Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/156

I2O Readings in European History is better than the world and everything that is in it : and verily the standing of one of you in the line of battle is better than supererogatory prayers performed in your house for sixty years. II. How PIPPIN, THE FIRST OF THE CAROLINGIAN LINE, BECAME KING OF FRANCE The Franks in olden times were wont to choose their kings from the family of the Merovingians. This royal line is con- sidered to have come to an end in the person of Childeric III, who was deposed from the throne by command of Stephen, the Roman pontiff; his long hair was cut off and he was thrust into a monastery. Although the line of the Merovingians actually ended with Childeric, it had nevertheless for some time previously been so utterly wanting in power that it had displayed no mark of royalty except the empty kingly title. All the resources and power of the kingdom had passed into the control of the prefects of the palace, who were called the "mayors of the palace," l and who employed the supreme authority. Nothing was left to the king. He had to con- tent himself with his royal title, his flowing locks, and long beard. Seated in a chair of state, he was wont to display an appearance of power by receiving foreign ambassadors on their arrival, and, on their departure, giving them, as if on his own authority, those answers which he had been taught or commanded to give. Thus, except for his empty title, and an uncertain allow- ance for his subsistence, which the prefect of the palace used to furnish at his pleasure, there was nothing that the king could call his own, unless it were the income from a single farm, and that a very small one, where he made his home, and where such servants as were needful to wait on him con- stituted his scanty household. When he went anywhere he traveled in a wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen, with a rustic 1 Maiores domus.