CAROLUS AUGUSTUS.
The events described at the end of the last chapter happened in August
797. In the autumn of the following year, when Charles was resting at
Aachen from the fatigues of a Saxon campaign on the banks of the Elbe,
there appeared before him two Byzantine ambassadors, Michael, aforetime
Patrician of Phrygia, and Theophilus, a priest of Blachernæ, who, on
behalf of the Empress Irene, sought for and obtained the restoration
of friendly relations between the empire and the kingdom. The covenant
of peace was ratified by the return of an illustrious Greek captive,
Sisinnius, brother of the Patriarch Tarasius, who had been taken
prisoner probably in the Apulian war of 788.
But a far more distinguished visitor than either Michael or Theophilus
was to visit Charles’s court in the following year, and to plead in
lowlier fashion for his help. To understand the nature of this visit we
must go back for a few years and glance at the events which had been
happening not in the New but in the Old Rome.
On the day after Christmas Day, 795, died Pope Hadrian I. after a long
and eventful pontificate. The relations between him and Charles had
not been always friendly, for Hadrian had found that no more than the
Lombard king would the Frank grant the exorbitant demands for towns
and lordships which were unceasingly urged in the name of St. Peter.
Still there had been a certain similarity of spirit and temper which
had drawn these two strong men together, and, as we have already seen,
Charles mourned for the death of Hadrian as if he had been the dearest
of his sons.
On the death of Hadrian, Leo III. was immediately elected to the
papal throne. He was a Roman by birth, an inmate from his childhood
of the Lateran palace, and had gone through the regular gradation
of ecclesiastical offices till he had reached the high position of
papal _vestararius_. It would seem probable that he was the candidate
most acceptable to the clerics of the Roman Church, though the result
showed that there was a large party among the great lay-officers of
the papal court to whom his elevation was by no means welcome. He was,
at a crisis of his fortunes, accused by bitter enemies of adultery and
forgery, but no proof was offered of these charges, and there seems
no reason to believe that his moral character was not stainless. There
are some indications, however, that he was not loved by the people of
Rome. Possibly his temper may have been harsh: possibly too they were
beginning to chafe under the yoke of the dignitary who but lately was
their spiritual pastor, sometimes their champion, but who now asserted
himself as their sovereign.
Immediately on his elevation, Pope Leo sent messengers to Charles
announcing his election and carrying to him the keys of St. Peter’s
tomb and the banner of the city of Rome. This act of submission to
the great Patrician of Rome, to whom the pope looked for confirmation
of his rights and protection from his enemies, was represented in the
celebrated mosaic in the Triclinium of the Lateran palace, of which
a tolerably accurate seventeenth-century copy still exists on the
outside wall of the oratory called the _Sancta Sanctorum_, immediately
in front of the Lateran. In it the Apostle Peter, of colossal size,
is represented sitting with the keys on his lap. Before him, on his
right, kneels Pope Leo, to whom he is giving the _pallium_; on his
left “our lord Carulus,” to whom he gives a banner; and underneath is
an inscription in barbarous Latin stating that the blessed Peter gives
life to Pope Leo and victory to King Charles. Charles is represented as
wearing a moustache, but no beard. He has a broad pleasant face and is
crowned with a conical diadem.
The Frankish king replied to the new pope by sending to him his friend
and chaplain Angilbert, bearing a letter in which he dilated on the
various duties which Providence had assigned to its sender and its
receiver. “It is ours with the help of the divine piety externally to
defend the Holy Church of Christ by our arms from all pagan inroads and
infidel devastation, and internally to fortify it by the recognition of
the Catholic faith. It is yours, most holy father, with hands raised
to God like Moses, to help our warfare; that by your intercession the
Christian people may everywhere have the victory over its enemies, and
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be magnified throughout the whole
world.” At the same time Angilbert brought the share of the Avar booty
which Charles had set aside for Hadrian, but which came too late to
gladden the heart of the aged pontiff.
This exchange of embassies took place in 796. Two years later the
Christian world was horrified by the news of a brutal outrage enacted
in the streets of Rome. On the 25th of April 798, the pope was mounted
and preparing to ride forth from Rome along the Flaminian Way, in order
to celebrate what was called the Greater Litany, a religious function
which had taken the place of the heathen _Robigalia_[59] and in which
the Divine protection was implored for the springing corn against the
perils of blasting and mildew. Suddenly, ere he had emerged from the
city, he was set upon by a band of ruffians who had been lying in wait
at the church of St. Silvestro in Capite, on the right hand of the
Corso. They tore him from his horse, they belabored him with cudgels;
according to one account they tried to practice upon him the Byzantine
atrocities of pulling out the eyes and cutting out the tongue; at any
rate they left him speechless and helpless in the solitary street,
for all his long train of attendants, as well as the crowd which had
gathered after him to go forth in bright procession along the Flaminian
Way, forsook him and fled.
There is some reason to suppose that this attack was an outburst of
civic fury, exasperated by some acts of the unpopular pontiff; but
there is no doubt that the movement was directed by two men, Paschalis
and Campulus, who were high in office in the papal household, and
one or both of whom were nephews of the pope’s predecessor Hadrian.
A lurid light is shed by this fact on the heart-burnings and angry
disappointments which were often caused among the clients of a deceased
pope by the election of his successor.
After suffering many indignities the unhappy Leo was dragged at night
to the monastery of St. Erasmus on the Cœlian hill. Here he was closely
confined for some days, but he recovered somewhat from his bruises, and
sight returned--miraculously the next generation said--to his injured
eyes. By the help of a faithful servant, his chamberlain Albinus,
he succeeded in escaping--probably by a rope--down the wall of the
convent, and was taken by his friends to St. Peter’s. Here he was soon
in perfect safety, for the Frankish duke of Spoleto, Winighis, who had
heard of the murderous assault, came with an army to his rescue and
escorted him to his own city, a safe stronghold among the mountains of
Umbria. The foiled conspirators, who had heard with terror of their
victim’s flight, vented their rage on the house of Albinus, which they
gave to the flames. Probably for many subsequent months anarchy ruled
in Rome.
In the disturbed state of Italy, and with Rome given over to his
unscrupulous foes, the only resource left for the pope was in the
protection of Charles; and to his court, or rather to his camp, for
he was immersed in the Saxon war, Leo III. repaired in the summer of
799. It was now more than forty-five years since a pope (Stephen II.)
had crossed the Alps on a similar errand. Much had happened in the
interval. The monarchy of the “most unspeakable” Lombards had been
overthrown; the successor of St. Peter had become one of the great
princes of the earth; and yet, as Leo must with sadness have reflected,
not even sovereignty had brought safety. “Wounded in the house of his
friends,” the Bishop of Rome had received from the hands of his own
courtiers and subjects treatment infinitely more cruel and contumelious
than any that the much vituperated Lombard had ever inflicted on his
predecessors. Musing on these things Pope Leo doubtless saw that the
day-dream of a papal sovereignty extending over all Italy could not
be realized. Rather must he make his Frankish friend and protector
stronger in Italy. The Patrician of Rome must take some higher and more
imposing title, and must be induced to give more assiduous attention to
the affairs of the Italian peninsula.
As in that earlier papal visit Charles, then a lad of twelve, had been
sent to meet Stephen II., so now did Charles send his son Pippin (a
young man of twenty-two and the crowned king of Italy) to meet Pope
Leo. Pippin escorted the venerable guest into his father’s presence.
Pope and king embraced and kissed with tears. The clergy in the papal
train intoned the _Gloria in Excelsis_, and the nobles and courtiers
round added their joyful acclamations. This meeting took place at
Paderborn, where Charles had built a new and splendid church in the
place of the edifice often destroyed by the Saxons. In this church Pope
Leo hallowed an altar, which he enriched with relics of the protomartyr
Stephen brought by him from Rome, and assured the king that by the
powerful intercession of that saint the church would be preserved from
future devastation.
Leo remained probably for about two months, from July to September, at
Paderborn, in constant intercourse with Charles. Much would doubtless
be said in the conferences between the two potentates concerning
the condition of the Church, the heresy of the Adoptians,[60] the
Iconoclastic controversy, and above all concerning the charges brought
against the pope’s character by his relentless enemies in Rome. Was
there also something said about that great event towards which, as we
know, the course of history was tending, the bestowal of the imperial
title on Charles? Here we have only conjectures to guide us, but in
these conjectures we must take account of one most powerful influence
upon which I have hitherto been silent, the influence of the absent,
but continually consulted Northumbrian, Alcuin.
Alcuin, born of a noble Anglian family about the year 735, and
therefore some seven years older than Charles, was brought up from
childhood in the monastic seminary of York, and there drank in with
eager lips the learning, deepest and best of its day in all Europe,
which that celebrated school imparted to its pupils. Bede, it is true,
had died about the time of Alcuin’s birth, but from Bede’s pupil
Ecgbert, Archbishop of York (732–766), and from his successor Ælbert
(767–778), he acquired a knowledge, not only of theology, but also
of many secular arts and sciences. To astronomy he was led by the
intricate calculations and endless discussions concerning the true date
of Easter. But in the archiepiscopal library, as Alcuin himself tells
us, there was also a respectable collection of the Latin classics,
Pliny, Cicero, Virgil, Lucan, Statius are all enumerated by him,
as well as Aristotle, who was probably represented only by a Latin
translation. To the study of these authors the young Northumbrian gave
many industrious years; Virgil especially was long the master of his
soul, and the legends of a later generation told how the visit of an
evil spirit to his cell was necessary to frighten him away from the
nocturnal study of the Mantuan bard into the repetition of the Psalms
appointed for the midnight service. Certain it is, however, that he did
not forsake the study of the profane authors, until they had thoroughly
permeated his style. Although an ecclesiastic he wrote Latin, both
prose and verse, of which no Roman in the first century need have
been ashamed. To pass from the continual barbarisms, obscurities,
puerilities of Gregory of Tours, of Fredegarius, or even of the authors
of the _Liber Pontificalis_, to the easily flowing prose, or hexameter
verse of Alcuin is like going from the ill-spelt productions of a
half-educated ploughman to the letters of Cowper or the poetry of
Goldsmith.
Alcuin has been called the Erasmus of the eighth century, and though in
one respect the comparison is too flattering, since the Northumbrian
did but little for critical science, it gives on the whole not an
incorrect impression of the literary position of this man, the “child
and champion” of the Carolingian Renascence. It is evident that he
and the men with whom he associated, Angles, Saxons, or Franks, were
tired of the barbarism which had pervaded Europe for three centuries,
and looked back with longing, perhaps sometimes with unwise longing,
to the great days of Roman supremacy and peace. Even their Teutonic
names were to them somewhat of a humiliation. In the literary circle or
academy which formed itself in Charles’s court, chiefly under Alcuin’s
influence, the members assumed classical names (like the Melancthon
and Œcolampadius[61] of a later Renascence), and corresponded with one
another under these disguises. Thus Alcuin himself was Flaccus Albinus,
Riculf (afterwards Archbishop of Mainz) was Damœtas; Angilbert,
Charles’s chaplain, was Homer; Arno, Archbishop of Salzburg, was
Aquila. The name of the great king himself was David, a name admirably
chosen to express his piety, his success in war, and his love of women.
The event which brought “Albinus” and his “dearest David” together was
a journey which Alcuin undertook to Rome in 781, in order to obtain
the _pallium_ for his friend and superior, Eanbald II., Archbishop of
York. Alcuin himself was at this time, and in fact throughout middle
life and old age, only a deacon, though from his learning and piety
he wielded more influence than many bishops. Returning from Rome, he
met Charles at Parma, and was entreated by him to return to Frankland
on the accomplishment of his mission. He protested that he could only
do this with the consent of his king and his archbishop, and these
consents having been obtained he returned to Charles’s court and
resided there, a sort of literary prime minister, from 782 to 796,
with the exception of a visit to his own country between 790 and 792.
Though apparently he never entered the monastic state, he received from
Charles, as a piece of preferment, the headship of two abbeys, that of
Bethlehem at Ferrières and that of St. Lupus at Troyes. In 796, feeling
the need of repose, he obtained his master’s reluctant permission
to retire to the great monastery of St. Martin at Tours, which was
placed under his rule, and where he spent the remainder of his days.
This absence from the court is a fortunate thing for us, for to it we
owe the letters between Charles and Alcuin, of which a considerable
number are still preserved, and which show both king and deacon in
no unpleasing light. Sometimes Alcuin advises the king to treat the
conquered Saxons and Avars tenderly, and not to gall them with the
yoke of tithes. Sometimes he explains to his royal friend the meaning
of the terms Septuagesima and Sexagesima. Then he enters into long
discussions about the calendar, the date of Easter, the intercalations
necessary to bring the solar and the lunar years into harmony. The king
half mischievously refers these calculations to the well-taught pages
of his palace, who discover in them some errors, which, after much
mutual banter, the elder scholar is compelled to acknowledge. Always,
however, the intercourse is friendly, sincere, elevating. The king does
not patronize, and the deacon does not cringe. One cannot but feel in
reading these letters that both men were made to be loved.
Such was the man who, as there is every reason to believe, had
whispered to many of his friends the fateful word “Imperator” before
Pope Leo III. arrived, a hunted and half-blinded fugitive, at Charles’s
court.
In the month of May (799) Alcuin had written to his royal master a
remarkable letter, commenting on the tidings which Charles had sent him
of the assault on Pope Leo. From this letter it will be well to extract
some sentences.
“To his peace-making lord King David, Albinus wishes health. I thank
your Goodness, sweetest David, for remembering my littleness and making
me acquainted with the facts which your faithful servant has brought to
my ears. Were I present with you I should have many counsels to offer
to your Dignity, if you had opportunity to listen or I eloquence to
speak. For I love to write concerning your prosperity, the stability
of the kingdom given you by God and the advancement of the Holy Church
of Christ. All which are much troubled and stained by the daring deeds
of wicked men which have been perpetrated, not on obscure and ignoble
persons, but on the greatest and the highest.
“For there have been hitherto three persons higher than all others in
this world. One is the Apostolic Sublimity who rules by vicarious power
from the seat of St. Peter, prince of the apostles. And what has been
done to him, who was the ruler of the aforesaid see, you have in your
goodness informed me.
“The second is the Imperial dignity and power of the second Rome.
How impiously the governor of that empire [Constantine VI.] has been
deposed, not by aliens but by his own people and fellow citizens,
universal rumor tells us.
“The third is the royal dignity in which the decree of our Lord Jesus
Christ has placed you as ruler of the Christian people, more excellent
in power than the other aforesaid dignities, more illustrious in
wisdom, more sublime in the dignity of your kingdom. Lo! now on you
alone the salvation of the churches of Christ falls and rests. You are
the avenger of crimes, the guide of the wanderers, the comforter of the
mourners, the exalter of the good.
“Have not the most frightful examples of wickedness now made themselves
manifest in the Roman see where of old there was the brightest religion
and piety? These men, blinded in their own hearts, have blinded him who
was their true head. There is in that place no fear of God, no wisdom,
no charity. What good thing can you look for where these are absent?
These are the perilous times long since foretold by Him who was Himself
the Truth, and therefore the love of many waxes cold.”
Alcuin then advises his royal friend to make peace if possible with the
“unutterable” people (the Saxons), to forbear threats in dealing with
them and to intermit, at any rate for a time, the exaction of tithes.
Evidently this prudent counsellor felt that the affairs of Italy had
now the most pressing claim on his master’s attention, and that it
would be wise to concentrate all his forces for the solution of the
problem which there awaited him.
It was then to a monarch thus prepossessed in his favor by the
representations of one of his nearest friends that Leo III. appealed
in the interview at Paderborn. The pope’s accusers sent their
representatives to the Saxon towns, repeating the charges of adultery
and perjury, and claiming that the pope should be called upon to deny
the truth of these charges on oath. Privily they gave him the advice of
professed well-wishers that he should give up the contest, lay down his
papal dignity and retire in peace to some convent. But the king, while
reserving the investigation into these charges for some future assembly
to be held in Rome, showed by his conduct that he attached to them
but little importance. After several weeks’ sojourn at Paderborn, Leo
was dismissed with all honor from the camp and was escorted by royal
_missi_ reverently back to Rome, where he received an enthusiastic
welcome from his penitent subjects (30th November, 799).
The close of this year was saddened by the tidings of the death of
those two brave champions of Frankish civilization, Gerold and Eric. In
the spring of 800, Charles set forth on an expedition into Neustria,
a part of his dominions which he had apparently not visited for
two-and-twenty years. Piratical raids of the Northmen seem to have been
the determining cause of this expedition, the object of which was to
put the coast of the Channel in a proper state of defence. He also,
however, received the submission of some Breton chiefs who had long
been in a chronic condition of revolt; he made the round of his villas
and country palaces in Neustria; and above all he visited the tomb of
St. Martin at Tours, and had a long spell of close and confidential
intercourse with his friend Alcuin. Here at Tours his fifth and last
wife Liutgard died (4th June, 800), and her illness probably lengthened
his stay in that city. At length, after revisiting Rhine-land and
holding a _placitum_ [assembly] at Mainz (August, 800) he began his
last and most celebrated journey into Italy.
Having rested for seven days at Ravenna, where he probably inhabited
the palace built by Theodoric wherein the Byzantine exarch had dwelt,
he marched down the coast of the Adriatic to Ancona. From thence he
despatched his son Pippin to lay waste the territories of that unruly
vassal, Grimwald of Benevento. Charles himself proceeded through the
Picene and Sabine districts by the old _Via Solaria_, and arrived at
Nomentum, fourteen miles from Rome. Here he was met by the pope, who
accosted him with every show of humility and deference. Pope and king
supped together at Nomentum, and then Leo returned to arrange for the
triumphal entry into Rome. Next day (24th November, 800) this great
pageant was enacted. The banners of the city of Rome borne by citizens,
the gilt crosses borne by ecclesiastics, came in long procession to
meet the great Patrician. Groups of citizens and of the foreigners
resident in Rome, Franks, Frisians, Saxons (among the latter doubtless
many of our own countrymen), stationed at intervals along the Salarian
Way, thundered forth their _laudes_ as the king rode by. St. Peter’s
Church, now as before, was the goal of his pilgrimage, and on the broad
marble stairs stood the pope, with all his train of bishops and clergy,
to welcome him. He sprang from his horse, mounted the steps (not now
apparently on his knees), and after receiving the papal blessing went
in and paid his devotions at the tomb of St. Peter.
The chief business which had brought King Charles to Rome was, of
course, the inquiry into the brutal assault on the pope and the
clearing of his character from the charges brought against him. Already
the Frankish _missi_ [ambassadors] who accompanied Leo to Rome had
held a preliminary inquiry, the result of which was that Paschalis
and Campulus had been sent across the Alps to Charles for judgment.
Now apparently they returned in his train, not so much to defend
themselves on the score of the outrage (for their guilt was too clear)
as to prove, if they could, their often-repeated accusations. A great
synod was assembled at St. Peter’s on the 1st of December, and was
opened by a speech from the king. According to the papal biographer,
the ecclesiastics composing the synod all with one accord declared:
“We do not dare to judge the Apostolic see, which is the head of all
the Church of God; for by it and by the Apostle’s vicar we all are
judged, but the see itself is judged of no man, and this has been the
custom from old time.” Whether this high papal doctrine was proclaimed
and accepted or not, it certainly seems as if Paschalis and Campulus
entirely failed to make good their charges; but the pope offered, if
his conduct were not drawn into a precedent against his successors, to
accept the challenge to clear himself by oath from the charges brought
against him. It is possible that the pope was only slowly brought to
make this concession, for it was not till more than three weeks after
the assembling of the synod that the next step was taken. On the 23d
of December, in the presence of the Roman clergy, as well as of the
Frankish followers of the king, Pope Leo appeared in the _ambo_[62]
of St. Peter’s, bearing a copy of the four gospels, which lie clasped
to his breast, and then he swore with a loud and clear voice: “Of all
those charges which the Romans, my unjust persecutors, have brought
against me, I declare in the presence of God and St. Peter, in whose
church I stand, that I am innocent, since I have neither done those
things whereof I am accused nor procured the doing of them.”
The result of the whole investigation was that Paschalis and Campulus
and their accomplices were found guilty of high treason and condemned
to death, a sentence which, on the intercession of the pope, was
commuted to perpetual banishment into Frank-land.
During the weeks that the papal trial was proceeding Charles, of
course, abode in Rome, whether in one of the old imperial dwellings on
the Palatine, or as an honored guest of the pope at the Lateran, we
are not informed. It was observed that now, as on the occasion of a
previous visit to Rome, out of courtesy to the pope he laid aside his
Frankish dress--a tunic with silver border, a vest of otter-skins and
sable, and a blue cloak--and wore instead, after the Roman fashion, a
long tunic and a _chlamys_[63] over it, shoes also made like those of
the Romans, instead of his Frankish boots with stockings and garters.
It was precisely during this month of December that by a fortunate
coincidence, the priest Zacharias, whom more than a year before
Charles had sent on a mission to the holy places, returned from the
East. Two monks came with him, from Olivet and St. Saba, sent by
the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and bringing by way of blessing from
that ecclesiastic the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of Calvary, of
Jerusalem and Mount Zion, together with a consecrated banner. A more
striking testimony to the world-wide fame of the Frankish conqueror
could hardly have been rendered than this, which must have been meant
to invest Charles with a kind of protectorate over the most sacred
sites in Christendom.
The pope’s solemn oath of self-exculpation was sworn on the 23d of
December. Two days later was transacted that yet more solemn ceremony
by which the Patriarch of the Western Church, thus purged from the
stains which his assailants had sought to cast upon his character,
bestowed upon his royal champion that title which set him highest
among the rulers of the Christian world. The scene was again laid in
the great basilica of St. Peter, a building, of course, utterly unlike
to the vast Renaissance temple of Bramante and Michael Angelo. There,
on Christmas morning, Charles the Frank was worshipping before the
_Confessio_ or tomb of St. Peter. The stately Roman _chlamys_ hung
around his shoulders; the crowd that filled the basilica could see
with satisfaction the dainty Roman buskins of the kneeling monarch.
When he rose from prayer Pope Leo approached him, placed upon his head
a costly golden crown, and clothed him in the purple mantle of empire.
“Then,” says the papal biographer, “all the faithful Romans, beholding
so great a champion given them, and knowing the love which he bare to
the Holy Roman Church and its vicar, in obedience to the will of God
and of St. Peter, the key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, cried out
with deep accordant voices: ‘To Charles, most pious and august, crowned
by God, the great and peace-bringing emperor, be life and victory!’”
Thereupon the people sang their jubilant _laudes_, and the pope
performed that lowly adoration wherewith his predecessors had been wont
to greet a Valentinian or a Theodosius.[64]
The deed was done, and the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted a thousand
years, and only in the days of our fathers was shattered by the fist
of Napoleon, was established, or (as Alcuin and Leo would have said)
was re-established in Europe. It was a revolution, no doubt, that was
enacted on that morning of the 25th of December 800. It could not have
been justified out of the Digest or the Code. According to all the
maxims of legitimacy which had prevailed for many preceding centuries,
Charles was an usurper and Leo an intermeddling traitor. And yet, if
one could go back still earlier to the first days of the empire, the
bestowal of the imperial title on Charles was not so utterly lawless
a proceeding. The Roman Imperator in those early centuries was not by
any elaborate process elected, but was always acclaimed. Acclaimed by
the army, it is true, but also by the people, and there were doubtless
many soldiers of the _militia cohortalis_ [the imperial guard] of
Rome present among the crowd who shouted for life and victory to the
peace-bringing emperor. When acclaimed by army and people the Cæsar
was, or ought to be, accepted by the Senate; and there are some
indications that after centuries of suspended animation a body calling
itself the Senate was at this time existing in Rome and consenting
to the elevation of Charles. And these bodies, Senate, people, army,
however insignificant in themselves, were at any rate Roman: they
belonged to the true old Rome; they trod the forum of the republic,
and looked up to the Palatine of the emperors; they were not like the
bastard Romans of the Bosphorus, who chattered in Greek and wore the
robes of Asia, but who had usurped for many centuries the profitable
trademark of the Senate and People of Rome. So, though there was
but one precedent--and that the bad one of Maximin the Thracian--for
conferring the dignity of emperor on a man of purely Teutonic descent,
and though it is quite impossible to find a place for the chief actor,
the Bishop of Rome, in the drama as played by all the earlier Cæsars,
we may on the whole conclude that Charles became Roman Emperor by
as good a title as any who had worn the purple since the days of
Theodosius.[65]
What were the chief causes which led to this great change in the
political constitution of Europe? They have been already hinted at, and
we shall probably not be wrong in enumerating them as follows:
_First._--The great revival of classical learning, due chiefly to the
labors of Anglo-Saxon scholars; a movement of which men like Bede and
Alcuin were the standard-bearers. The minds which were influenced by
this revival perceived plainly that the interests of civilization,
and to a certain extent of Christianity, had been in past centuries
identical with those of the great Roman Empire; and from a genuine
revival of that Empire (not from a mere ephemeral reconquest of certain
cities or provinces by a _spatharius_ or _cubicularius_ setting sail
from Constantinople), they anticipated, not altogether erroneously,
great gains for the civilization and the Christianity of the future.
_Second._--The anomalous position of that which called itself the
empire, which for the first time in its history found itself under what
John Knox called “the monstrous regiment of a woman,” and that woman
the murderess of her child.
_Third._--The brutal attack on Pope Leo made by the disappointed
kinsmen of his predecessor. This event may well have produced an
important change in the attitude of the pope towards the question of
reviving the empire in the west. Before that day of April when he was
assaulted by his own courtiers and left half dead in the streets of
Rome, he may (as has been already hinted) have looked forward to a time
when he should reign over the best part of Italy, subject to no king
or governor; and when whispers reached him of the use of the words
“Emperor” and “Imperial” by the learned ecclesiastics of Charles’s
court he may in that mood of mind have shown that their proposals were
little to his taste. After that fatal day, his reluctance, if he had
any, to see one man in the Italian peninsula holding an indisputably
higher position than his own, was changed into eager acquiescence
in the scheme. He was willing, nay anxious, to see the purple robe
encircling the stalwart limbs of the Frankish conqueror, if only he
himself might take shelter under that robe from the dagger of the
assassin.
In all this it may be truly said that we have failed to consider one
important factor in the problem, the desires and ambitions of Charles
himself. Unfortunately a mystery which we cannot penetrate hangs over
that very subject. One of his most intimate friends, his secretary
Einhard, expressly says that Charles “at first so greatly disliked the
title of Emperor and Augustus that he declared that if he could have
known beforehand the intention of the pope he would never have entered
the church on that day, though it was one of the holiest festivals of
the year.”
It used to be assumed that this reluctance on the part of Charles to
receive the new dignity was only a bit of well-played comedy between
him and Leo, that the Frankish king had been long aspiring to the
imperial dignity, and had even put constraint upon the pope to force
him to take part in the coronation. More recent discussion has shaken
our confidence in this easy solution of the problem: and probably the
greater number of writers on the history of this period now hold that
Charles was speaking the truth when he expressed his dissatisfaction
with the pope’s proceedings. The cause of that dissatisfaction can
only be conjectured. Einhard seems to hint that it was fear of the
resentment of the Byzantine Cæsars, but this hardly seems a sufficient
cause to one who remembers the low estate of the eastern monarchy under
Irene.
With much more probability Professor Dahn argues that what Charles
disliked was not the bestowal of the title in itself, but the bestowal
by the pope. He thinks that Charles and his counsellors had already,
in 799, virtually resolved on the revival of the empire, that the pope
penetrated their design, and determined that if that step were taken he
at least would be chief actor in the drama; that by his adroit tactics
he, so to speak, forced Charles’s hand, and that the latter, foreseeing
the evil consequences which would result from the precedent thus
established, of a pope-crowned emperor, expressed his genuine feelings
of vexation to his friend Einhard when he said, “Would that I had never
entered St. Peter’s on Christmas Day.” Certainly the remembrance of all
the miserable complications caused during the Middle Ages by the pope’s
claim to set the crown on the head of the emperor would do much to
justify the unwillingness of a statesman such as the Frankish king to
bind this chain round the limbs of his successors.
But even beyond this it seems possible that Charles’s own mind was not
fully made up as to the expediency of accepting the imperial diadem, by
whomsoever bestowed. That the plan had been discussed (perhaps often
discussed, through many years), by his more highly educated courtiers,
cannot be denied. He may have been dazzled by the brilliancy of the
position which was thus offered him; and yet the calmer judgment of
that foreseeing mind of his may not have been satisfied that it was
altogether wise for him to accept it. The Frankish kingdom, as it had
been built up by the valor and patience of Charles and his forefathers,
was a splendid and solid reality. This restored empire of Rome that
they talked of, would be even more splendid, but would it be equally
substantial? After all, the whole Roman _Orbis Terrarum_ was not
subject to his sway. Was it wise to assume a title which seemed to
assert a shadowy claim to vast unsubdued territories? Was it wise to
claim for a Teuton king that all-embracing authority wherewith the
legists had invested the Roman Imperator? The controversies of Guelphs
and Ghibellines, which distracted Italy for centuries, show that these
questions, if they presented themselves to the mind of Charles,
were questions which greatly needed an answer. And there was also a
difficulty, which has perhaps not been sufficiently dwelt upon, arising
from Charles’s prospective division of his dominions among his sons.
Charles, the eldest, was to succeed him in that Austrasian region which
was the heart and stronghold of his kingdom. If any son were to inherit
the Imperial dignity, sitting on a higher throne than his brethren and
holding a certain pre-eminence over them, that son must be Charles. Yet
Pippin, the second son, was the actual king and destined heir of Italy,
and would rule over Rome, the city from which the Roman Emperor was
to take his title. Here was the germ of probable future embroilments
between his sons, such as the prudent Charles may well have feared to
foster.
Upon the whole, therefore, it appears a probable conclusion that
Charles, though he accepted the imperial crown, accepted it with
genuine reluctance, and that he was the passive approver rather than
the active and ambitious contriver of the great revolution of 800.
In the summer of 801 Charles recrossed the Alps to his home in
Rhine-land. In the thirteen years of life which remained to him he
never again entered Italy, but he was, during the greater part of that
time, well represented there by his son, the able and courageous Pippin.
A question which doubtless excited much interest in all the Frankish
world was, how Charles’s assumption of the imperial title would be
viewed at Constantinople. There must have been many among the Byzantine
statesmen who bitterly resented it, but Irene’s position was too
insecure to permit of her giving utterance to their indignation. It is
indeed stated by a Greek chronicler that Charles sent an embassy to
Constantinople proposing to unite the two empires by his own marriage
with Irene, and that the project was only foiled by the opposition of
the eunuch Aetius who was scheming to secure the succession for his
brother. Whether this be true or not (and the entire silence of the
Frankish authorities on the subject is somewhat suspicious), there is
no doubt that a friendly embassy from Irene appeared at Charles’s court
in 802, and was replied to by a return embassy, consisting of Bishop
Jesse and Count Helmgaud, who were despatched from Aschen in the same
year, and that this embassy may have carried a declaration of love from
the elderly Frank to the middle-aged Athenian. But not in such romantic
fashion was the reconciliation of the two empires to be effected.
While the bishop and the count were tarrying at Constantinople they
were the unwilling spectators of a palace-revolution, which possibly
may have been hastened by their presence and by the fear of a treaty,
wounding to the national pride. On the 31st October, 802, Irene was
deposed and the Grand Treasurer of the empire, Nicephorus, was raised
to the throne. Irene’s life was spared, but she was banished to an
island in the Sea of Marmora, and afterwards to the isle of Lesbos,
where according to one account she was so meanly supplied with the
necessaries of life by her penurious successor, that this proud and
brilliant lady had to support herself by spinning. She died on the 9th
August, 803.
Again the precariousness of the new ruler’s position compelled him
to assume a courteous tone towards the Frankish sovereign. Charles’s
ambassadors were accompanied on their return journey by three envoys
from Nicephorus, a bishop, an abbot, and a life-guardsman, who were
charged with many professions of amity and good-will to the Frankish
king. In all this, however, there was no sign of recognition of Charles
as Emperor, and for any such recognition Charles apparently waited for
eight years in vain.
In 806 there was actual war between the two states, the bone of
contention being the little island-state of Venice, which was
now rising into commercial importance and in whose obscure and
entangled history two parties, a Frankish and a Byzantine, are dimly
discernible. After a long time a fleet from Constantinople appeared
for a second time in Venetian waters, but was not able to prevent the
victory of Pippin, who made a grand attack by land and sea, and subdued
apparently the cities of the lagunes, whose capital was at this time
shifted to the Rialto. This occurred in 810, but in the same year there
appeared at Aachen an ambassador from Nicephorus who probably, amid
the usual unmeaning professions of friendship, conveyed a hint that
his master might be willing, for a suitable compensation, to recognize
Charles as Roman Emperor. On this hint, for which he had waited with
statesmanlike patience, the Frankish monarch acted. He expressed his
willingness to surrender the Adriatic territories, Venetia, Istria,
Liburnia, and Dalmatia to “his brother Nicephorus” and sent Heito,
Bishop of Basel, with two colleagues to settle the terms of the new
treaty.
Unhappily, when Heito and his colleagues arrived in Constantinople they
found a change in the occupant of the palace. Nicephorus had fallen in
battle, a most disastrous battle, with Krum, the King of the Bulgarians
(25th July, 811); but his brother-in-law and successor, Michael
Rhangabé, was abundantly willing to confirm the proposed accommodation
with the most powerful sovereign of the west. In truth the suggestion
must have come at a most welcome season, for Constantinople was just
then as hard pressed by the Bulgarian as she had ever been by the Avar
or the Saracen. So it came to pass that yet another embassy from the
Byzantine court appeared at Aachen in January 812. A formal document
containing the terms of the treaty of peace was handed to them by
Charles in the church of the Virgin, and possibly the counterpart was
received from the ambassadors. But the essential point was, that they
sang a litany in the Greek tongue in which they hailed the Frankish
sovereign as Imperator and Basileus. That was a formal recognition of
Charles’s equality, and thenceforth no one could doubt that there was
an Emperor by the Rhine as well as by the Bosphorus.