RESTORATION OF THE WESTERN EMPIRE.
It was towards Rome as their ecclesiastical capital that the thoughts
and hopes of the men of the sixth and seventh centuries were
constantly directed. Yet not from Rome, feeble and corrupt, nor on the
exhausted soil of Italy, was the deliverer to arise. Just when, as we
may suppose, the vision of a renewal of imperial authority in the
Western provinces was beginning to vanish away, there appeared in the
furthest corner of Europe, sprung of a race but lately brought within
the pale of civilization, a line of chieftains devoted to the service
of the Holy See, and among them one whose power, good fortune, and
heroic character pointed him out as worthy of a dignity to which
doctrine and tradition had attached a sanctity almost divine.
[Sidenote: The Franks.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 486.]
Of the new monarchies that had risen on the ruins of Rome, that of the
Franks was by far the greatest. In the third century they appear, with
Saxons, Alemanni, and Thuringians, as one of the greatest German tribe
leagues. The Sicambri (for it seems probable that this famous race was
a chief source of the Frankish nation) had now laid aside their former
hostility to Rome, and her future representatives were thenceforth,
with few intervals, her faithful allies. Many of their chiefs rose to
high place: Malarich receives from Jovian the charge of the Western
provinces; Bauto and Mellobaudes figure in the days of Theodosius and
his sons; Meroveus (if Meroveus be a real name) fights under Aetius
against Attila in the great battle of Chalons; his countrymen
endeavour in vain to save Gaul from the Suevi and Burgundians. Not
till the Empire was evidently helpless did they claim a share of the
booty; then Clovis, or Chlodovech, chief of the Salian tribe, leaving
his kindred the Ripuarians in their seats on the lower Rhine, advances
from Flanders to wrest Gaul from the barbarian nations which had
entered it some sixty years before. Few conquerors have had a career
of more unbroken success. By the defeat of the Roman governor Syagrius
he was left master of the northern provinces: the Burgundian kingdom
in the valley of the Rhone was in no long time reduced to dependence:
last of all, the Visigothic power was overthrown in one great battle,
and Aquitaine added to the dominions of Clovis. Nor were the Frankish
arms less prosperous on the other side of the Rhine. The victory of
Tolbiac led to the submission of the Alemanni: their allies the
Bavarians followed, and when the Thuringian power had been broken by
Theodorich I (son of Clovis), the Frankish league embraced all the
tribes of western and southern Germany. The state thus formed,
stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn and the Ems, was of
course in no sense a French, that is to say, a Gallic monarchy. Nor,
although the widest and strongest empire that had yet been founded by
a Teutonic race, was it, under the Merovingian kings, a united kingdom
at all, but rather a congeries of principalities, held together by the
predominance of a single nation and a single family, who ruled in Gaul
as masters over a subject race, and in Germany exercised a sort of
hegemony among kindred and scarcely inferior tribes. But towards the
middle of the eighth century a change began. Under the rule of Pipin
of Herstal and his son Charles Martel, mayors of the palace to the
last feeble Merovingians, the Austrasian Franks in the lower Rhineland
became acknowledged heads of the nation, and were able, while
establishing a firmer government at home, to direct its whole strength
in projects of foreign ambition. The form those projects took arose
from a circumstance which has not yet been mentioned. It was not
solely or even chiefly to their own valour that the Franks owed their
past greatness and the yet loftier future which awaited them, it was
to the friendship of the clergy and the favour of the Apostolic See.
The other Teutonic nations, Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Suevians,
Lombards, had been most of them converted by Arian missionaries who
proceeded from the Roman Empire during the short period when Arian
doctrines were in the ascendant. The Franks, who were among the latest
converts, were Catholics from the first, and gladly accepted the
clergy as their teachers and allies. Thus it was that while the
hostility of their orthodox subjects destroyed the Vandal kingdom in
Africa and the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, the eager sympathy of the
priesthood enabled the Franks to vanquish their Burgundian and
Visigothic enemies, and made it comparatively easy for them to blend
with the Roman population in the provinces. They had done good service
against the Saracens of Spain; they had aided the English Boniface in
his mission to the heathen of Germany[39]; and at length, as the most
powerful among Catholic nations, they attracted the eyes of the
ecclesiastical head of the West, now sorely bested by domestic foes.
[Sidenote: Italy: the Lombards.]
[Sidenote: The Popes.]
Since the invasion of Alboin, Italy had groaned under a complication
of evils. The Lombards who had entered along with that chief in A.D.
568 had settled in considerable numbers in the valley of the Po, and
founded the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, leaving the rest of the
country to be governed by the exarch of Ravenna as viceroy of the
Eastern crown. This subjection was, however, little better than
nominal. Although too few to occupy the whole peninsula, the invaders
were yet strong enough to harass every part of it by inroads which met
with no resistance from a population unused to arms, and without the
spirit to use them in self-defence. More cruel and repulsive, if we
may believe the evidence of their enemies, than any other of the
Northern tribes, the Lombards were certainly singular in their
aversion to the clergy, never admitting them to the national councils.
Tormented by their repeated attacks, Rome sought help in vain from
Byzantium, whose forces, scarce able to repel from their walls the
Avars and Saracens, could give no support to the distant exarch of
Ravenna. The Popes were the Emperor's subjects; they awaited his
confirmation, like other bishops; they had more than once been the
victims of his anger[40]. But as the city became more accustomed in
independence, and the Pope rose to a predominance, real if not yet
legal, his tone grew bolder than that of the Eastern patriarchs. In
the controversies that had raged in the Church, he had had the wisdom
or good fortune to espouse (though not always from the first) the
orthodox side: it was now by another quarrel of religion that his
deliverance from an unwelcome yoke was accomplished[41].
[Sidenote: Iconoclastic controversy.]
[Sidenote: The Popes appeal to the Franks.]
[Sidenote: Pipin patrician of the Romans, A.D. 754.]
The Emperor Leo, born among the Isaurian mountains, where a purer
faith may yet have lingered, and stung by the Mohammedan taunt of
idolatry, determined to abolish the worship of images, which seemed
fast obscuring the more spiritual part of Christianity. An attempt
sufficient to cause tumults among the submissive Greeks, excited in
Italy a fiercer commotion. The populace rose with one heart in defence
of what had become to them more than a symbol: the exarch was slain:
the Pope, though unwilling to sever himself from the lawful head and
protector of the Church, must yet excommunicate the prince whom he
could not reclaim from so hateful a heresy. Liudprand, king of the
Lombards, improved his opportunity: falling on the exarchate as the
champion of images, on Rome as the minister of the Greek Emperor, he
overran the one, and all but succeeded in capturing the other. The
Pope escaped for the moment, but saw his peril; placed between a
heretic and a robber, he turned his gaze beyond the Alps, to a
Catholic chief who had just achieved a signal deliverance for
Christendom on the field of Poitiers. Gregory II had already opened
communications with Charles Martel, mayor of the palace, and virtual
ruler of the Frankish realm[42]. As the crisis becomes more pressing,
Gregory III finds in the same quarter his only hope, and appeals to
him, in urgent letters, to haste to the succour of Holy Church[43].
Some accounts add that Charles was offered, in the name of the Roman
people, the office of consul and patrician. It is at least certain
that here begins the connection of the old imperial seat with the
rising German power: here first the pontiff leads a political
movement, and shakes off the ties that bound him to his legitimate
sovereign. Charles died before he could obey the call; but his son
Pipin (surnamed the Short) made good use of the new friendship with
Rome. He was the third of his family who had ruled the Franks with a
monarch's full power: it seemed time to abolish the pageant of
Merovingian royalty; yet a departure from the ancient line might shock
the feelings of the people. A course was taken whose dangers no one
then foresaw: the Holy See, now for the first time invoked as an
international power, pronounced the deposition of Childeric, and gave
to the royal office of his successor Pipin a sanctity hitherto
unknown; adding to the old Frankish election, which consisted in
raising the chief on a shield amid the clash of arms, the Roman diadem
and the Hebrew rite of anointing. The compact between the chair of
Peter and the Teutonic throne was hardly sealed, when the latter was
summoned to discharge its share of the duties. Twice did Aistulf the
Lombard assail Rome, twice did Pipin descend to the rescue: the second
time at the bidding of a letter written in the name of St. Peter
himself[44]. Aistulf could make no resistance; and the Frank bestowed
on the Papal chair all that belonged to the exarchate in North Italy,
receiving as the meed of his services the title of Patrician[45].
[Sidenote: Import of this title.]
As a foreshadowing of the higher dignity that was to follow, this
title requires a passing notice. Introduced by Constantine at a time
when its original meaning had been long forgotten, it was designed to
be, and for awhile remained, the name not of an office but of a rank,
the highest after those of emperor and consul. As such, it was usually
conferred upon provincial governors of the first class, and in time
also upon barbarian potentates whose vanity the Roman court might wish
to flatter. Thus Odoacer, Theodoric, the Burgundian king Sigismund,
Clovis himself, had all received it from the Eastern emperor; so too
in still later times it was given to Saracenic and Bulgarian
princes[46]. In the sixth and seventh centuries an invariable practice
seems to have attached it to the Byzantine viceroys of Italy, and
thus, as we may conjecture, a natural confusion of ideas had made men
take it to be, in some sense, an official title, conveying an
extensive though undefined authority, and implying in particular the
duty of overseeing the Church and promoting her temporal interests. It
was doubtless with such a meaning that the Romans and their bishop
bestowed it upon the Frankish kings, acting quite without legal right,
for it could emanate from the emperor alone, but choosing it as the
title which bound its possessor to render to the Church support and
defence against her Lombard foes. Hence the phrase is always
'_Patricius Romanorum_;' not, as in former times, '_Patricius_' alone:
hence it is usually associated with the terms '_defensor_' and
'_protector_.' And since 'defence' implies a corresponding measure of
obedience on the part of those who profit by it, there must have been
conceded to the new patrician more or less of the positive authority
in Rome, although not such as to extinguish the supremacy of the
Emperor.
[Sidenote: Extinction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles king of the
Franks.]
[Sidenote: A.D. 774.]
So long indeed as the Franks were separated by a hostile kingdom from
their new allies, this control remained little better than nominal.
But when on Pipin's death the restless Lombards again took up arms and
menaced the possessions of the Church, Pipin's son Charles or
Charlemagne swept down like a whirlwind from the Alps at the call of
Pope Hadrian, seized king Desiderius in his capital, assumed himself
the Lombard crown, and made northern Italy thenceforward an integral
part of the Frankish empire. Proceeding to Rome at the head of his
victorious army, the first of a long line of Teutonic kings who were
to find her love more deadly than her hate, he was received by Hadrian
with distinguished honours, and welcomed by the people as their leader
and deliverer. Yet even then, whether out of policy or from that
sentiment of reverence to which his ambitious mind did not refuse to
bow, he was moderate in claims of jurisdiction, he yielded to the
pontiff the place of honour in processions, and renewed, although in
the guise of a lord and conqueror, the gift of the Exarchate and
Pentapolis, which Pipin had made to the Roman Church twenty years
before.
[Sidenote: Charles and Hadrian.]
It is with a strange sense, half of sadness, half of amusement, that
in watching the progress of this grand historical drama, we recognise
the meaner motives by which its chief actors were influenced. The
Frankish king and the Roman pontiff were for the time the two most
powerful forces that urged the movement of the world, leading it on by
swift steps to a mighty crisis of its fate, themselves guided, as it
might well seem, by the purest zeal for its spiritual welfare. Their
words and acts, their whole character and bearing in the sight of
expectant Christendom, were worthy of men destined to leave an
indelible impress on their own and many succeeding ages. Nevertheless
in them too appears the undercurrent of vulgar human desires and
passions. The lofty and fervent mind of Charles was not free from the
stirrings of personal ambition: yet these may be excused, if not
defended, as almost inseparable from an intense and restless genius,
which, be it never so unselfish in its ends, must in pursuing them fix
upon everything its grasp and raise out of everything its monument.
The policy of the Popes was prompted by motives less noble. Ever since
the extinction of the Western Empire had emancipated the
ecclesiastical potentate from secular control, the first and most
abiding object of his schemes and prayers had been the acquisition of
territorial wealth in the neighbourhood of his capital. He had indeed
a sort of justification--for Rome, a city with neither trade nor
industry, was crowded with poor, for whom it devolved on the bishop to
provide. Yet the pursuit was one which could not fail to pervert the
purposes of the Popes and give a sinister character to all they did.
It was this fear for the lands of the Church far more than for
religion or the safety of the city--neither of which were really
endangered by the Lombard attacks--that had prompted their passionate
appeals to Charles Martel and Pipin; it was now the well-grounded hope
of having these possessions confirmed and extended by Pipin's greater
son that made the Roman ecclesiastics so forward in his cause. And it
was the same lust after worldly wealth and pomp, mingled with the
dawning prospect of an independent principality, that now began to
seduce them into a long course of guile and intrigue. For this is
probably the very time, although the exact date cannot be established,
to which must be assigned the extraordinary forgery of the Donation of
Constantine, whereby it was pretended that power over Italy and the
whole West had been granted by the first Christian Emperor to Pope
Sylvester and his successors in the Chair of the Apostle.
[Sidenote: Accession of Pope Leo III, A.D. 796.]
For the next twenty-four years Italy remained quiet. The government of
Rome was carried on in the name of the Patrician Charles, although it
does not appear that he sent thither any official representative;
while at the same time both the city and the exarchate continued to
admit the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor, employing the
years of his reign to date documents. In A.D. 796, Leo the Third
succeeded Pope Hadrian, and signalized his devotion to the Frankish
throne by sending to Charles the banner of the city and the keys of
the holiest of all Rome's shrines, the confession of St. Peter, asking
that some officer should be deputed to the city to receive from the
people their oath of allegiance to the Patrician. He had soon need to
seek the Patrician's help for himself. In A.D. 798 a sedition broke
out: the Pope, going in solemn procession from the Lateran to the
church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina, was attacked by a band of armed men,
headed by two officials of his court, nephews of his predecessor; was
wounded and left for dead, and with difficulty succeeded in escaping
to Spoleto, whence he fled northward into the Frankish lands. Charles
had led his army against the revolted Saxons: thither Leo following
overtook him at Paderborn in Westphalia. The king received with
respect his spiritual father, entertained and conferred with him for
some time, and at length sent him back to Rome under the escort of
Angilbert, one of his trustiest ministers; promising to follow ere
long in person. After some months peace was restored in Saxony, and in
the autumn of 799 Charles descended from the Alps once more, while Leo
revolved deeply the great scheme for whose accomplishment the time was
now ripe.
[Sidenote: Belief in the Roman Empire not extinct.]
[Sidenote: Motives of the Pope.]
Three hundred and twenty-four years had passed since the last Cæsar of
the West resigned his power into the hands of the senate, and left to
his Eastern brother the sole headship of the Roman world. To the
latter Italy had from that time been nominally subject; but it was
only during one brief interval between the death of Totila the last
Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the first Lombard, that his
power had been really effective. In the further provinces, Gaul,
Spain, Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of a Roman Empire
as a necessary part of the world's order had not vanished: it had been
admitted by those who seemed to be destroying it; it had been
cherished by the Church; was still recalled by laws and customs; was
dear to the subject populations, who fondly looked back to the days
when slavery was at least mitigated by peace and order. We have seen
the Teuton endeavouring everywhere to identify himself with the system
he overthrew. As Goths, Burgundians, and Franks sought the title of
consul or patrician, as the Lombard kings when they renounced their
Arianism styled themselves Flavii, so even in distant England the
fierce Saxon and Anglian conquerors used the names of Roman dignities,
and before long began to call themselves _imperatores_ and _basileis_
of Britain. Within the last century and a half the rise of
Mohammedanism[47] had brought out the common Christianity of Europe
into a fuller relief. The false prophet had left one religion, one
Empire, one Commander of the faithful: the Christian commonwealth
needed more than ever an efficient head and centre. Such leadership it
could nowise find in the Court of the Bosphorus, growing ever feebler
and more alien to the West. The name of 'respublica,' permanent at the
elder Rome, had never been applied to the Eastern Empire. Its
government was from the first half Greek, half Asiatic; and had now
drifted away from its ancient traditions into the forms of an Oriental
despotism. Claudian had already sneered at 'Greek Quirites[48]:' the
general use, since Heraclius's reign, of the Greek tongue, and the
difference of manners and usages, made the taunt now more deserved.
The Pope had no reason to wish well to the Byzantine princes, who
while insulting his weakness had given him no help against the savage
Lombards, and who for nearly seventy years[49] had been contaminated
by a heresy the more odious that it touched not speculative points of
doctrine but the most familiar usages of worship. In North Italy their
power was extinct: no pontiff since Zacharias had asked their
confirmation of his election: nay, the appointment of the intruding
Frank to the patriciate, an office which it belonged to the Emperor to
confer, was of itself an act of rebellion. Nevertheless their rights
subsisted: they were still, and while they retained the imperial name,
must so long continue, titular sovereigns of the Roman city. Nor could
the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal: without
the Roman Empire there could not be a Roman, nor by necessary
consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church[50]. For, as will be shewn
more fully hereafter, men could not separate in fact what was
indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with
the great Christian state: they were but two names for the same thing.
Thus urged, the Pope took a step which some among his predecessors are
said to have already contemplated[51], and towards which the events of
the last fifty years had pointed. The moment was opportune. The
widowed empress Irene, equally famous for her beauty, her talents, and
her crimes, had deposed and blinded her son Constantine VI: a woman,
an usurper, almost a parricide, sullied the throne of the world. By
what right, it might well be asked, did the factions of Byzantium
impose a master on the original seat of empire? It was time to provide
better for the most august of human offices: an election at Rome was
as valid as at Constantinople--the possessor of the real power should
also be clothed with the outward dignity. Nor could it be doubted
where that possessor was to be found. The Frank had been always
faithful to Rome: his baptism was the enlistment of a new barbarian
auxiliary. His services against Arian heretics and Lombard marauders,
against the Saracen of Spain and the Avar of Pannonia, had earned him
the title of Champion of the Faith and Defender of the Holy See. He
was now unquestioned lord of Western Europe, whose subject nations,
Keltic and Teutonic, were eager to be called by his name and to
imitate his customs[52]. In Charles, the hero who united under one
sceptre so many races, who ruled all as the vicegerent of God, the
pontiff might well see--as later ages saw--the new golden head of a
second image[53], erected on the ruins of that whose mingled iron and
clay seemed crumbling to nothingness behind the impregnable bulwarks
of Constantinople.
[Sidenote: Coronation of Charles at Rome, A.D. 800.]
At length the Frankish host entered Rome. The Pope's cause was heard;
his innocence, already vindicated by a miracle, was pronounced by the
Patrician in full synod; his accusers condemned in his stead. Charles
remained in the city for some weeks; and on Christmas-day, A.D.
800[54], he heard mass in the basilica of St. Peter. On the spot where
now the gigantic dome of Bramante and Michael Angelo towers over the
buildings of the modern city, the spot which tradition had hallowed as
that of the Apostle's martyrdom, Constantine the Great had erected the
oldest and stateliest temple of Christian Rome. Nothing could be less
like than was this basilica to those northern cathedrals, shadowy,
fantastic, irregular, crowded with pillars, fringed all round by
clustering shrines and chapels, which are to most of us the types of
mediæval architecture. In its plan and decorations, in the spacious
sunny hall, the roof plain as that of a Greek temple, the long rows of
Corinthian columns, the vivid mosaics on its walls, in its brightness,
its sternness, its simplicity, it had preserved every feature of Roman
art, and had remained a perfect expression of the Roman character[55].
Out of the transept, a flight of steps led up to the high altar
underneath and just beyond the great arch, the arch of triumph as it
was called: behind in the semicircular apse sat the clergy, rising
tier above tier around its walls; in the midst, high above the rest,
and looking down past the altar over the multitude, was placed the
bishop's throne[56], itself the curule chair of some forgotten
magistrate[57]. From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of
the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles--who had exchanged his
simple Frankish dress for the sandals and the chlamys of a Roman
patrician[58]--knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in the sight
of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem
of the Cæsars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to
the shout of the multitude, again free, again the lords and centre of
the world, 'Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori
vita et victoria[59].' In that shout, echoed by the Franks without,
was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its
consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the
civilization of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from
that moment modern history begins.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] 'Denique gens Francorum multos et fœcundissimos fructus Domino
attulit, non solum credendo, sed et alios salutifere convertendo,'
says the emperor Lewis II in A.D. 871.
[40] Martin, as in earlier times Sylverius.
[41] A singular account of the origin of the separation of the Greeks
and Latins occurs in the treatise of Radulfus de Columna (Ralph
Colonna, or, as some think, de Coloumelle), _De translatione Imperii
Romani_ (circ. 1300). 'The tyranny of Heraclius,' says he, 'provoked a
revolt of the Eastern nations. They could not be reduced, because the
Greeks at the same time began to disobey the Roman Pontiff, receding,
like Jeroboam, from the true faith. Others among these schismatics
(apparently with the view of strengthening their political revolt)
carried their heresy further and founded Mohammedanism.' Similarly,
the Franciscan Marsilius of Padua (circa 1324) says that Mohammed, 'a
rich Persian,' invented his religion to keep the East from returning
to allegiance to Rome. It is worth remarking that few, if any, of the
earlier historians (from the tenth to the fifteenth century) refer to
the Emperors of the West from Constantine to Augustulus: the very
existence of this Western line seems to have been even in the eighth
or ninth century altogether forgotten.
[42] Anastasius, _Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_ i. _ap._ Muratori.
[43] Letter in _Codex Carolinus_, in Muratori's _Scriptores Rerum
Italicarum_, vol. iii. (part 2nd), addressed 'Subregulo Carolo.'
[44] Letter in _Cod. Carol._ (Mur. _R. S. I._ iii. [2.] p. 96), a
strange mixture of earnest adjurations, dexterous appeals to Frankish
pride, and long scriptural quotations: 'Declaratum quippe est quod
super omnes gentes vestra Francorum gens prona mihi Apostolo Dei Petro
exstitit, et ideo ecclesiam quam mihi Dominus tradidit vobis per manus
Vicarii mei commendavi.'
[45] The exact date when Pipin received the title cannot be made out.
Pope Stephen's next letter (p. 96 of Mur. iii.) is addressed 'Pipino,
Carolo et Carolomanno patriciis.' And so the _Chronicon Casinense_
(Mur. iv. 273) says it was first given to Pipin. Gibbon can hardly be
right in attributing it to Charles Martel, although one or two
documents may be quoted in which it is used of him. As one of these is
a letter of Pope Gregory II's, the explanation may be that the title
was offered or intended to be offered to him, although never accepted
by him.
[46] The title of Patrician appears even in the remote West: it stands
in a charter of Ina the West Saxon king, and in one given by Richard
of Normandy in A.D. 1015. Ducange, _s.v._
[47] After the _translatio ad Francos_ of A.D. 800, the two Empires
corresponded exactly to the two Khalifates of Bagdad and Cordova.
[48]
'Plaudentem cerne senatum
Et Byzantinos proceres, Graiosque Quirites.'
_In Eutrop._ ii. 135.
[49] Several Emperors during this period had been patrons of images,
as was Irene at the moment of which I write: the stain nevertheless
adhered to their government as a whole.
[50] I should not have thought it necessary to explain that the
sentence in the text is meant simply to state what were (so far as can
be made out) the sentiments and notions of the ninth century, if a
writer in the _Tablet_ (reviewing a former edition) had not understood
it as an expression of the author's own belief.
To a modern eye there is of course no necessary connection between the
Roman Empire and a catholic and apostolic Church; in fact, the two
things seem rather, such has been the impression made on us by the
long struggle of church and state, in their nature mutually
antagonistic. The interest of history lies not least in this, that it
shews us how men have at different times entertained wholly different
notions respecting the relation to one another of the same ideas or
the same institutions.
[51] Monachus Sangallensis, _De Gestis Karoli_; in Pertz, _Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica_.
[52] Monachus Sangallensis; _ut supra_. So Pope Gregory the Great two
centuries earlier: 'Quanto cæteros homines regia dignitas antecedit,
tanto cæterarum gentium regna regni Francorum culmen excellit.' Ep. v.
6.
[53] Alciatus, _De Formula imperii Romani_.
[54] Or rather, according to the then prevailing practice of beginning
the year from Christmas-day, A.D. 801.
[55] An elaborate description of old St. Peter's may be found in
Bunsen's and Platner's _Beschreibung der Stadt Rom_; with which
compare Bunsen's work on the Basilicas of Rome.
[56] The primitive custom was for the bishop to sit in the centre of
the apse, at the central point of the east end of the church (or, as
it would be more correct to say, the end furthest from the door) just
as the judge had done in those law courts on the model of which the
first basilicas were constructed. This arrangement may still be seen
in some of the churches of Rome, as well as elsewhere in Italy;
nowhere better than in the churches of Ravenna, particularly the
beautiful one of Sant' Apollinare in Classe, and in the cathedral of
Torcello, near Venice.
[57] On this chair were represented the labours of Hercules and the
signs of the zodiac. It is believed at Rome to be the veritable chair
of the Apostle himself, and whatever may be thought of such an
antiquity as this, it can be satisfactorily traced back to the third
or fourth century of Christianity. (The story that it is inscribed
with verses from the Koran is, I believe, without foundation.) It is
now enclosed in a gorgeous casing of gilded wood (some say, of
bronze), and placed aloft at the extremity of St. Peter's, just over
the spot where a bishop's chair would in the old arrangement of the
basilica have stood. The sarcophagus in which Charles himself lay,
till the French scattered his bones abroad, had carved on it the rape
of Proserpine. It may still be seen in the gallery of the basilica at
Aachen.
[58] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_.
[59] The coronation scene is described in all the annals of the time,
to which it is therefore needless to refer more particularly.