Pepin and his queen, and Charles and Carloman their children,
pronouncing an anathema upon all or any who should ever attempt to
elect a king not of their house. Upon Pepin too he conferred the title
of patrician. Can it be that by this he intended the king of the
Franks to be his executor in the exarchate as the exarch had been the
executor of the emperor?[1] We do not know; but a little later a
document was drawn up in which Pepin declared and enumerated the
territories he was ready to secure for the pope. This document, the
Donation of Pepin, would seem to have confirmed in detail and in
writing the oath he had sworn to the pope at Ponthion. Unhappily the
document has disappeared, and we can only judge of its contents by
what actually happened.
[Footnote 1: The title patrician was not exclusively borne by the
exarch, the Dux Romae, for instance, bore that title in 743.]
The adventure into Italy to which the pope had persuaded Pepin was not
universally popular with the Frankish nobles. We find Pepin attempting
to gain his end by negotiation with Aistulf, but all to no purpose,
and probably in March 755 the Franks set out with the pope at their
head to march into Italy to curb and chastise the Lombard.
The great army of Pepin crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis, and in
what was little more than a skirmish upon the northern side of the
pass defeated the Lombard army and proceeded to invest Pavia and
ravish the country round about. Aistulf, who was rather an impetuous
than a great soldier, had soon had enough and was ready to entertain
proposals for peace. A treaty was made in which he agreed "to restore"
Ravenna and divers other cities, and to attempt nothing in the future
against Rome and the Holy See. This having been decided, the pope took
leave of Pepin, who returned to France, and went on his way to Rome.
The pope had won and had really established the Holy See as the heir
of the empire; but Aistulf was by no means done with. He forgot alike
his treaty and his promises. "Ever since the day when we parted," the
pope writes to Pepin and the young kings, his sons Charles and
Carloman, "he has striven to put upon us such afflictions and on the
Holy Church of God such insults as the tongue of man cannot
declare.... You have made peace too easily, you have taken no
sufficient security for the fulfilment of the promises you have made
to S. Peter, which you yourselves guaranteed by writing under your
hand and seal...."
But the Franks were deaf. An expedition to crush the Lombards was a
laborious and an expensive business, and Pepin had much to occupy him
at home.
In January 756, however, Aistulf, mad from the start, laid siege to
Rome, and for three months laid waste the farms of the Campagna, S.
Peter's patrimony. Narni was taken and indeed all seemed as hopeless
as ever. Then the pope took up his pen and as the successor of the
Prince of the Apostles wrote a letter as from S. Peter himself and
sent it to the three kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, to the
bishops, abbots, priests and monks, the dukes, counts, armies, and
people of Francia. Gibbon thus summarises this extraordinary and
dramatic epistle: "The apostle assures his adoptive sons the king, the
clergy, and the nobles of France that dead in the flesh, he is still
alive in the spirit; that they now hear and must obey the voice of the
founder and guardian of the Roman Church; that the Virgin, the angels,
the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven unanimously
urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches,
victory, and paradise will crown their pious enterprise; and that
eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer
his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the
perfidious Lombards."
Pepin could not be deaf to such an appeal. He again crossed the Mont
Cenis, and again the Lombards were as chaff before him. On his march
to Pavia he was met by two envoys from Constantinople who had
ill-treated, detained, and outstripped the papal ambassador. They
besought Pepin to restore Ravenna and the exarchate to the empire, but
he denied them and declared roundly that "on no account whatsoever
should those cities be alienated from the power of the blessed Peter
and the jurisdiction of the Roman Church and the Apostolic See,
affirming too with an oath that for no man's favour had he given
himself once again to this conflict, but only for love of S. Peter and
for the pardon of his sins; asserting, also, that no abundance of
treasure would bribe him to take away what he had once offered for S.
Peter's acceptance."[1]
[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin, _op, cit_. vii. p. 217.]
Pepin marched on; Pavia was besieged, Aistulf was beaten to the dust.
A treaty was drawn up in which the Lombard gave to "S. Peter, the Holy
Roman Church, and all the popes of the Apostolic See forever" the
Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and Comacchio. An officer was commissioned
to receive the submission of every city, and their keys and the deed
of Pepin's donation were placed upon the tomb of S. Peter in Rome. The
papal state was founded; where the empire had ruled so long there
appeared the heir of the empire, the papacy "sitting crowned upon the
grave thereof."
The cities that with their _contadi_ and dependencies thus formed the
temporal dominion of the pope were, according to the papal biographer,
twenty-three in number; Ravenna first and foremost, then Rimini,
Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia (but not Ancona) that had formed the old
Pentapolis. To them was added La Cattolica. The whole of the inland
Pentapolis--though Fossombrone is not mentioned--Urbino, Jesi, Cagli,
Gubbio--passed to the pope as well as the following places: Cesena and
the Mons Lucatium, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Castro, Caro, S. Leo, Arcevia,
Serra dei Conti, the Republic of S. Marino, Sarsina, and Cantiano
together with Comacchio and Narni. A few months after all this was
accomplished, in December 756, Aistulf, "that follower of the devil,"
as the pope called him, died.
Every state that is nearing dissolution is the prey of civil discord.
So it was with the Lombards. Ratchis, who had more than seven years
before become a monk, claimed the throne; so did Desiderius, "mildest
of men." Pope Stephen supported the latter on condition that Ancona,
that last city of the Pentapolis, Osimo which dominated it, and Umana,
together with Faenza, Imola, and Ferrara, were "restored" to the
papacy. Desiderius agreed and became king, but failed, as the Lombards
always failed, to keep his promise, for though he handed over Faenza,
Bagnacavallo, and Gavello, he withheld Imola, Bologna, Ancona, Osimo,
and Umana; this was in 757, the year of Stephen's death.
In the same year Pope Paul I. seems to have visited the chief city of
his new state, Ravenna, mainly perhaps on ecclesiastical business, for
the archbishop Sergius was by no means a loyal subject and had only
been brought to heel when nothing but submission was left open to him.
He had then, according to Agnellus, promised to deliver to the pope
all the "gold, silver, vessels of price, hoards of money," and so
forth stored up in Ravenna. Agnellus tells a long and incoherent tale
of the way the pope obtained this treasure and of certain plots to
murder him therefor. All that seems fairly certain is that in the
first year of his reign pope Paul I. visited Ravenna. Indeed the chief
difficulty of the papacy at this time must have been the occupation of
the state it had won so consummately. How were the popes to make good
their somewhat shadowy hold upon Ravenna, and the Pentapolis, and
those other strongholds in central Italy and Aemilia?
That they were not to hold them easily was soon evident. The empire
was plotting to win Pepin to its side, and when that failed again,
rumours of an imperial invasion reached Rome. Politically all
relations ceased between Constantinople and Rome about this time; for
though the pope in reality had long ceased to be a subject of the
emperor, when he had possessed himself of the exarchate even theory
had to give way to fact. Nor was the papacy more fortunate in its
relations with Desiderius. The pope's object was doubtless to keep the
Lombard kingdom weak, if not to destroy it. The first step to that end
was obviously to encourage the achievement of a real independence by
the duchies of Spoleto and Benevento, which, again, bordering as they
did upon the duchy of Rome, would be easier to deal with if they stood
alone. There can be little doubt that the pope fostered the sleepless
disaffection of the dukes, but when their revolt matured Desiderius
was able to crush it, laying waste the Pentapolis on his way. He was
then wise enough to visit Rome and to arrange a peace which was only
once broken during pope Paul's pontificate: in 761 when Desiderius
attacked Sinigaglia.
It was easier, however, for the pope to arrange successfully a foreign
policy than to administer his new state. No machinery existed for the
secular government by the Holy See of a country so considerable; nor
was this easy to invent. The pope was forced to fall back upon his
representative in Ravenna, namely, the archbishop. Now the archbishops
of Ravenna had always been lacking in loyalty. Ravenna and the
exarchate were governed in the name of the pope by the archbishop,
assisted by three tribunes who were elected by the people. This
government was never very successful, for at every opportunity, and
especially after the resurrection of the empire in the West, the
archbishops were eager to consider themselves as feudatories of the
empire. This was natural and it may be worth while briefly to inquire
why.
Because Ravenna had for so long, ever since the year 404, been the
seat of the empire in Italy, the bishops of that city had acquired
extraordinary privileges and even a unique position among the bishops
of the West. As early as the time of Galla Placidia, the bishop of
Ravenna had obtained from the Augusta the title and rights of
metropolitan of the fourteen cities of Aemilia and Flaminia. It is
true that the bishop continued to be confirmed and consecrated by the
pope--S. Peter Chrysologus was so confirmed and consecrated--but the
presence of the imperial court and later of the exarch encouraged in
the minds of the bishops a sense of their unique importance and a
certain spirit of independence in regard to Rome. Of course the Holy
See was not prepared to cede any of its rights; but the spirit of
disloyalty remained, and presently the bishop of Ravenna at the time
of his consecration was forced to sign a declaration of loyalty, in
which was set forth his chief duties and a definition of his rights.
After the Byzantine conquest the church of Ravenna, which the empire
regarded as a bulwark against the papal claims, received important
privileges and its importance in the ecclesiastical hierarchy was
greatly increased. Like the bishop of Rome, the bishop of Ravenna had
a special envoy at Constantinople and was represented, again like
Rome, in a special manner in the councils of the Orient. In religions
ceremonies the bishops of Ravenna took a place immediately behind the
pope, and in ecclesiastical assemblies they sat at the right hand of
the pontiff. There can be little doubt indeed of the Erastianism of
Justinian nor of his encouragement of the bishop of Ravenna.
The declaration that the bishops were forced to sign upon their
consecration by the pope by no means settled matters. In 648 this
declaration itself was in dispute as to its interpretation, for
Constans II. had conferred upon the See of Ravenna the privilege of
autonomy, and at this time the bishop did not go to Rome for
consecration. The Iconoclastic heresy of Constantinople, however,
indirectly brought about peace between the pope and his suffragan, for
Ravenna was in this whole heartedly Roman.
It was then, by means of an instrument still very uncertain, that the
papacy was forced to govern its new state, and in these circumstances,
friendly relationship with Constantinople daily becoming more
impossible, it is not surprising that we see the pope making an
attempt to come to some sort of permanent reconciliation with
Desiderius; and indeed when pope Paul died in 767 undoubtedly a peace
had been arranged.
All might have been well if pope Paul's successor had been regularly
chosen; but a layman Constantine was elected by a rabble at the
instigation of his brother Toto of Nepi. Christopher and his son
Sergius, who held two of the greatest offices in the papal chancery,
decided to call in the aid of the duke of Spoleto to attack
Constantine, Rome was entered, and in the appalling confusion the
Lombards elected a certain priest named Philip to be pope. Christopher
appeared, Philip was turned out, and Stephen III., a Sicilian, was
regularly chosen. That was in 768, and in the same year king Pepin
died and was succeeded by his two sons, Charles to whom apparently
fell Austrasia and Neustria, and Carloman who took Burgundy, Provence,
and Swabia.
The death of Pepin left the papacy without a champion. Nor was this
all, as soon appeared. Charles and Carloman began to quarrel and to
effect their reconciliation, or to avert its consequences, Bertrada,
their mother, counselled and succeeded in forcing upon them a
friendship and an alliance with the Lombards which meant the complete
abandonment of Italy upon the part of the Franks. This alliance was to
be secured by a double marriage. Charles was to marry Desiderata, the
daughter of the Lombard king, while Gisila, Bertrada's daughter, was
to marry Desiderius' heir. It is obvious that S. Peter was in peril,
nor was pope Stephen slow to denounce the whole arrangement. His
remonstrance, however, was ineffectual and there remained to him but
one thing to do: to arrange himself with the now uncurbed Lombard
king. This was exceedingly difficult, because his own election had
been achieved only by the humiliation of the Lombards. However, he
managed it at the price of civil war. Desiderius and his army entered
Rome at the behest of the pope, who celebrated Mass before the king in
S. Peter's. The Franks were checkmated.
It was not long before Charles saw that he had been outwitted. An
immediate change of his policy was necessary. In 771 it came with the
repudiation of Desiderata, who was sent back to her father's court at
Pavia. Henceforth Charles and Desiderius were implacable enemies. And
now everything went in favour of the papal policy, just as before
everything had seemed to cross it. Carloman, who had not quarrelled
with Desiderius, and might have opposed Charles and changed all the
future, suddenly died in December of the year of the quarrel. Charles
became thus sole king of the Frankish nation. When pope Stephen came
to die in February 772 he must have laid him down with a quiet mind.
In Stephen's stead there was elected as pope a pure Roman, born in the
Via Lata of the nobility of the City; he took the famous name of
Hadrian I. Desiderius, who had watched with a growing anxiety the
amazing policy of Stephen, now turned to his successor, and both
demanded and begged a renewal of friendship. Hadrian answered his
ambassador at last with the mere truth. "How can I trust your king
when I recall what my predecessor Lord Stephen of pious memory told me
in confidence of his perfidy? He told me that he had lied to him in
everything as to the rights of Holy Church, though he swore upon the
body of the Blessed Peter.... Look you, such is the honour of king
Desiderius and the measure of the confidence I may repose in him."
Desiderius' answer was not to the point. He seized the cities of
Faenza, Ferrara, and Comacchio and ravaged the territory about
Ravenna, burned the farms and carried off the cattle. Then he fell
upon the Pentapolis, seized Sinigaglia, Jesi, Urbino, Gubbio, S. Leo,
and other "Roman" cities, and indeed possessed himself of everything
save only Ravenna and Rimini, and proceeded upon a raid into the duchy
of Rome.
The answer of the pope was mild but firm: mild, for the hour was not
yet come; firm, for it would strike ere long. "Tell your king," said
he, "that I swear in the presence of God that if he choose to restore
those cities which in my time he has taken from S. Peter, I will
hasten into his presence wherever he may appoint a meeting place, at
Pavia, Ravenna, Perugia, or here in Rome, that we may confer
together.... But if he does not restore what he has taken away he
shall never see my face."
The hour was not come. Charles was busy with the Saxon hordes upon the
north and east of his kingdom. It was not till the beginning of
January 773 that the pope sent his messenger Peter to summon him to
his aid. Meanwhile, Desiderius marched on Rome. But even without
Charles the pope was not defenceless. The Vicegerent of God who had
without a soldier turned back Attila on the Mincio and had thrust back
Liutprand from Rome was not to be at the mercy of such a king as
Desiderius. At Viterbo his messengers, the three bishops of Albano,
Palestrina, and Tivoli, met the Lombard king and gave him the pope's
last word: "Anathema." Desiderius shrank back. In that moment as it
seems the ambassadors of Charles arrived in Rome, satisfied themselves
of the justice of the papal summons, and carried back to the great
Frank the prayer of the pope that he would "redeem the Church of God."
In the late summer of that year the Frankish host was assembled at
Geneva and was already beginning to cross the mountains in two mighty
commands by the Great S. Bernard and the Mont Cenis; in October the
siege of Pavia was begun.
That siege endured for more than eight months. Meanwhile Charles had
made himself master of Verona and of many of the cities of the plain.
The men of Spoleto hastened to "commend" themselves to the pope and
the citizens of Fermo, Osimo, and Ancona, and of Citta di Castello, we
read, followed their example, and for the feast of Easter 774, Charles
appeared in Rome, and was greeted and embraced by the pope at S.
Peter's. On Easter Day Charles heard Mass in S. Maria Maggiore, on
Easter Monday in S. Peter's, on Easter Tuesday in S. Paul's. On the
Wednesday in that Easter week, according to Hadrian's biographer, he
made that great Donation to the papacy which confirmed and extended
and secured the gift of Pepin his father. The duchies of Spoleto and
Benevento, and much else, were added to the exarchate "as it was of
old" and given to the pope. Then in June Pavia, the Lombard capital,
fell and Desiderius and his wife were sent by Charles as prisoners to
a convent in Picardy where it is said they ended their lives.
[Illustration: GUARDHOUSE OF THE PALACE OF THEODORIC]
The Donation of Pepin, confirmed, renewed, and enlarged by Charles,
may, of course, be understood in various ways; at any rate it has been
so understood; but it is certain that the pope saw in it both the
fulfilment of his hopes and the final establishment of the papal
monarchy. Yet while he utterly refused, and rightly, to admit the
claim of Charles--not yet emperor--to interfere in the election of the
archbishop of Ravenna, the head of his new dominion, he graciously
permitted the king to take away certain mosaics from the old imperial
city to adorn his palace at Aix; and that in the following letter,
which Dr. Hodgkin translates: "We have received your bright and
honeysweet letters brought us by Duke Arwin. In these you expressed
your desire that we should grant you the mosaics and marbles of the
palace in the city of Ravenna, as well as other specimens to be found
both in the pavement and on the walls. We willingly grant your request
because by your royal struggles the Church of your patron S. Peter
daily enjoys many benefits, for which great will be your reward in
heaven...." On no theory yet put forward can the pope be considered as
the subject of the king of the Franks. That he had been and was to be
the subject of the emperor can be defended, but when has S. Peter been
the creature of a king?
It was not Hadrian as we know but Leo who was destined to crown what
pope Stephen had begun, and to re-establish the empire in the West,
and as he thought to create for S. Peter not an occasional but a
permanent champion.
Twenty-five years after that great Easter in Rome, pope Leo, who
succeeded Hadrian, whose long pontificate lasted for twenty-three
years, was attacked in the streets of Rome and thrown to the ground in
the Corso by two nephews of Hadrian's. Exactly what was the nature of
their quarrel with Leo we do not know, but they managed to imprison
the pope, who presently escaped and, assisted by Winichis, duke of
Spoleto, made his way to the court of Charles. During the summer of
799 the pope remained in France, and probably in October returned to
Rome with a Frankish guard of honour. In the following autumn Charles
set out on his fourth journey to Rome. It was now that he visited
Ravenna, as he had already done in 787, and remained for seven days.
On the 24th November he arrived in Rome. A month later upon Christmas
Day the great king, attended by his nobles, amid a vast multitude,
went to S. Peter's to hear Mass. It was there in the midst of that
great basilica, before the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, that
upon the birthday of Christ the empire re-arose; the pope placed upon
the head of Charlemagne the golden diadem and the Roman people cried
aloud, "_Carolo Piissimo Augusta Deo, Coronato Magno a Pacifico
Imperatori Vita et Victoria_," Three times that great acclamation
echoed over the tomb of the Fisherman. Once more there was an emperor
in the West, a champion of the Faith and defender of the Holy See.
It has been asserted, and is still I believe maintained, that that
coronation was a surprise to Charles. But such things do not come
unforeseen, nor was Charlemagne the man to permit or to tolerate so
amazing an astonishment. All Rome knew what was about to be
accomplished and had gathered in the ancient basilica to await it and
complete it.
Such a question, however, concerns us but little. For us it remains to
note that with the re-creation of the empire, and the appearance of
the Holy See as a great temporal sovereignty in Italy, the historical
importance of Ravenna comes to an end. We have seen that in the autumn
of the most famous year save that of the birth of Our Lord,
Charlemagne had visited Ravenna and had spent seven days in the city.
Once more he was to visit it, and that upon his return journey
northward in May 801. From this time Ravenna ceases to be of any
significance in the history of Europe. The pass it held was no longer
of importance, for the barbarian invasions were at an end, and a new
road into Italy over the Apennines was coming into use, the Via
Francigena, the way of the Franks. As the port upon the sea which was
the fault between East and West it, too, ceased to exist; for East and
West were no longer of any real importance the one to the other, and
already the alteration of the coast line, which was one day to leave
the old seaport some miles from the shore, had begun.
The history of Ravenna, her importance in the history of Europe and
Italy, thus comes to an end with the appearance of Charlemagne and the
resurrection of the West. The ancient and beautiful city which had
played so great a part in the fortunes of the empire, which had, as it
were, twice been its birthplace and twice its tomb, herself passes
into oblivion when that empire, Holy now and Roman still, rises again
and in the West with the crowning of Charlemagne in S. Peter's Church
upon Christmas Day in the year of Our Lord 800. With her subsequent
story, interesting to us mainly in two of its episodes--the apparition
of Dante and the incident of 1512--I shall deal when I come to
consider the Mediaeval and Renaissance city.
But in fact we always think of Ravenna as a city of the Dark Age, and
in that we are right. She is a tomb, the tomb of the old empire, and
like the sepulchre outside the gates of Jerusalem, that was Arimathean
Joseph's, she held during an appalling interval of terror and doubt
the most precious thing in the world, to be herself utterly forgotten
in the morning of the resurrection. And surely to one who had
approached her in the dawn, while it was yet dark, of the ninth
century, of mediaeval Europe that is, her words would have been those
of the angels so long ago: _Non est hic; sed surrexit_. While to us
to-day she would say: _Venite et videte locum ubi positus erat
Dominus_.
XI
THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
THE CATHEDRAL, BAPTISTERY, ARCIVESCOVADO, S. AGATA, S. PIETRO
MAGGIORE, S. GIOVANNI EVANGELISTA, S. GIOVANNI BATTISTA, AND THE
MAUSOLEUM OF GALLA PLACIDIA