CHAPTER I

Summary

Charles derived the title of his Empire from Rome, but the material which filled the ancient form had become essentially Teutonic; and in calling the New Empire the Germanic-Roman we but give expression to the alliance of those opposing elements on which the development of Europe rested. One nationality continued the history of mankind as an unbroken inheritance ; it handed the possessions of the ancient civilization, together with the ideas of Christianity, on to posterity;–the other received and resuscitated or developed both civilization and religion. Rome had drawn the German world to herself. The Roman Church had subdued barbarism, had brought nations under a social system, and lastly, had united them to a common ecclesiastical-political principle, which had its seat in the Eternal City. On Byzantium nowseemed to be laid the task of accomplishing the like work for the Slav nations; the task, however, remained unfulfilled, because the Byzantine Empire lacked the creative social principle possessed by the Roman Church, and also because the Slav races,unfi tted for the higher ideas of the State and of civilization, remained incapable of receiving the inheritance of Hellenic culture. The thought of a Slavic-Greek Empire still lingers in Russia, not, however, as the national object of an imperfect development, but rather as the consciousness of a neglected historic opportunity which it is now no longer possible to revive.