THE POPES AND THE REVIVAL OF THE EMPIRE
[Sidenote: Growth of papal power.]
The growth of the temporal power of the bishops of Rome was due to two
causes, the withdrawal of the imperial authority from Italy and the
conversion of the barbarians. As the emperors at Constantinople became
more and more busied with affairs Eastern, with the encroachments of
barbarians, heathen and Muhammadan, and the imperial rule in Italy was
destroyed by the Lombards, the popes stood out as the one permanent
institution in Northern and Central Italy. As gradually the barbarians
came to accept the faith they received it at the hands of the great
ecclesiastical organisation which kept together the traditions, so
strangely transformed, of the Old Rome. The legislation of Justinian
also had given great political power to the popes: and this power was
greatly increased when the papacy found itself the leader in the
resistance of the great majority of Christian peoples against the
policy of the Iconoclastic emperors. The history of Rome began to run
on very different lines from that of Venice, Naples, or other great
cities. It became for a while a conflict between the local military
nobility and the clergy under the rule of the pope. The {144} struggle
was a political one, just as the assumption of power by the popes, of
power over the country and a considerable district around it, was a
political act.
The popes had but very slight relations with the kings of the Merwing
house. It was different when the Karlings came into power. Zacharias,
both directly and through S. Boniface, came into close connection with
Pippin and Carloman. At first he was concerned simply with reform in
the Frankish Church, but before long he found himself able to intervene
in a critical event and to take part in the inauguration of the Karling
House, the revival as it claimed to be of the Empire in the West.
[Sidenote: The Karling reformation.]
The growth of the papal power was closely associated with two other
historic events: the growth of the Karling house among the Franks, and
the process of revival in the Church's spiritual activity, showing
itself in missions without and reforms within. The last leads back to
the first.
Whatever may be thought of the Karling reformation, it cannot be denied
that for the century before Charles assumed the Imperial crown the
Church showed many signs of corruption. The darkness of the picture is
relieved only by the lives of some remarkable saints.
[Sidenote: The Karling House.]
The first, of course, is S. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, the
great-grandfather of Charles Martel. Born about 582, he died in 641,
and the holy simplicity of his life as statesman and priest comes like
a ray of sunshine in the gloom of the days of "half heathen and wholly
vicious" kings. Mr. Hodgkin, with an eye no doubt to modern affairs,
comments thus on the career of the prelate so different from the
greedy, turbulent, and licentious men whom {145} Gregory of Tours
describes: "In reading his life one cannot but feel that in some way
the Frankish nation, or at least the Austrasian part of it, has groped
its way upwards since the sixth century." [Sidenote: S. Arnulf.] Arnulf
was a type of the good bishops of the Middle Ages, strong, able to hold
his own with kings, a friend of the poor, eager to pass from the world
to a quiet eventide in some monastic shade. The tale that is told of
him is typical of the sympathies and passions of his age. Bishop of
Metz, and chief counsellor of Dagobert whose father Chlothochar he had
helped to raise to the throne, when he expressed his wish to retire
from the world the king cried out that if he did he would slay his two
sons. "My sons' lives are in the hands of God," said Arnulf. "Yours
will not last long if you slay the innocent"; and when Dagobert drew
his sword on him he said, "Would you return good for evil? Here am I
ready to die in obedience to Him Who gave me life and Who died for me."
Queen and nobles cried out, and the king fell penitent at the bishop's
feet. Like S. Arnulf's is the romantic figure of his descendant
Carloman, who turned from the rule of kingdoms and the command of
armies to the seclusion of Soracte and Monte Cassino. The "great
renunciation" is a striking tale. The disappearance, the long days of
patient submission to rule, the discovery of the real position of the
humble brother, and then the last dramatic appearance to follow an
unpopular cause, make a story as striking as any which have come to us
from the Middle Age. But before Carloman come many other noble
figures. The fifty years that followed Arnulf's death are but a dreary
tale of anarchy and blood. It is broken here and there {146} by
records of Christian endurance or martyrdom: bishops who tried to serve
the State often served not wisely but too well and met the fate of
unsuccessful political leaders. Leodegar, Bishop of Autun, who helped
Ebroin to raise Theoderic III to the throne of Neustria, was blinded,
imprisoned and at length put to death and appears in the Church's
calendar as S. Leger.
The crisis came when the long march of the successful Muhammadans was
stayed by the arms of S. Arnulf's descendant Charles Martel, mayor of
the palace to the King of Austrasia 717, to all the kingdoms from 719,
who lived till 741. In 711 the Wisigothic monarchy of Spain had fallen
before the infidels: in 720 the Moors entered Gaul. From then to 731
there was for Abder Rahman an almost unbroken triumph. The power of
the Prophet reached from Damascus to beyond the Pyrenees. Then Charles
Martel came to the relief of Southern Gaul, and on an October Sunday in
732 the hosts of Islam were utterly routed at Poictiers by the soldiers
of the Cross. [Sidenote: The defeat of the Saracens.] It was a great
deliverance; and there is no wonder that imagination has exaggerated
its importance and thought that but for the Moorish defeat there might
to-day be a muezzin in every Highland steeple and an Imám set over
every Oxford college. Charles had still to reconquer Septimania and
Provence. Arles and Nîmes, the great Roman cities, had to be recovered
from the Arabs who had seized them, and Avignon, Agde, Beziers, cities
whose future was as wonderful as was the others' past, were also won
back by the arms of the Christian chief.
Charles died in 741. He had refused to help Pope {147} Gregory III. in
739 against the Lombards. It was reserved for his son Pippin to make
that alliance between the papacy and the Karling house which dictated
the future of Europe. [Sidenote: Pippin.] To Pippin came the lordship
of the West Franks, to Carloman his brother that of the East Franks,
when their father died. They conquered, they reformed the Church among
the Franks, with the aid of Boniface, and then came that dramatic
retirement of Carloman in 747 which showed him to be true heir of S.
Arnulf. Four years later the house of the Karlings became the nominal
as well as the real rulers of the Franks. In 751 the bishop of
Würzburg for the East Franks, and the abbat of S. Denis for those of
the West, went to Rome to ask the pope's advice. Were the wretched
Merwings "who were of royal race and were called kings but had no power
in the realm save that grants and charters were drawn up in their
names" to be still called kings, for "what willed the _major domus_ of
the Franks, that they did?" Zacharias answered as a wise man would,
that he who had the power should bear the name. And so, blessed by the
great missionary S. Boniface, Pippin was "heaved" on the shield, and
became king of the Franks, and Childerich, the last of the Merwings,
went to a distant monastery to end his days.
[Sidenote: The end of the Imperial power in Italy.]
But this was only a beginning. The pope was threatened by the
barbarians, neglected by the emperors who reigned at Constantinople,
and at last was in actual conflict with those who tried to impose
Iconoclasm upon the Church. In 751 the exarchate, the representation
of the Imperial power in Italy, with its seat at Ravenna, was
overwhelmed by the {148} arms of Aistulf, the Lombard king. The time
had come, thought Pope Stephen II. (752-7), when the distant
barbarians, now orthodox, should be called to save the patrimony of S.
Peter from the barbarians near at hand. In S. Peter's name letters
summoned Pippin to the rescue of the church especially dear to the
Franks.[1] But before this Stephen had made Pippin his friend. In 753
he left Rome and failing to win from Aistulf any concession to the
Imperial power made his way across the Alps, and on the Feast of the
Epiphany, 754, met in their own land Pippin and his son who was to be
Charles the Great. The pope fell at the king's feet and besought him
by the mercies of God to save the Romans from the hands of the
Lombards. Then Pippin and all his lords held up their hands in sign of
welcome and support. Then Stephen on July 28, 754, in the great
monastery which was to become the crowning-place of Frankish kings,
anointed Pippin and his sons Charles and Carloman as king of the Franks
and kings in succession.
[Sidenote: The crowning of Pippin.]
A point of special interest in this event is the title given to Pippin
at his crowning at Saint Denis. The title of Patrician of the Romans
was given by the pope, as commissioned by the emperor, "to act against
the king of the Lombards for the recovery of the lost lands of the
Empire." Pippin was made the officer of the distant emperor, and the
pope would say as little as possible about the rights of him who ruled
in Constantinople, and as much as he could about the Church which ruled
in Rome. It was a step in the assertion of {149} political rights for
the Roman Church. A new order of things was springing up in Italy.
The popes were asserting a political power as belonging to S. Peter.
They were asserting that the exarchate had ceased in political theory
as well as in practical fact. In this new order Pippin was to be
involved as supporter of the protectorate which the papacy assumed to
itself.
Then the Franks came forward to save Rome from the Lombards. The last
act of the romantic life of Carloman was to plead for justice to
Aistulf,--that what he had won should not be taken from him,--and to be
refused. Twice Pippin came south and saved the pope: and then the
cities he had won he refused to give up to the envoys of the distant
emperor and declared that "never should those cities be alienated from
the power of S. Peter and the rights of the Roman Church and the
pontiff of the Apostolic See." From this dates the Roman pope's
independence of the Roman emperor, the definite political severance of
Italy from the East, and therefore a great stop towards the schism of
the Church. Iconoclasm and the independence of the popes alike worked
against the unity of Christendom.
[Sidenote: The papal power.]
Pope Stephen, thanks to Pippin, had become the arbitrator of Italy.
The keys of Ravenna and of the twenty-two cities which "stretched along
the Adriatic coast from the mouths of the Po to within a few miles of
Ancona and inland as far as the Apennines" were laid on the tomb of S.
Peter. The "States of the Church" began their long history, the
history of "the temporal power."
And this new power was seen outside Italy as well {150} as within.
From the eighth century, at least, the popes are found continually
intervening in the affairs of the churches among the Franks and the
Germans, granting privileges, giving indulgence, writing with explicit
claim to the authority which Christ gave to S. Peter. Into the
recesses of Gaul, among Normans at Rouen, among Lotharingians at Metz,
to Amiens, or Venice, or Limoges, the papal letters penetrated; and
their tone is that of confidence that advice will be respected or
commands obeyed. And this is, in small matters especially, rather than
in great. The popes at least claimed to interfere everywhere in
Christian Europe and in everything.[2] Within Italy events moved
quickly.
The first step towards a new development was the destruction of the
Lombard kingdom by Charles, who succeeded his father Pippin in 768. At
first joint ruler with his brother he became on the latter's death in
771 sole king of all the Franks. In 772 Hadrian I., a Roman, ambitious
and distinguished, succeeded the weak Stephen III. on the papal throne.
He reigned till 795 and one of his first acts was to summon Charles and
the Franks to his rescue against the Lombards. [Sidenote: Charles the
Great and Rome.] In the midst of his conquests--which it is not here
our part to tell--Charles spent the Holy Week and Easter of 774 at
Rome. Thus the one contemporary authority tells the tale of the great
alliance which was made on the Wednesday in Easter week: "On the fourth
day of the week the aforesaid pontiff with all his nobles both clerkly
and knightly went forth to S. Peter's Church and there {151} meeting
the king in colloquy earnestly prayed him and with paternal affection
admonished him to fulfil entirely that promise which his father of holy
memory the dead king Pippin had made, and which he himself with his
brother Carloman and all the nobles of the Franks had confirmed to S.
Peter and his vicar Pope Stephen II. of holy memory when he visited
Francia, that they would grant divers cities and territories in that
province of Italy to S. Peter and his vicars for ever. And when
Charles had caused the promise which was made in Francia at a place
called Carisiacum (Quierzy) to be read over to him all its contents
were approved by him and his nobles. And of his will and with a good
and gracious mind that most excellent and most Christian king Charles
caused another promise of gift like the first to be drawn up by
Etherius his most religious and prudent chaplain and notary, and in
this he gave the same cities and lands to S. Peter and promised that
they should be handed over to the pope with their boundaries set forth
as is contained in the aforesaid donation, namely: From Luna with the
island of Corsica, thence to Surianum, thence to Mount Bardo, that is
to Vercetum, thence to Parma, thence to Pihegium, and from thence to
Mantua and Mons Silicis, together with the whole exarchate of Ravenna,
as it was of old, and the provinces of the Venetia and Istria; together
with the whole duchy of Spoletium and that of Beneventum." [3] The
donation was confirmed, says the chronicler, with the most solemn oaths.
Now if this records the facts, and if two-thirds of Italy were given by
Charles (who possessed very little {152} of it) to the popes, it is
almost incredible that his later conduct should have shown that he did
not pay any regard to it. But the question is of political rather than
ecclesiastical interest, and it may suffice to say that there are very
strong reasons for believing the passage to be a later interpolation.[4]
[Sidenote: The revival of the Empire, 800.]
Within four mouths Charles had subdued the Lombards and become "rex
Francorum et Langobardorum atque patricius Romanorum." For nearly a
quarter of a century Charles was employed in other parts of his empire:
he dealt friendly but firmly with the pope; but he kept away from Rome.
But in 799 the new pope Leo III., attacked by the Romans probably for
some harshness in his rule, fled from the city and in July came to
Charles at Paderborn to entreat his help. It is probable that the
great English scholar, Alcuin, who has been called the Erasmus of the
eighth century, had already suggested to the great king that the
weakness of the Eastern emperors was a real defeasance of power and
that the crown imperial might be his own. However that may be Charles
came to Rome and made a triumphal entry on November 24, 800. The
charges against the pope were heard and he swore to his innocence. On
the feast of the Nativity, in the basilica of S. Peter, when Charles
had worshipped at the _confessio_, the tomb of S. Peter, Leo clothed
him with a purple robe and set a crown of gold upon his head. "Then
all the faithful Romans beholding so great a champion given them and
the love which {153} he bore towards the holy Roman Church and its
vicar, in obedience to the will of God and S. Peter the key-bearer of
the kingdom of heaven, cried with one accord in sound like thunder 'To
Charles the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the Emperor great and
peaceable, life and victory!'"
Thus the Roman pope and the Roman people claimed to make anew in Rome
the Roman Empire with a German for Caesar and Augustus. It was not, if
we believe Charles's own close friend Einhard, a distinction sought by
the new emperor himself. "At first he so disliked the title of
_Imperator_ and _Augustus_ that he declared that if he had known before
the intention of the pope he would never have entered the church on
that day, though it was one of the most holy festivals of the year."
[5] It may well be that Charles, who had corresponded with the Caesars
of the East, hesitated to take a step of such bold defiance. Men still
preserved the memories of how the soldiers of Justinian had won back
Italy from the Goths. Nor was Charles pleased to receive such a gift
at the hands of the pope. He did not recognise the right of a Roman
pontiff to give away the imperial crown. What could be given could be
taken away. It was a precedent of evil omen.
But none the less the coronation of Charles the Great, as men came to
call him, was the greatest event in the Middle Age. It allowed the
vitality of the idea of empire which the West inherited from the
Romans, and it showed that idea linked to the new power of the popes.
It founded the Holy Roman Empire. Twelve years later the Empire of the
West won some sort of recognition from the Empire of the East. In 812
an ambassage from Constantinople came {154} to Charles at Aachen, and
Charles was hailed by them as Imperator and Basileus. The Empire of
the West was an accomplished and recognised fact.
[Sidenote: Results of the revived Empire.]
Its significance was at least as much religious as poetical. Charles
delighted in the works of S. Augustine and most of all in the _De
Civitate Dei_; and that great book is the ideal of a Christian State,
which shall be Church and State together, and which replaces the Empire
of pagan Rome. The abiding idea of unity had been preserved by the
Church: it was now to be strengthened by the support of a head of the
State. The one Christian commonwealth was to be linked together in the
bond of divine love under one emperor and one pope. That Constantine
the first Christian emperor had given to the popes the sovereignty of
the West was a fiction which it seems was already known at Rome:
Hadrian seems to have referred to the strange fable when he wrote to
Charles the Great in 777. It was a legend very likely of Eastern
fabrication, and it was probably not as yet believed to have any claim
to be authentic; but when the papacy had grown great at the expense of
the Empire it was to be a powerful weapon in the armoury of the popes.
Now it served only, with the revival of learning at the court of
Charles the Great, to illustrate two sides of the great movement for
the union of Europe under two monarchs, the spiritual and the temporal.
The coronation of Charles was indeed a fact the importance of which, as
well as the conflicts which would inevitably flow from it, lay in the
future. But it showed the Roman Church great, and it showed the
absorption of the great Teutonic race in the fascinating ideal of unity
at once Christian and imperial.
[1] _Cod. Car._ in Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Script._, iii. (2) 90.
[2] Cf. Dr. J. von Pflugk-Hartung, _Acta Pontificum Romanorum inedita_,
1880, 1884.
[3] _Liber Pontificalis_, i. 498.
[4] The question may be read in Mgr. Duchesne's Introduction to the
_Liber Pontificalis_, ccxxxvii.-ccxlii.; and Dr. Hodgkin, _Italy and
her Invaders_, vii. 387-97.
[5] _Liber Pontificalis_, ii. 6.
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