Chapter XIII: The Popes and the Revival of the Empire

[Sidenote: Growth of papal power.]

The growth of the temporal power of the bishops of Rome was due to two causes, the withdrawal of the imperial authority from Italy and the conversion of the barbarians. As the emperors at Constantinople became more and more busied with affairs Eastern, with the encroachments of barbarians, heathen and Muhammadan, and the imperial rule in Italy was destroyed by the Lombards, the popes stood out as the one permanent institution in Northern and Central Italy. As gradually the barbarians came to accept the faith they received it at the hands of the great ecclesiastical organisation which kept together the traditions, so strangely transformed, of the Old Rome. The legislation of Justinian also had given great political power to the popes: and this power was greatly increased when the papacy found itself the leader in the resistance of the great majority of Christian peoples against the policy of the Iconoclastic emperors. The history of Rome began to run on very different lines from that of Venice, Naples, or other great cities. It became for a while a conflict between the local military nobility and the clergy under the rule of the pope. The {144} struggle was a political one, just as the assumption of power by the popes, of power over the country and a considerable district around it, was a political act.

The popes had but very slight relations with the kings of the Merwing house. It was different when the Karlings came into power. Zacharias, both directly and through S. Boniface, came into close connection with Pippin and Carloman. At first he was concerned simply with reform in the Frankish Church, but before long he found himself able to intervene in a critical event and to take part in the inauguration of the Karling House, the revival as it claimed to be of the Empire in the West.

[Sidenote: The Karling reformation.]

The growth of the papal power was closely associated with two other historic events: the growth of the Karling house among the Franks, and the process of revival in the Church's spiritual activity, showing itself in missions without and reforms within. The last leads back to the first.

Whatever may be thought of the Karling reformation, it cannot be denied that for the century before Charles assumed the Imperial crown the Church showed many signs of corruption. The darkness of the picture is relieved only by the lives of some remarkable saints.

[Sidenote: The Karling House.]

The first, of course, is S. Arnulf, Bishop of Metz, the great-grandfather of Charles Martel. Born about 582, he died in 641, and the holy simplicity of his life as statesman and priest comes like a ray of sunshine in the gloom of the days of "half heathen and wholly vicious" kings. Mr. Hodgkin, with an eye no doubt to modern affairs, comments thus on the career of the prelate so different from the greedy, turbulent, and licentious men whom {145} Gregory of Tours describes: "In reading his life one cannot but feel that in some way the Frankish nation, or at least the Austrasian part of it, has groped its way upwards since the sixth century." [Sidenote: S. Arnulf.] Arnulf was a type of the good bishops of the Middle Ages, strong, able to hold his own with kings, a friend of the poor, eager to pass from the world to a quiet eventide in some monastic shade. The tale that is told of him is typical of the sympathies and passions of his age. Bishop of Metz, and chief counsellor of Dagobert whose father Chlothochar he had helped to raise to the throne, when he expressed his wish to retire from the world the king cried out that if he did he would slay his two sons. "My sons' lives are in the hands of God," said Arnulf. "Yours will not last long if you slay the innocent"; and when Dagobert drew his sword on him he said, "Would you return good for evil? Here am I ready to die in obedience to Him Who gave me life and Who died for me." Queen and nobles cried out, and the king fell penitent at the bishop's feet. Like S. Arnulf's is the romantic figure of his descendant Carloman, who turned from the rule of kingdoms and the command of armies to the seclusion of Soracte and Monte Cassino. The "great renunciation" is a striking tale. The disappearance, the long days of patient submission to rule, the discovery of the real position of the humble brother, and then the last dramatic appearance to follow an unpopular cause, make a story as striking as any which have come to us from the Middle Age. But before Carloman come many other noble figures. The fifty years that followed Arnulf's death are but a dreary tale of anarchy and blood. It is broken here and there {146} by records of Christian endurance or martyrdom: bishops who tried to serve the State often served not wisely but too well and met the fate of unsuccessful political leaders. Leodegar, Bishop of Autun, who helped Ebroin to raise Theoderic III to the throne of Neustria, was blinded, imprisoned and at length put to death and appears in the Church's calendar as S. Leger.

The crisis came when the long march of the successful Muhammadans was stayed by the arms of S. Arnulf's descendant Charles Martel, mayor of the palace to the King of Austrasia 717, to all the kingdoms from 719, who lived till 741. In 711 the Wisigothic monarchy of Spain had fallen before the infidels: in 720 the Moors entered Gaul. From then to 731 there was for Abder Rahman an almost unbroken triumph. The power of the Prophet reached from Damascus to beyond the Pyrenees. Then Charles Martel came to the relief of Southern Gaul, and on an October Sunday in 732 the hosts of Islam were utterly routed at Poictiers by the soldiers of the Cross. [Sidenote: The defeat of the Saracens.] It was a great deliverance; and there is no wonder that imagination has exaggerated its importance and thought that but for the Moorish defeat there might to-day be a muezzin in every Highland steeple and an Imám set over every Oxford college. Charles had still to reconquer Septimania and Provence. Arles and Nîmes, the great Roman cities, had to be recovered from the Arabs who had seized them, and Avignon, Agde, Beziers, cities whose future was as wonderful as was the others' past, were also won back by the arms of the Christian chief.

Charles died in 741. He had refused to help Pope {147} Gregory III. in 739 against the Lombards. It was reserved for his son Pippin to make that alliance between the papacy and the Karling house which dictated the future of Europe. [Sidenote: Pippin.] To Pippin came the lordship of the West Franks, to Carloman his brother that of the East Franks, when their father died. They conquered, they reformed the Church among the Franks, with the aid of Boniface, and then came that dramatic retirement of Carloman in 747 which showed him to be true heir of S. Arnulf. Four years later the house of the Karlings became the nominal as well as the real rulers of the Franks. In 751 the bishop of Würzburg for the East Franks, and the abbat of S. Denis for those of the West, went to Rome to ask the pope's advice. Were the wretched Merwings "who were of royal race and were called kings but had no power in the realm save that grants and charters were drawn up in their names" to be still called kings, for "what willed the _major domus_ of the Franks, that they did?" Zacharias answered as a wise man would, that he who had the power should bear the name. And so, blessed by the great missionary S. Boniface, Pippin was "heaved" on the shield, and became king of the Franks, and Childerich, the last of the Merwings, went to a distant monastery to end his days.

[Sidenote: The end of the Imperial power in Italy.]

But this was only a beginning. The pope was threatened by the barbarians, neglected by the emperors who reigned at Constantinople, and at last was in actual conflict with those who tried to impose Iconoclasm upon the Church. In 751 the exarchate, the representation of the Imperial power in Italy, with its seat at Ravenna, was overwhelmed by the {148} arms of Aistulf, the Lombard king. The time had come, thought Pope Stephen II. (752-7), when the distant barbarians, now orthodox, should be called to save the patrimony of S. Peter from the barbarians near at hand. In S. Peter's name letters summoned Pippin to the rescue of the church especially dear to the Franks.[1] But before this Stephen had made Pippin his friend. In 753 he left Rome and failing to win from Aistulf any concession to the Imperial power made his way across the Alps, and on the Feast of the Epiphany, 754, met in their own land Pippin and his son who was to be Charles the Great. The pope fell at the king's feet and besought him by the mercies of God to save the Romans from the hands of the Lombards. Then Pippin and all his lords held up their hands in sign of welcome and support. Then Stephen on July 28, 754, in the great monastery which was to become the crowning-place of Frankish kings, anointed Pippin and his sons Charles and Carloman as king of the Franks and kings in succession.

[Sidenote: The crowning of Pippin.]

A point of special interest in this event is the title given to Pippin at his crowning at Saint Denis. The title of Patrician of the Romans was given by the pope, as commissioned by the emperor, "to act against the king of the Lombards for the recovery of the lost lands of the Empire." Pippin was made the officer of the distant emperor, and the pope would say as little as possible about the rights of him who ruled in Constantinople, and as much as he could about the Church which ruled in Rome. It was a step in the assertion of {149} political rights for the Roman Church. A new order of things was springing up in Italy. The popes were asserting a political power as belonging to S. Peter. They were asserting that the exarchate had ceased in political theory as well as in practical fact. In this new order Pippin was to be involved as supporter of the protectorate which the papacy assumed to itself.

Then the Franks came forward to save Rome from the Lombards. The last act of the romantic life of Carloman was to plead for justice to Aistulf,--that what he had won should not be taken from him,--and to be refused. Twice Pippin came south and saved the pope: and then the cities he had won he refused to give up to the envoys of the distant emperor and declared that "never should those cities be alienated from the power of S. Peter and the rights of the Roman Church and the pontiff of the Apostolic See." From this dates the Roman pope's independence of the Roman emperor, the definite political severance of Italy from the East, and therefore a great stop towards the schism of the Church. Iconoclasm and the independence of the popes alike worked against the unity of Christendom.

[Sidenote: The papal power.]

Pope Stephen, thanks to Pippin, had become the arbitrator of Italy. The keys of Ravenna and of the twenty-two cities which "stretched along the Adriatic coast from the mouths of the Po to within a few miles of Ancona and inland as far as the Apennines" were laid on the tomb of S. Peter. The "States of the Church" began their long history, the history of "the temporal power."

And this new power was seen outside Italy as well {150} as within. From the eighth century, at least, the popes are found continually intervening in the affairs of the churches among the Franks and the Germans, granting privileges, giving indulgence, writing with explicit claim to the authority which Christ gave to S. Peter. Into the recesses of Gaul, among Normans at Rouen, among Lotharingians at Metz, to Amiens, or Venice, or Limoges, the papal letters penetrated; and their tone is that of confidence that advice will be respected or commands obeyed. And this is, in small matters especially, rather than in great. The popes at least claimed to interfere everywhere in Christian Europe and in everything.[2] Within Italy events moved quickly.

The first step towards a new development was the destruction of the Lombard kingdom by Charles, who succeeded his father Pippin in 768. At first joint ruler with his brother he became on the latter's death in 771 sole king of all the Franks. In 772 Hadrian I., a Roman, ambitious and distinguished, succeeded the weak Stephen III. on the papal throne. He reigned till 795 and one of his first acts was to summon Charles and the Franks to his rescue against the Lombards. [Sidenote: Charles the Great and Rome.] In the midst of his conquests--which it is not here our part to tell--Charles spent the Holy Week and Easter of 774 at Rome. Thus the one contemporary authority tells the tale of the great alliance which was made on the Wednesday in Easter week: "On the fourth day of the week the aforesaid pontiff with all his nobles both clerkly and knightly went forth to S. Peter's Church and there {151} meeting the king in colloquy earnestly prayed him and with paternal affection admonished him to fulfil entirely that promise which his father of holy memory the dead king Pippin had made, and which he himself with his brother Carloman and all the nobles of the Franks had confirmed to S. Peter and his vicar Pope Stephen II. of holy memory when he visited Francia, that they would grant divers cities and territories in that province of Italy to S. Peter and his vicars for ever. And when Charles had caused the promise which was made in Francia at a place called Carisiacum (Quierzy) to be read over to him all its contents were approved by him and his nobles. And of his will and with a good and gracious mind that most excellent and most Christian king Charles caused another promise of gift like the first to be drawn up by Etherius his most religious and prudent chaplain and notary, and in this he gave the same cities and lands to S. Peter and promised that they should be handed over to the pope with their boundaries set forth as is contained in the aforesaid donation, namely: From Luna with the island of Corsica, thence to Surianum, thence to Mount Bardo, that is to Vercetum, thence to Parma, thence to Pihegium, and from thence to Mantua and Mons Silicis, together with the whole exarchate of Ravenna, as it was of old, and the provinces of the Venetia and Istria; together with the whole duchy of Spoletium and that of Beneventum." [3] The donation was confirmed, says the chronicler, with the most solemn oaths.

Now if this records the facts, and if two-thirds of Italy were given by Charles (who possessed very little {152} of it) to the popes, it is almost incredible that his later conduct should have shown that he did not pay any regard to it. But the question is of political rather than ecclesiastical interest, and it may suffice to say that there are very strong reasons for believing the passage to be a later interpolation.[4]

[Sidenote: The revival of the Empire, 800.]

Within four mouths Charles had subdued the Lombards and become "rex Francorum et Langobardorum atque patricius Romanorum." For nearly a quarter of a century Charles was employed in other parts of his empire: he dealt friendly but firmly with the pope; but he kept away from Rome. But in 799 the new pope Leo III., attacked by the Romans probably for some harshness in his rule, fled from the city and in July came to Charles at Paderborn to entreat his help. It is probable that the great English scholar, Alcuin, who has been called the Erasmus of the eighth century, had already suggested to the great king that the weakness of the Eastern emperors was a real defeasance of power and that the crown imperial might be his own. However that may be Charles came to Rome and made a triumphal entry on November 24, 800. The charges against the pope were heard and he swore to his innocence. On the feast of the Nativity, in the basilica of S. Peter, when Charles had worshipped at the _confessio_, the tomb of S. Peter, Leo clothed him with a purple robe and set a crown of gold upon his head. "Then all the faithful Romans beholding so great a champion given them and the love which {153} he bore towards the holy Roman Church and its vicar, in obedience to the will of God and S. Peter the key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven, cried with one accord in sound like thunder 'To Charles the most pious Augustus, crowned of God, the Emperor great and peaceable, life and victory!'"

Thus the Roman pope and the Roman people claimed to make anew in Rome the Roman Empire with a German for Caesar and Augustus. It was not, if we believe Charles's own close friend Einhard, a distinction sought by the new emperor himself. "At first he so disliked the title of _Imperator_ and _Augustus_ that he declared that if he had known before the intention of the pope he would never have entered the church on that day, though it was one of the most holy festivals of the year." [5] It may well be that Charles, who had corresponded with the Caesars of the East, hesitated to take a step of such bold defiance. Men still preserved the memories of how the soldiers of Justinian had won back Italy from the Goths. Nor was Charles pleased to receive such a gift at the hands of the pope. He did not recognise the right of a Roman pontiff to give away the imperial crown. What could be given could be taken away. It was a precedent of evil omen.

But none the less the coronation of Charles the Great, as men came to call him, was the greatest event in the Middle Age. It allowed the vitality of the idea of empire which the West inherited from the Romans, and it showed that idea linked to the new power of the popes. It founded the Holy Roman Empire. Twelve years later the Empire of the West won some sort of recognition from the Empire of the East. In 812 an ambassage from Constantinople came {154} to Charles at Aachen, and Charles was hailed by them as Imperator and Basileus. The Empire of the West was an accomplished and recognised fact.

[Sidenote: Results of the revived Empire.]

Its significance was at least as much religious as poetical. Charles delighted in the works of S. Augustine and most of all in the _De Civitate Dei_; and that great book is the ideal of a Christian State, which shall be Church and State together, and which replaces the Empire of pagan Rome. The abiding idea of unity had been preserved by the Church: it was now to be strengthened by the support of a head of the State. The one Christian commonwealth was to be linked together in the bond of divine love under one emperor and one pope. That Constantine the first Christian emperor had given to the popes the sovereignty of the West was a fiction which it seems was already known at Rome: Hadrian seems to have referred to the strange fable when he wrote to Charles the Great in 777. It was a legend very likely of Eastern fabrication, and it was probably not as yet believed to have any claim to be authentic; but when the papacy had grown great at the expense of the Empire it was to be a powerful weapon in the armoury of the popes. Now it served only, with the revival of learning at the court of Charles the Great, to illustrate two sides of the great movement for the union of Europe under two monarchs, the spiritual and the temporal. The coronation of Charles was indeed a fact the importance of which, as well as the conflicts which would inevitably flow from it, lay in the future. But it showed the Roman Church great, and it showed the absorption of the great Teutonic race in the fascinating ideal of unity at once Christian and imperial.

[1] _Cod. Car._ in Muratori, _Rer. Ital. Script._, iii. (2) 90.

[2] Cf. Dr. J. von Pflugk-Hartung, _Acta Pontificum Romanorum inedita_, 1880, 1884.

[3] _Liber Pontificalis_, i. 498.

[4] The question may be read in Mgr. Duchesne's Introduction to the _Liber Pontificalis_, ccxxxvii.-ccxlii.; and Dr. Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, vii. 387-97.

[5] _Liber Pontificalis_, ii. 6.

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