ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
BOOK VI
.
CHAPTER VI.
FLAVIUS AUTHARI.
The attempt of the Lombard dukes to keep the government of the new state
in their own hands, after ten years of trial, had proved a failure. Their
enemies were drawing together into an alliance which might easily bring upon
the Lombard kingdom the same ruin that had befallen its Ostrogothic
predecessor, and internally the condition of the subject population, which
called itself Roman, was probably both miserable and menacing. Though we
greatly lack precise details as to the real position of these subject Italians,
there are many indications that their lot was harder during the ten years of
‘the kingless time' than at any period before or after. We can well understand
that the yoke of these thirty-six barbarous chiefs, each one a little despot in
his own domain, would be far more galling than that of one supreme lord, who,
both for the sake of his revenues and in order to prevent a dangerous rivalry,
would be disposed to defend the peasant and the handicraftsman from the too
grievous exactions of a domineering neighbour. But there is no need to labour
at this demonstration: it is one of the commonplaces of medieval history that
the power of the king was generally the shield of the commoner against the
oppression of the noble.
Whether it was the fear of external war or of internal discontent that
caused the return to monarchy, we know not; all our information on the subject
is contained in the following words of Paulus :—
“But when the Lombards had been for ten years under the power of their
dukes, at length by common consent they appointed to themselves as king,
Authari, the son of the abovementioned sovereign, Cleph. On account of his
dignity they called him Flavius, a forename which all the kings of the Lombards
who followed him used auspiciously. In his days, on account of the restoration
of the kingdom, the then ruling dukes contributed half of all their possessions
to the royal exchequer, that there might be a fund for the maintenance of the
king himself, and of those who were attached to him by the liability to perform
the various offices of his household. [In this division] the subject
populations who had been assigned to their several Lombard guests were also
included. In truth this was a marvellous fact in the kingdom of the Lombards;
there was no evidence, no plots were devised, no one oppressed another with
unjust exactions, none despoiled his neighbour; there were no thefts, no
robberies with violence: every man went about his business as he pleased, in
fearless security.”
In this brilliant, but doubtless over-painted picture of the golden days
of Flavius Authari, let us try to discover such lines of hard prosaic fact as
the labour of archaeologists and commentators have been able to decipher.
It was said in the previous chapter that there was some reason to
suppose that Cleph was the first Lombard duke of Bergamo. If this were so,
probably his son Authari passed his boyhood at that place under the
guardianship of his mother, Queen Masane.
Most of the great cities of Lombardy are built in the plain; but
Bergamo, at least the older city of Bergamo, stands on a hill, an outlier of
the great Alpine range which, even to the far Bernina, towers majestically
behind her. Her territory in those far-off days, when she still gave birth to
kings, was more extensive than in later centuries, reaching back to the deep
trough of the Valtelline, through which the early waters of the Adda are
poured, resting on the two lakes of Iseo and Como to
the east and west, and coming far down into the plain within eight miles of the
unfortunate Cremona,—Cremona, which as still loyal to the Empire, had to see
her territories retrenched for the benefit of her more submissive neighbours.
As we have seen, Authari assumed the title Flavius, that title which,
endeared to the memories of the subject Roman population by dim remembrance of
the glories of the Flavian line, was looked upon as in some sort putting the
seal of Roman legitimacy upon barbaric conquest. Odovacar, the captain of
Herulian mercenaries, had called himself Flavius, a century before the
accession of Authari. Recared, the Visigothic king of Spain, who was just at
this time coming over to the orthodox creed, and generally reconciling himself
to the old order of things, assumed the same title. There can be little doubt
that the poor downtrodden Roman colonists heaved a sigh of relief and lifted up
his eyes with faint hopes of the coming of a better day, when he heard that the
king of these fierce barbarians from the Danube condescended to call himself
Flavius. And upon the whole, the promise implied in Authari’s new title was fulfilled, and the expectations formed of him by the nobles who
raised him to the throne were justified. In the letters of popes and emperors,
he and his people are still ‘most unspeakable’ (nefandissimi);
but we hear less, in fact we hardly hear anything at all, of mere barbaric
plunder of the cities and villas of Italy; the senseless invasions of Gaul are
not resumed; the dukes are kept well in hand, and apparently the resources of
the young kingdom are directed with wisdom and foresight to the necessary work
of its defence against the threatening combination of its foreign foes. And
thus, though we certainly cannot accept the picture of millennial happiness
under Authari’s sway drawn for us by Paulus, we can
believe that his was, in the main, a rule which made for righteousness, and
that life was more endurable in his days than during the barbarous ‘kingless
time', or during the feeble reigns of some of his successors.
The figure of this bright and forceful young king, whose reign was too
short for his people's desires (for he was only six years upon the throne),
impressed the imaginations of the Lombard people, and their Sagas were more
busy with his fame than with that of most of the dwellers in the palace at
Pavia. Minstrels told how he marched victoriously through the regions which
were formed into the two great duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, how he arrived
finally at the city of Reggio, at the extreme end of the peninsula which looks
across over Scylla and Charybdis at the white walls of Messina, and seeing
there certain columns (perhaps of a submerged temple) placed in the very waters
of the straits, he rode up towards them, and hurling his spear said, “Thus far
shall come the boundaries of the Lombards.” Wherefore to this day (says Paulus)
that column is called “the column of Authari.”
The story of his wooing belongs to the latest years of his life, but it
may be related here, in order to show the popular conception of his character.
Authari had asked for and obtained the promise of the hand of Chlodosinda, daughter of Brunichildis, sister of
Childebert, king of Austrasia. But when news arrived in Gaul of the conversion
of Recared of Spain to the Catholic faith, Brunichildis, who was herself a
convert from Arianism and a fervent Catholic, broke off her daughter's
engagement to Authari, and betrothed Chlodosinda to
Recared. Hereupon Authari turned his thought to a nearer neighbour and
determined to woo Theudelinda, the daughter of Garibald, duke of the Bavarians.
Theudelinda, whose fame as a beautiful and accomplished princess had probably
been widely spread abroad, had been herself betrothed to the youthful
Childebert, but that alliance had also been broken by the influence of
Brunichildis, who probably dreaded the ascendency of such a woman over her
feeble son. The sister of Theudelinda had been already some ten or fifteen
years the wife of a Lombard duke, the stout-hearted and successful soldier Euin
of Trent.
To Bavaria accordingly king Authari sent his ambassadors to ask for the
hand of the daughter of Garibald. They returned with a favourable answer, and
the young king determined to seize an opportunity for gazing on the features of
his future bride before she entered his kingdom as its queen. Choosing out
therefore few of his most trusty followers, he journeyed with slight equipment
to the Bavarian court. A grave and reverend ‘senior,' upon whom was devolved
the apparent headship of the mission, spoke some words of diplomatic courtesy
to Garibald, and then Authari himself (of course preserving his incognito) stepped
up to the Bavarian and said, ‘My master Authari has sent me that I may behold
the face of his betrothed, our future mistress, and may make report of her
beauty to my lord'. Garibald then ordered his daughter to approach, and Authari
gazed long in silence on the blender form and beautiful face of his betrothed.
Thereafter he said to the Bavarian duke, “In good sooth we behold that your
daughter is such a person that she is well worthy to be our queen. Command,
therefore, I pray, that we may receive a goblet of wine from her hand, as we
hope often to do in the years that are to come.” Garibald gave the word and
Theudelinda brought the goblet of wine and offered it first to the older man,
the apparent chief of the embassy. Then she handed it to Authari, all unwitting
that he was her future husband, and he in returning the cup secretly
intertwined her fingers with his, and bending low, guided them over the profile
of his face from the forehead to the chin. When the ambassadors had left the
presence-chamber, Theudelinda, with a blush of shame, told her nurse of the
strange behaviour of the Lombard. “Assuredly,” said the aged crone, “he must be
the king thy betrothed suitor, or he would never have dared to do this unto
thee. But let us be silent about the matter lest it come to the knowledge of
thy father. And in truth he is a comely person, worthy of the kingdom and of
thee.” For the young king, in the flower of his age, with his tall stature and
waves of yellow hair, had won the hearts of all the beholders.
A banquet followed, and the Lombard messengers, escorted by some of the
Bavarian nobles, set forth upon their homeward journey. When they were just
crossing the frontiers of Noricum and their horses’ feet touched the soil of
his Italy, Authari, rising high in his saddle, whirled his battle-axe through
the air and fixed it deep in the trunk of a tree, where he left it, shouting as
he threw, “So Authari is wont to strike his blow.” Then the Bavarian escort
understood that he was indeed the king.
A short time elapsed. Childebert, probably alarmed at the tidings of the
alliance between the Bavarians, his doubtful subjects, and the Lombards, his
frequent foes, moved his army against Garibald. There is one reason to think
that either at this time or soon after, Garibald was dethroned and his duchy
given to a relative, perhaps a son or a nephew, named Tassilo; but however that
may be, it is certain that Theudelinda fled from her country (her young
brother, Gundwald being the companion of her exile),
and notified to her betrothed her arrival in Italy. Authari received her with
great pomp on the shores of the beautiful Lake Garda, and the marriage was
celebrated amid general rejoicings in the neighbouring city of Verona the 15th
of May (589).
The union so romantically brought about was apparently a happy one, but
its happiness was short-lived, for in September of the following year Authari
died. But having thus related all that is to be known as to the personal
history of the young king, let us turn back to consider the chief public events
of his short but important reign.
For some time the occupants of St. Peter's chair had been uttering to
all the potentates of the Catholic world plaintive cries for help against the
violence of the Lombards. In a letter written by Pope Pelagius II to Aunacharius, bishop of Auxerre, the writer bewails “the
shedding of innocent blood, the violation of the holy altars, the insults
offered to the Catholic faith by these idolaters.” “Not without some great
purpose,” continues the Pope, “has it been ordained by Divine Providence that
your [Frankish] kings should share with the Roman Empire in the confession of
the orthodox faith. Assuredly this was brought to pass in order that they might
be so to speak neighbours and helpers of this City of Rome, whence that
confession took its birth, and of the whole of Italy. Beware then lest through
levity of purpose your kings should fail in their high mission. Persuade them
as earnestly as you can to keep themselves from all friendship and alliance
with our most unspeakable enemies the Lombards, lest when the day of vengeance
dawns (which we trust in the Divine mercy it will do speedily), your kings
should share in the Lombard's punishment.”
Again, in 585 the same Pope addressed a letter to the deacon Gregory,
his representative at the court of Byzantium, urging him to bring under the
notice of the Emperor Maurice the cruel hardships of his Italian subjects. “Such
calamities and tribulations are brought upon us by the perfidy of the Lombard,
contrary to his own plighted oath, that no one can avail to relate them. Tell
our most pious lord the Emperor of our dangers and necessities, and consult
with him how they may be most speedily relieved: because so straitened is the
Republic that, unless God shall put it into the heart of our most pious
sovereign to bestow his wonted compassion upon his servants, and to relieve our
troubles by sending us one Master of the Soldiery and one Duke, we shall be
brought to the extremity of distress, since at present the region around Rome
is still for the most part quite undefended. The Exarch writes that he can give us no
remedy, since he avers that he has not sufficient force even to defend that
part of the country [the neighbourhood of Ravenna]. May God therefore direct
him speedily to succour our perils before the army of that most unspeakable
nation succeeds (which God forbid) in occupying the districts still held by the
Republic.”
If the Emperor could not spare any large number of soldiers in response
to these plaintive appeals, he could at least place the existing Italian army
under more efficient leadership than that of the incapable Longinus, who,
during the eighteen years of his government, had performed no memorable action,
except abetting the flight of the murderess Rosamund and shipping off Alboin's
daughter and her treasures to Constantinople. Smaragdus was now appointed
governor of Italy, with a title which was afterwards to become famous, but of
which we now meet with the first undoubted mention, the title of Exarch. It was
probably in the early part of the year 585 that the new governor arrived in
Italy. His name (a curious one to be borne by a Roman governor) is the Greek
word for an emerald. By no means a flawless jewel, and a man with some strange
streaks of madness in his composition, Smaragdus was nevertheless an active and
energetic soldier, and the fact that he twice held the great post of Exarch of
Italy shows the high value which the Imperial Consistory placed on his
services.
The efforts of the new Exarch were powerfully seconded by those of a
deserter from the Lombard camp. This was a certain Droctulf,
by birth belonging to the Suavic or Alamannic nation, who had grown to manhood among the
Lombards, and being a man of comely presence and evidently of some military
talent, had received the honour of a dukedom among them. He had apparently been
taken prisoner in some battle by the Imperial troops, and nurtured a feeling of
resentment against the other Lombard generals, to whose languid support he
considered that he owed his captivity. In this captivity at Ravenna, he, like
so many barbarian chiefs before him, was fascinated by the splendid
civilization—splendid even in its ruins—of the great Roman ‘Republic'. The
barbarous Suave of the Black Forest, the more barbarous Lombard of Pavia—what
were these beside the magnificent officials who sat in Theodoric's palace at
Ravenna, issuing the decrees and bestowing on loyal allies the endless golden
solidi of the great World-Emperor? As he worshipped in the glorious basilica of
St. Vitalis, and gazed upon the yet existing mosaic pictures of that martyred
praetorian, father of two sons, Gervasius and Protasius, soldiers and martyrs
like their sire, he took that warrior-saint for his patron, and in the visions
of the night he seemed to see Jesus Christ himself giving to him, as to
Constantine, a banner to be reared in the service of Christ and of Rome.
This was the man who, as it seems, early in the reign of Authari openly
attached himself to the party of the Empire, gathered a band of soldiers
together, and seizing the little town of Brixellum (Brescello) on the Po, raised there the Christ-given banner
of Rome against the unspeakable Lombard. Brescello is
only about twelve miles from Parma on the Aemilian way, and Droctulf's object in seizing this position was doubtless to hamper the communications of
the Lombards along that great highway between Parma, Placentia and Modena,
while he himself by the swift sailing-ships (dromones),
which sailed up and down the river Po, kept open his own communications with
the Adriatic. However, the young Authari led the Lombard host against Droctulf, and, after a long siege took Brixellum,
razed its walls to the ground, and forced Droctulf to
flee to Ravenna.
Hereupon a truce for three years (555-558) was concluded between the
Lombard king and the Exarch; a truce which was probably employed by both
parties in completing their preparations for further war. It was perhaps before
the full completion of the third year that hostilities of a desultory kind were
resumed both on the east and west of the Lombard kingdom. In the extreme
north-east, Authari’s future brother-in-law, Euin,
duke of Trent, invaded the wealthy province of Istria. After much pillaging and
burning he concluded peace— doubtless a special, local peace—with the governor
of the province for one year and returned bearing great spoil to Authari. In
the west, the shouts of battle were heard on the shores of the Lake of Como,
where for twenty years there had been a strange survival of Roman rule in a
part of Italy otherwise entirely subjugated by the barbarians.
At the present day, a traveller sailing or steaming up the western
branch of the Lake of Como, perhaps scarcely notices a little island—the only
one which the lake can boast—lying on his left hand as he is nearing Bellaggio. The hills of the mainland rise high above him,
bearing aloft the shrine of Our Lady of Succour, to which many a boatman has
looked for help when the suddenly arising storm has threatened to fill his
bark. But the little island itself, which is about half a mile long and two to
three hundred yards broad, rises to no great elevation, though its cliffs are
in one place somewhat steep, and there are slight traces of the walls which
once rose above them. Still the Isola Comacina, as
Paulus calls it, suggests to us in these modem days little of the idea of a
stronghold, nor has it ever been such since the invention of gunpowder. But
before that great change in the art of war, the simple fact that it was
separated by a deep strait, some quarter of a mile wide, from the mainland
rendered it inaccessible to any power which had not naval supremacy on the lake
and made its possession an object of desire to contending potentates. Here, as
we shall see, came Imperial generals and rebel Lombard dukes bent on defying
the arms of the lord of Pavia. In the twelfth century, in those fierce
intestine wars which preceded the formation of the Lombard League, the little
island threw in her lot with Milan against Como, shared the earlier reverses
and the final victory of her mightier ally, but was at last, some forty years
later, utterly destroyed by the neighbour whose power she had braved. The
sacristan of the small and lonely church of St. John tells one in dejected
tones that the little island once counted its 7000 inhabitants, but that in the
time of Frederick Barbarossa ‘everything was burnt', and the island has since
remained desolate. Apparently, however, it was not from the terrible Emperor,
but from their own burgher neighbours of Como, that the vengeance and the
destruction came. Last of all, in our own days, in the war of Italian
Liberation in 1848, Charles Albert confined a number of his Austrian prisoners
on the island. At night they slept in the church; in the day they were allowed
to scramble about the rocks and thickets of their prison, looking over the
narrow strait which divided them from the shore and longing in vain for their
Tyrolese or Croatian home
Hither then to this “home of lost causes” came an Imperial magister militum, Francio by name, when
Alboin entered Italy, and here for twenty years he had kept the flag of the
Empire flying. But now at length Authari directed the whole forces of his
kingdom against Francio, and after six months’ siege
captured his island-fortress and took possession of the vast stores of treasure
deposited there by refugees from almost all the cities of Italy. To Francio himself terms were accorded worthy of so brave a
foe, and he was allowed to depart for Ravenna with his wife and all his
household possessions.
It was probably just after the expiration of the three years’ truce that
the port of Classis, which had been for at least nine years in the occupation
of the Lombards was recaptured for the Empire. The hero of this reconquest was Droctulf, who was no doubt well supported by the Exarch
Smaragdus. He prepared a swarm of vessels of small draft, with which he covered
the shallow streams and lagunes between Ravenna and Classis, and by their aid
he overcame the large Lombard host which Farwald of
Spoleto had sent to maintain his important conquest.
This is all that is told us of the deeds of Droctulf in Italy. He seems, after his first Romanization, to have lived and died a
faithful servant of the Empire, and to have fought her battles in the Danubian lands against the savage Avars. We know not the
year of his death, but we learn that he was buried in the church of his
patron-saint Vitalis at Ravenna, where for many generations might be seen his
epitaph in thirteen elegiac couplets, which may be thus somewhat freely
translated:—
Droctulf here lies; his body, not his soul;
Droctulf,
whose fame doth round the wide world roll
Though leagued with Bardi, Suavia gave him
birth,
And suave his mood to all men upon earth.
Kind was his heart, though terrible his frown,
And his long beard o'er his broad breast flowed down.
On Rome's great commonwealth his love he placed,
And for that love's sake laid his brethren waste.
He scorned his fathers, prayed with us to stand,
And chose Ravenna for his fatherland.
Brixellum captured was his earliest feat;
There, feared by all his foes, he fixed his seat.
Christ gave the banner which he stoutly bore,
After Rome's standards thenceforth evermore.
When Farwald Classis won by foul deceit,
He for the Fleet-town's conquest armed his fleet.
Up Badrin's stream his shallops fought their
way,
And made the countless Bardic hosts their prey.
Taming, in Eastern lands, the Avar hordes,
He won the glorious laurel for his lords.
The soldier-saint, Vitalis, gave him might,
Triumph on triumph thus to earn in fight;
And in Vitalis' holy home to lie
He prayed, when 'twas the warrior's turn to die.
This of Johannes was his last request,
Whose loving hands here fold him to his rest.
The rest of the political events in the life of Authari were chiefly
connected with Frankish invasions, threatened, accomplished, or averted; and to
understand their somewhat obscure and tortuous course, we must once more cross
the Alps and visit the hill-girt city of Metz, whence the young king
Childebert, son of Sigibert and Brunichildis, rules his kingdom of Austrasia.
In the courtly language of contemporary ecclesiastics he is ‘gloriosissimus dominus Childeberthus rex’; but to us he is a somewhat pale and uninteresting figure, always acting
under the impulse of some stronger will, ruled either by his mother or by one
of the great nobles and prelates, who, as already said, claimed the right to
advise—a right not easily distinguishable from the right to rule—their youthful
monarch.
Childebert was generally on good terms with his uncle, the easy-tempered
Guntram of Burgundy, and he was in fact, three years after the accession of
Authari, formally recognized as his heir by the Treaty of Andelot:
but occasional misunderstandings arose between them, nor was it easy to direct
their combined resources to one common end.
The old fierce feud between Brunichildis and Fredegundis, though not
healed, was during these years slumbering. Ever and anon the wicked queen of
Neustria despatched one of her emissaries on the forlorn hope of murdering
Guntram or Childebert: but the plot was always discovered; the would-be
murderer confessed under torture the name of his inciter; he was put to death:
Fredegundis bestowed some of her vast wealth on his surviving relatives, and
all went on as before. Generally speaking, it may be said that the period from
584 to 600 was the time of the greatest obscuration of the Neustrian kingdom. Its king, Chlotochar II, was, at the beginning of this period, a mere
infant, and Neustria was shorn of a considerable part of its former territory
for the benefit of Austrasia and Burgundy.
The “most glorious lord Childebert” having once crossed the Alps at the
head of an army, and won but little renown there, was not disposed to repeat
the experiment. The court of Constantinople, however, unceasingly demanded
either the return of its 50,000 solidi or the accomplishment of the expedition
of which they were the wages. And, in addition to this pecuniary claim, there
was a personal motive towards friendliness with Constantinople, operating at
this time with peculiar force both on Brunichildis and on Childebert. To
understand its bearings we must go back three or four years, and must glance at
the history of Spain and the tragedy of the rebellion of Hermenigild.
We have seen that two kings of the Franks married two daughters of
Athanagild, king of the Visigoths. That monarch died shortly after he had
despatched the hapless Galswintha on that nuptial journey which proved to be
the road to death, and he was succeeded, after a short interval, by the last
and well-nigh the greatest of the Arian kings of the Visigoths, Leovigild.
Lion-like by name and by nature, this Visigoths, champion of a falling cause
stoutly defended the land and the faith 0f his Arian forefathers. Against the
generals of the Empire who had gained a footing in Murcia and Andalusia, and
against the hereditary Suevic enemy in Gallicia and
Lusitania, he dealt his swashing blows. He fought the Basques (that
irreconcilable remnant of the dim aboriginal race which once peopled the
Peninsula), and sent them flying across the Pyrenees. He repressed the anarchic
movements of his own turbulent nobility, and made them feel that they had now
indeed a king.
True, however, to the policy of his predecessor Athanagild (whose widow Goisvintha he had married after the death of his own first
wife), Leovigild desired to conciliate as much as possible his mighty Frankish
neighbours on the north. Accordingly, he asked and obtained for his son
Hermenigild the hand of the young Austrasian princess Ingunthis, sister of
Childebert. The little princess—she was scarcely more than a child—thus
recrossed the Pyrenees which her mother had crossed on a similar errand
fourteen years before. She was attended by a brilliant retinue; but she came
bringing dissension into the palace of the Visigoths, and to herself exile and
untimely death.
The cause of dissension was—need it be said?—the difference of creed
between the two royal families to which the bride and bridegroom belonged. In
the previous generation both Brunichildis and Galswintha had easily conformed
to the Catholic faith of their affianced husbands. Probably the counsellors of
Leovigild expected that a mere child like Ingunthis would, without difficulty,
make the converse change from Catholicism back into Arianism. This was ever the
capital fault of the Arian statesmen that, with all their religious bitterness,
they could not comprehend that the profession of faith, which was hardly more
than a fashion to most of themselves, was a matter of life and death to their
Catholic rivals. Here, for instance, was their own princess Brunichildis,
reared in Arianism, converted to the orthodox creed, clinging to it tenaciously
through all the perils and adversities of her own stormy career, and able to
imbue the child-bride, her daughter, with such an unyielding devotion to the
faith of Nicaea that not one of all the formidable personages whom she met in
her new husband's home could avail to move her by one hair's breadth towards “the
Arian pravity.”
Chief of all these baffled proselytisers was Queen Goisvintha,
own grandmother to the bride and step-mother to the bridegroom. This ancient
dame was a bitter Arian, who had inflicted some humiliations on the
ecclesiastics of the opposite party, and whose one blinded eye, covered with
the white film of cataract, was hailed by the Catholics as a Divine judgment on
her wickedness. It was at first with soft and fair speeches that the aged
grandmother—who had received Ingunthis with real gladness—sought to persuade
her to quit the Catholic fold and to be baptized as an Arian. But the
child-wife answered with manly spirit, ‘It is sufficient for me to have been
washed from the stain of original sin by baptism, and to have confessed the
Trinity in one equality. This doctrine I avow that I believe with my whole
heart, nor will I ever go back from this faith'. By this stubborn refusal the
wrath of Goisvintha was aroused. She seized the
child—so says the Catholic Gregory—by the hair of her head and dashed her to
the ground; she trampled her under foot and beat her till the blood spirted
forth; she ordered her to be stripped and thrown into a pond: but all these
outrages failed to shake the constancy of the heroic princess.
Of these proceedings, on the part of his wife, Leovigild seems to have
been a passive, probably an unwilling spectator, and it was perhaps in order to
deliver his daughter-in-law from such persecution, that he assigned the city of
Seville, far from his own new capital Toledo, as the residence of the youthful
pair; associating Hermenigild with himself in the kingdom.
In their new home by the Guadalquivir Ingunthis began to ply her husband
with entreaties that he would leave the falsehood of heresy and recognize the
verity of the Catholic law. Although Hermenigild came by the mother's side from
a Catholic family, his maternal uncle being the celebrated Leander, bishop of
Seville, he long resisted the arguments of his wife, but at length he yielded
and received Catholic baptism, perhaps from Leander's own hands; changing his
name to John.
After this defection of the young prince from the ancestral creed there
was of course ‘doubt, misconception, and pain' in the royal palace. The father
invited the son to a friendly conference. The son refused, as he said, ‘because
thou art hostile to me on account of my being a Catholic'. He called upon “the
Greeks”, that is the generals of the Empire, to protect him from his father's
anger; but as their succour had not arrived when the royal army was
approaching, he accepted the mediation of his brother Recared, entered the
hostile camp, and cast himself at the feet of Leovigild. The king raised him by
the hand, kissed him and spoke to him kindly; but afterwards, “forgetful” (says
Gregory) “of his plighted oath, sent him into exile, removing from him all his
usual attendants except one young slave.”
It is not easy to trace the exact course of subsequent events, but it is
clear that Hermenigild must have escaped from exile, and renewed his rebellion,
or, as the annalists (though of the Catholic party) call it, his ‘tyranny'. The
war seems to have lasted for two years. ‘The Greeks', as far as we can see,
brought little effectual help to Hermenigild, but the Catholic Suevi put forth
all their strength on his behalf. Their king perished in a vain attempt to
raise the siege of Seville, and the war ended in the triumph of Leovigild, the
captivity of Hermenigild, and the final overthrow of the Suevic kingdom.
Once again the king's son was sent into confinement; this time at
Valencia. Possibly he escaped thence, for a few months afterwards we hear of
his being slain at Tarragona. The Gaulish historian says that his father put
him to death; but a somewhat better informed Spanish annalist attributes the
murder to a certain man named Sisbert, without hinting at Leovigild's approval
of the deed.
The unfortunate Ingunthis was thus made a widow in her nineteenth year
and left with one orphaned child, a boy, already it would seem three or four
years old, whom she had named Athanagild, after her maternal grandfather. She
had been apparently separated from her husband during these years of war, for
when the rebellion first broke out he had left his wife and child under the
care of his Greek allies. Those allies, however, fully recognized the value of
such a hostage as Ingunthis, sister of the king of the Franks, and
daughter-in-law of the king of the Visigoths, bearing in her bosom one who one
day sit on the throne of Leovigild. In all the subsequent negotiations,
reconciliations, wars, between Leovigild and his son, neither of them could
ever recover Ingunthis from ‘the Greeks'. And now, after her husband's death,
she was not restored to her home by the Moselle, but sent in a kind of
honourable captivity over the wide Mediterranean, her destination being
Constantinople : so little consideration or sympathy did the orthodox Greeks
exhibit for one who had in her tender youth done and suffered so much on behalf
of the Creed of Nicaea. As it turned out, Ingunthis never reached the city of
the Bosphorus, but died, probably worn out by home-sickness and sorrow, at
Carthage, and was buried there. The little Athanagild was sent on to
Constantinople, where it is probable that he eventually died, as we never hear
of his return to the West of Europe, though that return was the subject of much
diplomatic discussion.
It was by the captivity of Ingunthis and her child that the tragedy of
Hermenigild was connected with the history of Italy, but it is worthwhile to
devote a few sentences to the sequel of that tragedy in Spain. The
stout-hearted Leovigild died in the spring of 586, not many months after the
murder of his eldest son. His second son, Recared, who then ascended the
throne, promptly put his brother's murderer to death, and by another striking
exercise of his royal power proved that the example of that brother, the
courage of his young sister-in-law, the exhortations of his uncle Leander, had
not been lost upon him. In 587 he assembled a conference of prelates, both
Catholic and Arian. They argued with one another and the heretics were
unconvinced; but when they appealed to miracles the orthodox won a signal
victory. Recared openly avowed himself a believer in the Three Equal Persons of
the Godhead, and before many years were passed he had, by gentle compulsion,
brought the whole Visigothic nation to share his change of faith. Thus was the
last of the great Arian kingdoms, except the Lombard, brought into communion
with that form of Christianity which was professed by the Empire, and thus was,
if not the ‘Eldest Son of the Church', perhaps the most obedient of her
children brought into the fold.
In the opinion of some scholars, it is to Recared that we should assign,
if not the composition, at any rate the authoritative publication of that great
battle-hymn of orthodoxy the ‘Quicunque vult', which is generally known by the incorrect name of “The
Creed of Saint Athanasius.”
In his father's lifetime Recared had been betrothed to the young Regunthis, daughter of the Neustrian Chilperic and Fredegundis; but on her father's assassination this matrimonial
project fell through, though the bride had already arrived on her nuptial
journey almost at the borders of the Visigothic kingdom. After his conversion
Recared obtained, as we have seen, the promise of the hand of Chlotoswinda, sister of Childebert, thus depriving Authari
of the coveted Frankish alliance. In fact, however, this betrothal also came to
naught, and the wife whom Recared eventually married was a Visigothic lady
named Baddo. Certainly the Merovings and the kings of the Visigoths were not happy in their matrimonial diplomacies.
We return to the court of Childebert, whither came messengers from the
Emperor Maurice with the usual request that the Frankish king would send an
army to Italy to fight against the Lombards. Childebert, supposing that his
widowed sister was still alive and in the Emperor's power, complied the more
readily with the Imperial request, and sent an expedition across the Alps. But
the heterogeneous character of the state which obeyed the rule of the
Austrasian king reflected itself disastrously in his army. So great a
dissension arose between the Franks and Alamanni serving under his standards,
that, without any gain of booty for themselves or conquest of territory for
their master, they were obliged to return home.
At length, perhaps early in the year 588, the tidings of the death of
Ingunthis reached the court of Metz, but at the same time probably came the
news that the little Athanagild was detained at Constantinople. Thereupon all
the resources of Austrasian diplomacy were employed to procure his liberation.
Four ambassadors were sent to Constantinople: their names and titles were Sennodius the ‘Optimate,’ Grippo the king’s Sword-bearer,
Radan the Chamberlain, and Eusebius the Notary. They took with them a whole
packet of letters, sixteen of which have been preserved. Though written, of
course, not by their reputed authors, but by some clerk—probably an
ecclesiastic—in the royal chancery, they are interesting for the light which
they throw on the ways of European diplomacy in the sixth century, and
especially on the relations existing between the barbarian kings of Western
Europe and the Imperial Court. There are letters to the Emperor's father, the
veteran Paulus; to his little son Theodosius, a child of about the same age as
Athanagild; to the Patriarch of Constantinople; to the Master of the Offices,
the Quaestor and the Curator of the Palace, beseeching the good offices of all
these illustrious persons on behalf of the ambassadors, sent as they were to
establish a firm peace between the Frankish monarchy and the Empire. In these
letters we hear but little of the true, the personal object of the embassy; but
those addressed by Childebert to Maurice, and by Brunichildis to the Empress,
are more outspoken, and plead earnestly for the liberation of the little orphan
who, by the waves of a cruel destiny, had been drifted so far from his home.
Two of the letters are addressed to Athanagild himself. In the letter of
Brunichildis to her grandson, notwithstanding the stilted style of its address,
there is something really pathetic. Though the prattling child is called ‘the
glorious lord, king Athanagild', he is also ‘my sweetest grandson whom I long
after with inexpressible desire'; and we read that the vanished Ingunthis will
not seem altogether lost, if only Brunichildis may gaze upon her offspring.
The whole correspondence, and the way in which this little one's
captivity among ‘the Greeks' influences the movements of armies, and
accomplishes results which thousands of solidi had been vain to procure, give
us a favourable idea of the strength of the family tie among these otherwise
unattractive Merovingian monarchs. Even the apathetic Childebert seems to show
some concern for the safety of his nephew: but doubtless Brunichildis was the
moving spirit in the whole negotiation. That fierce old Spanish lioness, though
her life was spent in fray, had something of the lioness's longing to recover
her captured whelp.
The embassy to Constantinople was hindered by various causes, which will
shortly be mentioned, and did not finally return to Metz till near two years
after it had set forth; but meanwhile Childebert, anxious to show his zeal in
the Emperor's service, sent an army into Italy, probably in the early summer of
588. Over this invading host Authari and his warriors won a signal victory.
They felt that the very existence of the Lombards as an independent nation was
at stake, and thus, fighting for their freedom, they triumphed. It is admitted
by Gregory that the slaughter of Frankish soldiers was greater than that on any
former battlefield whereof the memory was preserved. Many captives were taken,
and only a few fugitives returned, with difficulty, to their native land. This
victory was the chief event of Authari’s reign, and,
notwithstanding some subsequent reverses, obtained for him an enduring place in
the grateful recollection of his countrymen.
During the year 589 warlike operations seem to have slumbered. The year
was memorable to the of inhabitants of Italy for other ravages than those of
war. Throughout the north of Italy the streams fed by the Alpine snows rushed
down in such destructive abundance that men said to one another in terror that
Noah's deluge was returning upon the earth. Whole farms were washed away by the
raging streams, and in those villas which remained might everywhere be seen the
corpses of men and cattle. The stately Roman roads were in many places broken
down (and what a Roman Emperor had built a rough Lombard king would find it
hard to replace), and some of the smaller paths were quite obliterated.
Impetuous Adige rose so high that a large part of the walls of Verona was undermined
and fell in ruin, and the beautiful church of San Zenone outside the city was
surrounded by water reaching up to the highest tier of windows; but men noted
with awe-struck wonder that not a drop penetrated into the building itself.
This most terrible storm of a stormy season raged on the 17th of October, the
thunder rolling and the lightning flashing in such fashion as was rarely
witnessed even in the middle of summer. And only two months later the unhappy
city of Verona, which had suffered so severely from the plague of great waters,
was well-nigh reduced to ruin by the opposite enemy, fire.
At Rome the Tiber rose so high that it overtopped the walls which lined
its banks, and filled all the lower quarters of the City. “Through the channel
of the same river,” says our historian, “not only a multitude of serpents, but
also a dragon of vast size, passed through the City and descended to the sea.”
One reason why there were no great warlike operations in the year 5891
may have been that Pavia was busy with the marriage festivities of Authari and
Theudelinda, and that Ravenna was witnessing the departure of Smaragdus and the
advent of his successor in the office of Exarch. A bitter ecclesiastical
quarrel, the result of the miserable controversy about the Three Chapters, was
raging in the churches of Istria. The energetic but hot-tempered Smaragdus
could not refrain from interfering in this quarrel. Laying violent hands on the
patriarch of Aquileia he dragged him and three other bishops to Ravenna, and
forced them by threats and violence to communicate with the bishop of that
city. It was, in the general opinion, a fitting punishment for this high-handed
treatment of the Lords anointed, that Smaragdus was shortly afterwards
‘attacked by a demon' (in other words, became insane), and had to be recalled
to Constantinople. His successor, Romanus, held the office of Exarch for about
eight years (589-597).
In the year 590 Grippo, the ambassador who had been sent to
Constantinople to plead for the liberation of the young Athanagild, returned to
Metz, having a strange and terrible story to tell of his mission. It seems, on
the whole, most probable that the little prince was already dead when the
embassy of 588 arrived at Constantinople, that Grippo had returned to his
master with these tidings, and had then, in the year 589, been sent forth on
another embassy to the same court, his companions this time being two
Gallo-Roman noblemen, Bodigisil, son of Mummolinus of Soissons, and Evantius,
son of Dynamius of Arles. For some reason quite
unknown to us, but probably connected with the closing scenes in the life of
Ingunthis, these ambassadors went first to the great city, the metropolis of
Roman Africa, which was called Magna Carthago, to
distinguish her from her lesser namesake in Spain.
While the ambassadors were tarrying here, waiting the commands of the
Prefect as to the order of their journey to the Imperial Presence, a tragedy
was enacted, which affords us one of our few glimpses of the condition of the
great African city in the century and a half that elapsed between her
liberation from the yoke of the Vandals and her conquest by the sword-preachers
of Islam. One of the body-servants of Evantius saw in
the market-place some piece of merchandise which caught his fancy, and
following ‘the simple plan,' laid hold of it and took it with him to the inn
where the ambassadors were lodging. The shopkeeper, thus defrauded of his
goods, demanded daily, with ever more clamorous entreaties, the return of his
property, and at length, one day, meeting the servant in the street, laid hold
of his raiment and said, ‘I will not let you go till you have returned that
which you stole from me'. At this the Frank drew his sword and slew the
importunate creditor. He then returned to the inn, but gave no hint to any of
his companions of what he had done. The chief magistrate of the city1, when he
heard of the murder, collected his soldiers and some of the common people, whom
he hastily armed, and went at their head to the inn where the ambassadors were
then enjoying their siesta after the midday meal. Hearing an uproar the Franks
looked out and were at once called upon by the city magistrate to come forth
and assist in the investigation into an act of homicide which had just been
committed. Perplexed and alarmed, they asked for some security for their lives
before laying down their arms. Meanwhile the angry and excited mob began to
rush into the house. First Bodigisil, and then Evantius stepped out and were slain at the inn-door. Then Grippo,
fully armed and at the head of his retainers, sallied forth and said, ‘What the
crime may be, about which you say that you are come to enquire, I know not; but
here are my two colleagues, who were sent on an embassy to the Emperor, slain
by the swords of your citizens. We came for peace and for the common benefit of
your state and ours; but now there will never be peace between our kings and
your Emperor. I call God to witness of your crime, and He will judge between us
and you'. At this the Carthaginian levy was dismissed, and the Prefect of the
city, coming to Grippo's lodging, endeavoured to soothe him and began again to
discuss the old question of the formalities which were to be observed in their
visit to the Imperial court.
The Carthaginian outrages on the Frankish embassy had at least the
effect of making the surviving ambassador's work easier at Constantinople. The
Emperor laid aside his usual haughty isolation of manner, received Grippo as an
honoured guest, and promised that ample satisfaction should be made to his
master for the wound given to his dignity by the outrages at Carthage. In fact,
however, this ‘ample satisfaction' consisted in arresting, some months later,
twelve men who were said to have been guilty of the murder, and sending them
bound to the court of Childebert, who was told that he might put them to death
if he thought fit, or else allow them to redeem their lives at the rate of 300
aurei apiece. The Frankish king took reasonable objection to this mode of
settling the dispute. ‘There was no proof that these twelve men had anything to
do with the murder. They might be slaves of some Greek courtier, who allowed
them to be cheaply sacrificed in this manner, while the king's ambassadors, who
had been slain at Carthage, were men of noble birth'. Grippo too, who was
standing by, said, ‘The Prefect of that city collected two or three thousand
men, came against us, and killed my colleagues. Ay, and he would have killed me
too, if I had not known how to defend myself like a man. If I go to the place
myself, I can pick out the men who did the deed, on whom your master will have
to take vengeance, if he desires peace as much as he professes to desire it'.
King Childebert gave the word : the captives were allowed to depart, and, with
provoking reticence, the historian never tells us how the affair ended.
This last incident, however, of the sham satisfaction for the outrage
belongs to the later stages of the business. On the return of Grippo, in the
early months of 590, with his first friendly message from the Emperor, and his
promise of ample justice on the authors of the outrage, Childebert—so mighty
were still a few courteous words from the great Roman Emperor to a barbarian
king—at once prepared an army, the fourth that he had put in the field for the
invasion of Italy.
Twenty dukes were the officers of this new army, acting under three
leaders, whom we should call generals of division, and whose names were Audovald, Olo and Chedin. All
three divisions of the army, according to the usual Frankish custom, robbed and
murdered to their hearts' content, long ere they passed the frontiers of their
own land, beginning this work of devastation in the immediate neighbourhood of
Metz.
When they had crossed the Alps, Audovald with
seven1 dukes encamped over against Milan. Olo with no ducal subordinate marched
against Bellinzona. Chedin,
with thirteen dukes, descending, the valley of the Adige, threatened Verona.
Olo, approaching incautiously too near to the walls of Bellinzona, was pierced in the breast by a javelin and died
of the wound. His soldiers probably joined the main body under Audovald, who was pressing the siege of Milan. The Franks,
ravaging the country in all directions, found themselves continually liable to
be cut off by detachments of the Lombard army, issuing forth from the
fortresses, in which they had Audovald taken refuge.
At length, however, the two hosts were drawn up in battle array on the western
side of Lake Lugano, where the small but deep stream of the Tresa issues from
the lake, carrying its waters to the broader expanse of Maggiore. On the banks
of this stream stood a Lombard warrior, armed with helmet and breastplate, and
brandishing a spear, who shouted, ‘This day will it appear to which side God
will grant the victory'. A few of the Franks crossed the stream, set upon the
Lombard champion and overthrew him, whereupon his countrymen, who had
apparently staked all their hopes on the rude ordeal of this unequal combat,
took to flight. The Franks then crossed the stream, but the operation occupied
some time, and when they entered the Lombard camp they found nothing there but
the ovens and the marks of the tent-poles.
One cause of the discouragement and flight of the Lombard army was
doubtless the near approach of the Exarch's forces, which seemed to be on the
point of effecting a junction with the Franks. Messengers arrived from the
Imperial camp to announce this approach to Audovald,
and to say that they hoped in three days' time to reach the camp of their
allies. The signal of their arrival on the scene was to be the wreaths of smoke
arising from a certain villa on the hill to which the envoys pointed and which
they promised to set on fire. For six days the Franks waited, but no smoke was
seen to arise from the doomed villa. Apparently the failure to effect this
junction was the death-blow to the hopes of the western division, and they
returned home at the end of the sixth day.
In the north-east, Chedin, with his thirteen
dukes, took five border-fortresses in the Tridentine duchy, from the
inhabitants of which he received oaths of fidelity to King Childebert,
permanently annexing, or rather restoring, the surrounding territory to the
Austrasian kingdom. He also took ten towns or villages in the valley of the
Adige, two in the Valsugana, and one in the immediate
neighbourhood of Verona. Verona itself saw the Frankish host encamped beneath
its walls, but apparently resisted the siege with success, if any regular siege
there were.
The fortress of Verruca, erected, or at any rate greatly strengthened,
by Theodoric the Ostrogoth, was saved by the intercession of two bishops,
Ingenuinus of Seben and Agnellus of Trient, and the inhabitants were permitted to
redeem themselves at rates varying from one to 600 solidi. From all the
conquered towns a long train of captives was carried back into Gaul, though in
many cases their surrender had been obtained by the solemn oath of the
generals, that the liberty and property as well as the lives of the citizens
should be spared. In fact, to any one who studies the obscure notices which we
possess of this campaign, it will be clear that the Franks, burning, murdering
and pillaging, were more terrible to the miserable inhabitants of Italy than
even the Lombards themselves.
But now, as so often before and since, the climate of Italy, especially
her climate in the later months of summer, proved the best friend to her
afflicted inhabitants. The terrible deluges of 589 were succeeded by pestilence
in the following year, pestilence which carried off the venerable Pope Pelagius
II, and which, in the form of dysentery, so terribly wasted the invading army
that Chedin, as well as Audovald,
found himself obliged to abandon the campaign.
After three months of destructive wandering over Return the plains of
northern Italy, the whole Frankish army returned into its own country, having
practically accomplished nothing. It had not been able to force the Lombards to
fight, for they had remained behind the walls of their fortresses. It had not,
as it once hoped to do, captured Authari himself, for he had tarried in his
strongly fortified capital of Pavia. It had not succeeded in collecting great
spoil, for the soldiers had to sell their clothes and even their arms for
bread, before they reached their native land. Plague-stricken, ragged and
desperate, the great army of the Twenty Dukes disappeared from the soil of
Italy.
The Byzantine version of this campaign of 590—agreeing as to the main
result, but differing as to the cause of the failure—was given by the Exarch of
Italy, who wrote to Childebert two letters (still extant) bitterly complaining
of the incapacity of the Franks in war, and of their cruel conduct towards the
Roman provincials. The following are the most important sentences in these
letters:—
“We heard from your messenger, the Vir Magnificus,
Andreas, how earnestly your Glory desired to stop the effusion of Christian
blood and to liberate Italy from the unspeakable Lombards. We heard and
reported to the most clement Emperor and to his Augusta (your most serene
sister) that for this purpose you had ordered the most flourishing army of the
Franks to descend into Italy.
“Even before their arrival God gave us, in answer to your prayers, the
cities of Modena, Altino and Mantua, which we won in fight and beat down their
walls, hastening as we did to prevent the unspeakable ones from attacking the
Franks before our arrival1.
“Then we heard that the Vir Magnificus (your
general) Chedin was encamped with 2000 men near the
city of Verona, and had sent an ambassador to Authari with some talk about
terms of peace. That king had shut himself up in Ticinum;
the other dukes and all their armies had sought the shelter of divers
fortresses; we saw ourselves on the point of joining the Roman army to the
20,000 of Chedin, supporting them by our cutters on
the river, besieging Ticinum and taking captive king
Authari, whose capture would have been the greatest prize of victory. While we
were urging Chedin to this course and anxiously
consulting your dukes as to each step to be taken against God's enemies and
ours, what was our amazement to find that they, without any consultation with
us, had made a ten months' truce with the Lombards, abandoned the opportunities
for booty, and marched suddenly out of the country.
“If they had only had a little patience, today Italy would be found free
from the hateful race, and all the wealth of the unspeakable Authari would have
been brought into your treasury; for the campaign had reached such a point that
the Lombards did not consider themselves safe from the Franks even behind the
walls of their cities.
“For ourselves (besides the previously mentioned successes) Parma,
Rhegium and Placentia were promptly surrendered by their dukes to the Holy
Roman Republic, when we marched to besiege these cities. We received their sons
as hostages, returned to Ravenna, and marched into the province of Istria
against our enemy Grasulf. His son, the magnificent Duke, Gisulf, wishing to
show himself a better man than his father, came with his nobles and his entire
army, and submitted himself to the Holy Republic. The glorious patrician, Nordulf, having come by the favour of our Lords into Italy,
gathered his men together again and in concert with the glorious Osso and his
Roman army recovered several cities.
“Now, as we know that your anger is kindled by the return of your
generals, leaving their mission unaccomplished, we pray you to send speedily
other generals, more worthy of your trust, who may fulfil the promises made by
you and your pious ancestors. Let them come at such a time that they may find
all the enemy's harvests in the field. Tell them to inform us by what routes
and at what dates we may expect them. And, above all things, we hope that when,
with good luck, the Frankish army descends from the Alps, the Romans, on whose
behalf we ask your aid, may not be subjected to pillage and captivity; that you
will liberate those who have been already carried off into bondage; and that
you will direct your generals not to bum our workshops, so that it may be
clearly seen that it is a Christian nation which has come to the defence of
Italy'.”
There is much which, owing to our imperfect knowledge of persons and
events, is obscure in these letters of the Exarch, but we can see in them quite
enough of bitterness and misunderstanding to account for the failure of the
coalition to accomplish its full purpose and drive the Lombards out of Italy.
At the same time it is clear that the Lombards were in great danger, and that
Authari had a narrow escape of being carried in chains to the Austrasian
capital and visiting the court of Childebert, not as brother-in-law, but as
captive. A considerable tract of country on the southern bank of the Po was
recovered for the Empire; but this was won more through the disloyalty of the
Lombard dukes—perhaps weary of the strict rule of Authari—than by any bravery
of the Byzantine soldiers. Still, a hundred miles of the great Aemilian way had
been cleared from the presence of the invader; the frontier of the Empire had
been pushed up to within twenty miles of the Lombard capital, and the delusive
hope of once more extending the dominions of ‘the Republic,’ from the Adriatic
to the Gulf of Genoa, floated before the eyes of the Imperial governor.
Before the summer of 590 was ended, Authari sent an embassy first to the
king of Burgundy and then to the king of Austrasia, praying, in somewhat humble
fashion, for peace and alliance with the nation of the Franks. The ambassadors
were courteously received by Guntram and terms of peace between the Lombards
and the Franks of Burgundy were agreed upon. They were still at the court of
Childebert when they heard the unexpected tidings of their master's death.
King Authari died at Pavia on the 5th of September, 590, being still in
the prime of youthful manhood and having reigned less than seven years. His
death was by some attributed to poison, but, as pestilence was ravaging Italy
in that year, and he had been living for months in the unwholesome atmosphere
of a blockaded city, it seems more reasonable to attribute the event to natural
causes, especially as no author and no motive is suggested for the crime.
Though the last few months of Authari’s reign
were clouded by adversity, it is evident that he guided the fortunes of the
Lombard state with vigour and success. Some of the constitutional changes
connected with his assumption of royal power, and especially with that
arrangement whereby the Lombard dukes surrendered half of their territory in
order to endow the new kingdom with a royal domain, are reserved for
consideration in a later chapter.
