Simultaneously with this German movement, Italy under the lead of Cavour and Victor
Emmanuel, achieved her national unity, with Rome as the political capital.
But the new German empire is not a continuation or revival of the old. It differs from it in
several essential particulars. It is the result of popular national aspiration and of a war of self-defence,
not of conquest; it is based on the predominance of Prussia and North Germany, not of Austria and
South Germany; it is hereditary, not elective; it is controlled by modern ideas of liberty and progress,
not by mediaeval notions and institutions; it is essentially Protestant, and not Roman Catholic; it
is a German, not a Roman empire. Its rise is indirectly connected with the simultaneous downfall
of the temporal power of the pope, who is the hereditary and unchangeable enemy both of German
and Italian unity and freedom. The new empire is independent of the church, and has officially no
connection with religion, resembling in this respect the government of the United States; but its
Protestant animus appears not only in the hereditary religion of the first emperor, but also in the
expulsion of the Jesuits (1872), and the "Culturkampf" against the politico-hierarchical aspirations
of the ultramontane papacy. When Pius IX., in a letter to William I. (1873), claimed a sort of
jurisdiction over all baptized Christians, the emperor courteously informed the infallible pope that
he, with all Protestants, recognized no other mediator between God and man but our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ. The new German empire will and ought to do full justice to the Catholic
church, but "will never go to Canossa."
We pause at the close of a long and weighty chapter in history; we wonder what the next
chapter will be.
§ 59. The Papacy and the Empire from the Death of Charlemagne to Nicolas I a.d. 814–858).
Note on the Myth of the Papess Joan.
The power of Charlemagne was personal. Under his weak successors the empire fell to pieces,
and the creation of his genius was buried in chaotic confusion; but the idea survived. His son and
successor, Louis the Pious, as the Germans and Italians called him, or Louis the Gentle (le
débonnaire) in French history (814–840), inherited the piety, and some of the valor and legislative
wisdom, but not the genius and energy, of his father. He was a devoted and superstitious servant
of the clergy. He began with reforms, he dismissed his father’s concubines and daughters with their
paramours from the court, turned the palace into a monastery, and promoted the Scandinavian
mission of St. Ansgar. In the progress of his reign, especially after his second marriage to the
ambitious Judith, he showed deplorable weakness and allowed his empire to decay, while he wasted
his time between monkish exercises and field-sports in the forest of the Ardennes. He unwisely
shared his rule with his three sons who soon rebelled against their father and engaged in fraternal
wars.
After his death the treaty of Verdun was concluded in 843. By this treaty the empire was
divided; Lothair received Italy with the title of emperor, France fell to Charles the Bald, Germany
to Louis the German. Thus Charlemagne’s conception of a Western empire that should be
commensurate with the Latin church was destroyed, or at least greatly contracted, and the three
countries have henceforth a separate history. This was better for the development of nationality.
The imperial dignity was afterwards united with the German crown, and continued under this
modified form till 1806.