Karl and Rome.—His visits to that city.—The offences and
troubles of Leo III.—The coronation of Charlemagne.—The Pope’s
adoration of the Emperor.—Alcuin’s famous letter to Karl prior
to his coronation.—Two great Roman forgeries, the Donation of
Constantine and the Letter of St. Peter to the Franks.
We must now turn to the connexion of Karl with Rome, and especially
to Alcuin’s advice to him in the matter of declaring himself or being
declared emperor. It is a highly noteworthy fact that the Englishman
Boniface was the most trusted counsellor of Charlemagne’s father Pepin at
the time when it was proposed to raise him from Mayor of the Palace to
King of the Franks, and that Alcuin the Englishman was the most trusted
counsellor of Charlemagne himself, when it was under consideration that
he should be raised or should raise himself from King of the Franks to
Emperor of the West.
In 773 Pope Adrian had invited Karl to come to Italy and rid him of the
oppressions of the Lombards. The Pope’s messenger could not get through
by land, by reason of the Lombard power, and he went by sea. Karl agreed
to do as the Pope asked. He went with all his force to Geneva. There he
divided his army into two parts, sending his uncle Bernard with one
portion by the Mons Jovis (the great St. Bernard, called the Mount of
Jove because of the statue of Jupiter Peninus placed at its summit) and
himself went by the Mont Cenis. The two parts joined at Clusae on the
south side, between Susa and Turin, and proceeded to the siege of Pavia,
the Lombard capital. Karl spent his Easter at Rome, and on his return to
Pavia took the city and captured the king with his family and treasure.
At this visit he was received at Rome with the highest honours. In
return, he confirmed and enlarged the donation of Pepin his father,
adding, it is said, large parts of Italy—indeed, almost the whole
peninsula. He laid the deed of gift on the tomb of the Apostle Peter.
Karl visited Rome again in 781, and it is this visit that from one point
of view most concerns us, for it most concerned the course of Alcuin’s
life.
Karl had been to Rome again in the year 787, to visit Pope Adrian and
settle terms with the Duchy of Beneventum. He had purposed to devastate
the duchy, its bishoprics, and its monasteries; but in council with his
bishops and chief men he determined to accept hostages, including the two
sons of the hostile Duke, who did not himself dare to see the angry face
of Karl. Karl completed his visit by adoring the tombs of the blessed
Apostles, and paying there his vows; another sign that the great object
of visits to Rome was to visit the tombs of the twin princes of the
Apostles, Peter and Paul. He then returned to France and rejoined his
wife Fastrada, his sons and daughters, and his court, at Worms.
The all-important visit to Rome came at the end of the year 800. Pope
Leo III, elected in 795, had been seized in the spring of 799 by his
opponents, among whom two nephews of the late Pope, Adrian, played a
leading part, and an attempt had been made to put out his eyes and cut
out his tongue. He recovered[172] and escaped, and was called—or fled—to
Karl at Paderborn. Leo had on his consecration sent to Karl, as the
Patrician, the standard of Rome, the keys of Rome, and even the keys
of the tomb of St. Peter, in recognition of his supremacy, the Eastern
Emperor Constantine VI being disregarded. Karl was therefore doubly bound
to take cognisance of the Pope’s case. There were very grave charges
against Leo. Alcuin names[173] adultery and perjury; but he writes very
strongly against subjecting Leo to trial on these charges. He has read,
he says, that by a canon of the blessed Silvester there must be not less
than seventy-two adverse witnesses of blameless life if a pontiff was to
be brought to trial. He has read in other canons that the Apostolic See
judges, is not judged. What pastor, he asks, in the Church of Christ can
be immune, if he who is the head of all the churches is overthrown by
malefactors?
We may compare with this the reasons which another member of the trilogy
of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics and scholars, St. Aldhelm, gave at Rome
against condemning the Pope of his time, Sergius, for alleged immoral
practices. The reasons were three. First, it was a wretchedly base thing
to suspect their own pontiff of crimes. Next, what influence could the
Roman pontiff have with the Britons and other nations across the seas,
if he was attacked by his own citizens? Lastly, it did not seem likely,
it could not be true, that one who remembered that he was set over the
whole world would entangle himself in such a sin as this. Unhappily, for
long periods in the history of the Papacy, it not only was likely, it was
undoubtedly and overtly true.
Leo was received by Karl with great honour, and was sent back to Rome to
resume his high office. Karl followed him[174] towards the end of the
next year, 800, and was received by him at the twelfth milestone from
Rome “with the greatest humility and the greatest honour”. This was on
November 23. The next day Leo with great pomp received Karl on the steps
of the basilica of St. Peter, made an oration to him, and led him into
the church. Seven days later, on December 1, Karl convoked an assembly,
and expounded to them his reasons for coming to Rome, the first and
most difficult being the need of a judicial inquiry into the charges
against the Pope. It turned out that no witness appeared to substantiate
the charges; but that seems to have been regarded as insufficient, and
a formal abjuration was made by Leo. The Pope, Eginhart[175] says, in
the presence of all the people, in the basilica of the blessed Peter
the Apostle, carrying in his hands the Gospel, ascended the ambo, and
invoking the name of the Holy Trinity, purged himself by oath from the
crimes laid against him[176].
On the most sacred day of the Nativity of the Lord, Karl attended Mass
at St. Peter’s. As he rose from prayer before the Confessio[177] of
the Apostle, Leo placed on his head a crown, the whole Roman people
acclaiming—“To Charles Augustus, crowned by God the great and pacific
Emperor of the Romans, life and victory!” After which the Pope adored
him, that is, prostrated himself before the emperor and kissed his feet,
as had been the custom with the former emperors. The title of Patrician
was abandoned, and Charlemagne became Imperator and Augustus.
This is not the occasion for discussing the debated question whether
the Pope acted on an impulse of gratitude, or was guided by a desire
to interpose the most powerful personage in the West between Rome and
the Emperor of the East; or the equally debated question whether Karl
was an active and understanding receiver of the new burden of honour
and responsibility; or the question what sort of right the Pope had to
take such a step. To my mind the most pointed question is whether the
Pope skilfully forestalled Charles by suddenly crowning him, in order to
prevent his making himself emperor and crowning himself. But we cannot
pass by without a word of comment the remarkable fact that the Pope
performed the barbaric, Byzantine, humiliating, ceremony of prostration
before the emperor and kissing his feet in adoration, as earlier Popes
had had to do to earlier emperors. It is this same barbaric custom of
what is technically called adoration, that the Popes, who used to perform
it to their imperial superiors, have now for some centuries expected
others to perform to them—the kissing of the Pope’s toe as it is called
by some, of the Pope’s foot by others. The state of the foot of the great
bronze figure of St. Peter in his church at Rome certainly renders the
former the more accurate phrase.
It is clear that Karl had for many months been carefully considering the
question of assuming the imperial crown in asserted succession to the
Emperors of the West, who had come to an end three centuries and a half
before.
[Sidenote: Ep. 114.]
This is the letter which Alcuin wrote to Karl at this most critical point
in the history of Europe, a letter which has been described as the most
important of all which Alcuin is known to have written. His remark that
Karl’s position was higher and his power for good greater than that of
the Emperor of the East and that of the Pope, has been understood to mean
that Karl would do well to restore in his own person the Empire of the
West, so as to be supreme in title as well as in fact. The date is May
799.
“To the peace-making Lord David the king, Flaccus Albinus greeting.
“We give thanks to thy goodness, most clement, most sweet David, that
thou hast deigned to have in mind our littleness, and to note down for
us that which thy faithful servant hath told us by word of mouth. And
not for this only do we give continual thanks to thy piety, but for all
the boons which thou hast conferred upon me from the day on which my
littleness became known to thee. Thou didst begin with the very best for
me, thou hast gone on to better still. Wherefore with continual prayers
I pray the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, that having granted thee all
that is best in earthly felicity, He may deign to grant to thee eternally
the far realms of everlasting beatitude.
“If I were present with thee I would urge very many things on thy
venerable dignity, if opportunity were afforded for thee to hear and for
me to speak. For the pen of love is often wont to stir the deep things
of my heart, to treat of the prosperity of thy excellency, the stability
of the kingdom to thee by God given, and the profit of the holy Church
of Christ. The Church is perturbed by the multiform wickedness of evil
men, and stained by the nefarious attempts of the vilest, not of ignoble
persons only, but of some also among the greatest and highest. This is
matter for deep fear.
“Up to this time, there have been three loftiest persons in the world.
One, the apostolical sublimity, which is wont to rule by vicarial office
the see of the blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles. What has been done
against him who has been the ruler of that see, thy venerated goodness
has taken care to make known to me. Another, the imperial dignity and
secular power of the second Rome. How impiously the governor of that
empire has been deposed, not by those of another race, but by his own
people and fellow citizens, is becoming known everywhere. [This was
Constantine VI, Emperor of the East, who had been affianced to Karl’s
daughter Rotrudis some eighteen years before, but had been forced by his
mother Irene to break the contract. In 797, two years before Alcuin’s
letter, Irene had deposed him and put out his eyes; she was now reigning
alone.] The third is the royal dignity, in which the dispensation of our
Lord Jesus Christ has placed thee, more excelling in power than the other
dignities named, more clear in wisdom, more sublime in dignity of reign.
Lo, on thee alone the whole safety of the churches of Christ has fallen
and rests. Thou art the punisher of crimes, thou the guide of the erring,
thou the consoler of them that mourn, thou the exalter of good men.
“Is it not the case that in the see of Rome, where the greatest piety
of religion once shone clear, the very worst examples of impiety have
burst forth into view? They themselves, blinded in their own hearts, have
blinded their own Head. There is not seen there fear of God, or wisdom,
or love: what good thing can be there if nothing of these three is found
there? If there had been fear of God they would not have dared, if there
had been wisdom they would never have wished, if there had been love they
would by no means have done, what they have done. These are the perilous
times, foretold of old by the very Truth, because the love of many grows
cold.
“The care of the head must never be neglected; it is a less evil that the
feet suffer than the head.
“Let peace be made with those wicked Saxons, if that can be done. Let
threats be to some extent relaxed, so that men may not be hardened and
driven away, but may be kept in hope until by wholesome counsel they be
brought back to peace. Hold on to what has been won from them, lest if
they are allowed to gain a little, the larger part be lost. Keep safe
your own sheep-fold, that the ravening wolf devour not it. Let such
labour be spent on outside affairs that no loss be suffered in your
own affairs. Some time ago I spoke to your piety about the exaction of
tithes: that it is decidedly better to abstain from the exaction, even
for a considerable time, until the faith has got its roots fixed in the
hearts, if indeed that Saxon land be held worthy of the choice of God.
Those who have gone away were the best Christians, as is well known; and
those who remained have continued in the dregs of wickedness. For by
reason of the sins of the people, Babylon has become the habitation of
devils, as it is said in the prophets.
“None of these things can have been overlooked by thy wisdom; for we
know how well learned thou art in the sacred scriptures and in secular
histories. From all of these full knowledge has been given to thee by
God, that by thee the holy Church of God among a Christian people may be
ruled, exalted, and preserved. What reward may be given by God to thy
best devotion, who is able to say? For eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.”
Alcuin ends his letter with a pair of hexameters and some elegiacs,
both because Karl was interested in his versification, and—we may
suppose—because high-flown compliments, from which Karl was not averse,
come better in so-called poetry than in prose.
“From lofty heaven may Christ in mercy mild
Thee rule, exalt, defend, adorn, and love.
The holy stars of the sky, the grasses of the green earth,
All things together cry, May David prosper alway.
The earth and the sky and the sea, the men and the birds and the beasts,
Cry with concordant voice, Father be it well with thee.”
As we are dealing with the relations of the Papacy with the Franks, it
may be well to say here something that ought to be said about the demands
of the Popes for money and territories. The two demands which may on the
whole be called the most monstrous of all the long series, were made, the
one probably, the other certainly, in Alcuin’s time: one by Hadrian, to
influence Karl, the other by one of his predecessors to influence Karl’s
father, Pepin.
A ridiculous document was produced by the Popes, probably about the
middle of this eighth century, with which we are dealing. It was called
the Imperial Edict of Donation. Its alleged author was Constantine
the Great. It professed to give to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome in
Constantine’s time, and to his successors, the Imperial Palace (that is,
the Lateran) and the City of Rome; all the provinces, districts, and
cities of the whole of Italy; and, in the Latin copy of the forgery,
all islands. The islands are absent from the Greek copy of the forgery.
It was on the strength of this forged donation of islands that a later
Hadrian, the one English Pope, Hadrian IV, professed to be the owner
of Ireland, and gave it to our king Henry II just four centuries after
the time with which we are dealing. Muratori was of opinion that this
audacious forgery was concocted between 755 and 766, that is, when Alcuin
was from twenty to thirty years of age, and while Offa was king of
Mercia. In 774, when Karl had conquered the Lombards, he went to Rome,
as we have seen; ratified the donation of his father Pepin, of which we
must next speak, and laid the deed of donation on the altar or on the
tomb of St. Peter in the ancient basilica of St. Peter. The original deed
of Karl’s donation has, so far as is known, long since perished; its
terms are at best only vaguely known. It is said to have comprehended the
whole of Italy, the exarchate of Ravenna, from Istria to the frontiers
of Naples, and the island of Corsica. Karl, then, ratified the forged
Donation of Constantine, at that time a quite recent forgery. The whole
story, however, is very vague, and historians differ considerably in
the deductions which they draw from the inadequate records. They differ
almost more widely as to the date at which the document was first brought
forward, the dates ranging from 760 to 1105. Of the fact of the forgery
there is no question; it cannot be denied, and so far as I know no one of
the Romans now is bold enough to deny that it is a forgery. There is one
point in the forgery which has an important bearing on a very important
question, namely, the true basis of the reputation of the city of Rome as
the chief ecclesiastical centre of the Church of the West. Constantine is
made to declare, in this forged donation, that it was by the merits of
St. Peter and St. Paul that he emerged from the font at baptism cleansed
of his sins. More than that, he is made to declare that he makes this
enormous donation to the blessed chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul,
and through them to Silvester, the Bishop of Rome. Either, then, at the
time of the forgery it was completely recognized as a fact that the Popes
claimed their sovereignty on the twin authority, in the twin name, by the
twin princeship, of Peter and Paul; or it was completely recognized at
the time of the forgery that in the earliest times, and notably in the
time of Constantine the Great, whose baptism took place in the year 337,
Rome did base its claims to pre-eminence on its possession of the relics
of St. Peter and St. Paul, and on the twin supremacy of those two princes
of the Apostles, and, therefore, that it might stand the test of the
touchstone of history, it was essential to use the twin names of Peter
and Paul; if it had been Peter alone, it would have been detected as a
forgery. See Appendix D.
When we come to the document which was produced for the purpose of
influencing Pepin, Karl’s father, we pass out of the atmosphere of
vagueness, and find ourselves face to face with a scandalous, an impious,
fact. Pope Stephen II[178], who held the Papacy from 752 to 757, was
reduced to extremities by the arms of the Lombard kings of North
Italy. He went in person to Pepin, king of the Franks, to entreat him
to come over and succour the city of Rome and the domain of St. Peter.
To show how difficult it is to be sure about facts of history when the
chroniclers have a partisan bias, it may be mentioned that the Italian
chronicler states that Pepin went to meet Stephen, and on meeting him
dismounted from his horse, prostrated himself on the ground before the
Pope, and then walked to the royal residence by the side of the Pope’s
palfrey. The Frankish chroniclers say that the Pope and his clergy, with
ashes on their heads and sackcloth on their bodies, prostrated themselves
as suppliants at the feet of Pepin, and would not rise till he had
promised his aid against the Lombards.
The king lodged Stephen in the monastery of St. Denys for the winter, and
well on into the next summer. There Stephen was attacked by an illness
so dangerous that his recovery was regarded as a miracle, due to the
intercessions of St. Dionys, St. Peter, and St. Paul; where again we
notice the twinship of St. Peter and St. Paul as regards the protection
of the Pope, with the local saint added. After the return of the Pope to
Rome, he was besieged by the Lombard king, who vowed not to leave him
a scrap of territory the size of the palm of his hand. The Pope sent
to Pepin a letter of entreaty and threat. The king, he said, hazarded
eternal condemnation. He had vowed to secure to St. Peter the vast
donation to which reference has been made, and St. Peter had promised to
him eternal life. If the king was not faithful to his word, the Saint
kept firmly the donation, as it were the sign manual of the king, and
this he would produce against him at the day of judgement.[179] The
envoys came late in the year, and the king could not conduct an army into
Italy in the winter. In February, 755, or a little earlier, Stephen wrote
another letter, with a literally awe-full account of the horrors of the
siege, which had then lasted fifty-five days. He conjured Pepin to come
and help, “by God and his holy Mother, by the powers of the heavens,
by the apostles Peter and Paul, and by the last day.” The collocation
and the order of these adjurations is significant. Still Pepin did not
come. The Pope then resorted to the blasphemous proceeding which it has
seemed necessary to describe. We may suppose that the Pope’s metaphorical
statement—that St. Peter had Pepin’s sign manual to a document which
would be produced against him at the day of judgement—had suggested to
the harassed mind of the Pope the idea that an immediate letter from
St. Peter himself would be more effective than the threat to produce
signatures at the day of judgement; and that if the letter was addressed
to the Franks at large, and not as the former letter to Pepin and his
sons, the whole nation would be terrified into prompt action. However
that may have been, a letter[180] was written with the heading: “Peter,
called to be an Apostle by Jesus Christ the Son of the living God ...
and [after a long paragraph] Stephen the prelate of the catholic and
apostolic Roman Church, ... to the most excellent kings Pepin, Charles,
and Carloman, with all the bishops, abbats, priests, and all monks; all
judges, dukes, counts, military officers, and the whole people of the
Franks.” The letter begins with the words “Ego Petrus Apostolus”, I,
Peter the Apostle. In it St. Peter adjures those whom he addresses to
rescue Rome from the Lombards, making a special appeal that his own body,
which suffered torture for the Lord Jesus Christ, may be preserved from
desecration. “With me,” he proceeds, “the Mother of God likewise adjures
you, and admonishes and commands you, she as well as the thrones and
dominions and all the host of heaven, to save the beloved city of Rome
from the detested Lombards. If ye hasten, I, Peter the Apostle, promise
you my protection in this life and the next; I will prepare for you the
most glorious mansions in heaven; I will bestow upon you the everlasting
joys of paradise. Make common cause with my people of Rome, and I will
grant whatsoever ye may pray for. I conjure you not to yield up this
city to be lacerated and tormented by the Lombards, lest your own souls
be lacerated and tormented in hell with the devil and his pestilential
angels. Of all nations under heaven, the Franks are highest in the esteem
of St. Peter; to me you owe all your victories. Obey, and obey speedily,
and, by my suffrage, our Lord Jesus Christ will give you in this life
length of days, security, victory; in the life to come, will multiply His
blessings upon you, among His saints and angels.” That little summary is
only about a twelfth part of the length of the letter itself.
The letter brought Pepin with a great host; he overcame the Lombard king;
and he bestowed on the Pope as a donation, by right—it would appear—of
conquest, not only what are called the States of the Church, but also—and
that in the teeth of the ambassador of Constantine Copronymus, the
Emperor of Constantinople, who demanded its restoration to the Eastern
Empire—the whole exarchate of Ravenna. Thus it was that the Pope became
a temporal sovereign over vast portions of Italy. St. Peter’s letter was
probably the most important letter never written.