CHARLES THE GREAT AND THE EMPIRE
Survival of the Theory of the Empire in Western Europe, and especially
in Italy—Its influence—Troubles of Pope Leo III.—He crowns Charles
on Christmas Day 800—Consequences, immediate and remote, of the
coronation—The Papacy and the Empire—Charles as administrator and
legislator—His encouragement of Literature, Architecture, and
Science—His later years and death.
While narrating the never-ending wars of the great king of the Franks,
we have barely found time to mention the internal changes which he
wrought in the condition and constitution of his realms. Of these the
first and foremost was his introduction of a new political theory into
the government of Western Christendom, when he caused himself to be
crowned emperor by Pope Leo III. in the memorable year 800.
We have had occasion to remark in an earlier chapter that the theory of
the universal dominion of the Roman Empire had long survived the
extinction of any real power of the emperors in most of the countries of
Western Europe. Theodoric the Ostrogoth and Chlodovech the Frank had
been proud to acknowledge themselves as the first subjects of the
Constantinopolitan Caesar, and to receive from his hands high-sounding
titles and robes of honour. Till the middle of the sixth century Gaul,
Spain, and Italy had all owned a nominal allegiance to the empire, and
their homage had only been denied when Justinian by his bold attempt to
recover the whole of the West had forced the Teutonic kings to take arms
against him in their own defence. Then Baduila, Leovigild, and
Theudebert had disclaimed their allegiance, and banished the imperial
name from their coins and their charters. The last practical traces of
the old Roman connection had been lost in Spain when the soldiers of
Heraclius were driven out by Swinthila (623),[50] and in Gaul when the
encouragement and the subsidies of Maurice had failed to sustain the
pretender Gundovald (585).[51] Yet there still lingered on in the minds
of the educated classes a memory of the ancient empire; curious turns of
expression in chroniclers of the seventh century often show us that they
still remembered the old theory of the world-wide rule of Rome. A
Spanish chronicler writing in the seventh century can still call the
East Roman armies ‘the soldiers of the _respublica_.’ Subjects of the
Frankish kings in Gaul still dated their letters by Constantinopolitan
indictions.
Footnote 50:
See page 224.
Footnote 51:
See page 170.
In Italy, of course, the tradition of the unity of Christendom under the
emperors was in no danger of being forgotten. Appeals to the ancient
temporal and spiritual supremacy of Rome were the most powerful items in
the Pope’s stock of arguments, when a Gregory or a Zacharias stated his
pretensions to patriarchal authority in the West, or denounced the
wickedness of the intrusive Lombard. The personal ambition of the Popes
was always leading them to indulge in fond reminiscences of the ancient
glories of the Empire. The vanity of the degenerate populace of Rome
sometimes found vent in futile claims that they, ‘the Roman senate and
people,’ really were the heirs of Augustus and Constantine, while the
Caesar at Constantinople was nothing more than a mere Greek. [Sidenote:
The Empire and the West.] When, by the rupture between Leo the Isaurian
and Pope Gregory II., Rome practically passed out of the hands of the
Eastern Augustus, it was easy enough for an Italian to maintain that
Constantine Copronymus or Leo the Khazar had no longer any true right to
use the Roman Imperial title. And the Italian malcontent would add, not,
of course, that Rome had ceased to form part of the Roman Empire, but
that the title of emperor had passed away from the heretical Isaurian
house, and fallen into abeyance, while the empire itself still existed,
for its cessation had grown to be inconceivable to the Italian mind.
The Italians, and to a less extent the Franks, were sorely puzzled by
the long continuance of the anomalous condition of affairs, when for
sixty years the titular emperors had remained heretics, and had failed
to maintain their hold on Rome. Nor was the position improved when the
Eastern Empire relapsed into orthodoxy indeed, but at the same time
passed into the hands of an empress-regnant, a thing repugnant to all
those who remembered the ancient Roman horror of a woman’s reign. Irene
herself, too, had obtained the crown by such a series of crimes against
her son, that not merely constitutional jurists, but all right-minded
men shrank, in spite of her extreme orthodoxy, from the idea of
recognising in her the legitimate ruler of Rome.
More than once during the long quarrel between the Popes and the
Isaurian emperors there had been some talk of electing a separate
Augustus to bear rule over Roman Italy,—those districts of the peninsula
which were not in the hands of the Lombards. [Sidenote: Tendencies to
separation in Italy.] The scheme had not been carried out, mainly
because the Popes opposed it, but it had not been forgotten. Now that
the greater part of Italy, both Lombard and Roman, was under the rule of
a single king, and one well liked both by the Pope and by the Roman
people, it would have been strange if the idea of completely repudiating
the ignominious dependence of Rome on Constantinople had not been once
more mooted. For as long as there remained but one person bearing the
Imperial style,—the ruler of the East,—the Pope and his Roman and
Italian contemporaries had an uneasy consciousness that their homage
ought still, perhaps, to be paid to that person, Greek and heretic
though he or she might be.
We may suppose that these doubts hardly troubled the Frankish vassals of
Charles the Great, but to his Italian subjects they were a constant
source of vexation of spirit; while practically they were liegemen of
the Frankish king, they were not quite sure whether in theory they might
not still be considered the liegemen of the hated Caesars at
Constantinople.
Such thoughts must have been running through the heads of all the Popes
who held the Roman See from 773 to 800. But it would seem that it was
Pope Leo III. who first bethought him of the easiest way of settling the
situation—to declare the king of the Franks Roman emperor, and not
merely Roman patrician. A barbarian Augustus would be unprecedented, but
not more so than the female ruler of the Empire who now swayed
Constantinople. It was evidently the sight of a woman—and a very wicked
woman—on the Byzantine throne that gave the final impulse to the desire
of the Italians to cut off the last thread of connection with the
Imperial line in the East. Their desire must have been well known to
Charles himself, but it would seem that he for some time shrank from
granting it. Perhaps he feared the responsibilities of the title; more
probably he did not see how it legally could be conferred upon him:
there was no precedent to settle what person or body in the West could
claim to give it, and it was most certain that the court of
Constantinople would utterly refuse to grant it, and would view its
assumption by a ‘barbarian’ king of the West as a gross piece of
insolence.
[Sidenote: Leo III, and Charles.] It would seem that the fervent
gratitude of Pope Leo III. for his deliverance by the hand of Charles
from certain domestic enemies in Rome, was the active cause of the great
ceremony of Christmas Day 800. Leo had been cruelly maltreated by
personal enemies in Rome, the kinsmen of his predecessor Hadrian I.;
they had seized his person and tried to blind him. But he escaped, fled
over the Alps, and took refuge with the great king at his camp near
Paderborn, in Saxony. Charles investigated the dispute between Leo and
his enemies, and he determined that he would come to Rome and decide the
matter in person; meanwhile he sent Leo home under the protection of
some Frankish ambassadors. Late in the year 800 Charles moved down into
Italy, and held a synod at Rome in which he carefully investigated the
conduct of Leo, and pronounced him blameless, while his enemies were
executed or thrown into prison. The Pope then purged himself by an oath
from all the charges that had been made against him, and was reinstated
in his place with much solemnity.
It was only a few days after Charles had thus restored and commended
Leo, that the Pope paid the debt of gratitude by crowning his saviour as
emperor. The details of this all-important ceremony are curious. The
royal and papal courts were thronging St. Peter’s basilica to celebrate
the festival of Christmas. [Sidenote: Charles crowned Emperor.] When the
service was ended, and while the emperor was still kneeling before the
altar in silent prayer, Leo advanced with a diadem in his hand, and
placed it upon the bowed head of the great king, crying, ‘God grant life
and victory to Charles the Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific
Emperor of the Romans.’ Frankish warriors and Italian clergy and
citizens joined in the cry, and all present, including the Pope himself,
bent their knees to Charles as he rose, and saluted him with the fashion
of adoration paid to the ancient emperors.
Charles himself was wont to declare that the ceremony took place without
his consent having been obtained, and that he would never have entered
St. Peter’s that day, if he had known of the Pope’s intention. Yet there
is no doubt that he had seriously taken the matter into consideration
long before; it is probable that Leo in his outburst of gratitude for
his restoration did no more than force Charles’s hand, by sweeping away
by his sudden act the king’s lingering objections to the coronation. He
knew that the act would be hailed with joy both by Frank and Roman, and
that Charles himself was rather doubtful as to the proper form for
assuming the title than opposed to its actual adoption. The way in which
the coronation was viewed by the majority of his subjects may be
gathered from an extract from the Frankish chronicle of Lauresheim:—‘The
name of emperor had ceased among the Greeks, for they were enduring the
reign of a woman, wherefore it seemed good both to Leo the apostolic
Pope, and to the holy fathers (bishops) who were in council with him,
and to all Christian men, that they should hail Charles king of the
Franks as emperor. For he held Rome itself, where the ancient Caesars
always dwelt, and all these other possessions of his own in Italy and
Gaul and Germany. Wherefore, as God had granted him all these dominions,
it seemed just to them that he should accept the imperial title also,
when it was offered him by the consent of all Christendom.’
That there was much to be said against the legality of the assumption by
Charles of his new style, cannot be disputed. Certainly the Pope had no
right to give it: nor had there been a precedent for many centuries for
the conferring of the imperial title by the decayed body of nobles and
the miscellaneous gathering of citizens who might still call themselves
‘the senate and people of Rome.’ Apparently the Pope, when he saluted
Charles as ‘crowned by God,’ claimed that the impulse to hail him by the
great name of emperor, descended by a direct inspiration from heaven
upon the multitude gathered in St. Peter’s. [Sidenote: The meaning of
the coronation.] But such a plea would hardly appeal with much force,
either to the Byzantine Court or to the modern historian. In truth,
there was much to be said for the assumption of the imperial style by
Charles, as recognising an accomplished fact, but little for the
particular forms by which it was carried out. Most especially did the
fact that the Pope seemed to confer the title, by his own act and
impulse, prove of incalculable harm in future years. If the coronation
of the great king had taken some other form, it would have been
impossible for the Popes of later generations to bring forward their
preposterous claim to have the power of giving or taking away the
imperial crown. The successors of Charles would have been spared many a
weary journey to Rome, and many a bitter wrangle with the Holy See, if
there had been a formal election-ceremony in which all the nations of
the West could have taken part, or if Charles, like Napoleon in a later
age, could have placed the crown on his own head instead of receiving it
from the pontiff’s hand.
The assumption of the imperial title by the great king had many
practical consequences at the moment, and many and yet more important
influences upon the history of Europe for long centuries to come.
[Sidenote: Charles’s views of the Empire.] The most notable of the
immediate results of the coronation was that Charles and all his
subjects regarded his regal authority as being re-affirmed in a new and
more hallowed shape by the ceremony. Formerly his power rested on his
election as king by the Franks, and afterwards by the Lombards: now he
was ‘crowned by God’ as well as chosen by the people. For the future he
showed an increasing tendency to insist on the omnipotence of his
authority in things ecclesiastical and moral as well as in civil
matters. As Heaven’s anointed he claimed to be the guardian of morality
and the reformer of Christendom, as well as the protector of the Church.
Charles had always shown a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of his
dominions. We have seen already what energy he displayed in enforcing
the conversion of Saxony, of the Slavs, and of the Avars. He had
presided at innumerable councils and synods, stirring up his bishops to
enforce strict discipline and sober life among the clergy, and to root
out heathen survivals and immorality among the laity. Now that he had
become emperor he insisted even more than before on the moral side of
his authority: he thought of himself not only as the successor of
Constantine and Theodosius, but even as inheriting the theocratic powers
of the ancient kings of Israel—of David or of Josiah. When Charles
recrossed the Alps after his coronation and held his next great council
in Austrasia, he took the opportunity of bringing home his views to his
liegemen. He made all his subjects, lay and secular, swear allegiance to
him for a second time under his new name of emperor: every person above
the age of twelve was to have the oath administered to him by the local
clergy, and to be warned ‘that his vow of homage was not merely a
promise to be true to the emperor and to serve him against his enemies,
but a promise to live in obedience to God and His law according to the
best of each man’s strength and understanding. It was a vow to abstain
from theft and oppression and injustice, no less than from heathen
practices and witchcraft: a vow to do no wrong to the Churches of God,
nor to injure widows and orphans, of whom the emperor is the chosen
protector and guardian.’ Much more followed to the same effect: Charles
formally claimed that the defence of all law and morality was involved
in the imperial name, and warned his subjects that any offence against
him and his ordinances was a direct crime against the anointed of God.
It was not only in the mind of Charles that this high and holy view of
the duty and power of the emperor found a place. [Sidenote: The Holy
Roman Empire.] He succeeded in impressing it on his own contemporaries
and on long centuries to come: with him starts the idea of the ‘Holy
Roman Empire,’ which affected so deeply the whole secular and religious
life of the Middle Ages. The Frankish kingship, a mere rule of force,
had no exalted and spiritual meaning: the new empire represented a close
and conscious union of Church and State for the advantage of both. It
started with the conception that the emperor should be the protector and
overseer of the Church: by an unhappy development it ended in making the
Pope the overseer of the State. But the generation which had seen Pope
Leo on his knees ‘adoring’ the majesty of the great Charles, could not
have foreseen the day when the successor of Charles should humbly wait
for hours before the unopened door of the successor of Leo, or beg as a
favour the privilege of holding his stirrup.
A new age then commences in Europe with the coronation of Charles the
Great. The reign of pure barbaric force is ended: there follows a time
when the history of Europe is complicated by the strife of ideas no less
than by the strife of armed nations. For the future we must always be on
the watch to detect the influence on politics of the ideal conception of
Christendom as a great empire, under a single ruler chosen by God to
sway the sword, and the rival conception of it as a great Church under a
single Patriarch at Rome, appointed to hold the keys of heaven and hell,
and to guide kings in the way they should go.
The internal government of the vast realm of Charles was a difficult
problem. [Sidenote: Charles and his sons.] In his own lifetime the great
king provided for it by delegating his authority in certain large
sections of it to his sons: we have already spoken of his nomination of
Charles, Pippin, and Lewis to be kings in Neustria, Italy, and
Aquitaine. Charles contemplated the possibility of a single empire
existing while yet many of its parts should be governed by vassal
sovereigns. In his own time the plan worked well enough: he did not,
perhaps, foresee that the problem would be far harder in the next
generation, when the homage and obedience of the lesser kings would have
to be paid to a brother, an uncle, and at last to a mere distant cousin.
Charles publicly issued in 806 the scheme on which his realm was to be
ruled after his death: the title of emperor and all the Frankish lands,
both Neustrian and Austrasian, were to go to his first-born Charles;
with them went Saxony, Thuringia, and Burgundy. Pippin, the second son,
had Italy, together with Bavaria and eastern Suabia. Lewis, the youngest
child, was to take Aquitaine, Provence, and the Spanish March. This
division, however, was rendered fruitless by the unexpected decease of
the two elder kings: to the great grief of their father, Pippin died in
810, and Charles in 811. This necessitated a new division of the empire:
Lewis was now the only grown man in the family: to him, therefore, was
left the imperial name and all the realm save Italy, which was to be a
vassal-kingdom for Bernard, the young son of Pippin.
Charles, while all his sons yet lived, gave over the charge of large
sections of his realm to them. Beneath their authority the kingdoms were
ruled by the same hierarchy of dukes and counts who had existed in
Merovingian times. When any new land, such as Saxony or Lombardy, was
added to the empire, it was ere long cut up into countships on the same
pattern that already served for Austrasia and Neustria. Thus a regular
ascending scale of grades lay between the count and the emperor. The
count obeyed the duke, the duke the sub-king, the king his father the
suzerain of all. In the conquered lands Franks were, as a rule,
intrusted with the most important provincial governments: but Charles
often gave countships in their own native districts to Lombards,
Aquitanians, or even Saxons who had served him well and truly.
The best security for the unity and peace of the empire was the
never-ceasing activity of Charles himself, who incessantly perambulated
his realm from end to end so long as life was in him. It was his own
frequent visits to Saxony, Italy, or Bavaria, that were the best means
of keeping those outlying provinces in loyalty and obedience. But he had
also a regular system of travelling commissioners who were always moving
round the realm, and reporting to him on the needs and requirements of
the different provinces. [Sidenote: The Missi Dominici.] The circuits of
these _Missi Dominici_, or royal legates, as they were called, were
fully settled by him only in 802, but he had been employing them less
systematically at a far earlier date. His father and grandfather, Pippin
the Short and Charles Martel, had been wont to send out occasionally
travelling commissions (_Missi discurrentes_), but it was Charles the
emperor who multiplied and systematised their activity. By his
arrangements his emissaries, who were sometimes clerics, sometimes
laymen, were appointed for a year’s duty over a certain number of
countships. They visited the assemblies of the inhabitants of the
district, summoned to the count’s _Mallus_,[52] and inquired into the
state of the provinces. Complaints against the count himself or the
local bishop were brought before them, and they would send them up to
the king or take account of them on the spot. We sometimes find _Missi_
charged with other duties, such as the conduct of an embassy or a
warlike expedition, but this terminal inspection of the local governors
was their primary duty. As long as men of probity and strength were
chosen, no better machinery for keeping together the wide empire of the
Franks could have been devised.
Footnote 52:
See page 125.
We have already mentioned in an earlier chapter the interest which
Charles always showed in art and letters, an interest which had been
very rare among the Frankish kings, whether of his own house or of the
Merovings. Of all the two dynasties the ruffian Chilperich I.
is—curiously enough—the only one who is recorded to have shown any
literary tastes. Charles, however, atoned for the neglect of his
predecessors. [Sidenote: Encouragement of learning.] He collected
learned men from all quarters: the Northumbrian Alcuin and the
Lombards Peter of Pisa and Paul the Deacon were the best-known names
among them: at first his scholars were mostly foreigners, but by the
end of his reign he had seen a generation of learned Franks arise in
response to his encouragement. Two of his proclamations, the _Epistola
de litteris colendis_ and the _Encyclica de emendatione librorum_, set
forth his purpose. He complains that the letters addressed to him by
bishops and abbots from all parts of his realm are ‘very correct in
sentiment but very incorrect in grammar,’ so that he has begun to fear
whether his clergy have enough knowledge of Latin to understand the
whole sense of the Scriptures. Wherefore he will have schools
established in every monastery for the perfect teaching of the Latin
tongue, ‘because it is useful that men of God should not only live by
the rule and dwell in holy conversation, but should devote themselves
to literary meditations, each according to his ability, that they may
be able to give themselves to the duty of teaching others.’ [Sidenote:
Multiplication of books.] Under the fostering hand of Charles all the
greater monasteries became centres of learning: we owe to his care the
preservation of many of the classical authors, for he was incessantly
causing the old volumes, ‘almost worn out,’ as he says, ‘by the
carelessness of our ancestors,’ to be fairly copied out and
multiplied. Each monastery was urged to have its own treasures
preserved by several copies, and to interchange them with those of its
neighbours. He paid special attention to the books of the Old and New
Testaments, was shocked at the diverse readings which he found to
exist—due, as he asserts, to the extreme ignorance of copyists—and set
Paul the Deacon to construct a new lectionary, corrected according to
the best texts, and destined to be used in all the Churches in his
realm. It was not only to religious books that he turned his
attention: he had the old heroic epics of the Franks—the prototypes,
we may suppose, of such works as the _Nibelungenlied_—collected and
written out: unfortunately his pious son Lewis destroyed this
invaluable _corpus_ of Frankish poetry, because he deemed it
heathenish. He is also found setting his scholars to work on the
compilation of grammars—both Latin and German—biographies, and even of
works of secular history. It is, no doubt, to his inspiration that we
owe the sudden expansion and multiplication of the Frankish
chronicles. Our historical sources, down to his time, are few, bald,
and jejune; soon after his accession they become full, satisfactory,
and numerous. The ninth century, in spite of all its troublous times,
is far better known to us than the eighth.
Charles kept the best of his scholars about his Court, and treated them
as familiar friends. When he was settled down at Aachen for the winter,
and was at rest from wars, he gathered them about him to discuss all
manners of subjects, from astronomy to logic. The literary circle
assumed old classical names. Alcuin called himself Flaccus, Charles was
addressed as King David, other scholars styled themselves Homer, Mopsus,
and Damætas. Their discussions were often fruitless, and sometimes
childish, but it was something new in Western Christendom to find a
whole group of scholars busied in discussions of any sort whatever.
After looking back at the blank darkness of the seventh century, we find
the court of Charles the Great a very centre of light and wisdom. In it
lay the promise of great things in the future, a promise for which we
have looked in vain in any period of the preceding ages.
It was not only in literature that Charles busied his leisure hours. He
was a great admirer of music, both secular and ecclesiastical. His ear
was charmed by the Gregorian chants which he heard at Rome, and he took
back with him Italian choirmasters to teach the churchmen of the north
the sonorous cadences of the sainted Pope.
[Sidenote: Charles as builder.] He was also a mighty builder. At Aachen
he reared a great palace for himself and a magnificent cathedral. The
former has perished, but enough survives of the latter to show the exact
extent to which Romanesque architecture had developed by his time. So
much was he set on making it the most magnificent basilica to the north
of the Alps, that when he found his own workmen unable to carry out his
ideas, he sent for ancient columns and marbles from distant Rome and
Ravenna. His own coffin was a splendid Roman sarcophagus, probably
procured from Italy. He constructed palaces in two other Austrasian
towns besides Aachen, the old royal seats of Nimuegen and Engelheim, for
he was Austrasian to the core, and always made the land of his ancestors
his favourite dwelling. He built a bridge at Mainz five hundred yards
long, the first effort of Frankish engineering in that class of
structure. Unfortunately it was destroyed by fire in 813, and never
renewed. Another piece of work which testifies to his interest in
engineering was a canal to join the Rhine and Danube, by means of their
tributaries, the Altmühl and the Rednitz.
But to follow Charles into every department of his activity during his
long life and reign would require many volumes. [Sidenote: Death of
Charles, 814.] Here it must suffice to say that after all these
achievements he died at his chosen abode at Aachen, on the 28th of
January 814, carried off at a ripe old age by a pleurisy caught in the
winter cold. He was buried in the cathedral that he himself had built,
and over his tomb was placed a golden shrine, with his image and the
inscription:—‘SUB HOC CONDITORIO SITUM EST CORPUS KAROLI MAGNI ET
ORTHODOXI IMPERATORIS, QUI REGNUM FRANCORUM NOBILITER AMPLIAVIT, ET PER
ANNOS XLVII FELICITER REXIT.’ It was but a short epitaph considering the
mighty deeds of him who lay beneath, but no length of words could have
done justice to his greatness. A far better memorial was left to him in
the hearts of his subjects; his name survived in the mouths of all the
races that had served him, as the type of power, wisdom, and
righteousness. All Western Europe looked back to him for seven hundred
years as the common pride of Christendom, the founder of that ‘Holy
Roman Empire’ which satisfied their ideal of governance. His figure
looms out, though often with outlines blurred and distorted, from dozens
of the legends and romances which shadowed forth the aspirations of the
Middle Ages. Within a hundred years of his death it was currently
believed that he had conquered Spain and Byzantium, and carried his arms
as far as Palestine. So great was the impression he had left behind him,
that the world thought nothing too impossible for him to have achieved.
Perhaps the notion that his reign had been a kind of Golden Age was
partly produced by the contrasting years of trouble and civil strife
that followed his death. But the tendency to look back to his time as a
period of unexampled splendour and righteousness was no delusion, but a
just recognition of the fact that he had given the Western world a
glimpse of new and high ideals, such as it had never known under the
brutal rule of twelve generations of barbarian kings, nor in those
earlier days when it was still held together in the iron grasp of the
Caesars of ancient Rome.
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