ed his disapproval, and even dictated a work
against it--the Carolinian books. The pope was therefore placed in a
singular dilemma, for not only had image-worship been restored at
Constantinople, and the original cause of the dispute removed, but the
new protector, Charlemagne, had himself embraced iconoclasm. However, it
was not without reason that the pope at this time avoided the
discussion, for a profitable sale of bones and relics, said to be those
of saints but in reality obtained from the catacombs of Rome, had
arisen. To the barbarian people of the north these gloomy objects proved
more acceptable than images of wood, and the traffic, though
contemptible, was more honourable than the slave-trade in vassals and
peasant children which had been carried on with Jews and Mohammedans.
Like all the great statesmen of antiquity, who were unable to comprehend
the possibility of a highly civilized society without the existence of
slavery, Charlemagne accepted that unfortunate condition as a political
necessity, and attempted to draw from it as much benefit as it was
capable of yielding to the state. From certain classes of slaves he
appointed, by a system of apprenticeship, those who should be devoted to
the mechanical arts and to trade. It was, however, slavery and warfare
which, during his own life, by making the possession of property among
small proprietors an absolute disadvantage, prepared the way for that
rapid dissolution of his empire so quickly occurring after his death.

[Sidenote: The European slave-trade.]

Yet, though Charlemagne thus accepted the existence of slavery as a
necessary political evil, the evidences are not wanting that he was
desirous to check its abuses wherever he could. When the Italian dukes
accused Pope Adrian of selling his vassals as slaves to the Saracens,
Charlemagne made inquiry into the matter, and, finding that transactions
of the kind had occurred in the port of Civita Vecchia, though he did
not choose to have so infamous a scandal made public, he ever afterwards
withdrew his countenance from that pope. At that time a very extensive
child slave-trade was carried on with the Saracens through the medium of
the Jews, ecclesiastics as well as barons selling the children of their
serfs.

[Sidenote: Improvements of the physical state of the people.]

[Sidenote: State of the clergy.]

Though he never succeeded in learning how to write, no one appreciated
better than Charlemagne the v