It was currently asserted that the immediate origin of iconoclasm was

due to the caliph Yazid, who had completed the destruction of the Syrian

images, and to two Jews, who stimulated Leo the Isaurian to his task.

However that may be, Leo published an edict (726 A.D.), prohibiting

the worship of images. This was followed by another directing their

destruction, and the whitewashing of the walls of churches ornamented

with them. Hereupon the clergy and the monks rebelled; the emperor was

denounced as a Mohammedan and a Jew. He ordered that a statue of the

Saviour in that part of the city called Chalcopratia should be removed,

and a riot was the consequence. One of his officers mounted the ladder

and struck the idol with an axe upon its face; it was an incident like

that enacted centuries before in the temple of Serapis at Alexandria. The

sacred image, which had often arrested the course of nature and worked

many miracles, was now found to be unable to protect or to avenge its own

honour. A rabble of women interfered in its behalf; they threw down the

ladder and killed the officer; nor was the riot ended until the troops

were called in and a great massacre perpetrated. The monks spread the

sedition in all parts of the empire; they even attempted to proclaim a

new emperor. Leo was everywhere denounced as a Mohammedan infidel, an

enemy of the mother of God; but with inflexible resolution he persisted

in his determination as long as he lived.[h]

MILMAN ON ICONOCLASM

Iconoclasm was an attempt by the Eastern emperor to change by his own

arbitrary command the religion of his subjects. No religious revolution

has ever been successful which has commenced with the government. Such

revolutions have ever begun in the middle or lower orders of society,

struck on some responsive chord of sympathy in the general feeling,

supplied some religious want, stirred some religious energy, and shaken

the inert strength of the established faith by some stronger counter

emotion.

Whatever the motives of the emperor Leo the Isaurian (and on this

subject, as in all the religious controversies where the writings of the

unsuccessful party were carefully suppressed or perished through neglect,

authentic history is almost silent), whether he was actuated by a rude

aversion to what perhaps can hardly yet be called the fine arts with

which Christianity was associating itself, or by a spiritual disdain and

impatience of the degrading superstition into which the religion of the

Gospel had so long been degenerating, the attempt was as politically

unwise and unseasonable as the means employed were despotic and

altogether unequal to the end. The time was passed, if it had ever been,

when an imperial edict could change, or even much affect, the actual

prevailing religion of the empire. For this was no speculative article

of belief, no question of high metaphysical theology, but a total change

in the universal popular worship, in the spirit and in the essence, if

not of the daily ritual, of countless observances and habitual practices

of devotion. It swept away from almost all the churches of the empire

objects hallowed by devotion, and supposed to be endowed with miraculous

agency; objects of hope and fear, of gratitude and immemorial veneration.

It not merely invaded the public church, and left its naked walls without

any of the old remembrancers of faith and piety; it reached the private

sanctuary of prayer. No one could escape the proscription; learned or

unlearned, priest or peasant, monk or soldier, clergyman or layman, man,

woman, and even child were involved in the strife. Something to which

their religious attachments clung, to which their religious passions

were wedded, might at any time be forcibly rent away, insulted, trampled

under foot; that which had been their pride and delight could only now be

furtively visited, and under the fear of detection.

Nor was it possible for this controversy to vent itself in polemic

writings. Here actual, personal, furious collision of man and man,

of faction and faction, of armed troops against armed troops, was

inevitable. The contending parties did not assail each other with mutual

anathemas, which they might despise, or excommunication and counter

excommunication, the validity of which might be questioned by either

party. On one side it was a sacred obligation to destroy, to mutilate,

to dash to pieces, to deface the objects on which the other had so long

gazed with intense devotion, and which he might think it an equally

sacred obligation to defend at the sacrifice of life. It was not a

controversy, it was a feud; not a polemic strife, but actual war declared

by one part of Christendom against the other. It was well perhaps for

Christendom that the parties were not more equally balanced; that, right

or wrong, one party in that division of the Christian world, where total

change would have been almost extermination, obtained a slow but complete

triumph.[b]

Milman then goes on to plead eloquently for the encouragement of the fine

arts by the church which produced a Raphael and a Michelangelo, as the

Greek religion produced and employed its Phidias and Praxiteles. He then

proceeds to describe the ferocity of the dissension.[a]

THE WAR OF ICONOCLASM

[Sidenote: [726-731 A.D.]]

A formidable insurrection broke out in Greece and in the Ægean

islands. A fleet was armed, a new emperor, one Cosmas, proclaimed, and

Constantinople menaced by the rebels. The fleet, however, was scattered

and destroyed by ships which discharged the Greek fire; the insurrection

was suppressed, the leaders either fell or were executed, along with the

usurper. The monks here and throughout the empire, the champions of this

as of every other superstition, were the instigators to rebellion. Few

monasteries were without some wonder-working image; the edict struck at

once at their influence, their interest, their pride, their most profound

religious feelings.

But the more eminent clergy were likewise at first almost unanimous

in their condemnation of the emperor. Constantine, bishop of Nacolia,

indeed, is branded as his adviser. Another bishop, Theodosius, son of

Apsimarus, metropolitan of Ephesus, is named as entering into the war

against images. But almost for the first time the bishops of the two

Romes, Germanus of Constantinople and Pope Gregory II, were united in

one common cause. Leo attempted to win Germanus to his views, but the

aged patriarch (he was now ninety-five years old) calmly but resolutely

resisted the arguments, the promises, the menaces of the emperor.

But the conduct of Gregory II, as leading to more important results,

demands more rigid scrutiny. The Byzantine historians represent him as

proceeding, at the first intimation of the hostility of the emperor to

image-worship, to an act of direct revolt, as prohibiting the payment

of tribute by the Italian province. This was beyond the power, probably

beyond the courage, of Gregory. The great results of the final separation

of the West from the inefficient and inglorious sovereignty of the East

might excuse or palliate, if he had foreseen them, the disloyalty of Pope

Gregory to Leo. But it would be to estimate his political and religious

sagacity too highly to endow him with this gift of ambitious prophecy, to

suppose him anticipating the full development of Latin Christianity when

it should become independent of the East.

[Illustration: MOSAIC, REPRESENTING THE TEMPORAL AND SPIRITUAL POWER OF

JESUS CHRIST]

Like most ordinary minds, and if we are to judge by his letters Gregory’s

was a very ordinary mind, he was merely governed by the circumstances and

passions of his time without the least foreknowledge of the result of his

actions. The letter of Pope Gregory to the emperor (729 A.D.) is arrogant

without dignity, dogmatic without persuasiveness; in the stronger part of

the argument far inferior, both in skill and ingenuity, to that of the

aged Germanus, or the writer who guided his pen. The strange mistakes in

the history of the Old Testament, the still stranger interpretations of

the New, the loose legends which are advanced as history, give a very low

opinion of the knowledge of the times.

[Sidenote: [731-742 A.D.]]

When Gregory addressed this and a second letter to the emperor Leo, the

tumult in Constantinople, the first public act of rebellion against

iconoclasm, had taken place; but the aged bishop Germanus was not yet

degraded from his see. Germanus, with better temper and more skilful

argument, had defended the images of the East. Before his death (731), he

was deposed or compelled to retire from his see. He died most probably in

peace; his extreme age may well account for his death. His personal ill

treatment by the emperor is the legend of a later age to exalt him into a

martyr.

But these two powerful prelates were not the only champions of their

cause whose writings made a strong impression on their age. It is

singular that the most admired defender of images in the East was a

subject not of the emperor but of the Mohammedan sultan. John of Damascus

was famed as the most learned man in the East, and it may show either the

tolerance, the ignorance, or the contempt of the Mohammedans for these

Christian controversies, that writings which became celebrated all over

the East should issue from one of their capital cities, Damascus.

In the West, all power, almost all pretension to power, excepting over

Sicily and Calabria, expired with Leo;[90] and this independence partly

arose out of and was immeasurably strengthened by the faithful adherence

of the West to image-worship.

CONSTANTINE COPRONYMUS (741-775 A.D.)

Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine. The name by which this emperor

was known is a perpetual testimony to the hatred of a large part of his

subjects. Even in his infancy he was believed to have shown a natural

aversion to holy things, and in his baptism to have defiled the font.

Constantine Copronymus sounded to Greek ears as a constant taunt against

his filthy and sacrilegious character.

The accession of Constantine (741), although he had already been

acknowledged for twenty years with his father as joint emperor, met

formidable resistance. The contest for the throne was a strife between

the two religious parties which divided the empire. During the absence

of Constantine, on an expedition against the Saracens, a sudden and

dangerous insurrection placed his brother-in-law, Artavasdes, on the

throne. Constantinople was gained to the party of the usurper by

treachery. The city was induced to submit to Artavasdes only by a

rumour, industriously propagated and generally believed, of the death of

Constantine. The emperor on one occasion had been in danger of surprise,

and escaped by the swiftness of his horses.

[Sidenote: [742-746 A.D.]]

In the capital, as throughout Greece and the European part of the empire,

the triumph of Artavasdes was followed by the restoration of the images.

Anastasius, the dastard patriarch of Constantinople, as he had been the

slave of Leo, now became the slave of the usurper, and worshipped images

with the same zeal with which he had destroyed them. He had been the

principal actor in the deception of the people by the forged letters

which announced the death of Constantine. He plunged with more desperate

recklessness into the party of Artavasdes. The monks, and all over whom

they had influence, took up the cause of the usurper; but the mass of

the people, from royal respect for the memory of Leo, or from their

confidence in the vigorous character of Constantine and attachment to the

legitimate succession, from indifference or aversion to image-worship,

still wavered, and submitted rather than clamorously rejoiced in the

coronation of Artavasdes.

But Constantine Copronymus with the religious opinions inherited the

courage, the military abilities, and the popularity with the army which

had distinguished his father Leo. After some vicissitudes, a battle took

place near Ancyra, fought with all the ferocity of civil and religious

war. After an obstinate resistance, and after having suffered all the

horrors of famine, Constantinople was taken. Artavasdes was punished by

the loss of his eyes.

Constantine was a soldier, doubtless of a fierce temper; the blinding and

mutilation of many, the beheading a few of his enemies, the abandonment

of the houses of the citizens to the plunder of his troops, was the

natural course of Byzantine revolution; and these cruelties have no doubt

lost nothing in the dark representations of the emperor’s enemies, the

only historians of the times. But they suffered as rebels in arms against

their sovereign, not as image-worshippers. The fate of the patriarch

Anastasius was the most extraordinary. His eyes were put out, he was led

upon an ass, with his face to the tail, through the city; and after all

this mutilation and insult, for which, considering his tergiversation

and impudent mendacity, it is difficult to feel much compassion, he was

reinstated in the patriarchal dignity. The clergy in the East had never

been arrayed in the personal sanctity which, in ordinary occasions, they

possessed in the West; but could Constantine have any other object in

this act than the degradation of the whole order in public estimation?

THIRD COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE (746 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [746-766 A.D.]]

For ten years Constantine refrained from any stronger measures against

image worship. In the tenth year of Constantine rumours spread abroad

of secret councils held for the total destruction of images. Either

the emperor must have prepared the public mind for this great change

with consummate address, or reverence for images must have been less

deeply rooted in the East than in the West, otherwise it can scarcely be

supposed that so large a number of the clergy as appeared at the Third

Council of Constantinople (746) would have slavishly assented to the

strong measures of the emperor. Three hundred and forty-eight bishops

formed this synod.

Part of the proceedings of this assembly have been preserved in the

records of the rival council, the second held in Nicæa. The passages

are cited in the original words, followed by a confutation, sanctioned

apparently by the Nicene bishops. The Council of Constantinople

proscribes the lawless and blasphemous art of painting. The fathers of

Constantinople assume, as boldly as the brethren of Nicæa their sanctity,

that all images are the invention of the devil; that they are idols in

the same sense as those of the heathen. Nor do they hesitate to impute

community of sentiment with the worst heretics to their opponents.

They thought that they held the image-worshippers in an inextricable

dilemma. If the painters represented only the humanity of Christ, they

were Nestorians; if they attempted to mingle it with the divinity, they

were Eutychians, circumscribing the infinite and confounding the two

substances. It was impiety to represent Christ without his divinity,

Arianism to undeify him, despoil him of his godhead.

The Council of Nicæa admits the perfect unanimity of the Council of

Constantinople. These 348 bishops concurred in pronouncing their anathema

against all who should represent the incarnate Word by material form

or colours, who should not restrict themselves to the pure spiritual

conception of the Christ, as he is seated, superior in brightness to the

sun, on the right hand of the Father; against all who should confound

the two natures of Christ in one human image, or who should separate

the manhood from the Godhead in the second person of the indivisible

Trinity; against all who should not implore the intercession of the

Virgin in pure faith, as above all visible and invisible things;

against all who should set up the deaf and lifeless images of saints,

and who do not rather paint the living likenesses of their virtues in

their own hearts. All images, whether statues or paintings, were to be

forcibly removed from the churches; everyone who henceforth should set

up an image, if a bishop or priest, was to be degraded; if a layman,

excommunicated. They proceed to curse by name the principal asserters

of image-worship. “Anathema against the double-minded Germanus, the

worshipper of wood! Anathema against George (of Cyprus), the falsifier of

the traditions of the fathers! Anathema against Mansar (they called by

this unchristian-sounding name the famous John of Damascus), the Saracen

in heart, the traitor to the empire--Mansar the teacher of impiety, the

false interpreter of Holy Scripture!”

Thus was image-worship proscribed by a council, in numbers at least

of weight, in the severest and most comprehensive terms. The work of

demolition was committed to the imperial officers; only with strict

injunctions, not perhaps always obeyed, to respect the vessels, the

priestly vestments, and other furniture of the churches, and the cross,

the naked cross without any image. The crucifix was of a later period.

THE WAR ON MONASTERIES

[Sidenote: [766-775 A.D.]]

But if the emperor had overawed, or bought, or compelled the seemingly

willing assent of so large a body of the eastern clergy, the formidable

monks were still in obstinate implacable opposition to his will. It was

now fanaticism encountering fanaticism. Everywhere the monks preached

resistance to the imperial decree, and enough has been seen of their

turbulent and intractable conduct to make us conclude that their language

at least would keep no bounds. Stephen, the great martyr of this

controversy, had lived as a hermit in a cave near Sinope for thirty years.

The emperor sent the patriarch to persuade him to subscribe the decrees

of the Council of Constantinople. The patriarch’s eloquence was vain. The

emperor either allowed or compelled the aged monk to retire to the wild

rock of Proconnesus, where, to consummate his sanctity, he took his stand

upon a pillar. His followers assembled in crowds about him, and built

their cells around the pillar of the saint. But the zeal of Stephen would

not be confined within that narrow sphere. He returned to the city, and

in bold defiance of the imperial orders denounced the iconoclasts. He was

seized, cast into prison, and there treated with unusual harshness. But

even there the zeal of his followers found access. Constantine exclaimed,

in a paroxysm of careless anger, “Am I or this monk the emperor of the

world?” The word of the emperor was enough for some of his obsequious

courtiers; they rushed, broke open the prison, dragged out the old man

along the streets with every wanton cruelty, and cast his body at last

into the common grave of the public malefactors.

The emperor took now a sterner and more desperate resolution. He

determined to root out monkery itself. The monks were driven from their

cloisters, which were given up to profane and secular uses. Consecrated

virgins were forced to marry; monks were compelled, each holding the

hand of a woman, doubtless not of the purest character, to walk round

the Hippodrome among the jeers and insults of the populace. Throughout

the whole empire they were exposed to the lawless persecutions of the

imperial officers. Their zeal or their obstinacy was chastised by

scourgings, imprisonments, mutilations, and even death. The monasteries

were plundered, and by no scrupulous or reverent hands; churches are

said to have been despoiled of all their sacred treasures, the holy books

burned, feasts and revels profaned the most hallowed sanctuaries.

Multitudes fled to the neighbouring kingdoms of the less merciless

barbarians; many found refuge in the West, especially in Rome. The

prefect of Thrace was the most obsequious agent of his master’s tyranny.

The patriarch himself was accused of having used disrespectful language

towards the emperor. Already he had been required to acquit himself of

imputing Nestorianism to his master; now his accusers swore on the cross

that they had heard him hold conference with one of the conspirators.

Constantine ordered the imperial seal to be affixed on the palace of the

patriarch, and sent him into banishment.

For some new offence, real or supposed, the exiled patriarch was brought

back to the capital, scourged so cruelly that he could not walk, and

then carried in a litter, and exposed in the great church before all the

people assembled to hear the public recital of the charges made against

him, and to behold his degradation. At each charge the secretary of

his successor smote him on the face. He was then set up in the pulpit,

and while Nicetas read the sentence of excommunication, another bishop

stripped him of his metropolitan pall, and calling him by the opprobrious

name Scotiopsis, “face of darkness,” led him backwards out of the church.

The next day his head, beard, eyebrows were shaved; and as we have

already said, he was put upon an ass, and paraded through the circus

(his own nephew, a hideous, deformed youth, leading the ass), while the

populace jeered, shouted, spat upon him. He was then thrown down, trodden

on, and in that state lay till the games were over. Some days after the

emperor sent to demand a formal declaration of the orthodoxy of his own

faith and of the authority of the council. The poor wretch acknowledged

both in the amplest manner; as a reward he was beheaded, while still

in a state of excommunication, and his remains treated with the utmost

ignominy.

This odious scene, blackened it may be by the sectarian hatred of the

later annalists, all of whom abhorred iconoclasm, has been related at

length, in order to contrast more fully the position of the bishop of

Rome. This was the second patriarch of Constantinople who had been thus

barbarously treated, and seemingly without the sympathy of the people;

and now, in violation of all canonical discipline, the imperial will

had raised a eunuch to the patriarchate. What wonder that pontiffs like

Gregory II and Gregory III should think themselves justified in throwing

off the yoke of such a government, and look with hope to the sovereignty

of the less barbarous barbarians of the north--barbarians who, at least,

had more reverence for the dignity of the sacerdotal character.

If the Byzantine historians, all image-worshippers, have not greatly

exaggerated the cruelties of their implacable enemy Constantine

Copronymus, they have assuredly not done justice to his nobler

qualities, his valour, incessant activity, military skill, and general

administration of the sinking empire, which he maintained unviolated by

any of its formidable enemies, and with imposing armies, during a reign

of thirty-five years, not including the twenty preceding during which

he ruled as the colleague of his father Leo. Constantine died, during

a campaign against the Bulgarians, of a fever which, in the charitable

judgment of his adversaries, gave him a foretaste of the pains of hell.

His dying lips ordered prayers and hymns offered to the Virgin, for

whom he had always professed the most profound veneration, utterly

inconsistent, his enemies supposed, with his hostility to her sacred

images.

HELENA AND IRENE

[Sidenote: [775-787 A.D.]]

A female had been the principal mover in the great change of Christianity

from a purely spiritual worship to that paganising form of religion which

grew up with such rapidity in the succeeding centuries; a female was

the restorer of images in the East, which have since, with but slight

interruption, maintained their sanctity. The first, Helena, the mother

of Constantine the Great, was a blameless and devout woman, who used the

legitimate influence of her station, munificence, and authority over her

imperial son, to give that splendour which to her piety appeared becoming

to the new religion; to communicate to the world all those excitements

of symbols, relics, and sacred memorials which she found so powerful

in kindling her own devotion. The second, the empress Irene, wife to

the son and heir of Constantine Copronymus, an ambitious, intriguing,

haughty princess, never lost sight of political power in the height of

her religious zeal, and was at length guilty of the most atrocious crime

against God and womanhood.

Irene, during the reign of her husband Leo, surnamed the Khazar, did not

openly betray her inclination to the image-worship which she had solemnly

forsworn under her father-in-law Constantine. On his death (780) she at

once seized the government in the name of her son Constantine, who was

but ten years old. Her creature, Patriarch Tarasius, summoned a council

on image-worship.

The council met in Constantinople (785), but with the army and a large

part of the populace of Constantinople image-worship had lost its

power. The soldiery, attached to the memory and tenets of Constantine

Copronymus, broke into the assembly, and dispersed the affrighted monks

and bishops.

SECOND COUNCIL OF NICÆA (787 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [787-842 A.D.]]

Nicæa was chosen for the session of the council, no doubt on account of

the reverence which attached to that city, hallowed by the sittings of

the first great council of Christendom. Decrees issued from Nicæa would

possess peculiar force and authority; this smaller city, too, could be

occupied by troops on whom the empress could depend, and in the meantime

Irene managed to disband the more unruly soldiery. Thus, while the

Bulgarians menaced one frontier and the Saracens another, she sacrificed

the safety of the empire, by the dissolution of her best army, to the

success of her religious designs.

The council met at Nicæa. The number of ecclesiastics is variously stated

from 330 to 387. Among these were at least 130 monks or abbots, besides

many bishops, who had been expelled as monks from their sees, and were

now restored. They repudiated the so-called Council of Constantinople,

as a synod of fools and madmen, who had dared to violate the established

discipline of the church and impiously reviled the holy images. They

showered their anathemas on all the acts, on all the words, on all the

persons engaged in that unhallowed assembly.

The fathers of Nicæa impaired a doubtful cause by the monstrous fables

which they adduced, the preposterous arguments which they used, their

unmeasured invectives against their antagonists. With one voice they

broke out into a long acclamation: “We all believe, we all assent, we all

subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the

church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the

world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the

like, anathema upon him! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema

on all who communicate with them who do not worship images!”

Among the acclamations and the anathemas which closed the Second

Council of Nicæa, echoed loud salutations and prayers for the peace and

blessedness of the new Constantine and the new Helena. A few years passed

and that Constantine was blinded, if not put to death, by his unnatural

mother, whom religious faction had raised into a model of Christian

virtue and devotion.

The controversy slept during the reign of Nicephorus, and that of

Michael, surnamed Rhangabé. The monks throughout this period seem to form

an independent power (a power no doubt arising out of and maintained by

their championship of image-worship), and to dictate to the emperor, and

even to the church. On the other hand, among the soldiery are heard some

deep but suppressed murmurs of attachment to the memory of Constantine

Copronymus. Leo the Armenian ascended the throne.

As Irene had promoted Tarasius, so Leo raised an officer of his

household, Theodotus Cassiteras, to the patriarchal throne. Image-worship

was again proscribed by an imperial edict. The worshippers are said to

have been ruthlessly persecuted; and Leo, according to the phraseology

of the day, is accused of showing all the blood-thirstiness without

the generosity of the lion. Yet no violent popular tumult took place;

nor does the conspiracy which afterwards cut short the days of Leo the

Armenian appear to have been connected with the strife of religious

factions. Whatever hopes the clergy, at least the image-worshippers, or

the monks, might have conceived at the murder of Leo, which they scrupled

not to allege as a sign of the divine disfavour towards the iconoclasts,

were disappointed on the accession of Michael the Stammerer. He favoured

the Jews in the exaction of tribute (perhaps he was guilty of the sin

of treating them with justice), he fasted on the Jewish Sabbath, he

doubted the resurrection of the dead, and the personality of the devil,

as unauthorised by the religion of Moses. Image-worship he treated with

contemptuous impartiality. In a great public assembly (assembled for

the purpose), he proclaimed the worship of images a matter altogether

indifferent.

Theophilus could not but perceive the failure, and disdained to imitate

his father’s temporising policy, who endeavoured to tolerate the monks,

while he discouraged image-worship. He avowed his determination to

extirpate both at once. Leo the Armenian and Michael the Stammerer had

attempted to restrict the honours paid to images; Theophilus prohibited

the making of new ones, and ordered that in every church they should be

effaced, and the walls covered with pictures of birds and beasts. The

sacred vessels, adorned with figures, were profaned by unhallowed hands,

sold in the public markets, and melted for their metal. The prisons were

full of painters, of monks and ecclesiastics of all orders. The monks,

driven from their convents, fled to desert places; some perished of cold

and hunger, some threw off the proscribed dress, yet retained the sacred

character and habits; others seized the opportunity of returning to the

pleasures as to the dress of the world.

The history of iconoclasm has a remarkable uniformity: another female

in power, another restoration of images. After the death of Theophilus

his widow Theodora administered the empire in the name of her youthful

son Michael, called afterwards the Drunkard. Theodora, like her own

mother Theoctista, had always worshipped images in private. No sooner

was Theophilus dead than the monks, no doubt in the secret of Theodora’s

concealed attachment to images, poured into Constantinople from all

quarters. She now ventured to send an officer of the palace to command

the patriarch, Joannes the Grammarian, either to recant his iconoclastic

opinions, or to withdraw from Constantinople. The patriarch is accused

of a paltry artifice. He opened a vein in the region of his stomach, and

showed himself wounded and bleeding to the people. The rumour spread that

the empress had attempted to assassinate the patriarch. But the fraud was

detected, exposed, acknowledged. The abashed patriarch withdrew, unpitied

and despised, into the suburbs (842). Methodius was raised to the dignity

of the patriarchate. The worshippers of images were in triumph.

But Theodora, still tenderly attached to the memory of her husband,

demanded, as the price of her inestimable services in the restoration of

images, absolution for the sin of his iconoclasm and his persecution of

the image-worshippers.

All was now easy; the fanaticism of iconoclasm was exhausted or rebuked.

A solemn festival was appointed for the restoration of images. The

whole clergy of Constantinople, and all who could flock in from the

neighbourhood, met in and before the palace of the archbishop, and

marched in procession with crosses, torches, and incense, to the church

of St. Sophia. There they were met by the empress and her infant son

Michael, Feb. 19th, 842. They made the circuit of the church, with their

burning torches, paying homage to every image and picture, which had been

carefully restored, never again to be effaced till the days of later,

more terrible iconoclasts, the Ottoman Turks.

The Greek church from that time has celebrated the anniversary of this

festival with loyal fidelity. The successors of Methodius, particularly

the learned Photius, were only zealous to consummate the work of his

predecessors, and images have formed part of the recognised religious

worship of the Eastern world.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[84] Felix III, if the anti-pope Felix (356 A.D.) is reckoned as Felix II.

[85] [The office to which Gregory I was suddenly elevated in the year

590, included under it the three following distinct dignities. First,

it included the actual episcopal charge of the city of Rome; the church

of St. John Lateran with its haughty inscription: _Omnium Urbis et

Orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput_--being the cathedral church; and the

adjoining Lateran palace, which tradition says was given by Constantine

to Silvester I, being the place of residence. Secondly, it included the

metropolitan or archiepiscopal superintendence of the Roman territory,

with jurisdiction over the seven suffragan bishops, afterwards called

cardinal bishops; the bishops of Ostia, Portus, Silva Candida, Sabina,

Præneste, Tusculum, and Albanum. Thirdly, it included the patriarchal

oversight of the suburban provinces, which were under the political

jurisdiction of the _Vicarius Urbis_, viz., Campania, Tuscany with

Umbria, Picenum, Valeria, Samnium, Apulia with Calabria, Lucania with

Bruttium--in short, upper Italy, together with the three islands of

Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. As patriarch, the Roman bishop stood

on the same footing as the four great patriarchs of the East, those

of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem; he enjoyed however

the primacy of honour, and standing alone in the West, whereas four

patriarchs divided the primacy of the East, his jurisdiction often seemed

to extend to districts where he had no jurisdiction by right. For the

vicariate of Rome was only one among four vicariates, into which the

great prefecture of Italy was politically divided; the other vicariates

being northern Italy, with its centre at Milan; western Illyricum, with

its capital at Sirmium; and western Africa, with its capital at Carthage.

So far were Gaul, Spain, and Britain from belonging to the vicariate of

Rome, that they constituted together a separate prefecture, known as the

prefecture of Gaul. Nevertheless, all these districts were in time drawn

into the patriarchate of Rome, and indeed the whole of western Europe as

it gradually came under the influence of Christianity.[e]]

[86] The absurd story about Gregory’s fish-ponds paved with the skulls of

the drowned infants of the Roman clergy, is only memorable as an instance

of what writers of history will believe, and persuade themselves they

believe, when it suits party interests. But by whom, or when, was it

invented? It is much older than the Reformation.

[87] [Monothelism or one-ness of will is the opposite of “dyothelism” or

duality of will, as distinguishing the divine and the human aspects of

Christ. Monothelism had its origin in Sergius.]

[88] [The council held in the _trullus_ or domed hall of the imperial

palace in Constantinople. The council here referred to is the Quinisext

Council of 692, called the Second Trullan Council, the first being that

which condemned monothelite views (681).]

[89] [Gibbon[l] calls him the “founder of the papal monarchy.”]

[90] Leo died June, 741. Gregory III in the same year.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II. “THE NIGHT OF THE PAPACY”--CHARLEMAGNE TO OTTO THE GREAT

[Sidenote: [740-985 A.D.]]

From the East, powerless to render help, from an empire crumbling away

beneath the weight of its own greatness, Gregory III therefore turned

away, and fixed his gaze on the youthful greatness of a transalpine

nation--the Franks--brave, adventurous, full of promise, successful in

warfare, and destined to rise to future power. With Charles Martel,

mayor of the palace, and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm, Gregory

II had already opened communications. To Charles Martel, his successor

Gregory III again appealed, when, after eight years of doubtful peace,

he suddenly found himself involved in an open war with the Lombards.

His appeal is truly touching: “His tears are falling night and day for

the destitute state of the church; the Lombard king and his son are

ravaging the last remains of the property of the church, which no longer

suffices for the sustenance of the poor, or to provide lights for the

daily service; they have invaded the territory of Rome and seized all

his farms; his only hope is in the timely succour of the Frankish king.”

The appeal was rendered still stronger by the presents that accompanied

it--the mystic keys of the sepulchre of St. Peter, and filings of his

chains, which no Christian could resist. The title of patrician and

consul of Rome was offered; and Gregory, as might be expected after such

presents, received a courteous answer and an embassy was despatched to

the imperial city.

[Sidenote: [741-754 A.D.]]

It is impossible to say what might have been the result of the

negotiations between the pope and the ambassadors had they been

continued. They were, however, interrupted by the death of both the

potentates; of Charles Martel in October, of Gregory III in November of

the very same year. Nevertheless these negotiations were the prelude to

subsequent negotiations which Pepin le Bref, the son of Charles Martel,

carried on with Pope Zacharias (Zachary), the successor of Gregory III;

and this time the negotiations led to most important results.

INDEPENDENCE OF THE ROMAN BISHOPS

At the election of Zacharias, the customary form of obtaining the consent

of the exarch was discarded, and discarded to be never afterwards

revived. Henceforth the popes may be considered as independent of the

Eastern Empire; henceforth begins their connection with the West;

henceforth they hold no longer an exclusive ecclesiastical position,

but the papacy has become a political dukedom. After the Sixth General

Council, they had claimed the title of “universal priest,” and vindicated

that claim by soon afterwards reducing to submission the last of the

great archbishops of the West. After the appeal to Charles Martel

and the independent election of Zacharias, they aspired to political

sovereignty.[b]

THE APPEAL TO THE FRANKS

Zacharias, convinced of the advantage which Rome might derive from

intimate union with the rising power of the Franks, watched with careful

attention over the interests of the mayors of the palace; and it was at

his suggestion that the nation at length conferred on those powerful

functionaries the titles as well as the privileges of royalty. The

Lombard princes regarded him with corresponding reverence. Liutprand,

whose reign lasted above thirty years, was distinguished for his devout

observance of the maxims of the church. The charity of the pontiff was

equal to his talents, and the slaves which Venice offered to the Moors

were purchased by his agents and set free.

Stephen II,[91] who next occupied the pontifical chair, had to endure,

from the very commencement of his career, the troubles and dangers of

domestic wars. Aistulf, the new king of the Lombards, inherited the

spirit of his earliest predecessors, and it only required the appearance

of a leader like Aistulf to put an end forever to the rule of the Greeks

in Italy. But the Lombard monarch was not contented with the acquisition

of Ravenna. He assailed the duchy of Rome and the lands of the church,

nor could Stephen, either by the most solemn expostulations, or the

offers which he made of money, induce the conqueror to withdraw his

troops. In this situation, and when the Lombards had demanded as the

price of their safety a tribute which the citizens of Rome felt it would

be impossible to pay, the pontiff sent messengers to Constantinople

requesting aid of the emperor; but his entreaties were disregarded. He

turned his eyes towards France, where Pepin, the father of the heroic

Charlemagne, was now at the head of a nation as warlike as the Lombards,

and as disposed to ally itself with Rome as the invaders were to effect

its ruin.

[Sidenote: [754-755 A.D.]]

Ambassadors were sent to Rome to treat with the Lombards for Stephen’s

safe passage into France, a negotiation which could scarcely fail in the

hands of the powerful sovereign by whom it was undertaken. The pontiff

was speedily on his way to the new protector of the church. He appeared

with all his attendants before the monarch, clad in sackcloth and ashes,

and falling at his knees he implored him, by the mercy of God and the

merits of St. Peter and St. Paul, to deliver Rome from the devastation

of the Lombards. Pepin in reply promised to grant the pontiff’s request,

and speedily fulfilled his promise by compelling the enemy to retreat

and shut himself up in the single town of Pavia. Aistulf, thus pressed,

agreed to the terms proposed by his conqueror, and the French army was

withdrawn. But scarcely had they left the district when he returned to

the attack with renewed vigour, laid waste the country round Rome with

fire and sword, and at length encamped before the gates of the city

itself. The pontiff again sent a strong appeal to his protector. He

dictated his letter in the name of the apostle Peter, closely imitating

his epistles, and speaking in a language which implied that he was

possessed of an authority to anoint or dethrone kings, and to perform the

offices, not of a messenger, of a teacher sent from God, which is the

highest characteristic of an apostle, but of a delegated minister of his

power and justice.

The French monarch was moved to render the pontiff immediate succour, and

Aistulf was quickly deprived of the fruits of his numerous campaigns. It

now became a question to whom the district from which the Lombard was

driven ought of right to belong; and, before this point could be decided,

the envoy of the Greek emperor appeared, to claim for his master the

restoration of the territory which he had so completely abandoned to

its fate. But Pepin was both too politic and too conscious of his power

to listen to such demands; and sending his chief counsellor, the abbot

Fulrade (Folrad), to perform the investiture, he granted to Stephen, and

to his successors forever, the undivided sovereignty of the conquered

territory.

Thus commenced the temporal dominion of the bishops of Rome--an event

which marks a distinct period in the history of the papacy, but the

importance of which we cannot but think has been somewhat overrated. The

power by which the pontiffs acquired their vast empire in the minds of

men, owed little or none of its vigour to the influence they possessed

as princes; it went on increasing till it reached the very boundaries of

civilisation, while their little seigniory remained confined within the

narrowest limits; and it declined, and became almost nominal, while their

rights as sovereigns continued to be acknowledged by all the states of

Europe. In point of wealth it plainly admits of being questioned whether

they could gain any advantage from an acquisition which obliged them to

keep an army in their pay; to support a countless train of emissaries and

envoys; and to engage in all the expensive arts of diplomacy with the

monarchs of countries whose treasures were perpetually supplied by the

labours and the commerce of their people.

As little was their new dominion advantageous to their dignity. The

pontiff was the first among the spiritual rulers of mankind, the

lowest almost of temporal princes. As the head of the church, he was

rendered venerable by all the associations and by many of the highest

sanctions of religion; as the successor of the exarchs of Ravenna, he

was the dependent of every prince who had an army at his command, and

was but an item in the catalogue of petty rulers, who were counted as

make-weights in the balance of power. In whatever designs he undertook

as the supremely endowed minister of God, he could appeal to the hearts

and consciences of men; could shake the confidence of the mightiest,

and bring into alliance the most contrary elements of society to effect

his purpose; whatever attempts he had to make in his temporal capacity

required to be supported by the pettiest inventions of secret policy, by

contrivances and deceits which, in time, rendered the proceedings of the

court of Rome proverbial as examples of cunning and duplicity.

[Sidenote: [755-775 A.D.]]

Stephen died, after a short but eventful pontificate of five years,

and was succeeded by his brother Paul (756 A.D.). The Greeks still

continued to proclaim their pretensions to the sovereignty of Italy; nor

dared the Roman pontiff, vain as were their claims, at once throw off

the appearance of allegiance. The Lombards, on the other hand, showed

themselves little inclined to preserve the treaty which had been formed

with the church. A tumult, equally dangerous to the state and to the

respectability of the pontificate, followed the death of Paul. Totona,

a nobleman of wealth and influence, formed the design of elevating his

brother Constantine to the vacant chair, and Constantine kept possession

of his usurped authority nearly a year. A strong effort was then made

by the great body of the clergy and the people to recover their invaded

right of election. The pontiff was seized, and deprived of his eyes. A

new pope ascended the throne.

Stephen III enjoyed his honours about four years, and then left them

to be possessed by Adrian I. The Lombards still pressed close upon the

boundaries of Rome. It was at this period, moreover, that the controversy

with the iconoclasts approached its highest degree of virulence; and

Adrian had to employ all the prudence of which he was master to meet the

dangers in which it involved him. The measures pursued by the empress

Irene were as unfavourable to his views as they were in themselves

violent and unjust. The iconoclasts were as odious to him as to her; they

were as opposed to the system which it was his object to establish, as

they were to her usurpations and tyranny. While he expressed his doubts,

therefore, as to the propriety of the new patriarch’s consecration,

and showed considerable backwardness in recognising the Second Council

of Nicæa, he attempted no vigorous resistance to the invasion of those

rules which were violated in her proceedings. The establishment of

image-worship promised effects more favourable to his general interests

than the assumption of authority by Tiresias, and his patroness was

offensive to his immediate feelings. But the church was now to receive

the support of a prince whose character and circumstances were equally

calculated to mark him for her champion.[c]

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE POPE

[Sidenote: [775-776 A.D.]]

Einhard[l] (Eginhard), the biographer of Charlemagne, informs us that

the strictest friendship subsisted between that monarch and Pope

Adrian I. In the still extant correspondence between them, we find the

freest communication of opinion and feeling both upon political and

ecclesiastical affairs. In exact conformity with the policy of his

predecessors, Adrian regarded the Frankish monarch as the covenanted

protector of the holy see and its possessions, and in that capacity

bound to recover for her every debt the pope might see fit to claim as

her “righteous due.” Thus when Leo, archbishop of Ravenna, refused to

relinquish his metropolitan rights over certain districts alleged to form

part of the donation of Charlemagne, the pope expressed his anxiety for

the presence and support of his friend and protector. Adrian, moreover,

suspected the royal _missi_, or commissioners, of collusion with the

vassal dukes of Benevento and Spoleto, to the injury of the holy see;

and, whether from authentic information or with a view to alarm his

correspondent for the safety of his Italian conquests, he magnified the

transactions complained of into a criminal conspiracy against the crown.

He told the king that the outbreak was actually fixed to take place

in the month of March then next following (776 A.D.); that Adelchis

(Adalgis), the son of Desiderius, the captive king of the Lombards, was

to appear on the coast with a Greek fleet; that Rome was to be assailed

both by sea and land, the churches were to be plundered, the pope was to

be carried into captivity, and the Lombard dynasty to be reinstated.

Other motives were not wanting to induce Charlemagne to pay a second

military visit to his newly acquired dominions in Italy. It had become

necessary to take immediate steps for the dissolution of a long-suspected

plot between his disaffected subject, Duke Tassilo of Bavaria, and the

partisans of the late dynasty. In the winter, therefore, of the year

776, he crossed the Alps at the head of a numerous army; the duke of

Friuli, who appears to have taken a principal part in the conspiracy,

was expelled from his duchy; and in a short time the presence of the

conqueror appears to have dispelled all apprehensions of further danger

either to church or state. The pope professed himself satisfied with

the result, and returned thanks for the protection afforded with great

apparent warmth and cordiality.

THE DONATION FROM CONSTANTINE

[Sidenote: [776-780 A.D.]]

Yet all had not, it seems, been done for the satisfaction of the

papal claims. Another and a different title to an almost imperial

power is brought to light. Now, for the first time after the lapse of

four centuries and a half, it is discovered that all which Pepin or

Charlemagne had conferred on the church of Rome was an insignificant

instalment of that more extensive dominion originally granted to the

chair of Peter by “the pious emperor Constantine.”

The expressions used by the pope to denote the extent of this supposed

donation are not free from uncertainty and ambiguity. The endowment of

“supreme power over all the region of the West,” alleged to have been

granted by Constantine the Great, must have comprehended much more than

the territories conveyed by the deeds of Pepin and Charlemagne. It is

therefore insinuated that, though those princes had dealt liberally by

the church, they would, notwithstanding, not have done their whole duty

until they should have given possession of all that had been comprised in

the original deed of gift. Charlemagne, it seems, was to consider himself

as the mere executor of his predecessor Constantine the Great; and in

that character it is obvious he must stand in a position of far less

observance than as the spontaneous patron and benefactor.

The fictitious donation was presented to him as absolute in its terms;

therefore as at once discharging the estate conveyed in the execution

of its provisions from all dues, duties, and conditions whatsoever,

claimable by the hand through which it passed to the rightful owner. It

was significantly hinted that his past services were held by the pope

to merge in his obligations for the future; that he should think less

of the benefits he had conferred than of the duties he might rightfully

be called upon to perform; and that, as long as a single item of the

infinite debt entailed upon him by his great testator remained unpaid,

he must consider himself as debtor to God and St. Peter for the whole.

It would be hardly fair to presume that the impudent forgery, afterwards

known by the title of the _Donation of Constantine_, had as yet found its

appropriate niche in the archives of the Lateran, or that it was included

among the documents which the pope instructed his envoys to produce

to Charlemagne. But among the multitude of eager searchers, the thing

wanted is generally near enough at hand for the purposes of the less

scrupulous among the number. In the reign of Pope Adrian I the desire

for territorial acquisition had been stimulated by success to a degree

of intensity scarcely paralleled in the history of secular ambition. In

such a disposition, a feather-light tradition might stand as good ground

for the most extravagant claims; and the fabrication of the outward proof

of what was already registered in men’s minds as accredited fact, might

appear as a mere venial condescension to the natural adhesion of mankind

to the usual and customary modes of proof.

[Illustration: VERY EARLY GREEK MANUSCRIPT OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS, GIVEN

BY QUEEN ELIZABETH TO SIR JOHN FORTESCUE]

The transient visit of Charlemagne to Italy in the year 776 appears

for the moment to have dissipated the apprehensions of the pope. Four

years later an interval of peace on his Saxon frontier and the temporary

submission of his turbulent vassal Tassilo of Bavaria left Charlemagne

at leisure to disentangle by his presence the ravelled state of Italian

affairs. He was probably anxious to acquaint himself personally with the

causes of the existing disorders, as well as to obtain an explanation

of the interruption in the harmony of his correspondence with the

pope, whom he sincerely honoured and was well disposed to support. The

critical state, however, of the coasts and frontiers, as depicted to

him by Adrian, appears to have made no serious impression. No military

preparations were thought necessary; and in the winter of the year 780,

Charlemagne, accompanied by his consort Hildegard, his two infant sons

Carloman and Louis, and escorted by no other force than his ordinary

household troops and followers, crossed the Alps into Italy. The

annalists of the age describe the expedition as a visit of devotion.

CHARLEMAGNE’S THIRD AND FOURTH ENTRANCES INTO ITALY

[Sidenote: [780-786 A.D.]]

In the spring of the year 781 Charlemagne arrived for the third time in

Rome, where he celebrated the great festival of Easter. Pope Adrian upon

this occasion conferred the right of baptism on the two young princes,

changing the name of the elder from that of Carloman to Pepin, in honour

of his grandfather; and at the same moment he crowned the elder “king

of the Lombards,” and the younger (Louis) king of Aquitaine. The honour

was accepted, probably solicited, by the king without any misgiving

as to the inferences that might thereafter be drawn from this or past

condescendencies of the like character. Charlemagne never scrupled to

make use of church or pontiff for the accomplishment of his political

purposes; and he now called upon Adrian to support the remonstrances he

thought it necessary to address to his nephew Tassilo by the aid of his

spiritual authority.

Charlemagne could not but acknowledge that he had been greatly indebted

to the exertions of the churchmen for the pacification of his Saxon

acquisitions; and in requital of this co-operation he was not inclined

to deny to his spiritual allies an important share in the profits of

victory. But the consciousness of present power shut out any sinister

view to the future. The church was, after all, in his hands no more than

an instrument for the accomplishment of his purposes; that she should

ever become his mistress was remote from his contemplation; and it is not

to be wondered at that he should have identified her interests with those

of his government in that spirit of gratitude which might in the sequel

be made to wear an aspect of homage very conducive to the progress of

hierarchical pretension.

Both parties were in the main inclined to regard each other as the means

and instruments for the promotion of their separate interests. But the

absence of any real reciprocity in the terms of compact could not but

very soon become apparent. No temporal benefit could be conferred by

the pope commensurate with the sacrifices the monarch was incessantly

called upon to make to the insatiate craving of the holy see for

those substantial augmentations, that costly support, that burdensome

protection, to which he was held to have pledged himself. Such an

understanding could last no longer than while either or both parties

were actuated rather by religious than by merely selfish motives. The

views of Pope Adrian had nothing of a properly religious character in

them; his correspondence is but an echo of the one shrill cry for “more.”

“Give, grant, endow, restore, and the blessed Peter shall surely send

you victory and prosperity.” This is the burden of the papal addresses

from the birth to the consummation of the alliance. A certain coincidence

of interests, supported upon the religious and loyal character of

Charlemagne, had hitherto cemented the union; but, though the result

might be overlooked, it is clear that as soon as those interests should

diverge or cease to exist, there remained nothing behind to prevent them

from falling into irreconcilable opposition. Even within this period of

apparent concord and cordiality some symptoms of such a divergency may be

detected.

[Sidenote: [786-795 A.D.]]

In the year 786 Charlemagne paid a fourth visit to Rome; and after

performing the customary devotional exercises at the principal shrines

and churches, he applied himself to the task of reducing the refractory

duke of Benevento to obedience. An accommodation was easily accomplished;

Charlemagne accepted the renewed oaths of allegiance of the duke and his

vassals, and carried away with him Grimwald (Grimoald), the second son of

Arichis (Arighis), as a pledge for the future obedience of the duke and

his subjects. No notice was taken of the papal claim upon the territory

of Benevento; and Pope Adrian once more saw his royal patron depart

without obtaining the object nearest to his heart. During the remainder

of his pontificate we trace no further attempt on the part of the pope to

realise his favourite project of aggrandisement. The momentary coolness

which had followed the defeat of the Calabrian Greeks produced no real

estrangement between him and his great patron; and Adrian died (795) in

the full enjoyment of the confidence and esteem of Charlemagne.

THE REALM OF THE POPES

At the close of the reign of Charlemagne the possessions of the church

of Rome may thus be identified with existing geographical divisions: (1)

In virtue of right, or pretension of right, originating prior to the

donation of Pepin, the pontiffs exercised temporal jurisdiction over the

city and duchy of Rome as it had existed under the Byzantine supremacy,

comprehending, as nearly as may now be ascertained, the modern district

emphatically known by the name of the “Patrimony Proper,” together with

the greatest portion if not the whole of the Campagna di Roma as far

south as Terracina. (2) By the donations of Pepin and Charlemagne the

church of Rome had reduced into possession the city and exarchate of

Ravenna, comprising the modern legations of Bologna, Romagna, Urbino,

and Ferrara, with the duchies of Parma and Modena and a portion of the

Venetian terra-firma on the mouths of the Po.

But these extensive tracts of country were regarded by the popes as but a

portion of their claim under the treaties of Pontyon and Quierzy and the

donation of Charlemagne. That claim extended over the islands of Corsica

and Sardinia, the entire duchies of Benevento and Spoleto, and all the

remaining dependencies of the Byzantines in southern Italy, including

both Calabrias and the adjacent island of Sicily; thus constituting in

the aggregate nearly the whole of Italy south of the river Po, ranging

thence along the eastern declivity of the Apennines as far as the

southernmost confine of the modern grand duchy of Tuscany, and thence

expanding over the breadth of the peninsula to the extreme coasts,

embracing all the greater adjoining islands and the territory of Istria

on the northeastern shores of the Adriatic Sea. Pope Adrian I died on the

26th of December in the year 795, after the unusually long pontificate of

twenty-three years and upwards. When Charlemagne heard of his demise, we

are told that he wept for him as for a brother.

[Sidenote: [795-800 A.D.]]

On the occasion of Charlemagne’s first visit to Rome (774), Pope Adrian

conferred upon him the title and dignity of patrician, or official

advocate and protector of the holy see. When shortly after the death

of that pontiff in the year 795, Leo, archpriest of the church of St.

Susanna, was elected to the vacant chair by the title of Leo III, the new

pope hastened to renew the patent of the patriciate, as if it were an

office expiring with the life of the grantor. As matters stood at this

moment between him and the king, it is safest to conclude that the pope

desired that the royal patrician should regard himself as captain-general

of the church, and that he should in that capacity be entitled to the

military services of its subjects, when called on by the church to

interfere for the protection of her temporal rights. But the act of

Pope Leo III, which placed his subjects under military obligation to a

stranger, was calculated to engender grave misunderstandings. The feudal

principle, now rapidly unfolding itself in the European polity, drew no

distinction between civil and military subjection; and the oath of the

Romans to the protector might be easily confounded with that of subject

to sovereign.

The constitutional or political powers exercised at this period by the

pontiffs within the city and territory of the church are very obscurely

indicated in the documents of the age. From what we discern on the

surface of history, no very well-defined relation subsisted between

the so-called “republic of Rome” and the spiritual ruler. The bond

which connected them, as far as, at this distance of time and with such

defective information, we can discern, was the recognised participation

of the richer and more powerful families in all the offices of government

and the dignities and emoluments of ecclesiastical promotion. But by such

an arrangement it is obvious that every just limit between spiritual and

temporal interests must be speedily obliterated; the result was verified

in the unutterable corruptions of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Even

at this point of time, and for a long series of years past, many symptoms

of a vicious and demoralising relation between the constituents of the

Roman state are apparent.

In the fifth year of the pontificate of Leo III two relatives of Pope

Adrian I, Paschal the primicerius and Campulus the sacellarius of the

holy see, conspired to depose the reigning pontiff. After suffering

some personal injuries at the hands of his rebellious subjects, Leo

was expelled from the city; and he resolved to solicit redress in

person at the court of Charlemagne, who was at that moment sojourning

at Paderborn, within the confines of the vanquished Saxons. The king

received the suppliant pontiff with the highest honours, and listened to

his complaints with the profoundest attention. Of the special subjects

of the conference we are not informed; but in the autumn of the year 799

Leo returned to Rome under an escort sufficiently strong to insure his

personal safety. In the interim, the faction opposed to him had lost

ground, and he was received by the citizens with unusual tokens of joy

and affection.

Pope Leo was, as it appears, accompanied to Rome by two German prelates,

Hildebrand archbishop of Cologne, and Arno archbishop of Salzburg, as

_missi dominici_, or royal commissioners, charged to make due inquisition

into the offences imputed to the pope by his adversaries. The prelates

are said to have examined the evidence on both sides with great care

and minuteness, and at the close of it to have come to the conclusion

that nothing criminal had been established against the pope; upon which

decision his rebellious accusers were taken into custody and carried away

to France.

THE TRIAL OF THE POPE AND THE CROWNING OF CHARLEMAGNE

[Sidenote: [800 A.D.]]

Within the twelvemonth of the reinstatement of the pope, Charlemagne held

a great diet of the realm at Mainz. “There,” says the annalist,[m] “he

assembled his great nobles, his bishops, and his abbots all; and having

reported to them that there was now peace in all his borders, he called

to their minds the evils which the Romans had done to the apostolic

Leo; and he set his face to go into the parts of Rome, and thither he

accordingly proceeded.” This simple notice of the annalist of Moissac is

the only passage in any original chronicle in which a motive for this

fifth expedition of Charlemagne to Rome is assigned. The king arrived

at the gates of the city on the 24th of November, 800, and was received

by the pontiff under the porch of St. Peter’s church, outside the walls,

with all due devotion and honour. Seven days afterwards a solemn assembly

of the citizens was convoked, at which the king acquainted them with the

cause of his visit.

His next proceeding is not very intelligible. He assembled, we are told,

a solemn synod, still in the basilica of St. Peter, to inquire into the

crimes imputed to the pope; but whether the old or fresh inculpations is

not said. On this occasion the king and the pope sat beside each other,

surrounded by the nobility, the bishops, and the abbots of France and

Italy. The spiritual lords alone were seated; the inferior priests and

the laity of all ranks remained standing. Proclamation was then made

for the accusers to come forward and make their complaint; but no one

answered to the call. It is not apparent why this formality should have

been observed at all, inasmuch as the clergy had unanimously declared

themselves incompetent to sit in judgment upon a pontiff of the holy

see. The pope, however, intimated his intention to purge himself of all

the offences laid to his charge in the form established in like cases

by his predecessors. On the following day, therefore, he in full synod

took the books of the Gospels in his hands, and upon them he solemnly

protested his innocence; whereupon “the prelates and all the clergy burst

simultaneously into a hymn of thanksgiving, devoutly praising God, the

holy Virgin, St. Peter, and all the saints.”

Within the first month of the residence of Charlemagne in Rome nothing

took place indicative of any ulterior purpose. During all that time the

king had appeared to be absorbed in regulating the political affairs of

the church and city. But on Christmas Day of the year 800, while he and

the pope devoutly knelt together at the altar of St. Peter’s church,

engaged in the preliminary prayer before mass, the pontiff, as if moved

by a sudden impulse of inspiration, placed upon his head an elaborately

wrought and very costly imperial crown. At the same time the people,

as if prepared for the incident, simultaneously and as with one voice

exclaimed, “Long life to Charles, augustus, the great and peace-giving

emperor of the Romans, whom the hand of God hath crowned!” The salutation

was twice repeated; after which, according to imperial custom, he was

enthroned and anointed with holy oil, and worshipped by the pope.

“Whereby,” says the annalist,[m] “he was unanimously constituted emperor;

and dropping the title of patrician, he was thenceforth called ‘imperator

augustus.’”

Whether the crown was placed on his head with or without his consent, the

mode of conferring it was intended to imply that the king was a passive

party, that he accepted it as a boon or gift at the hands of the pope

without claim or pretence of right on his own part. The material crown

itself was of papal procurement and fabrication; the act of coronation

was that of the pontiff; he gave the crown, the Roman people ratified the

act and proclaimed the emperor. The transaction bears the character of a

joint act, in which Leo and the Romans performed the part of spontaneous

electors and sovereign depositaries of imperial power. The adoration was

a simple ceremony of recognition; it was unaccompanied with any new oath

of allegiance; the rights of the new emperor still resting upon the oath

of obedience to him as patrician. Ultimately the participation of the

people was no doubt considered as wholly accessory to the papal decision;

and the pope might well hold himself out to the world as the sole

depositary and dispenser of imperial authority. Upon this ground, indeed,

the papacy cast anchor, and for all future ages held on with amazing

pertinacity and success.

[Sidenote: [800-824 A.D.]]

On the other hand, Charlemagne and his subjects did not concern

themselves with any curious inquiry into the origin of the powers which

the imperial crown brought along with it. Yet, in conformity with their

general notion of government, they believed that Rome and her pontiff had

taken upon them the relation of subjects to the emperor whom they had

crowned and anointed. It is certain that Charlemagne regarded himself

as the sovereign of Rome, if not of the pope; he was emperor in his

own right as fully as if he had placed the crown upon his own head. In

conformity with the opinion and practice of his age, he grounded that

right upon possession. In the mind of the warrior there was no place for

any other derivation of title; and Charlemagne and his successors took as

little distinction between the possession and the sovereignty of Rome and

its appurtenant territories as they did in the case of his newly acquired

dominions in Germany, Lombardy, or Spain.

A few days after the coronation of Charlemagne, he directed the persons

implicated in the plot of the preceding year against the life and

government of the pope to be brought before him for judgment; and, as

supreme judge, he condemned them to the death of traitors. This exercise

of supreme criminal judicature indicates at least the assumption of

a power understood in that age to be a distinguishing attribute of

sovereign authority. The condemned criminals were indeed respited at the

intercession of the pope, and their punishment was commuted for exile;

but nothing occurred to indicate any jealous feeling on the part of the

pontiff; and throughout the winter of the year 801 Charlemagne continued

to exercise every prerogative of imperial power in Rome with as free a

hand as when he set up his migratory throne upon the banks of the Seine,

the Rhine, or the Elbe.

In the year 806 he executed a provisional settlement of the succession to

his vast dominions among his then surviving sons. During the whole course

of his life Charlemagne was anxious to invest his more important acts

with the sanction of religion. The settlement of 806, though provisional

only, was solemnly enacted and sworn to by his sons and the estates of

the realm assembled in diet at Thionville; and was soon afterwards sent

by the hand of the emperor’s secretary to Rome for the approval and

signature of the pope--a step which lay open to a construction probably

far beyond the intent of Charlemagne.[d]

PAPAL AMBITION AFTER CHARLEMAGNE

Almost immediately after Charlemagne’s death, Leo assumed to himself a

degree of authority which could not be exercised without equal injury to

the state and to the sacerdotal character. Stephen IV, his successor,

took the oath of allegiance, together with the whole of the people, as

soon as he ascended the pontifical throne; and announced to the monarch,

Louis the Pious, that he would attend him at whatever place he should

appoint. But the Christian meekness of the pontiff was exceeded by that

of the sovereign, who, on receiving his visit at Rheims, prostrated

himself three times at his feet. There is evidence, however, to prove

that it still required a man of equally powerful and ambitious mind

to take full advantage of the means of aggrandisement afforded by the

present position of the church. During the short reigns of several

successive popes, we see the power of the emperor distinctly at work, and

his right acknowledged, in the management of ecclesiastical affairs.

[Sidenote: [824-847 A.D.]]

In the year 824, and under the pontificate of Eugenius I, Louis sent his

son Lothair to Rome, to inquire into the truth of the complaints made by

the citizens against their sacerdotal chiefs; and when Gregory IV visited

France, for the purpose of effecting a reconciliation between Louis and

his son, the bishops of France, whom he appears to have threatened with

his censures, proudly dared him to a trial of his power, by informing

him that if he did aught against the canons, he should himself be

excommunicated or deposed. The pernicious counsel of one of his advisers

taught him to answer this intimation by fresh assertions of authority,

and he dared to commence the practice, which subsequently proved such

a fruitful source of disorder and scandal in Christendom, of declaring

the sovereign deposed because of his quarrel with the ruler of the Roman

church. The emperor Lothair was sufficiently tenacious of his authority

to issue especial orders, on the election of Sergius II without his being

consulted, that for the future no candidate for the papal throne should

be consecrated till he had given his assent to the election.

[Illustration: AN EXTRACT FROM BEZA’S TESTAMENT OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE]

In the midst of these events, the victorious Saracens were pursuing their

conquests over the most fertile provinces of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

While Calabria was overrun by one division of the Saracens, Rome itself

was threatened by another. In vain did the terrified Romans look to the

descendants of Charlemagne for help; in vain did they proffer again their

broken allegiance to the emperor of the East. Neither the one nor the

other was in a condition to render the required assistance, and the city

appeared doomed to destruction. The venerable churches of St. Peter and

St. Paul, which inspired a feeling of devotion by their antiquity, and

of wonder by the magnificence of their shrines, were situated a short

distance from the walls; and the unfortunate citizens witnessed from

the ramparts the spoliation of these, the most sacred of their temples,

without the means of making a single effort for their defence. But the

rage produced by this spectacle, combined with the terror with which the

entrance of the enemy into the city was contemplated, roused them to

attempt some measure of resistance. The death of Sergius just at this

juncture greatly contributed to promote their success. In electing Leo IV

to the vacant office, they provided themselves with a skilful counsellor

and an energetic leader. The invader, after various assaults, was obliged

to retreat, in order to make the conquest of places less skilfully

defended.

The death of Leo was succeeded by much confusion, and in this period

of excitement and difficulty, the vacant chair was said to have been

ascended by a woman, the celebrated papess Joan.[c]

THE MYTH OF THE WOMAN POPE

[Sidenote: [847-855 A.D.]]

Joan was the name given to a female pope, now regarded as a fictitious

personage, who under the title of John VII or VIII was said, according

to the most general accounts, to have occupied the papal chair between

the pontificate of Leo IV and Benedict III, although various other dates

are given. Tradition represents her as of English descent, but born in

Ingelheim or Mainz. By some her original name is given as Gilberta,

by others as Agnes. She was credited with having fallen in love with

a young Benedictine monk, and with having on that account assumed the

male monastic habit and lived for some time in the monastery of Fulda.

Her lover, it is affirmed, died while they were pursuing their studies

together at Athens, and after his death she went to Rome, where,

according to the most approved version of the story, she became a very

successful professor. So high indeed became her reputation for piety and

learning that the cardinals with one consent elected the supposed young

monk the successor of Pope Leo IV. In this position she comported herself

so as to entirely justify their choice, until the catastrophe of giving

birth to a male child during a procession to the Lateran palace suddenly

and irrevocably blasted her reputation. She is said to have died in

childbirth or to have been stoned to death.

The story of the pontificate of Joan was received as fact from the

thirteenth to the fifteenth century, but it has been discredited by later

researches. The circumstantial evidence around which it clung, and which

may have aided in suggesting it, was the observance of a circuit by the

papal processions so as to avoid passing through a certain street (a

statue at one time standing in that street, said to represent a woman and

child, with a monumental stone near it having a peculiar inscription),

and the use of a pierced seat at the enthronement of the popes. Of these

facts other and more credible explanations have, however, been given,

although there is no sufficient evidence to demonstrate beyond dispute

the manner in which the story originated. According to Dr. Döllinger,[e]

the tradition finds no support in the original text either of Marianus

Scotus,[n] Sigebert of Gemblours,[o] or Otto of Freysing.[p] She is first

mentioned by Stephen de Bourbon,[q] who died in 1261, and who took his

information probably from the chronicle of the Dominican Jean de Mailly,

no copy of which is now known to be in existence. The story is not found

in any of the original manuscripts of Martinus Polus,[r] and according to

Döllinger was interpolated in that chronicle some time between 1278 and

1312. He attributes the propagation of the myth chiefly to its insertion

in Martinus Polus, from which it was copied into the _Flores Temporum_,

a chronicle founded on Martinus, and its real originators he supposes

to have been the Dominicans and Minorites, who had a grudge against the

papacy on account of the persecutions they were experiencing at the

hands of Benedict VIII. So rapidly did the tradition spread that in 1400

a bust of the papess was placed in the cathedral of Siena along with

other popes, having the inscription, “John VIII, a woman from England.”

The statue occupied this position till the beginning of the seventeenth

century.[f]

[Sidenote: [847-867 A.D.]]

The eight years of Leo’s papacy were chiefly occupied in strengthening,

in restoring the plundered and desecrated churches of the two apostles,

and adorning Rome. The succession to Leo IV was contested between

Benedict III, who commanded the suffrages of the clergy and people, and

Anastasius, who, at the head of an armed faction, seized the Lateran,

stripped Benedict of his pontifical robes, and awaited the confirmation

of his violent usurpation by the imperial legates, whose influence he

thought that he had secured. But these commissioners, after strict

investigation, decided in favour of Benedict. Anastasius was expelled

with disgrace from the Lateran, his rival consecrated in the presence of

the emperor’s representatives. Anastasius, with unwonted mercy, was only

degraded to lay communion. The pontificate of Benedict III is memorable

chiefly for the commencement of the long strife between Ignatius and

Photius for the see of Constantinople. This strife ended in the permanent

schism between the Eastern and Western churches.

Nicholas I, the successor of Benedict, was chosen rather by the favour of

the emperor Louis and his nobles than that of the clergy (858). He has

been thought worthy to share the appellation of the Great with Leo I,

with Gregory I, with Hildebrand, and with Innocent III. At least three

great events signalised the pontificate of Nicholas I--the strife of

Photius with Ignatius for the archiepiscopal throne of Constantinople;

the prohibition of the divorce of King Lothair from his queen Theutberga;

and the humiliation of the great prelates on the Rhine, the successful

assertion of the papal supremacy even over Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims.

In the first two of these momentous questions, the contest about the see

of Constantinople, and that of Lothair, king of Lorraine, with his wife

Theutberga, Nicholas took his stand on the great eternal principles of

justice, humanity, and sound morals. These were no questions of abstruse

and subtle theology nor the assertion of dubious rights. In both cases

the pope was the protector of the feeble and the oppressed, the victims

of calumny and of cruelty. The bishop of Constantinople, unjustly

deposed, persecuted, exiled, treated with the worst inhumanity, implored

the judgment of the head of western Christendom. A queen, not only

deserted by a weak and cruel husband, but wickedly and falsely criminated

by a council of bishops, obtained a hearing at the court of Rome; her

innocence was vindicated, her accusers punished, the king himself

compelled to bow before the majesty of justice, made more venerable by

religion. If in both cases the language of Nicholas was haughty and

imperious, it was justified to the ears of men by the goodness of his

cause. The lofty supremacy which he asserted over the see of Byzantium

awoke no jealousy, being exerted in behalf of a blameless and injured

prelate. If he treated the royal dignity of France with contempt, it had

already become contemptible in the eyes of mankind; if he annulled by

his own authority the decree of a national council, composed of the most

distinguished prelates of Gaul, that council had already been condemned

by all who had natural sympathies with justice and with innocence. Yet,

though in both cases Nicholas displayed equal ability and resolution in

the cause of right, the event of the two affairs was very different.

The dispute concerning the patriarchate of Constantinople ended in the

estrangement, the alienation, the final schism between the East and West.

It was the last time that the pope was permitted authoritatively to

interfere in the ecclesiastical affairs of the East. The excommunication

of the Greek by the Latin church was the final act of separation. In the

West Nicholas established a precedent for control even over the private

morals of princes. The vices of kings, especially those of France, became

the stronghold of papal influence; injured queens and subjects knew to

what quarter they might recur for justice or for revenge. And on this

occasion the pope brought not only the impotent king, but the powerful

clergy of Lorraine, beneath his feet. The great bishops of Cologne and of

Trèves were reduced to abject humiliation.

RIVALRY OF NICHOLAS AND PHOTIUS

[Sidenote: [860-867 A.D.]]

The contention for the patriarchate of Constantinople was, strictly

speaking, no religious controversy--it was the result of political

intrigue and personal animosity. Ignatius, who became the patriarch,

was of imperial descent. In the revolution which dethroned his father,

Michael Rhangabé, he had taken refuge, under the cowl of a monk, from the

jealousy of Leo the Armenian. Photius was chosen as his successor. Rival

councils met, and the two patriarchs were alternately excommunicated by

the adverse spiritual factions.

Photius was the first to determine on an appeal to Rome. The pope, he

thought, would hardly resist the acknowledgment of his superiority, with

the tempting promise of the total extirpation of the hated iconoclasts.

Not merely did the pope address two lofty and condemnatory letters to the

emperor and to Photius, but a third also to “the faithful in the East,”

at the close of which he made known to the three Eastern patriarchs

his steadfast resolution to maintain the cause of Ignatius, to refuse

the recognition of the usurper Photius. The restoration of Ignatius

was commanded even in more imperious language, and under more awful

sanctions. “We, by the power committed to us by our Lord through St.

Peter, restore our brother Ignatius to his former station, to his see, to

his dignity as patriarch, and to all the honours of his office. Whoever,

after the promulgation of this decree, shall presume to disturb him in

the exercise of his office, separate from his communion, or dare to judge

him anew, without the consent of the apostolic see, if a clerk, shall

share the eternal punishment of the traitor Judas; if a layman, he has

incurred the malediction of Canaan; he is excommunicate, and will suffer

the same fearful sentence from the eternal Judge.”

Never had the power of the clergy or the supremacy of Rome been asserted

so distinctly, so inflexibly. The privileges of Rome were eternal,

immutable, anterior to, derived from no synod or council, but granted

directly by God himself; they might be assailed, but not transferred;

torn off for a time, but not plucked up by the roots. An appeal was open

to Rome from all the world, from her authority lay no appeal. The emperor

and Constantinople paid no regard to these terrible anathemas of the

pope.

SYNOD AT CONSTANTINOPLE

[Sidenote: [867 A.D.]]

In the year 867 Photius had summoned a council at Constantinople; the

obsequious prelates listened to the arraignment, and joined in the

counter excommunication of Pope Nicholas. Photius drew up eight articles

inculpating in one the faith, in the rest the departure, of the see of

Rome from ancient and canonical discipline. Among the dreadful acts

of heresy and schism which were to divide forever the churches of the

East and West were: (1) the observance of Saturday as a fast; (2) the

permission to eat milk or cheese during Lent; (4) the restriction of

the chrism to the bishops; (6) the promotion of deacons at once to the

episcopal dignity; (7) the consecration of a lamb, according to the hated

Jewish usage; (8) the shaving of their beards by the clergy. The fifth

only of the articles objected to by Photius, the procession of the Holy

Ghost from the Father and the Son, was an error so awful as to deserve a

thousand anathemas. The third, condemning the enforced celibacy of the

clergy, was alone of high moral or religious importance. “From this usage

we see in the West,” says Photius, “so many children who know not their

fathers.” These, however, were but the pretexts for division. The cause

lay deeper, in the total denial of the papal supremacy by the Greeks;

their unequivocal assertion that with the empire that supremacy had

passed to Constantinople.

The decree of the council boasted the signature of the emperor (obtained,

it was said, in an hour of drunkenness); of Basil the Macedonian,

averred (most improbably) to have been forged; of the three eastern

patriarchs; of the senate and the great officers; of abbots and bishops

to the number of nearly one thousand. But the episcopal messenger who

was to bear to Rome this defiance of the church of Constantinople

and the counter-excommunication of the pope, had proceeded but a

short way on his journey when he was stopped by the orders of the new

emperor. A revolution in the palace was a revolution in the church of

Constantinople. The first act of Basil the Macedonian was to depose

Photius. Photius is said to have refused the communion to the murderer

Basil. From this time a succession of changes agitated the empire;

Photius rose or fell at each successive change.

Leo the Philosopher, the son of Basil, once more ignominiously expelled

him from his throne. Yet, though accused of treason, Photius was

acquitted and withdrew into honoured retirement. He did not live to

witness or profit by another revolution. Though the schism of thirty

years, properly speaking, expired in his person, and again a kind of

approximation to Rome took place, yet the links were broken which united

the two churches. The articles of difference, from which neither would

depart, had been defined and hardened into rigid dogmas. During the dark

times of the papacy which followed the disruption, even the intercourse

became more and more precarious. The popes of the next century were too

busy in defending their territories or their lives to regard the affairs

of the East. The darkness which gathered round both churches shrouded

them from each other’s sight.

[Sidenote: [860-867 A.D.]]

Nicholas the Great had not lived to triumph even in the first fall of

Photius. In the West his success was more complete; he had the full

enjoyment of conscious power exercised in a righteous cause. Not merely

did he behold one of Charlemagne’s successors prostrate at his feet,

obliged to abandon to papal censure and to degradation even his high

ecclesiastical partisans, but in succession the greatest prelates of

the West, the archbishop of Ravenna, the archbishops of Cologne and

Trèves, and even Hincmar, the archbishop of Rheims, who seemed to rule

despotically over the church and kingdom of France, were forced to bow

before his vigorous supremacy.

The matrimonial cause which for many years distracted part of France,

on which council after council met, and on which the great prelates of

Lorraine came into direct collision with the pope, and were reduced to

complete and unpitied humiliation under his authority, was that of King

Lothair and his queen Theutberga, as elsewhere described. He threatened

the king with immediate excommunication if he did not dismiss the

concubine Waldrada, and receive his repudiated queen. He then betook

himself to Attigny, the residence of Charles the Bald. He peremptorily

commanded the restoration of the bishop Rothrad, who had been

canonically, as it was asserted, deposed by Hincmar his metropolitan,

and was now irregularly, without inquiry or examination, replaced by the

arbitrary mandate of the pope. Hincmar murmured and obeyed; the trembling

king acquiesced in the papal decree.

But Nicholas did not live to enjoy his perfect triumph; he died in

November, 867 A.D.--a pontiff who, if he advanced no absolutely

unexampled pretensions to supremacy in behalf of the Roman see, yet, by

the favourable juncture and auspicious circumstances which he seized to

assert and maintain that authority, did more than all his predecessors to

strengthen and confirm it. During all his conflicts in the West with the

royal and with the episcopal power, the moral and religious sympathies of

mankind could not but be on his side. If his language was occasionally

more violent, even contemptuous, than became the moderation which, up

to this time, had mitigated the papal decrees, he might plead lofty and

righteous indignation; if he interfered with domestic relations, it was

in defence of the innocent and defenceless, and in vindication of the

sanctity of marriage; if he treated kings with scorn, it was because

they had become contemptible for their weakness or their vices; if he

interfered with episcopal or metropolitan jurisdiction, the inferior

clergy, even bishops, would be pleased to have a remote, and possibly

disinterested tribunal, to which they might appeal from prelates, chosen

only from aristocratic connections, barbarians in occupation and in

ferocity; if he was inexorable to transgressors, it was to those of

the highest order, prelates who had lent themselves to injustice and

iniquity, and had defied his power; if he annulled councils, those

councils had already been condemned for their injustice, had deserved the

reproachful appellation with which they were branded by the pope, with

all who had any innate or unperverted sentiment of justice and purity.

Hence the presumptuous usurpation even of divine power, so long as it was

thus beneficently used, awed, confounded all, and offended few. Men took

no alarm at the arrogance which befriended them against the oppressor and

the tyrant.

But this vast moral advancement of the popedom was not all which the

Roman see owes to Nicholas I; she owes the questionable boon of the

recognition of the _False Decretals_ as the law of the church.

THE _FALSE DECRETALS_

[Sidenote: [858-869 A.D.]]

Nicholas I not only saw during his pontificate the famous _False

Decretals_ take their place in the jurisprudence of Latin Christendom; if

he did not promulgate, he assumed them as authentic documents; he gave

them the weight of the papal sanction; and with their aid prostrated at

his feet the one great transalpine prelate who could still maintain the

independence of the Teutonic church, Hincmar archbishop of Rheims.

Up to this period the decretals, the letters or edicts of the bishops

of Rome, according to the authorised or common collection of Dionysius,

commenced with Pope Siricius, towards the close of the fourth century.

To the collection of Dionysius was added that of the authentic councils,

which bore the name of Isidore of Seville. On a sudden was promulgated,

unannounced, without preparation, not absolutely unquestioned, but

apparently overawing at once all doubt, a new code, which to the former

authentic documents added fifty-nine letters and decrees of the twenty

oldest popes from Clement to Melchiades (Miltiades), and the donation of

Constantine; and in the third part, among the decrees of the popes and

of the councils from Silvester to Gregory II, thirty-nine false decrees,

and the acts of several unauthentic councils. In this vast manual of

sacerdotal Christianity the popes appear from the first the parents,

guardians, legislators of the faith throughout the world. The _False

Decretals_ do not merely assert the supremacy of the popes--the dignity

and privileges of the bishop of Rome--they comprehend the whole dogmatic

system and discipline of the church, the whole hierarchy from the highest

to the lowest degree, their sanctity, and immunities, their persecutions,

their disputes, their right of appeal to Rome.

But for the too manifest design, the aggrandisement of the see of Rome

and the aggrandisement of the whole clergy in subordination to the see of

Rome; but for the monstrous ignorance of history, which betrays itself in

glaring anachronisms, and in the utter confusion of the order of events

and the lives of distinguished men--the former awakening keen and jealous

suspicion, the latter making the detection of the spuriousness of the

whole easy, clear, irrefragable--the _False Decretals_ might still have

maintained their place in ecclesiastical history. They are now given up

by all; not a voice is raised in their favour; the utmost that is done by

those who cannot suppress all regret at their explosion, is to palliate

the guilt of the forger, to call in question or to weaken the influence

which they had in their own day, and throughout the later history of

Christianity.

The author or authors of this most audacious and elaborate of pious

frauds are unknown; the date and place of its compilation are driven

into such narrow limits that they may be determined within a few years,

and within a very circumscribed region. The _False Decretals_ came not

from Rome; the time of their arrival at Rome, after they were known

beyond the Alps, appears almost certain. In one year Nicholas I is

apparently ignorant of their existence, the next he speaks of them with

full knowledge. They contain words manifestly used at the Council of

Paris (829 A.D.), consequently are of later date; they were known to the

Levite Benedict of Metz, who composed a supplement to the collection

of capitularies by Adgesil, between 840-847 A.D. The city of Metz is

designated with nearly equal certainty as the place in which, if not

actually composed, they were first promulgated as the canon law of

Christendom.

The state of affairs in the divided and distracted empire might seem

almost to call for, almost to justify, this desperate effort to

strengthen the ecclesiastical power. All the lower clergy, including

some of the bishops, were groaning, just at this time, under heavy

oppression. By the constitution of Charlemagne, which survived under

Louis the Pious, and, so long as the empire maintained its unity,

asserted the independence of the transalpine hierarchy of all but the

temporal sovereign, the clergy were under strict subordination to the

bishop, the bishop to the metropolitan, the metropolitan only to the

emperor. Conflicting popes, or popes in conflict with Italian enemies, or

with their own subjects, had reduced the papacy to vassalage under the

empire. Conflicting kings, on the division of the realm of Charlemagne,

had not yet, but were soon about to submit the empire to the Roman

supremacy. All at present was anarchy. The Germans and the French were

drawing asunder into separate rival nations; the sons of Louis were

waging an endless, implacable strife. Almost every year, less than every

decade of years, beheld a new partition of the empire; kingdoms rose and

fell, took new boundaries, acknowledged new sovereigns; no government was

strong enough to maintain the law; might was the only law.

The hierarchy, if not the whole clergy, had taken the lead in the

disruption of the unity of the empire; they had abased the throne of

Louis; they were for a short disastrous period now the victims of that

abasement. Their wealth was their danger. They had become secular

princes, they had become nobles, they had become vast landed proprietors.

But during the civil wars it was not the persuasive voice, but the strong

arm, which had authority; the mitre must bow before the helmet, the

crosier before the sword. Not only the domains, the persons of the clergy

had lost their sanctity. The persecution and oppression of the church and

the clergy had reached a height unknown in former times.

[Illustration: AN EXTRACT FROM ST. AUGUSTINE’S PSALTER]

It might occur to the most religious that for the sake of religion; it

might occur to those to whom the dignity and interest of the sacerdotal

order were their religion, that some effort must be made to reinvest the

clergy in their imperilled sanctity. There must be some appeal against

this secular, this ecclesiastical tyranny; and whither should appeal

be? It could not be to the Scriptures, to the Gospel. It must be to

ancient and venerable tradition, to the unrepealed, irrepealable law

of the church; to remote and awful Rome. Rome must be proclaimed in an

unusual, more emphatic manner, the eternal, immemorial court of appeal.

The tradition must not rest on the comparatively recent names of Leo the

Great, of Innocent the Great, of Siricius, or the right of appeal depend

on the decree of the Council of Sardica. It must come down from the

successors of St. Peter himself in unbroken succession. The whole clergy

must have a perpetual, indefeasible sanctity of the same antiquity. So

may the idea of this, to us it seems, monstrous fiction have dawned

upon its author; himself may have implicitly believed that he asserted

no prerogative for Rome which Rome herself had not claimed, which he

did not think to be her right. It is even now asserted, perhaps can

hardly be disproved, that the _False Decretals_ advanced no pretensions

in favour of the see of Rome which had not been heard before in some

vague and indefinite, but not therefore less significant, language. The

boldness of the act was in the new authority in which it arrayed these

pretensions. The new code was enshrined, as it were, in a framework

of deeply religious thought and language; it was introduced under the

venerated name of Isidore of Seville; it was thus attached to the

authentic work of Isidore, which had long enjoyed undisputed authority.

Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, as the most powerful, so, perhaps, the

most learned transalpine ecclesiastic, who might at once have exposed

the fiction, which he could hardly but know to be a fiction, co-operated

more than anyone else to establish its authority. So long as he supposed

it to advance or confirm his own power, he suppressed all intrusive

doubts; he discovered too late that it was a trap (a mousetrap is his

own undignified word) to catch unwary metropolitans. Hincmar was caught,

beyond all hope of escape. In the appeal of Rothrad, bishop of Soissons,

against Hincmar, metropolitan of Rheims, Pope Nicholas I at first alleges

no word of the new decretals in favour of his right of appeal; he

seemingly knows no older authority than that of Innocent, Leo, Siricius,

and the Council of Sardica. The next year not merely is he fully master

of the pseudo-Isidorian documents, but he taunts Hincmar with now calling

in question, when it makes against him, authority which he was ready to

acknowledge in confirmation of his own power. Hincmar is forced to the

humiliation of submission. Rothrad, deposed by Hincmar, deposed by the

Council of Senlis, is reinstated in his see.

This immediate, if somewhat cautious, adoption of the fiction,

unquestionably not the forgery, by Pope Nicholas, appears less capable of

charitable palliation than the original invention. Nor did the successors

of Nicholas betray any greater scruple in strengthening themselves by

this welcome, and therefore only unsuspicious aid. It is impossible to

deny that, at least by citing without reserve or hesitation, the Roman

pontiffs gave their deliberate sanction to this great historic fraud.

Nor must be overlooked, perhaps, the more important result of the

acceptance of the pseudo-Isidorian statutes as the universal, immemorial,

irrepealable law of Christendom. It established the great principle

which Nicholas I had before announced, of the sole legislative power of

the pope. Every one of these papal epistles was a canon of the church;

every future bull therefore rested on the same irrefragable authority,

commanded the same implicit obedience. The papacy became a legislative

as well as an administrative authority. Infallibility was the next

inevitable step, if infallibility was not already in the power asserted

to have been bestowed by the Lord on St. Peter, by St. Peter handed down

in unbroken descent, and in a plenitude which could not be restricted or

limited, to his successors.

ADRIAN II

Nicholas was succeeded (November, 867) by Adrian II, a rigid and lofty

churchman, who, though his policy at first appeared doubtful, resolutely

maintained, but not with equal judgment and success, the principles of

his predecessor. Adrian (he was now seventy-five years old) had been

married before he became a priest. At the intercession of the emperor

Louis, he took off the ban of excommunication from Waldrada, and restored

her to the communion of the church. By this lenity he might seem to lure

King Lothair to the last act of submission. The king of Lorraine arrived

in Italy. The pope seemed to yield to the influence of Louis and the

empress Ingelberga; at least he accepted the munificent presents of the

king.

[Sidenote: [869-876 A.D.]]

From Monte Cassino, where they first met, Lothair followed the pope to

Rome. There, instead of being received as a king, and as one reconciled

with the see of Rome, when he entered the church all was silent and

vacant; not one of the clergy appeared; he retired to a neighbouring

chamber, which was not even swept for his reception. The next day was

Sunday, and he hoped to hear the mass chanted before him. The pope

refused him this honour. He dined, however, the next day with the pope,

and an interchange of presents took place. At length Adrian consented to

admit him to the communion.

Pope Adrian seized the occasion of the contest for the kingdom of Lothair

to advance still more daring and unprecedented pretensions. But the

world was not yet ripe for this broad and naked assertion of secular

power by the pope, his claim to interfere in the disposal of kingdoms.

Directly he left the strong ground of moral and religious authority, from

which his predecessor Nicholas had commanded the world, he encountered

insurmountable resistance. With all that remained of just and generous

sympathy on their side popes might intermeddle in the domestic relations

of kings; they were not permitted as yet to touch the question of royal

succession or inheritance. The royal and the episcopal power had quailed

before Nicholas; the fulminations of Adrian were treated with contempt or

indifference: and Hincmar of Rheims in this quarrel with Adrian regained

that independence and ascendency which had been obscured by his temporary

submission to Nicholas.

Nicholas I and Adrian II thus, with different success, imperiously

dictating to sovereigns, ruling or attempting to rule the higher

clergy in foreign countries with a despotic sway, mingling in the

political revolutions of Europe, awarding crowns, and adjudging kingly

inheritances, might seem the immediate ancestors of Gregory VII, of

Innocent III, of Boniface VIII. But the papacy had to undergo a period

of gloom and degradation, even of guilt, before it emerged again to its

height of power.

The pontificate of John VIII (872) is the turning-point in this gradual,

but rapid and almost total change; among its causes were the extinction

of the imperial branch of the Carlovingian race and the frequent

transference of the empire from one line of sovereigns to another;

with the growth of the formidable dukes and counts in Italy, which

overshadowed the papal power and reduced the pope himself to the slave

or the victim of one of the contending factions. The pope was elected,

deposed, imprisoned, murdered. In the wild turbulence of the times not

merely the reverence but the sanctity of his character disappeared. He

sank to the common level of mortals; and the head of Christendom was as

fierce and licentious as the petty princes who surrounded him, out of

whose stock he sprang, and whose habits he did not break off when raised

to the papal throne.

John VIII, however, still stood on the vantage ground occupied by

Nicholas I and Adrian II. He was a Roman by birth. He signalised his

pontificate by an act even more imposing than those of his predecessors,

the nomination to the empire, which his language represented rather as

a grant from the papal authority than as an hereditary dignity; it was

a direct gift from heaven, conveyed at the will of the pope. Already

there appear indications of a French and German interest contending for

the papal influence which grows into more and more decided faction, till

the Carlovingian empire is united, soon to be dissolved forever, in the

person of Charles the Fat. John VIII adopted the dangerous policy of a

partial adherence to France. But the historians are almost unanimous as

to the price which Charles was compelled to pay for his imperial crown.

He bought the pope, he bought the senators of Rome; he bought, if we

might venture to take the words to the letter, St. Peter himself.

[Sidenote: [876-878 A.D.]]

The imperial reign of Charles the Bald was short and inglorious. The

whole pontificate of John VIII was a long, if at times interrupted, agony

of apprehension lest Rome should fall into the hands of the unbeliever.

The reign of the late emperor Louis had been almost a continual warfare

against the Mohammedans, who had now obtained a firm footing in southern

Italy. He had successfully repelled their progress, but at the death of

Louis Rome was again in danger of becoming a Mohammedan city. The pope

wrote letter after letter in the most urgent and feeling language to

Charles the Bald soon after he had invested him with the empire. “If all

the trees in the forest,” such is the style of the pope, “were turned

into tongues, they could not describe the ravages of these impious

pagans; the devout people of God are destroyed by a continual slaughter;

he who escapes the fire and the sword is carried as a captive into

exile. Cities, castles, and villages are utterly wasted, and without an

inhabitant. The bishops are wandering about in beggary, or fly to Rome as

the only place of refuge.”

Yet, if possible, even more formidable than the infidels were the petty

Christian princes of Italy. “The canker-worm eats what the locust has

left.” In many parts of Italy had gradually arisen independent dukedoms;

and none of these appear to have felt any religious respect for the

pope, some not for Christianity. On the vacancy after the death of Pope

Nicholas, Lambert of Spoleto had occupied and pillaged Rome, respecting

neither monastery nor church, and carrying off a great number of young

females of the highest rank. Adelchis, the duke of Benevento, had dared

to seize in that city the sacred person of the emperor Louis. He was

only permitted to leave the city after he had taken a solemn oath to

Adelchis--an oath in which his wife, his daughter, and all his attendants

were compelled to join--that he would neither in his own person nor by

any other revenge this act of insolent rebellion. No sooner, however,

had Louis reached Ravenna in safety than he sent to the pope to absolve

him from his oath. Adrian II, then pope, began to assert that dangerous

privilege of absolution from solemn and recorded oaths.

The bishop-duke of Spoleto did not scruple to return to the unhallowed

policy of his brother. He entered into a new league with the Saracens,

gave them quarters, and actually uniting his troops with theirs, defeated

the forces of Benevento, Capua, and Salerno, and opened a free passage

for their incursions to the gates of Rome.

The imperial crown was again vacant, and claimed by the conflicting

houses of France and Germany. But Carloman, son of Ludwig of Germany,

had been acknowledged as king of Italy. Probably as partisans of the

German, and to compel the pope to abandon the interest of the French

line, to which he adhered with unshaken fidelity, Lambert, duke of

Spoleto, that antichrist, as the pope described him, with his adulterous

sister, Richildis, and his accomplice, the treacherous Adalbert, count

of Tuscany, at the head of an irresistible force, entered Rome, seized

and confined the pope, and endeavoured to starve him into concession,

and compelled the clergy and the Romans to take an oath of allegiance to

Carloman, as king of Italy. For thirty days the religious services were

interrupted; not a single lamp burned on the altars.

[Sidenote: [878-891 A.D.]]

No sooner had they retired than the pope caused all the sacred treasures

to be conveyed from St. Peter’s to the Lateran, covered the altar of

St. Peter with sackcloth, closed the doors, and refused to permit the

pilgrims from distant lands to approach the shrine. He then fled to

Ostia, and embarked for France.

When he reached the shores of Provence, John VIII felt himself in another

world. Instead of turbulent and lawless enemies (such were the counts and

dukes of Italy) whose rapacity or animosity paid no respect to sacred

things, and treated the pope like an ordinary mortal, the whole kingdom

of France might seem to throw itself humbly at his feet. No pope was more

prodigal of excommunication than John VIII. Of his letters (above three

hundred) it is remarkable how large a proportion threaten, inflict, or at

least allude to this last exercise of sacerdotal power.

The indefatigable pope returned over the Alps by the Mont Cenis, to

Turin and Pavia; but of all whom he had so commandingly exhorted, and

so earnestly implored to march for his protection against the Saracens,

and no doubt against his Italian enemies, none obeyed but Duke Boson

of Provence. The Saracens, in the meantime, courted by all parties,

impartially plundered all, made or broke alliances with the same facility

with the Christians, while the poor monks, even of St. Benedict’s own

foundation, lived in perpetual fear of spoliation. The last days of

John VIII were occupied in writing more and more urgent letters for aid

to Charles the Fat, in warfare, or providing means of war against his

Saracen and Christian foes, or dealing excommunications on all sides; yet

facing with gallant resolution the foes of his person and his power. This

violent pope is said (but by one writer only) to have come to a violent

end; his brains were beaten out with a mallet by some enemy, covetous of

his wealth and ambitious of the papal crown.

The short pontificate of Marinus (Marinus I or Martin II) was followed by

the still shorter rule of Adrian III, which lasted but fourteen months.

That of Stephen V, though not of longer duration, witnessed events of far

more importance to the papacy, to Italy, and to Christendom. On the death

of Charles the Fat, the ill-cemented edifice of the Carlovingian Empire,

the discordant materials of which had reunited, not by natural affinity

but almost by the force of accident, dissolved again and forever. The

legitimate race of Charlemagne expired in the person of his unworthy

descendant, whose name, derived from mere physical bulk, contrasted

with the mental greatness, the commanding qualities of military,

administrative, and even intellectual superiority which had blended with

the name of the first Charles the appellation of the Great.

POPE FORMOSUS

[Sidenote: [891-897 A.D.]]

The death of Stephen, September, 891, and the election of Formosus to the

papacy, changed the aspect of affairs, and betrayed the hostilities still

rankling at Rome. By the election of Formosus was violated the ordinary

canonical rule against the translation of bishops from one see to another

(Formosus was bishop of Porto), which was still held in some respect.

There were yet stronger objections to the election of a bishop who had

been excommunicated by a former pontiff, excommunicated as an accomplice

in a conspiracy to murder the pope. The excommunicated Formosus had

been compelled to take an oath never to resume his episcopal functions,

never to return to Rome, and never to presume but to lay communion. The

successor of John had granted absolution from these penalties, from this

oath.

This election must have been a desperate measure of an unscrupulous

faction. Nor was Formosus chosen without a fierce and violent struggle.

The suffrages of a party among the clergy and people had already fallen

upon Sergius. He was actually at the altar preparing for the solemn

ceremony of inauguration, when he was torn away by the stronger faction.

Formosus, chosen, as his partisans declared, for his superior learning

and knowledge of the Scripture, was then invested in the papal dignity.

When Pope Formosus died, May 23rd, 896, the election fell to Boniface

VII. The new pontiff laboured under the imputation of having been

twice deposed for his profligate and scandalous life, first from the

subdiaconate, afterwards from the priesthood. Boniface died of the gout

fifteen days after his elevation. The Italian party hastened to the

election of Stephen VI.

Probably the German governor had withdrawn before Stephen and his faction

proceeded to wreak their vengeance on the lifeless remains of Formosus.

Fierce political animosity took the form of ecclesiastical solemnity. The

body was disinterred, dressed in the papal habiliments, and, before a

council assembled for the purpose, addressed in these words: “Wherefore

wert thou, being bishop of Porto, tempted by ambition to usurp the

Catholic see of Rome?” The deacon who had been assigned as counsel for

the dead maintained a prudent silence. The sacred vestments were then

stripped from the body, three of the fingers cut off, the body cast into

the Tiber. All who had been ordained by Formosus were reordained by

Stephen. Such, however, were the vicissitudes of popular feeling in Rome,

that some years after a miracle was said to have asserted the innocence

of Formosus. His body was found by fishermen in the Tiber, and carried

back for burial in the church of St. Peter. As the coffin passed, all the

images in the church reverentially bowed their heads.

[Illustration: A MONK OF THE MIDDLE AGES]

The pontificate of Stephen soon came to an end. A new revolution revenged

the disinterment of the insulted prelate. And now the fierceness

of political rather than religious faction had utterly destroyed

all reverence for the sacred person of the pope. Stephen was thrown

into prison by his enemies, and strangled. The convenient charge of

usurpation, always brought against the popes whom their adversaries

dethroned or put to death, may have reconciled their minds to the impious

deed, but it is difficult to discover in what respect the title of Pope

Stephen VI was defective.

[Sidenote: [897-911 A.D.]]

Pope now succeeded pope with such rapidity as to awaken the inevitable

suspicion, either that those were chosen who were likely to make a speedy

vacancy, or they received but a fatal gift in the pontificate of Rome.

Romanus and Theodore II survived their promotion each only a few months.

The latter, by his restoration of Formosus to the rights of Christian

burial, and by his reversal of the acts of Stephen VI, may be presumed

to have belonged to that faction. The next election was contested with

all the strength and violence of the adverse parties. John IX was

successful; his competitor Sergius, according to some accounts formerly

the discomfited competitor of Formosus, and his bitter and implacable

enemy, fled to the powerful protection of the marquis of Tuscany. Sergius

was excommunicated, with several other priests and inferior clergy, as

accessory to the insults against the body of Formosus. Sergius laughed to

scorn the thunders of his rival, so long as he was under the protection

of the powerful house of Tuscany. With John IX, who died July, 901,

closed the ninth century of Christianity; the tenth, in Italy at least

the iron age, had already darkened upon Rome; the pontificate had been

won by crime and vacated by murder.

This iron age, as it has been called, opened with the pontificate of

Benedict IV (900-903), the successor of John IX. The only act recorded

of Benedict IV was the coronation of the unfortunate Louis of Provence,

the competitor of Berengar for the empire. Louis, according to imperial

usage, set up his tribunal and adjudged causes at Rome. On the death of

Benedict, the prudent precautions established by John IX to introduce

some regularity and control over the anarchy of an election by a clergy

rent into factions by a lawless nobility, and still more lawless people,

during this utter helplessness and the abeyance, or the strife for the

empire between rival princes, fell into utter neglect or impotency. The

papacy became the prize of the most active, daring, and violent. Leo V

won the prize; before two months he was ejected and thrown into prison by

Christopher, one of his own presbyters and chaplains. The same year, or

early in the next, Christopher was in his turn ignominiously driven from

Rome.

It was under the protection of the powerful Tuscan prince Berengar that

the exiled Sergius, at the head of a strong force of Tuscan soldiers,

appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher, who had just deposed Leo V, and

took possession of the papal throne. Sergius had been seven years an

exile in Tuscany; for seven years he ruled as supreme but not undisputed

pontiff. This pope has been loaded with every vice and every enormity

which can blacken the character of man. Yet as to his reign there is

almost total obscurity. The only certain act which has transpired is his

restoration of the Lateran palace, which had fallen into ruins; an act

which indicates a period of comparative peace and orderly administration,

with the command of a large revenue. In these violent times Sergius

probably scrupled at no violence; but if he drove a pope from the throne

of St. Peter, that pope had just before deposed his patron, and with

great cruelty.

THEODORA IN POWER

But during the papacy of Sergius rose into power the infamous Theodora,

with her daughters Marozia and Theodora, the prostitutes who, in the

strong language of historians, disposed for many years the papal tiara,

and not content with disgracing by their own licentious lives the chief

city of Christendom, actually placed their profligate paramours or

base-born sons in the chair of St. Peter. The influence obtained by

Theodora and her daughters, if it shows not the criminal connivance

of Pope Sergius, or a still more disgraceful connection with which he

was charged by the scandal of the times, proves at least the utter

degradation of the papal power in Rome. It had not only lost all

commanding authority, but could not even maintain outward decency.

Theodora was born of a noble and wealthy senatorial family, on whom

she has entailed an infamous immortality. The women of Rome seem at

successive periods seized with a kind of Roman ambition to surpass their

sex by the greatness of their virtues and of their vices. These females

were to the Paulas and Eustochiums of the younger and severer age of

Roman Christianity, what the Julias and Messallinas of the empire were to

the Volumnias and Cornelias of the republic.

[Sidenote: [911-928 A.D.]]

It must be acknowledged that if the stern language of Tacitus and Juvenal

may have darkened the vices of the queens and daughters of the cæsars,

the bishop of Cremona,[s] our chief authority on the enormities of

Theodora and her daughters, wants the moral dignity, while he is liable

to the same suspicion as those great writers. Throughout the lives of

the pontiffs themselves we have to balance between the malignant license

of satire and the unmeaning phrases of adulatory panegyric. On the other

hand it is difficult to decide which is more utterly unchristian--the

profound hatred which could invent or accredit such stories; the utter

dissoluteness which made them easily believed; or the actual truth of

such charges.

Liutprand[s] relates that John, afterwards the tenth pope of that name,

being employed in Rome on some ecclesiastical matters by the archbishop

of Ravenna, was the paramour of Theodora, who not only allowed but

compelled him to her embraces. John was first appointed to the see of

Bologna; but the archbishopric of Ravenna, the second ecclesiastical

dignity in Italy, falling vacant before he had been consecrated, he was

advanced by the same dominant influence to that see. But Theodora bore

with impatience the separation of two hundred miles from her lover.

Anastasius III had succeeded Sergius (911) and occupied the papacy for

rather more than two years; after him Lando for six months (913). On the

death of Lando (914) by a more flagrant violation of the canonical rule

than that charged against the dead body of Formosus, John was translated

from the archiepiscopate of Ravenna to the see of Rome. But Theodora, if

she indeed possessed this dictatorial power, and the clergy and people of

Rome, if they yielded to her dictation, may have been actuated by nobler

and better motives than her gratification of a lustful passion, if not by

motives purely Christian. For however the archbishop of Ravenna might be

no example of piety or holiness as the spiritual head of Christendom, he

appears to have been highly qualified for the secular part of his office.

He was a man of ability and daring, eminently wanted at this juncture to

save Rome from becoming the prey of Mohammedan conquest, organising a

powerful confederacy of neighbouring dukes to accomplish this purpose.

He placed himself at the head of the army, and for the first time the

successor of St. Peter, the vicar of the Prince of peace, rode forth

in his array to battle. And if success, as it doubtless was, might be

interpreted as a manifestation of divine approval, the total discomfiture

of the Saracens and the destruction of the troublesome fortress on the

Garigliano seemed to sanction this new and unseemly character assumed by

the pope. Even the apostles sanctioned or secured by their presence the

triumph of the warlike pope.

For fourteen years (914-928), obscure as regards Rome and the

pontificate, this powerful prelate occupied the see of Rome. If he gained

it (a doubtful charge) by the vices and influence of the mother Theodora,

he lost it, together with his life, by the no less flagrant vices and

more monstrous power of the daughter Marozia.

THE INFAMOUS MAROZIA

[Sidenote: [925-931 A.D.]]