An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton.

  • Emerton, Ephraim, 1851-1935.
Date:
[1888], ©1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of the Middle Ages (375-814) / by Ephraim Emerton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

    97/320 (page 63)
    leys of the Rhone and SaSne, we hear of the Franks as a great nation, living along the lower Rhine, from about where Cologne now is to near the river's mouth. The Roman government in Gaul had used them as allies to defend the Rhine border, and we They advance meet many single Franks among the generals gradually. and councillors of the later Empire. The Franks did not, like their kinsmen, the Goths, Vandals, and Lom- bards, leave their own country, and go roaming over the world in search of new lands. They held what they had, and kept adding more to it, and this is prob- ably the chief reason why they got the better of the rest. In all the other kingdoms, the difference between the German and the Roman population was the hardest thing to manage, but the rule of the Franks was always in great part over people of pure German blood, living on land which had been for centuries Frankish land. We find the nation in two great divisions, — the Saliaus, living near the mouth of the Rhine ; The Salian and the Ripuarians, farther up the river, near Franks. Cologne. Our chief interest is in the Salian Franks, who, long before the time of their great conquest in Gaul, had been spreading out toward the south and west, passing the rivers Meuse, Scheldt, and Somme. We know little about these early movements; but when, in the year 486, the Salian Franks begin an active warfare against a feeble Roman garrison south of the Somme, they are a fully developed nation like the Goths or Lombards, with a well-defined legal sys- tem, the famous Salic law, and with a strong, well- recognized royal power in the hands of the Merovingian family. Under their king, Clovis (Chlodoweg, Louis),