A Source Book of Mediaeval History Part 11

Verily in delight shall the righteous dwell; And verily the wicked in h.e.l.l [-Fire]; They shall be burnt at it on the day of doom, And they shall not be hidden from it.

And what shall teach thee what the Day of Judgment is?

Again: What shall teach thee what is the Day of Judgment?

_It is_ a day when one soul shall be powerless for another soul; and all on that day shall be in the hands of G.o.d.

[Sidenote: The reward of the righteous]

When one blast shall be blown on the trumpet, And the earth shall be raised and the mountains, and be broken to dust with one breaking, On that day the Calamity shall come to pa.s.s: And the heavens shall cleave asunder, being frail on that day, And the angels on the sides thereof; and over them on that day eight _of the angels_ shall bear the throne of thy Lord.

On that day ye shall be presented _for the reckoning_; none of your secrets shall be hidden.

And as to him who shall have his book[108] given to him in his right hand, he shall say, 'Take ye, read my book;'

Verily I was sure I should come to my reckoning.

And his [shall be] a pleasant life In a lofty garden, Whose cl.u.s.ters [shall be] near at hand.

'Eat ye and drink with benefit on account of that which ye paid beforehand in the past days.'

[Sidenote: The fate of the wicked]

But as to him who shall have his book given to him in his left hand, he shall say, 'O would that I had not had my book given to me, Nor known what [was] my reckoning!

O would that _my death_ had been the ending _of me_!

My wealth hath not profited me!

My power is pa.s.sed from me!'

'Take him and chain him, Then cast him into h.e.l.l to be burnt, Then in a chain of seventy cubits bind him: For he believed not in G.o.d, the Great, Nor urged to feed the poor; Therefore he shall not have here this day a friend, Nor any food save filth Which none but the sinners shall eat.'

[Sidenote: "The preceders"]

When the Calamity shall come to pa.s.s There shall not be _a soul_ that will deny its happening, [It will be] an abaser _of some_, an exalter _of others_; When the earth shall be shaken with a _violent_ shaking, And the mountains shall be crumbled with a violent crumbling, And shall become fine dust scattered abroad; And ye shall be three cla.s.ses.[109]

And the people of the right hand, what shall be the people of the right hand!

And the people of the left hand, what the people of the left hand!

And the Preceders, the Preceders![110]

These [shall be] the brought-nigh [unto G.o.d]

In the gardens of delight,-- A crowd of the former generations, And a few of the latter generations, Upon inwrought couches, Reclining thereon, face to face.

Youths ever-young shall go unto them round about With goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine, Their [heads] shall ache not with it, neither shall they be drunken; And with fruits of the [sorts] which they shall choose, And the flesh of birds of the [kinds] which they shall desire.

And damsels with eyes like pearls laid up _We will give them_ as a reward for that which they have done.

Therein shall they hear no vain discourse nor accusation of sin, But [only] the saying, 'Peace! Peace!'

[Sidenote: The pleasures of paradise]

And the people of the right hand--what [shall be] the people of the right hand!

[They shall dwell] among lote-trees without thorns And bananas loaded with fruit, And a shade _ever-spread_, And water _ever_-flowing, And fruits abundant Unstayed and unforbidden,[111]

And couches raised.[112]

Verily we have created them[113] by a [peculiar] creation, And have made them virgins, Beloved of their husbands, of equal age [with them], For the people of the right hand, A crowd of the former generations And a crowd of the latter generations.

[Sidenote: The torments of h.e.l.l]

And the people of the left hand--what [shall be] the people of the left hand!

[They shall dwell] amidst burning wind and scalding water, And a shade of blackest smoke, Not cool and not grateful.

For before this they were blest with worldly goods, And they persisted in heinous sin, And said, 'When we shall have died and become dust and bones, shall we indeed be raised to life, And our fathers the former generations?'

Say, verily the former and the latter generations Shall be gathered together for the appointed time of a known day.

Then ye, O ye erring, belying [people], Shall surely eat of the tree of Ez-Zakkoom,[114]

And fill therewith [your] stomachs, And drink thereon boiling water, And ye shall drink as thirsty camels drink.-- This [shall be] their entertainment on the day of retribution.

FOOTNOTES:

[103] This prayer of the Mohammedans corresponds in a way to the Lord's Prayer of Christian peoples. It is recited several times in each of the five daily prayers, and on numerous other occasions.

[104] The pet.i.tion is for guidance in the "right way" of the Mohammedan, marked out in the Koran. By those with whom G.o.d is "wroth," and by the "erring," is meant primarily the Jews. Mohammed regarded the Jews and Christians as having corrupted the true religion.

[105] "This chapter is held in particular veneration by the Mohammedans and is declared, by a tradition of their prophet, to be equal in value to a third part of the whole Koran."--Sale, quoted in Lane, _Selections from the Kur-an_, p. 5.

[106] This pa.s.sage, known as the "throne verse," is regarded by Mohammedans as one of the most precious in the Koran and is often recited at the end of the five daily prayers. It is sometimes engraved on a precious stone or an ornament of gold and worn as an amulet.

[107] These are all to be signs of the day of judgment.

[108] The record of his deeds during life on earth.

[109] The three cla.s.ses are: (1) the "preceeders," (2) the people of the right hand, i.e., the good, and (3) the people of the left hand, i.e., the evil. The future state of each of the three is described in the lines that follow.

[110] "Either the first converts to Mohammedanism, or the prophets, who were the respective leaders of their people, or any persons who have been eminent examples of piety and virtue, may be here intended.

The original words literally rendered are, _The Leaders, The Leaders_: which repet.i.tion, as some suppose, was designed to express the dignity of these persons and the certainty of their future glory and happiness."--Sale, quoted in Wherry, _Comprehensive Commentary on the Qur-an_, Vol. IV., pp. 109-110.

[111] The luxuries of paradise--the flowing rivers, the fragrant flowers, the delicious fruits--are sharply contrasted with the conditions of desert life most familiar to Mohammed's early converts.

Such a description of the land of the blessed must have appealed strongly to the imaginative Arabs. It should be said that in the modern Mohammedan idea of heaven the spiritual element has a rather more prominent place.

[112] Lofty beds.

[113] The "damsels of paradise."

[114] A scrubby bush bearing fruit like almonds, and extremely bitter.

It was familiar to Arabs and hence was made to stand as a type of the tree whose fruit the wicked must eat in the lower world.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE CAROLINGIAN DYNASTY OF FRANKISH KINGS

14. Pepin the Short Takes the t.i.tle of King (751)

During the seventh and eighth centuries the Merovingian line of Frankish kings degenerated to a condition of weakness both pitiable and ridiculous. As the royal family became less worthy, the powers of government gradually slipped from its hands into those of a series of ministers commonly known by the t.i.tle of Mayor of the Palace (_Maior Domus_). The most ill.u.s.trious of these uncrowned sovereigns was Charles Martel, the victor over the Saracens near Poitiers, in whose time the Frankish throne for four years had no occupant at all. Martel contrived to make his peculiar office hereditary, and at his death in 741 left it to be filled jointly by his two elder sons, Karlmann and Pepin the Short. They decided that it would be to their interest to keep up the show of Merovingian royalty a little longer and in 743 allowed Childeric III. to mount the throne--a weakling destined to be the last of his family to wear the Frankish crown. Four years later Karlmann renounced his office and withdrew to the monastery of Monte Ca.s.sino, southeast of Rome, leaving Pepin sole "mayor" and the only real ruler of the Franks. Before many more years had pa.s.sed, the utter uselessness of keeping up a royal line whose members were notoriously unfit to govern had impressed itself upon the nation to such an extent that when Pepin proceeded to put young Childeric in a monastery and take the t.i.tle of king for himself, n.o.body offered the slightest objection. The sanction of the Pope was obtained for the act because Pepin thought that his course would thus be made to appear less like an outright usurpation. The Pope's reward came four years later when Pepin bestowed upon him the lands in northern and central Italy which eventually const.i.tuted, in the main, the so-called States of the Church. In later times, after the reign of Pepin's famous son Charlemagne, the new dynasty established by Pepin's elevation to the throne came to be known as the Carolingian (from _Karolus_, or Charles).

The following account of the change from the Merovingian to the Carolingian line is taken from the so-called _Lesser Annals of Lorsch_. At the monastery of Lorsch, as at nearly every other such place in the Middle Ages, records or "annals" of one sort or another were pretty regularly kept. They were often very inaccurate and their writers had a curious way of filling up s.p.a.ce with matters of little importance, but sometimes, as in the present instance, we can get from them some very interesting information. The monastery of Lorsch was about twelve miles distant from Heidelberg, in southern Germany.

Source--_Annales Laurissenses Minores_ ["Lesser Annals of Lorsch"]. Text in _Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores_ (Pertz ed.), Vol. I., p. 116.

In the year 750[115] of the Lord's incarnation Pepin sent amba.s.sadors to Rome to Pope Zacharias,[116] to inquire concerning the kings of the Franks who, though they were of the royal line and were called kings, had no power in the kingdom, except that charters and privileges were drawn up in their names. They had absolutely no kingly authority, but did whatever the Major Domus of the Franks desired.[117] But on the first day of March in the Campus Martius,[118] according to ancient custom, gifts were offered to these kings by the people, and the king himself sat in the royal seat with the army standing round him and the Major Domus in his presence, and he commanded on that day whatever was decreed by the Franks; but on all other days thenceforward he remained quietly at home. Pope Zacharias, therefore, in the exercise of his apostolic authority, replied to their inquiry that it seemed to him better and more expedient that the man who held power in the kingdom should be called king and be king, rather than he who falsely bore that name. Therefore the aforesaid pope commanded the king and people of the Franks that Pepin, who was exercising royal power, should be called king, and should be established on the throne. This was therefore done by the anointing of the holy archbishop Boniface in the city of Soissons. Pepin was proclaimed king, and Childeric, who was falsely called king, was shaved and sent into a monastery.

FOOTNOTES: