The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III: A.D. 1185 to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453: 003 (Modern Library) by Edward Gibbon

Author:Edward Gibbon [Gibbon, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780679641483
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2000-10-23T06:00:00+00:00

Notes for Chapter LVIII

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1 Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date earlier than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humour of those students, in the university of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders.

2 She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupræcia, Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a Russian prince, and the widow of a Margrave of Brandenburg.

3 Guibert himself, a Frenchman, praises the piety and valour of the French nation, the author and example of the crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis, et nitida.—–Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus? He owns, however, that the vivacity of the French degenerates into petulance among foreigners, and vain loquaciousness.

4 John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was Archbishop of Rheims, A.D. 773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed in his name by a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and such was the idea of ecclesiastical merit that he describes himself as a fighting and drinking priest! Yet the book of lies was pronounced authentic by Pope Calixtus II. (A.D. 1122), and is respectfully quoted by the abbot Suger, in the great Chronicles of St. Denys.

5 In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the first Capetians were scarcely allowed a feudal supremacy. On all sides, Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain, Burgundy, Lorraine, and Flanders contracted the name and limits of the proper France.

6 These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of Aquitain, were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city.

7 The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first invented in Aquitain, A.D. 1032; blamed by some bishops as an occasion of perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to their privileges.

8 Dcus vult, Deus vult! was the pure acclamation of the clergy who understood Latin. By the illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom, it was corrupted to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt. Ducange, in his preface, produces a very difficult specimen of the dialect of Rovergue, A.D. 1100, very near, both in time and place, to the council of Clermont.

9 Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk, or cloth, sewed on their garments. In the first crusade, all were red; in the third, the French alone preserved that colour, while green crosses were adopted by the Flemings, and white by the English. Yet in England the red ever appears the favourite, and, as it were, the national, colour of our military ensigns and uniforms.

10 If the reader will turn to the first scene of the First Part of Henry IV., he will see in the text of Shakespeare the natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in the notes of Dr. Johnson the workings of a bigoted

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