THE STATE Scandinavian Sagas sing their exploits. The devotion of sworn brothers is the theme of the most beautiful of these epical songs; whereas the Church and the rising kings, representatives of reappearing Byzantine or Roman law, hurl against. them anathemas and decrees which happily remain ineffectual. The whole history of that period loses its significance, and becomes incomprehensible, if we do not take into account these unions of brothers and sisters that spring up everywhere to satisfy the multiple nc~ds of the economic and emotional life of man. Nt;vertheless, clouds gather on the horizon. Other unions-those of ruling minorities-are formed; and they endeavour, little by little, to transform these free men into serfs and subjects. Rome is dead, but its tradition revives; and the Christian Church, haunted by Oriental theocratic visions, gives its powerful support to the new powers that seek to constitute themselves. Far from being the sanguinary beast that he is represented in order to prove the necessity of ruling over him, man has always loved tranquility and peace. He fights rather from necessity than ferocity, and prefers his cattle and his land to the profession of arms. Therefore, hardly had the great migration of barbarians begun to abate, hardly had hordes and tribes more or less cantoned themselves on their respective lands, than we see the care of the defence of territory against new waves of immigrants confided to a man who engages a small band of adventurers, men hardened in wars, or brigands, to be his followers; while the great mass raises cattle or cultivates the soil. This· defender soon begins to amass wealth. He gives a horse and armour (very dear at that time) to the poor man, and reduces him to servitude; he begins to conquer the germ of military power. On the other hand, little by little, tradition, which constituted law in those times, is forgotten by the masses. There hardly remains an old man who keeps in his memory the verses and songs which tell of the "precedents," of which customary law consists, and recites them before the commune on great festival days. Little by little, some families made a speciality, transmitted from father to son, of retaining these songs and verses in their memory and of preserving "the law" in its purity. To them villagers apply to judge differences in intricate cases, especially when two villages or confederations refuse to accept the decisions of arbitrators taken from their midst. The germ of princely or royal authority is already sown in these families; and the more I study the institutions of that time, the more I see that the knowledge of customary law did far more to constitute that authority than the power of the sword. Man allowed himself to be enslaved far more by his desire to "punish according to law" than by direct military conquest. Gradually the first "concentration of powers," the first mutual insiirance for domination-that of the judge and the military chief17 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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