servus massarius,
who seems to be also rusticanus, one who takes care of his lord's
'massa' or farm, and is allowed a peculium, it seems, some animals of
his own, which he may not sell, though he may give them away. And
again, servus doctus, an educated household slave, whose weregeld is
higher than that of others.
The laws relating to fugitive slaves seem as merciful as such things
can be; and the Lombards have always had the credit of being kind and
easy masters.
Connected with fugitive slaves are laws about portunarii, ferrymen,
who appear, as you know, in the old ballads as very important, and
generally formidable men. The fight between Von Troneg Hagen and the
old ferryman in the Nibelungen Lied, is a famous instance of the
ancient ferrymen's prowess. One can easily understand how necessary
strict laws were, to prevent these ferrymen carrying over fugitive
slaves, outlaws, and indeed any one without due caution; for each man
was bound to remain in his own province, that he might be ready when
called on for military service; and a traveller to foreign parts was
looked on as a deserter from his liege-lord and country.
Then follow a great number of laws, to me both amusing and
instructive, as giving us some glimpse of the country life of those
Lombards in the 8th century.
Scattered in the vast woodlands and marshes lie small farms, enclosed
by ditches and posts and rails, from which if you steal a rail, you
are fined 1s., if you steal a post, 3s. There were stake fences,
which you must be careful in making, for if a horse stakes himself by
leaping in, you pay nothing; but if he does so by leaping out, you
pay the price of the horse. Moreover, you must leave no sharp stakes
standing out of the hedge; for if a man or beast wounds himself
thereby in passing, you have to pay full weregeld.
Walking over sown land, or sending a woman of your mundium to do so,
in accordance with an ancient superstition, is a severe offence; so
is injuring a vineyard, or taking more than tres uvae (bunches of
grapes, I presume) from the vine. Injuring landmarks cut on the
trees (theclaturas and signaturas) or any other boundary mark, is
severely punishable either in a slave, or in a freeman.
In the vast woods range herds of swine, and in the pastures, horses,
cared for by law; for to take a herd of swine or brood mares as
pledge, without the king's leave, is punishable by death, or a fine
of 900s. Oxen or horses used to the yoke can be taken as pledge; but
only by leave of the king, or of the schuldhais (local magistrate),
on proof that the debtor has no other property; for by them he gets
his living. If, however, you find pigs routing in your enclosure,
you may kill one, under certain restrictions, but not the 'sornpair,'
sounder boar, who 'battit et vincit' all the other boars in the
sounder (old English for herd).
Rival swineherds, as is to be supposed, 'battidunt inter se,' and
'scandalum faciunt,' often enough. Whereon the law advises them to
fight it out, and then settle the damage between them.
Horses are cared for. To ride another man's horse costs 2s.; to dock
or crop him, eight-fold the damage; and so on of hurting another
man's horse. Moreover, if your neighbour's dog flies at you, you may
hit him with a stick or little sword, and kill him, but if you throw
a stone after him and kill him, you being then out of danger, you
must give the master a new dog.
Then there are quaint laws about hunting; and damage caused by wild
beasts caught in snares or brought to bay. A wounded stag belongs to
the man who has wounded it for twenty-four hours: but after that to
anyone. Tame deer, it is observable, are kept; and to kill a doe or
fawn costs 6s., to kill a buck, 12s. Tame hawks, cranes, and swans,
if taken in snares, cost 6s. But any man may take flying hawks out
of his neighbour's wood, but not out of the Gaias Regis, the king's
gehage, haies, hedges, or enclosed parks.
And now, I have but one more law to mention--would God that it had
been in force in later centuries -
'Let no one presume to kill another man's aldia or ancilla, as a
striga, witch, which is called masca; because it is not to be
believed by Christian minds, that a woman can eat up a live man from
within; and if any one does so he shall pay 60s. as her price, and
for his fault, half to her master, and half to the king.'
This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may
have been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture. If these
were the old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the
respect for man as man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite
element? How is it that these liberties have been lost throughout
almost all Europe? How is it that a system of law prevailed over the
whole continent, up to the French revolution, and prevails still in
too many countries, the very opposite of all this?
I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the
Roman clergy during the middle age.
The original difference of race between the clergy and the Teutonic
conquerors, which I have already pointed out to you, had a curious
effect, which lingers to this day. It placed the Church in
antagonism, more or less open, to the civil administration of
justice. The criminal was looked on by the priest rather as a
sufferer to be delivered, than an offender to be punished. All who
are conversant with the lives of saints must recollect cases in which
the saint performs even miracles on behalf of the condemned.
Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same feeling which
prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to carry a
leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard. In an old French
fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was
always careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before
going out to murder and steal; and found the practice pay him well.
For when he was taken and hanged, our Lady put her 'mains blanches'
under his feet, and supported him invisibly for a whole day, till the
executioner, finding it impossible to kill him, was forced to let him
retire peaceably into a monastery, where he lived and died devoutly.
We may laugh at such fancies; or express, if we will, our abhorrence
of their immorality: but it will be more useful to examine into the
causes which produced them. They seem to have been twofold. In the
first place, the Church did not look on the Teutonic laws, whether
Frank, Burgund, Goth or Lombard, as law at all. Her law, whether
ecclesiastical or civil, was formed on the Roman model; and by it
alone she wished herself, and those who were under her protection, to
be judged. Next--and this count is altogether to her honour--law,
such as it was, was too often administered, especially by the Franks,
capriciously and brutally; while the servile population, always the
great majority, can hardly be said to have been under the protection
of law at all. No one can read the pages of Fredegarius, or Gregory
of Tours, without seeing that there must have been cases weekly, even
daily, which called on the clergy, in the name of justice and
humanity, to deliver if possible, the poor from him that spoiled him;
which excused fully the rise of the right of sanctuary, and of
benefit of clergy, afterwards so much abused; which made it a pious
duty in prelates to work themselves into power at court, and there,
as the 'Chancellors' of princes, try to get something like regular
justice done; and naturally enough, to remodel the laws of each
nation on the time-honoured and scientific Roman form. Nevertheless,
the antagonism of the Church to the national and secular law remained
for centuries. It died out first perhaps, in England, after the
signature of Magna Charta. For then the English prelates began to
take up that truly Protestant and national attitude which issued in
the great Reformation: but it lingers still in Ireland and in Italy.
It lingered in France up to the French revolution, as may be seen
notably in the account of the execution of the Marquise de
Brinvilliers, by the priest who attended her. Horror at her
atrocious crimes is quite swallowed up, in the mind of the good
father, by sympathy with her suffering; and the mob snatch her bones
from the funeral pile, and keep them as the relics of a saint.
But more. While the Roman clergy did real good to Europe, in
preserving the scientific elements of Roman law, they did harm by
preserving therewith other elements--Roman chicane, and Roman
cruelty. In that respect, as in others, 'Rome conquered her
conquerors;' and the descendants of those Roman lawyers, whom the
honest Teutons called adders, and as adders killed them down,
destroyed, in course of time, Teutonic freedom.
But those descendants were, alas! the clergy. Weak, they began early
to adopt those arms of quibbling and craft, which religious men too
often fancy are the proper arms of 'the saints' against 'the world.'
Holding human nature in suspicion and contempt, they early gave way
to the maxim of the savage, that every one is likely to be guilty
till proved innocent, and therefore licensed the stupid brutalities
of torture to extract confession. Holding self-degradation to be a
virtue, and independence as a carnal vice; glorying in being slaves
themselves, till to become, under the name of holy obedience,
'perinde ac cadaver,' was the ideal of a good monk; and accustomed,
themselves, to degrading corporal punishment; they did not shrink
from inflicting, even on boys and women, tortures as dastardly as
indecent. Looking on the world, and on the future of the human race,
through a medium compared with which the darkest fancies of a modern
fanatic are bright and clear, they did not shrink from inflicting
penalties, the very mention of which makes the blood run cold.
Suspecting, if not alternately envying and despising, all women who
were not nuns; writing openly of the whole sex (until unsexed) as the
snare and curse of mankind; and possessed by a Manichaean belief in
the power and presence of innumerable demons, whose especial victims
were women; they erected witch-hunting into a science; they pandered
to, and actually formalized, and justified on scientific grounds, the
most cruel and cowardly superstitions of the mob; and again and again
raised literal crusades against women, torturing, exposing, burning,
young and old, not merely in the witch-mania of the 17th century, but
through the whole middle age. It is a detestable page of history. I
ask those who may think my statement exaggerated, to consult the
original authorities. Let them contrast Rothar's law about the
impossibility of witchcraft, with the pages of the Malleus
Maleficarum, Nider's Fornicarium, or Delrio the Jesuit, and see for
themselves who were the false teachers. And if they be told, that
the cruelties of the Inquisition were only those in vogue according
to the secular law of the day, let them recollect that the
formulizers of that law were none other than the celibate Roman
clergy.
I do not deny that there was in all this a just, though a terrible,
Nemesis. What was the essential fault of these Lombard laws--indeed
of all the Teutonic codes? This--that there was one law for the free
man, another for the slave. Ecclesiastical dominion was necessary,
to make one law for all classes, even though it were a law of common
slavery. As the free had done to the slave, even so, and far worse,
would the Roman clergy do to them. The Albigense persecutors,
burning sixty ladies in one day; Conrad of Marpurg scourging his own
sovereign, St. Elizabeth; shaving the Count of Saiym's head; and
burning noble ladies almost without trial; Sprenger and his compeers,
offering up female hecatombs of the highest blood thoughout Germany;
English bishops burning in Smithfield Anne Askew, the hapless court-
beauty, and her fellow-courtier Mr. Lascelles, just as if they had
been Essex or Berkshire peasants;--all these evildoers were welding
the different classes of the European nations, by a community of
suffering, into nations; into the belief that free and slave had one
blood, one humanity, one conscience, one capacity of suffering; and
at last, one capacity of rebelling, and making common cause, high and
low alike, against him who reigned in Italy under the 'Romani nominis
umbram.'
And if our English law, our English ideas of justice and mercy, have
retained, more than most European codes, the freedom, the
truthfulness, the kindliness, of the old Teutonic laws, we owe it to
the fact, that England escaped, more than any other land, the taint
of effete Roman civilization; that she therefore first of the lands,
in the 12th century, rebelled against, and first of them, in the 16th
century, threw off, the Ultramontane yoke.
And surely it will be so, in due time, with the descendants of these
very Lombards. We have seen them in these very years arise out of
the dust and shame of centuries, and determine to be Lombards once
again. We have seen a hero arise among them of the true old Teuton
stamp, bearing worthily the name which his forefathers brought over
the Alps with Alboin--Garibald, the 'bold in war.' May they succeed
in the same noble struggle as that in which we succeeded, and
returning, not in letter, but in spirit, to the old laws of Rothar
and their free forefathers, become the leading race of a free and
united Italy!
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