Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/7



HE present volume of the Cambridge Medieval History covers the stormy period of about three hundred years from Justinian to Charles the Great inclusive. It is a time little known to the general reader, and even students of history in this country seldom turn their attention to any part of it but the Conversion of the English. Hence, English books are scarce—Dr Hodgkin’s Italy and her Invaders is the brilliant exception which proves the rule—and the editors have had to rely more on foreign scholars than in the former volume. Some indeed of the chapters treat of subjects on which very little has ever been written in English, such as the Visigoths in Spain, the organisation of Imperial Italy and Africa, the Saracen invasions of Sicily and Italy, and the early history and expansion of the Slavs.

Professor Diehl begins with two chapters on Justinian, one dealing with the conquest of Africa and Italy by Belisarius and Narses, and the imperial restoration in the West, the other devoted to the administration in the East—the Empress Theodora and her influence, Justinian’s buildings and diplomacy, and government civil and ecclesiastical. The city of Constantinople is reserved for the same writer in Volume IV. Dr Roby follows, with a general survey of Roman Law, of its history and growth, and of its completion by the legislation of Justinian. A survey of this kind has hardly been attempted since the famous forty-fourth chapter of Gibbon. Then Professor Pfister takes up the story of the Franks at the accession of Clovis, where he left it in the first volume, and traces the growth and decline of the Merovingian kingdom to the deposition of the last of the rois fainéants. He then follows it up with another chapter on the political and social institutions of Gaul in Merovingian times—the King, the Mayor of the Palace, the Bishop, the origin of the benefice, the state of literature and commerce. In the next chapter we turn with pr Altamira to the Visigoths in Spain, and follow their stormy history from the defeat at Vouglé, through the Councils of Toledo, to the times of Count Julian and the Saracen Conquest, and to some further discussion of Gothic law. The next writer is Dr Hartmann, who traces the early history of the Lombards and their settlement in Italy, their conversion and the story of Theodelinda. After her come Rothari and Grimoald, and the great king Liutprand, and parallel with the main narrative is traced the history of the duchies