descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of Charlemagne,
the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to reign over their
conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was elected, by the suffrage
of the nation, to save and institute the kingdom of Germany. Its limits
were enlarged on every side by his son, the first and greatest of the
Othos. A portion of Gaul, to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of
the Meuse and the Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood
and language it has been tinged since the time of CÊsar and Tacitus.
Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of Otho
acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of Burgundy and
Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by the sword of Otho,
the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic nations of the Elbe and Oder:
the marches of Brandenburgh and Sleswick were fortified with German
colonies; and the king of Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia,
confessed themselves his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious
army, he passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation of
Germany. From that memorable Êra, two maxims of public jurisprudence
were introduced by force and ratified by time. I. _That_ the prince, who
was elected in the German diet, acquired, from that instant, the subject
kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II. But that he might not legally assume the
titles of emperor and Augustus, till he had received the crown from the
hands of the Roman pontiff.
The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by the
alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers, the Greek
emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and familiar appellation
of brother. Perhaps in his connection with Irene he aspired to the name
of husband: his embassy to Constantinople spoke the language of peace
and friendship, and might conceal a treaty of marriage with that
ambitious princess, who had renounced the most sacred duties of a
mother. The nature, the duration, the probable consequences of such a
union between two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us to
suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene, to charge
her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to the strangers
of the West. The French ambassadors were the spectators, and had nearly
been the victims, of the conspiracy of Nicephorus, and the national
hatred. Constantinople was exasperated by the treason and sacrilege
of ancient Rome: a proverb, "That the Franks were good friends and bad
neighbors," was in every one's mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St. Sophia,
the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious journey of
circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found him in his camp,
on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne affected to confound
their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian village, the pomp, or at
least the pride, of the Byzantine palace. The Greeks were successively
led through four halls of audience: in the first they were ready to
fall prostrate before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he
informed them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of
the horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer, were
repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the steward, and the
chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually heightened, till the
doors of the presence-chamber were thrown open, and they beheld the
genuine monarch, on his throne, enriched with the foreign luxury which
he despised, and encircled with the love and reverence of his victorious
chiefs. A treaty of peace and alliance was concluded between the two
empires, and the limits of the East and West were defined by the right
of present possession. But the Greeks soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it was
extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they respectfully
saluted the _august_ Charlemagne, with the acclamations of _basileus_,
and emperor of the Romans. As soon as these qualities were separated in
the person of his pious son, the Byzantine letters were inscribed,
"To the king, or, as he styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and
Lombards." When both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis
the Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous appellation
of rex or _rega_, degraded him among the crowd of Latin princes. His
reply is expressive of his weakness: he proves, with some learning,
that, both in sacred and profane history, the name of king is synonymous
with the Greek word _basileus_: if, at Constantinople, it were assumed
in a more exclusive and imperial sense, he claims from his ancestors,
and from the popes, a just participation of the honors of the Roman
purple. The same controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos;
and their ambassador describes, in lively colors, the insolence of
the Byzantine court. The Greeks affected to despise the poverty and
ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline refused to
prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman emperors.
These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to exercise the
powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and Grecian princes; and the
importance of this prerogative increased with the temporal estate
and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman church. In the Christian
aristocracy, the principal members of the clergy still formed a senate
to assist the administration, and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop.
Rome was divided into twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was
governed by a cardinal priest, or presbyter, a title which, however
common or modest in its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of
kings. Their number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons
of the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical senate
was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman province, who
were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia, Porto, VelitrÊ,
Tusculum, PrÊneste, Tibur, and the Sabines, than by their weekly service
in the Lateran, and their superior share in the honors and authority of
the apostolic see. On the death of the pope, these bishops recommended a
successor to the suffrage of the college of cardinals, and their choice
was ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman people.
But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be legally
consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church, had graciously
signified his approbation and consent. The royal commissioner examined,
on the spot, the form and freedom of the proceedings; nor was it till
after a previous scrutiny into the qualifications of the candidates,
that he accepted an oath of fidelity, and confirmed the donations which
had successively enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent
schisms, the rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor;
and in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a treaty
on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the candidate most
acceptable to his majesty: his successors anticipated or prevented their
choice: they bestowed the Roman benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne
or Bamberg, on their chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might
be the merit of a Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the
interposition of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most
speciously excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor
who had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were stained with
blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises of Tuscany and the
counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in a long and disgraceful
servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the ninth and tenth centuries, were
insulted, imprisoned, and murdered, by their tyrants; and such was
their indigence, after the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical
patrimonies, that they could neither support the state of a prince,
nor exercise the charity of a priest. The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth and
beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most strenuous of
their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and their reign may
have suggested to the darker ages the fable of a female pope. The
bastard son, the grandson, and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare
genealogy, were seated in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age
of nineteen years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion; and the
nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges that were urged
against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence of Otho the Great. As
John XII. had renounced the dress and decencies of his profession, the
_soldier_ may not perhaps be dishonored by the wine which he drank,
the blood that he spilt, the flames that he kindled, or the licentious
pursuits of gaming and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence
of distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if it
be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some surprise,
that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public adultery with the
matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was turned into a school for
prostitution, and that his rapes of virgins and widows had deterred the
female pilgrims from visiting the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout
act, they should be violated by his successor. The Protestants have
dwelt with malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to
a philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than
their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic see was
reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory VII. That
ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two projects. I.
To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and independence of
election, and forever to abolish the right or usurpation of the emperors
and the Roman people. II. To bestow and resume the Western empire as a
fief or benefice of the church, and to extend his temporal dominion over
the kings and kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years,
the first of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the
ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of their
chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with some partial
and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted by the secular power,
and finally extinguished by the improvement of human reason.
In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the bishop nor
the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the provinces which were
lost, as they had been won, by the chance of arms. But the Romans were
free to choose a master for themselves; and the powers which had been
delegated to the patrician, were irrevocably granted to the French and
Saxon emperors of the West. The broken records of the times preserve
some remembrance of their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their
edicts, and the sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth
century, was derived from CÊsar to the prÊfect of the city. Between the
arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy
was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor and
Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert this local
jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their ambition was diverted by
more alluring objects; and in the decay and division of the empire, they
were oppressed by the defence of their hereditary provinces. Amidst the
ruins of Italy, the famous Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume
the character of her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was
introduced by her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St.
Angelo, which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her
son by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was chastised
with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive of a revolution.
"Romans," exclaimed the youth, "once you were the masters of the world,
and these Burgundians the most abject of your slaves. They now reign,
these voracious and brutal savages, and my injury is the commencement
of your servitude." The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of
the city: the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI., was
reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the title of
prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the government of Rome;
and he is said to have gratified the popular prejudice, by restoring the
office, or at least the title, of consuls and tribunes. His son and heir
Octavian assumed, with the pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his
predecessor, he was provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer
for the church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded
with the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans were
impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by the secret
conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho commanded his sword-bearer
not to stir from his person, lest he should be assaulted and murdered
at the foot of the altar. Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor
chastised the revolt of the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The
pope was degraded in a synod; the prÊfect was mounted on an ass, whipped
through the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty
were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe process
was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and Justinian. The voice
of fame has accused the second Otho of a perfidious and bloody act, the
massacre of the senators, whom he had invited to his table under the
fair semblance of hospitality and friendship. In the minority of his son
Otho the Third, Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke,
and the consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the
condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command of
the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and formed a
conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek emperors. In
the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an obstinate siege, till the
unfortunate consul was betrayed by a promise of safety: his body was
suspended on a gibbet, and his head was exposed on the battlements of
the castle. By a reverse of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops,
was besieged three days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful
escape saved him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator
Ptolemy was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a poison
which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the design of Otho
the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the North, to erect his
throne in Italy, and to revive the institutions of the Roman monarchy.
But his successors only once in their lives appeared on the banks of
the Tyber, to receive their crown in the Vatican. Their absence was
contemptible, their presence odious and formidable. They descended
from the Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of tumult
and bloodshed. A faint remembrance of their ancestors still tormented
the Romans; and they beheld with pious indignation the succession of
Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and Bohemians, who usurped the purple and
prerogatives of the CÊsars.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.--Part VI.
There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold
in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to
their inclination and interest. A torrent of Barbarians may pass over
the earth, but an extensive empire must be supported by a refined system
of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in
action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the
extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion;
a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined
army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
different was the situation of the German CÊsars, who were ambitious to
enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial estates were stretched
along the Rhine, or scattered in the provinces; but this ample domain
was alienated by the imprudence or distress of successive princes;
and their revenue, from minute and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely
sufficient for the maintenance of their household. Their troops were
formed by the legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who
passed the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the campaign.
Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential influence of the
climate: the survivors brought back the bones of their princes and
nobles, and the effects of their own intemperance were often imputed to
the treachery and malice of the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the
calamities of the Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on
equal terms with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or
the reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the flame of
industry and freedom; and the generous example was at length imitated by
the republics of Tuscany. In the Italian cities a municipal government
had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were
granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of
erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles.
But their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and
pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising
communities. Each city filled the measure of her diocese or district:
the jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and counts,
was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were persuaded or
compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to embrace the more
honorable character of freemen and magistrates. The legislative
authority was inherent in the general assembly; but the executive powers
were intrusted to three consuls, annually chosen from the three orders
of _captains_, _valvassors_, and commons, into which the republic was
divided. Under the protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture
and commerce were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the
Lombards was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the
bell was rung, or the standard erected, the gates of the city poured
forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their own cause was
soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At the foot of these
popular ramparts, the pride of the CÊsars was overthrown; and the
invincible genius of liberty prevailed over the two Frederics, the
greatest princes of the middle age; the first, superior perhaps in
military prowess; the second, who undoubtedly excelled in the softer
accomplishments of peace and learning.
Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the First
invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a statesman, the
valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant. The recent discovery of
the Pandects had renewed a science most favorable to despotism; and his
venal advocates proclaimed the emperor the absolute master of the lives
and properties of his subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious
sense, were acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue
of Italy was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, which were
multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal officers.
The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the force of his
arms: his captives were delivered to the executioner, or shot from
his military engines; and after the siege and surrender of Milan,
the buildings of that stately capital were razed to the ground, three
hundred hostages were sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were
dispersed in four villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror.
But Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of oppression
was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of Constance, Frederic
subscribed, with some reservations, the freedom of four-and-twenty
cities. His grandson contended with their vigor and maturity; but
Frederic the Second was endowed with some personal and peculiar
advantages. His birth and education recommended him to the Italians;
and in the implacable discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were
attached to the emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of
liberty and the church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father
Henry the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son derived an
ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet Frederic the Second
was finally oppressed by the arms of the Lombards and the thunders of
the Vatican: his kingdom was given to a stranger, and the last of his
family was beheaded at Naples on a public scaffold. During sixty years,
no emperor appeared in Italy, and the name was remembered only by the
ignominious sale of the last relics of sovereignty.