THEORY OF THE MEDIÆVAL EMPIRE.
[Sidenote: Why the revival of the Empire was desired.]
These were the events and circumstances of the time: let us now look
at the causes. The restoration of the Empire by Charles may seem to be
sufficiently accounted for by the width of his conquests, by the
peculiar connection which already subsisted between him and the Roman
Church, by his commanding personal character, by the temporary vacancy
of the Byzantine throne. The causes of its revival under Otto must be
sought deeper. Making every allowance for the favouring incidents
which have already been dwelt upon, there must have been some further
influence at work to draw him and his successors, Saxon and Frankish
kings, so far from home in pursuit of a barren crown, to lead the
Italians to accept the dominion of a stranger and a barbarian, to make
the Empire itself appear through the whole Middle Age not what it
seems now, a gorgeous anachronism, but an institution divine and
necessary, having its foundations in the very nature and order of
things. The empire of the elder Rome had been splendid in its life,
yet its judgment was written in the misery to which it had brought the
provinces, and the helplessness that had invited the attacks of the
barbarian. Now, as we at least can see, it had long been dead, and the
course of events was adverse to its revival. Its actual
representatives, the Roman people, were a turbulent rabble, sunk in a
profligacy notorious even in that guilty age. Yet not the less for all
this did men cling to the idea, and strive through long ages to stem
the irresistible time-current, fondly believing that they were
breasting it even while it was sweeping them ever faster and faster
away from the old order into a region of new thoughts, new feelings,
new forms of life. Not till the days of the Reformation was the
illusion dispelled.
[Sidenote: Mediæval theories.]
The explanation is to be found in the state of the human mind during
these centuries. The Middle Ages were essentially unpolitical. Ideas
as familiar to the commonwealths of antiquity as to ourselves, ideas
of the common good as the object of the State, of the rights of the
people, of the comparative merits of different forms of government,
were to them, though sometimes carried out in fact, in their
speculative form unknown, perhaps incomprehensible. Feudalism was the
one great institution to which those times gave birth, and feudalism
was a social and a legal system, only indirectly and by consequence a
political one. Yet the human mind, so far from being idle, was in
certain directions never more active; nor was it possible for it to
remain without general conceptions regarding the relation of men to
each other in this world. Such conceptions were neither made an
expression of the actual present condition of things nor drawn from an
induction of the past; they were partly inherited from the system that
had preceded, partly evolved from the principles of that metaphysical
theology which was ripening into scholasticism[102]. Now the two great
ideas which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages that followed
were those of a World-Monarchy and a World-Religion.
[Sidenote: The World-Religion.]
Before the conquests of Rome, men, with little knowledge of each
other, with no experience of wide political union[103], had held
differences of race to be natural and irremovable barriers. Similarly,
religion appeared to them a matter purely local and national; and as
there were gods of the hills and gods of the valleys, of the land and
of the sea, so each tribe rejoiced in its peculiar deities, looking on
the natives of another country who worshipped other gods as Gentiles,
natural foes, unclean beings. Such feelings, if keenest in the East,
frequently shew themselves in the early records of Greece and Italy:
in Homer the hero who wanders over the unfruitful sea glories in
sacking the cities of the stranger[104]; the primitive Latins have the
same word for a foreigner and an enemy: the exclusive systems of
Egypt, Hindostan, China, are only more vehement expressions of the
belief which made Athenian philosophers look on a state of war between
Greeks and barbarians as natural[105], and defend slavery on the same
ground of the original diversity of the races that rule and the races
that serve. The Roman dominion giving to many nations a common speech
and law, smote this feeling on its political side; Christianity more
effectually banished it from the soul by substituting for the variety
of local pantheons the belief in one God, before whom all men are
equal[106].
[Sidenote: Coincides with the World-Empire.]
It is on the religious life that nations repose. Because divinity was
divided, humanity had been divided likewise; the doctrine of the unity
of God now enforced the unity of man, who had been created in His
image[107]. The first lesson of Christianity was love, a love that was
to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of
race had hitherto kept apart. There was thus formed by the new
religion a community of the faithful, a Holy Empire, designed to
gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold
polytheisms of the older world, exactly as the universal sway of the
Cæsars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that
had gone before it. The analogy of the two made them appear parts of
one great world-movement toward unity: the coincidence of their
boundaries, which had begun before Constantine, lasted long enough
after him to associate them indissolubly together, and make the names
of Roman and Christian convertible[108]. Œcumenical councils, where
the whole spiritual body gathered itself from every part of the
temporal realm under the presidency of the temporal head, presented
the most visible and impressive examples of their connection[109]. The
language of civil government was, throughout the West, that of the
sacred writings and of worship; the greatest mind of his generation
consoled the faithful for the fall of their earthly commonwealth Rome,
by describing to them its successor and representative, the 'city
which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God[110].'
[Sidenote: Preservation of the unity of the Church.]
[Sidenote: Mediæval Theology requires One Visible Catholic Church.]
Of these two parallel unities, that of the political and that of the
religious society, meeting in the higher unity of all Christians,
which may be indifferently called Catholicity or Romanism (since in
that day those words would have had the same meaning), that only which
had been entrusted to the keeping of the Church survived the storms of
the fifth century. Many reasons may be assigned for the firmness with
which she clung to it. Seeing one institution after another falling to
pieces around her, seeing how countries and cities were being severed
from each other by the irruption of strange tribes and the increasing
difficulty of communication, she strove to save religious fellowship
by strengthening the ecclesiastical organization, by drawing tighter
every bond of outward union. Necessities of faith were still more
powerful. Truth, it was said, is one, and as it must bind into one
body all who hold it, so it is only by continuing in that body that
they can preserve it. Thus with the growing rigidity of dogma, which
may be traced from the council of Jerusalem to the council of Trent,
there had arisen the idea of supplementing revelation by tradition as
a source of doctrine, of exalting the universal conscience and belief
above the individual, and allowing the soul to approach God only
through the universal consciousness, represented by the sacerdotal
order: principles still maintained by one branch of the Church, and
for some at least of which far weightier reasons could be assigned
then, in the paucity of written records and the blind ignorance of the
mass of the people, than any to which their modern advocates have
recourse. There was another cause yet more deeply seated, and which it
is hard adequately to describe. It was not exactly a want of faith in
the unseen, nor a shrinking fear which dared not look forth on the
universe alone: it was rather the powerlessness of the untrained mind
to realize the idea as an idea and live in it: it was the tendency to
see everything in the concrete, to turn the parable into a fact, the
doctrine into its most literal application, the symbol into the
essential ceremony; the tendency which intruded earthly Madonnas and
saints between the worshipper and the spiritual Deity, and could
satisfy its devotional feelings only by visible images even of these:
which conceived of man's aspirations and temptations as the result of
the direct action of angels and devils: which expressed the strivings
of the soul after purity by the search for the Holy Grail: which in
the Crusades sent myriads to win at Jerusalem by earthly arms the
sepulchre of Him whom they could not serve in their own spirit nor
approach by their own prayers. And therefore it was that the whole
fabric of mediæval Christianity rested upon the idea of the Visible
Church. Such a Church could be in nowise local or limited. To
acquiesce in the establishment of National Churches would have
appeared to those men, as it must always appear when scrutinized,
contradictory to the nature of a religious body, opposed to the genius
of Christianity, defensible, when capable of defence at all, only as a
temporary resource in the presence of insuperable difficulties. Had
this plan, on which so many have dwelt with complacency in later
times, been proposed either to the primitive Church in its adversity
or to the dominant Church of the ninth century, it would have been
rejected with horror; but since there were as yet no nations, the plan
was one which did not and could not present itself. The Visible Church
was therefore the Church Universal, the whole congregation of
Christian men dispersed throughout the world.
[Sidenote: Idea of political unity upheld by the clergy.]
Now of the Visible Church the emblem and stay was the priesthood; and
it was by them, in whom dwelt whatever of learning and thought was
left in Europe, that the second great idea whereof mention has been
made--the belief in one universal temporal state--was preserved. As a
matter of fact, that state had perished out of the West, and it might
seem their interest to let its memory be lost. They, however, did not
so calculate their interest. So far from feeling themselves opposed to
the civil authority in the seventh and eighth centuries, as they came
to do in the twelfth and thirteenth, the clergy were fully persuaded
that its maintenance was indispensable to their own welfare. They
were, be it remembered, at first Romans themselves living by the Roman
law, using Latin as their proper tongue, and imbued with the idea of
the historical connection of the two powers. And by them chiefly was
that idea expounded and enforced for many generations, by none more
earnestly than by Alcuin of York, the adviser of Charles[111]. The
limits of those two powers had become confounded in practice: bishops
were princes, the chief ministers of the sovereign, sometimes even the
leaders of their flocks in war: kings were accustomed to summon
ecclesiastical councils, and appoint to ecclesiastical offices.
[Sidenote: Influence of the metaphysics of the time upon the theory of
a World-State.]
But, like the unity of the Church, the doctrine of a universal
monarchy had a theoretical as well as an historical basis, and may be
traced up to those metaphysical ideas out of which the system we call
Realism developed itself. The beginnings of philosophy in those times
were logical; and its first efforts were to distribute and classify:
system, subordination, uniformity, appeared to be that which was most
desirable in thought as in life. The search after causes became a
search after principles of classification; since simplicity and truth
were held to consist not in an analysis of thought into its elements,
nor in an observation of the process of its growth, but rather in a
sort of genealogy of notions, a statement of the relations of classes
as containing or excluding each other. These classes, genera or
species, were not themselves held to be conceptions formed by the mind
from phenomena, nor mere accidental aggregates of objects grouped
under and called by some common name; they were real things, existing
independently of the individuals who composed them, recognized rather
than created by the human mind. In this view, Humanity is an essential
quality present in all men, and making them what they are: as regards
it they are therefore not many but one, the differences between
individuals being no more than accidents. The whole truth of their
being lies in the universal property, which alone has a permanent and
independent existence. The common nature of the individuals thus
gathered into one Being is typified in its two aspects, the spiritual
and the secular, by two persons, the World-Priest and the
World-Monarch, who present on earth a similitude of the Divine unity.
For, as we have seen, it was only through its concrete and symbolic
expression that a thought could then be apprehended[112]. Although it
was to unity in religion that the clerical body was both by doctrine
and by practice attached, they found this inseparable from the
corresponding unity in politics. They saw that every act of man has a
social and public as well as a moral and personal bearing, and
concluded that the rules which directed and the powers which rewarded
or punished must be parallel and similar, not so much two powers as
different manifestations of one and the same. That the souls of all
Christian men should be guided by one hierarchy, rising through
successive grades to a supreme head, while for their deeds they were
answerable to a multitude of local, unconnected, mutually
irresponsible potentates, appeared to them necessarily opposed to the
Divine order. As they could not imagine, nor value if they had
imagined, a communion of the saints without its expression in a
visible Church, so in matters temporal they recognized no brotherhood
of spirit without the bonds of form, no universal humanity save in the
image of a universal State[113]. In this, as in so much else, the men
of the Middle Ages were the slaves of the letter, unable, with all
their aspirations, to rise out of the concrete, and prevented by the
very grandeur and boldness of their conceptions from carrying them out
in practice against the enormous obstacles that met them.
[Sidenote: The ideal state supposed to be embodied in the Roman
Empire.]
[Sidenote: Constantine's Donation.]
Deep as this belief had struck its roots, it might never have risen to
maturity nor sensibly affected the progress of events, had it not
gained in the pre-existence of the monarchy of Rome a definite shape
and a definite purpose. It was chiefly by means of the Papacy that
this came to pass. When under Constantine the Christian Church was
framing her organization on the model of the state which protected
her, the bishop of the metropolis perceived and improved the analogy
between himself and the head of the civil government. The notion that
the chair of Peter was the imperial throne of the Church had dawned
upon the Popes very early in their history, and grew stronger every
century under the operation of causes already specified. Even before
the Empire of the West had fallen, St. Leo the Great could boast that
to Rome, exalted by the preaching of the chief of the Apostles to be a
holy nation, a chosen people, a priestly and royal city, there had
been appointed a spiritual dominion wider than her earthly sway[114].
In A.D. 476 Rome ceased to be the political capital of the Western
countries, and the Papacy, inheriting no small part of the Emperor's
power, drew to herself the reverence which the name of the city still
commanded, until by the middle of the eighth, or, at latest, of the
ninth century she had perfected in theory a scheme which made her the
exact counterpart of the departed despotism, the centre of the
hierarchy, absolute mistress of the Christian world. The character of
that scheme is best set forth in the singular document, most
stupendous of all the mediæval forgeries, which under the name of the
Donation of Constantine commanded for seven centuries the
unquestioning belief of mankind[115]. Itself a portentous falsehood,
it is the most unimpeachable evidence of the thoughts and beliefs of
the priesthood which framed it, some time between the middle of the
eighth and the middle of the tenth century. It tells how Constantine
the Great, cured of his leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved,
on the fourth day from his baptism, to forsake the ancient seat for a
new capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular
government should cramp the freedom of the spiritual, and how he
bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his successors the sovereignty
over Italy and the countries of the West. But this is not all,
although this is what historians, in admiration of its splendid
audacity, have chiefly dwelt upon. The edict proceeds to grant to the
Roman pontiff and his clergy a series of dignities and privileges, all
of them enjoyed by the Emperor and his senate, all of them shewing the
same desire to make the pontifical a copy of the imperial office. The
Pope is to inhabit the Lateran palace, to wear the diadem, the collar,
the purple cloak, to carry the sceptre, and to be attended by a body
of chamberlains. Similarly his clergy are to ride on white horses and
receive the honours and immunities of the senate and patricians[116].
[Sidenote: Interdependence of Papacy and Empire.]
The notion which prevails throughout, that the chief of the religious
society must be in every point conformed to his prototype the chief of
the civil, is the key to all the thoughts and acts of the Roman
clergy; not less plainly seen in the details of papal ceremonial than
it is in the gigantic scheme of papal legislation. The Canon law was
intended by its authors to reproduce and rival the imperial
jurisprudence; a correspondence was traced between its divisions and
those of the Corpus Juris Civilis, and Gregory IX, who was the first
to consolidate it into a code, sought the fame and received the title
of the Justinian of the Church. But the wish of the clergy was always,
even in the weakness or hostility of the temporal power, to imitate
and rival, not to supersede it; since they held it the necessary
complement of their own, and thought the Christian people equally
imperilled by the fall of either. Hence the reluctance of Gregory II
to break with the Byzantine princes[117], and the maintenance of their
titular sovereignty till A.D. 800: hence the part which the Holy See
played in transferring the crown to Charles, the first sovereign of
the West capable of fulfilling its duties; hence the grief with which
its weakness under his successors was seen, the gladness when it
descended to Otto as representative of the Frankish kingdom.
[Sidenote: The Roman Empire revived in a new character.]
Up to the era of A.D. 800 there had been at Constantinople a
legitimate historical prolongation of the Roman Empire. Technically,
as we have seen, the election of Charles, after the deposition of
Constantine VI, was itself a prolongation, and maintained the old
rights and forms in their integrity. But the Pope, though he knew it
not, did far more than effect a change of dynasty when he rejected
Irene and crowned the barbarian chief. Restorations are always
delusive. As well might one hope to stop the earth's course in her
orbit as to arrest that ceaseless change and movement in human affairs
which forbids an old institution, suddenly transplanted into a new
order of things, from filling its ancient place and serving its former
ends. The dictatorship at Rome in the second Punic war was not more
unlike the dictatorships of Sulla and Cæsar, nor the States-general of
Louis XIII to the assembly which his unhappy descendant convoked in
1789, than was the imperial office of Theodosius to that of Charles
the Frank; and the seal, ascribed to A.D. 800, which bears the legend
'Renovatio Romani Imperii[118],' expresses, more justly perhaps than
was intended by its author, a second birth of the Roman Empire.
It is not, however, from Carolingian times that a proper view of this
new creation can be formed. That period was one of transition, of
fluctuation and uncertainty, in which the office, passing from one
dynasty and country to another, had not time to acquire a settled
character and claims, and was without the power that would have
enabled it to support them. From the coronation of Otto the Great a
new period begins, in which the ideas that have been described as
floating in men's minds took clearer shape, and attached to the
imperial title a body of definite rights and definite duties. It is
this new phase, the Holy Empire, that we have now to consider.
[Sidenote: Position and functions of the Emperor.]
[Sidenote: Correspondence and harmony of the spiritual and temporal
powers.]
The realistic philosophy, and the needs of a time when the only notion
of civil or religious order was submission to authority, required the
World-State to be a monarchy; tradition, as well as the continuance of
certain institutions, gave the monarch the name of Roman Emperor. A
king could not be universal sovereign, for there were many kings: the
Emperor must be, for there had never been but one Emperor; he had in
older and brighter days been the actual lord of the civilized world;
the seat of his power was placed beside that of the spiritual autocrat
of Christendom[119]. His functions will be seen most clearly if we
deduce them from the leading principle of mediæval mythology, the
exact correspondence of earth and heaven. As God, in the midst of the
celestial hierarchy, ruled blessed spirits in paradise, so the Pope,
His Vicar, raised above priests, bishops, metropolitans, reigned over
the souls of mortal men below. But as God is Lord of earth as well as
of heaven, so must he (the _Imperator cœlestis_[t]) be represented by
a second earthly viceroy, the Emperor (_Imperator terrenus_[120]),
whose authority shall be of and for this present life. And as in this
present world the soul cannot act save through the body, while yet the
body is no more than an instrument and means for the soul's
manifestation, so must there be a rule and care of men's bodies as
well as of their souls, yet subordinated always to the well-being of
that which is the purer and the more enduring. It is under the emblem
of soul and body that the relation of the papal and imperial power is
presented to us throughout the Middle Ages[121]. The Pope, as God's
vicar in matters spiritual, is to lead men to eternal life; the
Emperor, as vicar in matters temporal, must so control them in their
dealings with one another that they may be able to pursue undisturbed
the spiritual life, and thereby attain the same supreme and common end
of everlasting happiness. In the view of this object his chief duty is
to maintain peace in the world, while towards the Church his position
is that of Advocate, a title borrowed from the practice adopted by
churches and monasteries of choosing some powerful baron to protect
their lands and lead their tenants in war[122]. The functions of
Advocacy are twofold: at home to make the Christian people obedient to
the priesthood, and to execute their decrees upon heretics and
sinners; abroad to propagate the faith among the heathen, not sparing
to use carnal weapons[123]. Thus does the Emperor answer in every
point to his antitype the Pope, his power being yet of a lower rank,
created on the analogy of the papal, as the papal itself had been
modelled after the elder Empire. The parallel holds good even in its
details; for just as we have seen the churchman assuming the crown and
robes of the secular prince, so now did he array the Emperor in his
own ecclesiastical vestments, the stole and the dalmatic, gave him a
clerical as well as a sacred character, removed his office from all
narrowing associations of birth or country, inaugurated him by rites
every one of which was meant to symbolize and enjoin duties in their
essence religious. Thus the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman
Empire are one and the same thing, in two aspects; and Catholicism,
the principle of the universal Christian society, is also Romanism;
that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type of its universality;
manifesting itself in a mystic dualism which corresponds to the two
natures of its Founder. As divine and eternal, its head is the Pope,
to whom souls have been entrusted; as human and temporal, the Emperor,
commissioned to rule men's bodies and acts.
[Sidenote: Union of Church and State.]
In nature and compass the government of these two potentates is the
same, differing only in the sphere of its working; and it matters not
whether we call the Pope a spiritual Emperor or the Emperor a secular
Pope. Nor, though the one office is below the other as far as man's
life on earth is less precious than his life hereafter, is therefore,
on the older and truer theory, the imperial authority delegated by the
papal. For, as has been said already, God is represented by the Pope
not in every capacity, but only as the ruler of spirits in heaven: as
sovereign of earth, He issues His commission directly to the Emperor.
Opposition between two servants of the same King is inconceivable,
each being bound to aid and foster the other: the co-operation of both
being needed in all that concerns the welfare of Christendom at large.
This is the one perfect and self-consistent scheme of the union of
Church and State; for, taking the absolute coincidence of their limits
to be self-evident, it assumes the infallibility of their joint
government, and derives, as a corollary from that infallibility, the
duty of the civil magistrate to root out heresy and schism no less
than to punish treason and rebellion. It is also the scheme which,
granting the possibility of their harmonious action, places the two
powers in that relation which gives each of them its maximum of
strength. But by a law to which it would be hard to find exceptions,
in proportion as the State became more Christian, the Church, who to
work out her purposes had assumed worldly forms, became by the contact
worldlier, meaner, spiritually weaker; and the system which
Constantine founded amid such rejoicings, which culminated so
triumphantly in the Empire Church of the Middle Ages, has in each
succeeding generation been slowly losing ground, has seen its
brightness dimmed and its completeness marred, and sees now those who
are most zealous on behalf of its surviving institutions feebly defend
or silently desert the principle upon which all must rest.
The complete accord of the papal and imperial powers which this
theory, as sublime as it is impracticable, requires, was attained only
at a few points in their history[124]. It was finally supplanted by
another view of their relation, which, professing to be a development
of a principle recognized as fundamental, the superior importance of
the religious life, found increasing favour in the eyes of fervent
churchmen[125]. Declaring the Pope sole representative on earth of the
Deity, it concluded that from him, and not directly from God, must the
Empire be held--held feudally, it was said by many--and it thereby
thrust down the temporal power, to be the slave instead of the sister
of the spiritual[126]. Nevertheless, the Papacy in her meridian, and
under the guidance of her greatest minds, of Hildebrand, of Alexander,
of Innocent, not seeking to abolish or absorb the civil government,
required only its obedience, and exalted its dignity against all save
herself[127]. It was reserved for Boniface VIII, whose extravagant
pretensions betrayed the decay that was already at work within, to
show himself to the crowding pilgrims at the jubilee of A.D. 1300,
seated on the throne of Constantine, arrayed with sword, and crown,
and sceptre, shouting aloud, 'I am Cæsar--I am Emperor[128].'
[Sidenote: Proofs from mediæval documents.]
The theory of an Emperor's place and functions thus sketched cannot be
definitely assigned to any point of time; for it was growing and
changing from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Nor need it surprise
us that we do not find in any one author a statement of the grounds
whereon it rested, since much of what seems strangest to us was then
too obvious to be formally explained. No one, however, who examines
mediæval writings can fail to perceive, sometimes from direct words,
oftener from allusions or assumptions, that such ideas as these are
present to the minds of the authors[129]. That which it is easiest to
prove is the connection of the Empire with religion. From every
record, from chronicles and treatises, proclamations, laws, and
sermons, passages may be adduced wherein the defence and spread of the
faith, and the maintenance of concord among the Christian people, are
represented as the function to which the Empire has been set apart.
The belief expressed by Lewis II, 'Imperii dignitas non in vocabuli
voce sed in gloriosæ pietatis culmine consistit[130],' appears again
in the address of the Archbishop of Mentz to Conrad II[131], as Vicar
of God; is reiterated by Frederick I[132], when he writes to the
prelates of Germany, 'On earth God has placed no more than two powers,
and as there is in heaven but one God, so is there here one Pope and
one Emperor. Divine providence has specially appointed the Roman
Empire to prevent the continuance of schism in the Church[133];' is
echoed by jurists and divines down to the days of Charles V[134]. It
was a doctrine which we shall find the friends and foes of the Holy
See equally concerned to insist on, the one to make the transference
(_translatio_) from the Greeks to the Germans appear entirely the
Pope's work, and so establish his right of overseeing or cancelling
his rival's election, the others by setting the Emperor at the head of
the Church to reduce the Pope to the place of chief bishop of his
realm[135]. His headship was dwelt upon chiefly in the two duties
already noticed. As the counterpart of the Mussulman Commander of the
Faithful, he was leader of the Church militant against her infidel
foes, was in this capacity summoned to conduct crusades, and in later
times recognized chief of the confederacies against the conquering
Ottomans. As representative of the whole Christian people, it belonged
to him to convoke General Councils, a right not without importance
even when exercised concurrently with the Pope, but far more weighty
when the object of the council was to settle a disputed election, or,
as at Constance, to depose the reigning pontiff himself.
[Sidenote: The Coronation ceremonies.]
No better illustrations can be desired than those to be found in the
office for the imperial coronation at Rome, too long to be transcribed
here, but well worthy of an attentive study[136]. The rites prescribed
in it are rights of consecration to a religious office: the Emperor,
besides the sword, globe, and sceptre of temporal power, receives a
ring as the symbol of his faith, is ordained a subdeacon, assists the
Pope in celebrating mass, partakes as a clerical person of the
communion in both kinds, is admitted a canon of St. Peter and St. John
Lateran. The oath to be taken by an elector begins, 'Ego N. volo regem
Romanorum in Cæsarem promovendum, temporale caput populo Christiano
eligere.' The Emperor swears to cherish and defend the Holy Roman
Church and her bishop: the Pope prays after the reading of the Gospel,
'Deus qui ad prædicandum æterni regni evangelium Imperium Romanum
præparasti, prætende famulo tuo Imperatori nostro arma cœlestia.'
Among the Emperor's official titles there occur these: 'Head of
Christendom,' 'Defender and Advocate of the Christian Church,'
'Temporal Head of the Faithful,' 'Protector of Palestine and of the
Catholic Faith[137].'
[Sidenote: The rights of the Empire proved from the Bible.]
Very singular are the reasonings used by which the necessity and
divine right of the Empire are proved out of the Bible. The mediæval
theory of the relation of the civil power to the priestly was
profoundly influenced by the account in the Old Testament of the
Jewish theocracy, in which the king, though the institution of his
office was a derogation from the purity of the older system, appears
divinely chosen and commissioned, and stood in a peculiarly intimate
relation to the national religion. From the New Testament the
authority and eternity of Rome herself was established. Every passage
was seized on where submission to the powers that be is enjoined,
every instance cited where obedience had actually been rendered to
imperial officials, a special emphasis being laid on the sanction
which Christ Himself had given to Roman dominion by pacifying the
world through Augustus, by being born at the time of the taxing, by
paying tribute to Cæsar, by saying to Pilate, 'Thou couldest have no
power at all against Me except it were given thee from above.'
More attractive to the mystical spirit than these direct arguments
were those drawn from prophecy, or based on the allegorical
interpretation of Scripture. Very early in Christian history had the
belief formed itself that the Roman Empire--as the fourth beast of
Daniel's vision, as the iron legs and feet of Nebuchadnezzar's
image--was to be the world's last and universal kingdom. From Origen
and Jerome downwards it found unquestioned acceptance[138], and that
not unnaturally. For no new power had arisen to extinguish the Roman,
as the Persian monarchy had been blotted out by Alexander, as the
realms of his successors had fallen before the conquering republic
herself. Every Northern conqueror, Goth, Lombard, Burgundian, had
cherished her memory and preserved her laws; Germany had adopted even
the name of the Empire 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,
and diverse from all that were before it.' To these predictions, and
to many others from the Apocalypse, were added those which in the
Gospels and Epistles foretold the advent of Antichrist[139]. He was to
succeed the Roman dominion, and the Popes are more than once warned
that by weakening the Empire they are hastening the coming of the
enemy and the end of the world[140]. It is not only when groping in
the dark labyrinths of prophecy that mediæval authors are quick in
detecting emblems, imaginative in explaining them. Men were wont in
those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did
it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom
they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether
the sense they discovered was one which the language used would
naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy
was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple
text; and, once propounded, the interpretation acquired in argument
all the authority of the text itself. Thus the two swords of which
Christ said, 'It is enough,' became the spiritual and temporal powers,
and the grant of the spiritual to Peter involves the supremacy of the
Papacy[141]. Thus one writer proves the eternity of Rome from the
seventy-second Psalm, 'They shall fear thee as long as the sun and
moon endure, throughout all generations;' the moon being of course,
since Gregory VII, the Roman Empire, as the sun, or greater light, is
the Popedom. Another quoting, 'Qui tenet teneat donec auferatur[142],'
with Augustine's explanation thereof[143], says, that when 'he who
letteth' is removed, tribes and provinces will rise in rebellion, and
the Empire to which God has committed the government of the human race
will be dissolved. From the miseries of his own time (he wrote under
Frederick III) he predicts that the end is near. The same spirit of
symbolism seized on the number of the electors: 'the seven lamps
burning in the unity of the sevenfold spirit which illumine the Holy
Empire[144].' Strange legends told how Romans and Germans were of one
lineage; how Peter's staff had been found on the banks of the Rhine,
the miracle signifying that a commission was issued to the Germans to
reclaim wandering sheep to the one fold. So complete does the
scriptural proof appear in the hands of mediæval churchmen, many
holding it a mortal sin to resist the power ordained of God, that we
forget they were all the while only adapting to an existing
institution what they found written already; we begin to fancy that
the Empire was maintained, obeyed, exalted for centuries, on the
strength of words to which we attach in almost every case a wholly
different meaning.
[Sidenote: Illustrations from Mediæval Art.]
It would be a task both pleasant and profitable to pass on from the
theologians to the poets and artists of the Middle Ages, and endeavour
to trace through their works the influence of the ideas which have
been expounded above. But it is one far too wide for the scope of the
present treatise; and one which would demand an acquaintance with
those works themselves such as only minute and long-continued study
could give. For even a slight knowledge enables any one to see how
much still remains to be interpreted in the imaginative literature and
in the paintings of those times, and how apt we are in glancing over a
piece of work to miss those seemingly trifling indications of the
artist's thought or belief which are all the more precious that they
are indirect or unconscious. Therefore a history of mediæval art which
shall evolve its philosophy from its concrete forms, if it is to have
any value at all, must be minute in description as well as subtle in
method. But lest this class of illustrations should appear to have
been wholly forgotten, it may be well to mention here two paintings in
which the theory of the mediæval empire is unmistakeably set forth.
One of them is in Rome, the other in Florence; every traveller in
Italy may examine both for himself.
[Sidenote: Mosaic of the Lateran Palace at Rome.]
The first of these is the famous mosaic of the Lateran triclinium,
constructed by Pope Leo III about A.D. 800, and an exact copy of
which, made by the order of Sextus V, may still be seen over against
the façade of St. John Lateran. Originally meant to adorn the state
banqueting-hall of the Popes, it is now placed in the open air, in the
finest situation in Rome, looking from the brow of a hill across the
green ridges of the Campagna to the olive-groves of Tivoli and the
glistering crags and snow-capped summits of the Umbrian and Sabine
Apennine. It represents in the centre Christ surrounded by the
Apostles, whom He is sending forth to preach the Gospel; one hand is
extended to bless, the other holds a book with the words 'Pax Vobis.'
Below and to the right Christ is depicted again, and this time
sitting: on his right hand kneels Pope Sylvester, on his left the
Emperor Constantine; to the one he gives the keys of heaven and hell,
to the other a banner surmounted by a cross. In the group on the
opposite, that is, on the left side of the arch, we see the Apostle
Peter seated, before whom in like manner kneel Pope Leo III and
Charles the Emperor; the latter wearing, like Constantine, his crown.
Peter, himself grasping the keys, gives to Leo the pallium of an
archbishop, to Charles the banner of the Christian army. The
inscription is, 'Beatus Petrus dona vitam Leoni PP et bictoriam Carulo
regi dona;' while round the arch is written, 'Gloria in excelsis Deo,
et in terra pax omnibus bonæ voluntatis.'
The order and nature of the ideas here symbolized is sufficiently
clear. First comes the revelation of the Gospel, and the divine
commission to gather all men into its fold. Next, the institution, at
the memorable era of Constantine's conversion, of the two powers by
which the Christian people is to be respectively taught and governed.
Thirdly, we are shewn the permanent Vicar of God, the Apostle who
keeps the keys of heaven and hell, re-establishing these same powers
on a new and firmer basis[145]. The badge of ecclesiastical supremacy
he gives to Leo as the spiritual head of the faithful on earth, the
banner of the Church Militant to Charles, who is to maintain her cause
against heretics and infidels.
[Sidenote: Fresco in S. Maria Novella at Florence.]
The second painting is of greatly later date. It is a fresco in the
chapter-house of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella[146] at
Florence, usually known as the Capellone degli Spagnuoli. It has been
commonly ascribed, on Vasari's authority, to Simone Martini of Siena,
but an examination of the dates of his life seems to discredit this
view[147]. Most probably it was executed between A.D. 1340 and 1350.
It is a huge work, covering one whole wall of the chapter-house, and
filled with figures, some of which, but seemingly on no sufficient
authority, have been taken to represent eminent persons of the
time--Cimabue, Arnolfo, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Laura, and others. In it
is represented the whole scheme of man's life here and hereafter--the
Church on earth and the Church in heaven. Full in front are seated
side by side the Pope and the Emperor: on their right and left, in a
descending row, minor spiritual and temporal officials; next to the
Pope a cardinal, bishops, and doctors; next to the Emperor, the king
of France and a line of nobles and knights. Behind them appears the
Duomo of Florence as an emblem of the Visible Church, while at their
feet is a flock of sheep (the faithful) attacked by ravening wolves
(heretics and schismatics), whom a pack of spotted dogs (the
Dominicans[148]) combat and chase away. From this, the central
foreground of the picture, a path winds round and up a height to a
great gate where the Apostle sits on guard to admit true believers:
they passing through it are met by choirs of seraphs, who lead them on
through the delicious groves of Paradise. Above all, at the top of the
painting and just over the spot where his two lieutenants, Pope and
Emperor, are placed below, is the Saviour enthroned amid saints and
angels[149].
[Sidenote: Anti-national character of the Empire.]
Here, too, there needs no comment. The Church Militant is the perfect
counterpart of the Church Triumphant: her chief danger is from those
who would rend the unity of her visible body, the seamless garment of
her heavenly Lord; and that devotion to His person which is the sum of
her faith and the essence of her being, must on earth be rendered to
those two lieutenants whom He has chosen to govern in His name.
A theory, such as that which it has been attempted to explain and
illustrate, is utterly opposed to restrictions of place or person. The
idea of one Christian people, all whose members are equal in the sight
of God,--an idea so forcibly expressed in the unity of the priesthood,
where no barrier separated the successor of the Apostle from the
humblest curate,--and in the prevalence of one language for worship
and government, made the post of Emperor independent of the race, or
rank, or actual resources of its occupant. The Emperor was entitled to
the obedience of Christendom, not as hereditary chief of a victorious
tribe, or feudal lord of a portion of the earth's surface, but as
solemnly invested with an office. Not only did he excel in dignity the
kings of the earth: his power was different in its nature; and, so far
from supplanting or rivalling theirs, rose above them to become the
source and needful condition of their authority in their several
territories, the bond which joined them in one harmonious body. The
vast dominions and vigorous personal action of Charles the Great had
concealed this distinction while he reigned; under his successors the
imperial crown appeared disconnected from the direct government of the
kingdoms they had established, existing only in the form of an
undefined suzerainty, as the type of that unity without which men's
minds could not rest. It was characteristic of the Middle Ages, that
demanding the existence of an Emperor, they were careless who he was
or how he was chosen, so he had been duly inaugurated; and that they
were not shocked by the contrast between unbounded rights and actual
helplessness. At no time in the world's history has theory, pretending
all the while to control practice, been so utterly divorced from it.
Ferocious and sensual, that age worshipped humility and asceticism:
there has never been a purer ideal of love, nor a grosser profligacy
of life.
The power of the Roman Emperor cannot as yet be called international;
though this, as we shall see, became in later times its most important
aspect; for in the tenth century national distinctions had scarcely
begun to exist. But its genius was clerical and old Roman, in nowise
territorial or Teutonic: it rested not on armed hosts or wide lands,
but upon the duty, the awe, the love of its subjects.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] I do not mean to say that the system of ideas which it is
endeavoured to set forth in the following pages was complete in this
particular form, either in the days of Charles or in those of Otto, or
in those of Frederick Barbarossa. It seems to have been constantly
growing and decaying from the fourth century to the sixteenth, the
relative prominence of its cardinal doctrines varying from age to age.
But, just as the painter who sees the ever-shifting lights and shades
play over the face of a wide landscape faster than his brush can place
them on the canvas, in despair at representing their exact position at
any single moment, contents himself with painting the effects that are
broadest and most permanent, and at giving rather the impression which
the scene makes on him than every detail of the scene itself, so here,
the best and indeed the only practicable course seems to be that of
setting forth in its most self-consistent form the body of ideas and
beliefs on which the Empire rested, although this form may not be
exactly that which they can be asserted to have worn in any one
century, and although the illustrations adduced may have to be taken
sometimes from earlier, sometimes from later writers. As the doctrine
of the Empire was in its essence the same during the whole Middle Age,
such a general description as is attempted here may, I venture to
hope, be found substantially true for the tenth as well as for the
fourteenth century.
[103] Empires like the Persian did nothing to assimilate the subject
races, who retained their own laws and customs, sometimes their own
princes, and were bound only to serve in the armies and fill the
treasury of the Great King.
[104] Od. iii. 72:--
ἢ μαψίδιως ἀλάλησθε,
οἷά τε ληϊστῆρες, ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοίτ' ἀλόωνται
ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι, κακὸν =ἀλλοδαποῖσι= φέροντες;
Cf. Od. ix. 39: and the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, I. 274. So in II.
v. 214, ἀλλότριος φώς.
[105] Plato, in the beginning of the Laws, represents it as natural
between all states: πολεμὸς φύσει ὑπάρχει πρὸς ἁπάσας τὰς πόλεις.
[106] See especially Acts xvii. 26; Gal. iii. 28; Eph. ii. 11, sqq.;
iv. 3-6; Col. iii. 11.
[107] This is drawn out by Laurent, _Histoire du Droit des Gens_; and
Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach dem Luneviller Frieden_.
[108] 'Romanos enim vocitant homines nostræ religionis.'--Gregory of
Tours, quoted by Ægidi, from A. F. Pott, _Essay on the Words
'Römisch,' 'Romanisch,' 'Roman,' 'Romantisch.'_ So in the Middle Ages,
Ῥωμαῖοι is used to mean Christians, as opposed to Ἕλληνες, heathens.
Cf. Ducange, 'Romani olim dicti qui alias Christiani vel etiam
Catholici.'
[109] As a reviewer in the _Tablet_ (whose courtesy it is the more
pleasant to acknowledge since his point of view is altogether opposed
to mine) has understood this passage as meaning that 'people imagined
the Christian religion was to last for ever because the Holy Roman
Empire was never to decay,' it may be worth while to say that this is
far from being the purport of the argument which this chapter was
designed to state. The converse would be nearer the truth:--'people
imagined the Holy Roman Empire was never to decay, because the
Christian religion was to last for ever.'
The phenomen may perhaps be stated thus:--Men who were already
disposed to believe the Roman Empire to be eternal for one set of
reasons, came to believe the Christian Church to be eternal for
another and, to them, more impressive set of reasons. Seeing the two
institutions allied in fact, they took their alliance and connection
to be eternal also; and went on for centuries believing in the
necessary existence of the Roman Empire because they believed in its
necessary union with the Catholic Church.
[110] Augustine, in the _De Civitate Dei_. His influence, great
through all the Middle Ages, was greater on no one than on
Charles.--'Delectabatur et libris sancti Augustini, præcipueque his
qui De Civitate Dei prætitulati sunt.'--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap.
24.
[111] 'Quapropter universorum precibus fidelium optandum est, ut in
omnem gloriam vestram extendatur imperium, ut scilicet catholica fides
... veraciter in una confessione cunctorum cordibus infigatur,
quatenus summi Regis donante pietate eadem sanctæ pacis et perfectæ
caritatis omnes ubique regat et custodiat unitas.' Quoted by Waitz
(_Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte_, ii. 182) from an unprinted letter
of Alcuin.
[112] A curious illustration of this tendency of mind is afforded by
the descriptions we meet with of Learning or Theology (_Studium_) as a
concrete existence, having a visible dwelling in the University of
Paris. The three great powers which rule human life, says one writer,
the Popedom, the Empire, and Learning, have been severally entrusted
to the three foremost nations of Europe: Italians, Germans, French.
'His siquidem tribus, scilicet sacerdotio imperio et studio, tanquam
tribus virtutibus, videlicet naturali vitali et scientiali, catholica
ecclesia spiritualiter mirificatur, augmentatur et regitur. His itaque
tribus, tanquam fundamento, pariete et tecto, eadem ecclesia tanquam
materialiter proficit. Et sicut ecclesia materialis uno tantum
fundamento et uno tecto eget, parietibus vero quatuor, ita imperium
quatuor habet parietes, hoc est, quatuor imperii sedes, Aquisgranum,
Arelatum, Mediolanum, Romam.'--_Jordanis Chronica_; _ap._ Schardius
_Sylloge Tractatuum_. And see Döllinger, _Die Vergangenheit und
Gegenwart der katholischen Theologie_, p. 8.
[113] 'Una est sola respublica totius populi Christiani, ergo de
necessitate erit et unus solus princeps et rex illius reipublicæ,
statutus et stabilitus ad ipsius fidei et populi Christiani
dilatationem et defensionem. Ex qua ratione concludit etiam Augustinus
(_De Civitate Dei_, lib. xix.) quod extra ecclesiam nunquam fuit nec
potuit nec poterit esse verum imperium, etsi fuerint imperatores
qualitercumque et secundum quid, non simpliciter, qui fuerunt extra
fidem Catholicam et ecclesiam.'--Engelbert (abbot of Admont in Upper
Austria), _De Ortu et Fine imperii Romani_ (circ. 1310).
In this 'de necessitate' everything is included.
[114] See note 37.
[115] This is admirably brought out by Ægidi, _Der Fürstenrath nach
dem Luneviller Frieden_.
[116] See the original forgery (or rather the extracts which Gratian
gives from it) in the _Corpus Iuris Canonici_, _Dist._ xcvi. cc. 13,
14. 'Et sicut nostram terrenam imperialem potentiam, sic sacrosanctam
Romanam ecclesiam decrevimus veneranter honorari, et amplius quam
nostrum imperium et terrenum thronum sedem beati Petri gloriose
exaltari, tribuentes ei potestatem et gloriæ dignitatem atque vigorem
et honorificentiam imperialem.... Beato Sylvestro patri nostro summo
pontifici et universali urbis Romæ papæ, et omnibus eius successoribus
pontificibus, qui usque in finem mundi in sede beati Petri erunt
sessuri, de præsenti contradimus palatium imperii nostri Lateranense,
deinde diadema, videlicet coronam capitis nostri, simulque phrygium,
necnon et superhumerale, verum etiam et chlamydem purpuream et tunicam
coccineam, et omnia imperialia indumenta, sed et dignitatem imperialem
præsidentium equitum, conferentes etiam et imperialia sceptra,
simulque cuncta signa atque banda et diversa ornamenta imperialia et
omnem processionem imperialis culminis et gloriam potestatis
nostræ.... Et sicut imperialis militia ornatur ita et clerum sanctæ
Romanæ ecclesiæ ornari decernimus.... Unde ut pontificalis apex non
vilescat sed magis quam terreni imperii dignitas gloria et potentia
decoretur, ecce tam palatium nostrum quam Romanam urbem et omnes
Italiæ seu occidentalium regionum provincias loca et civitates
beatissimo papæ Sylvestro universali papæ contradimus atque
relinquimus.... Ubi enim principatus sacerdotum et Christianæ
religionis caput ab imperatore cœlesti constitutum est, iustum non est
ut illic imperator terrenus habeat potestatem.'
The practice of kissing the Pope's foot was adopted in imitation of
the old imperial court. It was afterwards revived by the German
Emperors.
[117] Döllinger has shewn in a recent work (_Die Papst-Fabeln des
Mittelalters_) that the common belief that Gregory II excited the
revolt against Leo the Iconoclast is unfounded.
So Anastasius, 'Ammonebat (_sc._ Gregorius Secundus) ne a fide vel
amore Romani imperii desisterent.'--_Vitæ Pontif. Rom._
[118] Of this curious seal, a leaden one, preserved at Paris, a figure
is given upon the cover of this volume. There are very few monuments
of that age whose genuineness can be considered altogether beyond
doubt; but this seal has many respectable authorities in its favour.
See, among others, Le Blanc, _Dissertation historique sur quelques
Monnoies de Charlemagne_, Paris, 1689; J. M. Heineccius, _De Veteribus
Germanorum aliarumque nationum sigillis_, Lips. 1709; Anastasius,
_Vitæ Pontificum Romanorum_, ed. Vignoli, Romæ, 1752; Götz,
_Deutschlands Kayser-Münzen des Mittelalters_, Dresden, 1827; and the
authorities cited by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii.
179, n. 4.
[119] 'Præterea mirari se dilecta fraternitas tua quod non Francorum
set Romanorum imperatores nos appellemus; set scire te convenit quia
nisi Romanorum imperatores essemus, utique nec Francorum. A Romanis
enim hoc nomen et dignitatem assumpsimus, apud quos profecto primum
tantæ culmen sublimitatis effulsit,' &c--_Letter of the Emperor Lewis
II to Basil the Emperor at Constantinople_, from _Chron. Salernit.
ap._ Murat. _S. R. I._
[120] 'Illam (_sc._ Romanam ecclesiam) solus ille fundavit, et super
petram fidei mox nascentis erexit, qui beato æternæ vitæ clavigero
terreni simul et cœlestis imperii iura commisit.'--_Corpus Iuris
Canonici_, _Dist._ xxii. c. 1. The expression is not uncommon in
mediæval writers. So 'unum est imperium Patris et Filii et Spiritus
Sancti, cuius est pars ecclesia constituta in terris,' in Lewis II's
letter.
[121] 'Merito summus Pontifex Romanus episcopus dici potest rex et
sacerdos. Si enim dominus noster Iesus Christus sic appellatur, non
videtur incongruum suum vocare successorem. Corporale et temporale ex
spirituali et perpetuo dependet, sicut corporis operatio ex virtute
animæ. Sicut ergo corpus per animam habet esse virtutem et
operationem, ita et temporalis iurisdictio principum per spiritualem
Petri et successorum eius.'--St. Thomas Aquinas, _De Regimine
Principum_.
[122] 'Nonne Romana ecclesia tenetur imperatori tanquam suo patrono,
et imperator ecclesiam fovere et defensare tanquam suus vere patronus?
certe sic.... Patronis vero concessum est ut prælatos in ecclesiis sui
patronatus eligant. Cum ergo imperator onus sentiat patronatus, ut qui
tenetur eam defendere, sentire debet honorem et emolumentum.' I quote
this from a curious document in Goldast's collection of tracts
(_Monarchia Imperii_), entitled '_Letter of the four Universities,
Paris, Oxford, Prague, and the "Romana generalitas," to the Emperor
Wenzel and Pope Urban_,' A.D. 1380. The title can scarcely be right,
but if the document is, as in all probability it is, not later than
the fifteenth century, its being misdescribed, or even its being a
forgery, does not make it less valuable as an evidence of men's ideas.
[123] So Leo III in a charter issued on the day of Charles's
coronation: '... actum in præsentia gloriosi atque excellentissimi
filii nostri Caroli quem auctore Deo in defensionem et provectionem
sanctæ universalis ecclesiæ hodie Augustum sacravimus.'--Jaffé
_Regesta Pontificum Romanorum_, ad ann. 800.
So, indeed, Theodulf of Orleans, a contemporary of Charles, ascribes
to the Emperor an almost papal authority over the Church itself:--
'Cœli habet hic (_sc._ Papa) claves, proprias te iussit habere;
Tu regis ecclesiæ, nam regit ille poli;
Tu regis eius opes, clerum populumque gubernas,
Hic te cœlicolas ducet ad usque choros.'
In D. Bouquet, v. 415.
[124] Perhaps at no more than three: in the time of Charles and Leo;
again under Otto III and his two Popes, Gregory V and Sylvester II;
thirdly, under Henry III; certainly never thenceforth.
[125] _The Sachsenspiegel_ (_Speculum Saxonicum_, circ. A.D. 1240),
the great North-German law book, says, 'The Empire is held from God
alone, not from the Pope. Emperor and Pope are supreme each in what
has been entrusted to him: the Pope in what concerns the soul; the
Emperor in all that belongs to the body and to knighthood.' _The
Schwabenspiegel_, compiled half a century later, subordinates the
prince to the pontiff: 'Daz weltliche Schwert des Gerichtes daz lihet
der Babest dem Chaiser; daz geistlich ist dem Babest gesetzt daz er
damit richte.'
[126] So Boniface VIII in the bull _Unam Sanctam_, will have but one
head for the Christian people. 'Igitur ecclesiæ unius et unicæ unum
corpus, unum caput, non duo capita quasi monstrum.'
[127] St. Bernard writes to Conrad III: 'Non veniat anima mea in
consilium eorum qui dicunt vel imperio pacem et libertatem ecclesiæ
vel ecclesiæ prosperitatem et exaltationem imperii nocituram.' So in
the _De Consideratione_: 'Si utrumque simul habere velis, perdes
utrumque,' of the papal claim to temporal and spiritual authority,
quoted by Gieseler.
[128] 'Sedens in solio armatus et cinctus ensem, habensque in capite
Constantini diadema, stricto dextra capulo ensis accincti, ait:
"Numquid ego summus sum pontifex? nonne ista est cathedra Petri? Nonne
possum imperii iura tutari? ego sum Cæsar, ego sum imperator."'--Fr.
Pipinus (ap. Murat. _S. R. I._ ix.) l. iv. c. 47. These words,
however, are by this writer ascribed to Boniface, when receiving the
envoys of the emperor Albert I, in A.D. 1299. I have not been able to
find authority for their use at the jubilee, but give the current
story for what it is worth.
It has been suggested that Dante may be alluding to this sword scene
in a well-known passage of the Purgatorio (xvi. l. 106):--
'Soleva Roma, che 'l buon mondo feo
Duo Soli aver, che l' una e l' altra strada
Facean vedere, e del mondo e di Deo.
L' un l' altro ha spento, ed è giunta la spada
Col pastorale: e l' un coll altro insieme
Per viva forzu mal convien che vada.'
[129] See especially Peter de Andlo (_De Imperio Romano_); Ralph
Colonna (_De translatione Imperii Romani_); Dante (_De Monarchia_);
Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_); Marsilius Patavinus (_De
translatione Imperii Romani_); Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (_De Ortu et
Authoritate Imperii Romani_); Zoannetus (_De Imperio Romano atque ejus
Iurisdictione_); and the writers in Schardius's _Sylloge_, and in
Goldast's Collection of Tracts, entitled _Monarchia Imperii_.
[130] Letter of Lewis II to Basil the Macedonian, in _Chron.
Salernit._ in Mur. _S. R. I._; also given by Baronius, _Ann. Eccl._ ad
ann. 871.
[131] 'Ad summum dignitatis pervenisti: Vicarius es Christi.'--Wippo,
_Vita Chuonradi_ (_ap._ Pertz), c. 3.
[132] Letter in Radewic, _ap._ Murat, _S. R. I._
[133] Lewis IV is styled in one of his proclamations, 'Gentis humanæ,
orbis Christiani custos, urbi et orbi a Deo electus præesse.'--Pfeffinger,
_Vitriarius Illustratus_.
[134] In a document issued by the Diet of Speyer (A.D. 1529) the
Emperor is called 'Oberst, Vogt, und Haupt der Christenheit.'
Hieronymus Balbus, writing about the same time, puts the question
whether all Christians are subject to the Emperor in temporal things,
as they are to the Pope in spiritual, and answers it by saying, 'Cum
ambo ex eodem fonte perfluxerint et eadem semita incedant, de utroque
idem puto sentiendum.'
[135] 'Non magis ad Papam depositio seu remotio pertinet quam ad
quoslibet regum prælatos, qui reges suos prout assolent, consecrant et
inungunt.'--_Letter of Frederick II_ (lib. i. c. 3).
[136] _Liber Ceremonialis Romanus_, lib. i. sect. 5; with which
compare the _Coronatio Romana_ of Henry VII, in Pertz, and Muratori's
Dissertation in vol. i. of the _Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi_.
[137] See Goldast, _Collection of Imperial Constitutions_; and Moser,
_Römische Kayser_.
[138] The abbot Engelbert (_De Ortu et Fine Imperii Romani_) quotes
Origen and Jerome to this effect, and proceeds himself to explain,
from 2 Thess. ii., how the falling away will precede the coming of
Antichrist. There will be a triple 'discessio,' of the kingdoms of the
earth from the Roman Empire, of the Church from the Apostolic See, of
the faithful from the faith. Of these, the first causes the second;
the temporal sword to punish heretics and schismatics being no longer
ready to work the will of the rulers of the Church.
[139] A full statement of the views that prevailed in the earlier
Middle Age regarding Antichrist--as well as of the singular prophecy
of the Frankish Emperor who shall appear in the latter days, conquer
the world, and then going to Jerusalem shall lay down his crown on the
Mount of Olives and deliver over the kingdom to Christ--may be found
in the little treatise, _Vita Antichristi_, which Adso, monk and
afterwards abbot of Moutier-en-Der, compiled (cir. 950) for the
information of Queen Gerberga, wife of Louis d'Outremer. Antichrist is
to be born a Jew of the tribe of Dan (Gen. xlix. 17), 'non de episcopo
et monacha, sicut alii delirando dogmatizant, sed de immundissima
meretrice et crudelissimo nebulone. Totus in peccato concipietur, in
peccato generabitur, in peccato nascetur.' His birthplace is Babylon:
he is to be brought up in Bethsaida and Chorazin.
Adso's book may be found printed in Migne, t. ci. p. 1290.
[140] S. Thomas explains the prophecy in a remarkable manner, shewing
how the decline of the Empire is no argument against its fulfilment.
'Dicendum quod nondum cessavit, sed est commutatum de temporali in
spirituale, ut dicit Leo Papa in sermone de Apostolis: et ideo
discessio a Romano imperio debet intelligi non solum a temporali sed
etiam a spirituali, scilicit a fide Catholica Romanæ Ecclesiæ. Est
autem hoc conveniens signum nam Christus venit, quando Romanum
imperium omnibus dominabatur: ita e contra signum adventus Antichristi
est discessio ab eo.'--_Comment. ad 2 Thess._ ii.
[141] See note 149, page 119. The Papal party sometimes insisted that
both swords were given to Peter, while the imperialists assigned the
temporal sword to John. Thus a gloss to the _Sachsenspiegel_ says,
'Dat eine svert hadde Sinte Peter, dat het nu de paves: dat andere
hadde Johannes, dat het nu de keyser.'
[142] 2 Thess. ii. 7.
[143] St. Augustine, however, though he states the view (applying the
passage to the Roman Empire) which was generally received in the
Middle Ages, is careful not to commit himself positively to it.
[144] _Jordanis Chronica_ (written towards the close of the thirteenth
century).
[145] Compare with this the words which Pope Hadrian I. had used some
twenty-three years before, of Charles as representative of
Constantine: 'Et sicut temporibus Beati Sylvestri, Romani pontificis,
a sanctæ recordationis piissimo Constantino magno imperatore, per eius
largitatem sancta Dei catholica et apostolica Romana ecclesia elevata
atque exaltata est, et potestatem in his Hesperiæ partibus largiri
dignatus est, ita et in his vestris felicissimis temporibus atque
nostris, sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, beati Petri apostoli germinet
atque exsultet, ut omnes gentes quæ hæc audierint edicere valeant,
'Domine salvum fac regem, et exaudi nos in die in qua invocaverimus
te;' quia ecce novus Christianissimus Dei Constantinus imperator his
temporibus surrexit, per quem omnia Deus sanctæ suæ ecclesiæ beati
apostolorum principis Petri largiri dignatus est.'--_Letter XLIX of
Cod. Carol._, A.D. 777 (in Mur. _Scriptores Rerum Italicarum_).
This letter is memorable as containing the first allusion, or what
seems an allusion, to Constantine's Donation.
The phrase 'sancta Dei ecclesia, id est, B. Petri apostoli,' is worth
noting.
[146] The church in which the opening scene of Boccaccio's _Decameron_
is laid.
[147] So Kugler (Eastlake's ed. vol. i. p. 144), and so also Messrs.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, in their _New History of Painting in Italy_,
vol. ii. pp. 85 _sqq._
[148] Domini canes. Spotted because of their black-and-white raiment.
[149] There is of course a great deal more detail in the picture,
which it does not appear necessary to describe. St. Dominic is a
conspicuous figure.
It is worth remarking that the Emperor, who is on the Pope's left
hand, and so made slightly inferior to him while superior to every one
else, holds in his hand, instead of the usual imperial globe, a
death's head, typifying the transitory nature of his power.