Among the missionary enterprises of the Anglo-Saxons had been some attempts to convert the nations of Northern Germany. Suidbert, one of the original companions of Willibrord, was consecrated in England during his master’s first visit to Rome, and went forth to preach to the Boructuarians, who occupied a territory between the Ems and the Yssel; but the disorders of the country obliged him to withdraw from it, and he afterwards laboured on the lower Rhine. Two brothers named Hewald, and distinguished from each other by the epithets White and Black, are also celebrated as having penetrated into the country of the Old Saxons, and having there ended their lives by martyrdom. But no great or lasting missionary success had been achieved to the east of the Rhine in the lower part of its course until the time of Boniface.

This missionary, whose original name was Winfrid, was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, of a noble and wealthy family, about the year 680. It was intended that he should follow a secular career; but the boy was early influenced by the discourse of some monks who visited his father's house, and at the age of seven he entered a monastery at Exeter, from which he afterwards removed to that of Nutscelle (Nutshalling or Nursling) in Hampshire. Here he became famous for his ability as a preacher and as an expositor of Scripture. He was employed in important ecclesiastical business, and had the prospect of rising to eminence in the church of his own country; but he was seized with an earnest desire to labour for the extension of the gospel, and, with two companions, he crossed the sea to Frisia, in the year 716. The state of things in that country was unfavourable for his design. Charles, who in later ages was called Martel, the son of Pipin of Heristal by a concubine, had possessed himself of the mayoralty of the palace in Austrasia, and was now engaged in war with Radbod of Frisia, who had made an alliance with Ragenfrid, the mayor of the Neustrian palace. The pagan prince had destroyed many churches and monasteries, and, although he admitted Boniface to an interview, he refused him permission to preach in his dominions. Boniface therefore returned to Nutscelle, where the monks, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the headship of their house, were desirous to elect him abbot. But his missionary zeal induced him to withstand their importunities; and, having secured the appointment of another abbot, through the assistance of his bishop, Daniel of Winchester, he set out for Rome in the spring of 717. A letter from Daniel procured him a kind reception from Gregory II, who held many conferences with him during the following winter; and in 718 Boniface left Rome, carrying with him a large supply of relics, with a commission by which the pope authorized him to preach to the heathens of Germany wherever he might find an opportunity. After having surveyed Bavaria and Thuringia, he was induced by tidings of Radbod's death to go again into Frisia, where for three years he labored under Willibrord. The aged bishop wished to appoint him his successor; but Boniface declined the honour, on the ground that, as he was not yet fifty years old, he was unfit for so high an office, and that he must betake himself to the sphere for which the pope had especially appointed him. He therefore took leave of Willibrord, and passed into Hessia. Two local chiefs, Detdic and Dierolf, who, although professing Christianity, were worshippers of idols, granted him leave to establish himself at Amanaburg, on the Ohm (Amana), where in a short time he reclaimed them from their heathenish practices, and baptized many thousands of Hessians. On receiving a report of this success, Gregory summoned Boniface to Rome, and, after having exacted a formal profession of faith, ordained him as a regionary bishop, at the same time binding him to the papal see by an oath, which was a novelty as imposed on a missionary, although, with some necessary changes, it was the same which had long been required of bishops within the proper patriarchate of Rome. Standing at the tomb of St. Peter, to whom the oath was addressed, Boniface solemnly pledged himself to obey the apostle, and the pope as his vicar; in no wise to consent to anything against the unity of the catholic church; in all things to keep his faith to the apostle, and to the interests of the Roman see; to have no communion or fellowship with bishops who might act contrary to the institutions of the holy fathers; but to check such persons, if possible, or otherwise to report them faithfully to his lord the pope.

The bishop received from the pope a code of regulations for the government of his church (probably the collection of Dionysius Exiguus); and, having learnt by experience the importance of securing the countenance of princes for missionary undertakings, he carried with him a recommendation from Gregory to Charles Martel, who, under the name of the effete descendants of Clovis, was the virtual sovereign of their kingdom. He was also furnished by the pope with letters to the nations among which his labours were to be employed. Charles Martel received the missionary coldly; such enterprises as that of Boniface had no interest for the rude warrior, nor were the clergy of his court likely to bespeak his favour for one whose life and thoughts differed widely from their own. Boniface, however, obtained from Charles the permission which he desired, to preach beyond the Rhine, with a letter of protection which proved to be very valuable

In Hessia and Thuringia, the countries to which he now repaired, Christianity had already been long preached, but by isolated teachers, and without any regular system. The belief and the practice of the converts were still largely mixed with paganism; Boniface even speaks of presbyters who offered sacrifices to the heathen gods. The preachers had for the most part proceeded from the Irish church, in which diocesan episcopacy was as yet unknown, and the jurisdiction was separate from the order of a bishop; they had brought with them its peculiar ideas as to the limitation of the episcopal rights; they were unrestrained by any discipline or by any regard for unity; they owned no subjection to Rome, and were under no episcopal authority. Boniface often complains of these preachers as fornicators and adulterers—words which may in some cases imply a charge of real immorality, but which in general mean nothing more than that the Irish missionaries held the doctrine of their native church as to the lawfulness of marriage for the clergy. He speaks, too, of some who imposed on the people by pretensions to extraordinary asceticism—feeding on milk and honey only, and rejecting even bread. With these rival teachers he was involved in serious and lasting contentions.

Among the collection of Boniface’s correspondence is a letter from his old patron, Daniel of Winchester, containing advice for the conduct of his missionary work. The bishop tells him that, in discussions with the heathen, he ought not to question the genealogies of their gods, but to argue from them that beings propagated after the fashion of mankind must not be gods but men. The argument is to be urged by tracing back the genealogies to the beginning; by asking such questions as— “When was the first god generated? To which sex did this god belong? Has the generation of gods come to an end? If it has ceased, why? Is the world older than the gods? If so, who governed it before they existed?”. The missionary must argue mildly, and must avoid all appearance of insult or offence. He must contrast the truth of Christianity with the absurdities of the pagan mythology. He must ask how it is that the gods allow Christians to possess the fairest places of the earth, while their own votaries are confined to cold and barren tracts; he is to dwell on the growth of the Christian church from nothing to the predominance which it has already attained.

It would seem, however, that Boniface rarely had occasion to enter into arguments of this sort, but was obliged to rely on others of a more palpable kind. He found that an oak near Geismar, sacred to the thunder-god Donar, was held in great reverence by the Hessians, and that the impression which his words made on the people was checked by their attachment to this object of ancestral veneration. He therefore, at the suggestion of some converts, resolved to cut down the tree. A multitude of pagans assembled and stood around, uttering fierce curses, and expecting the vengeance of the gods to show itself on the missionary and his companions. But when Boniface had hardly begun his operations, a violent gust of wind shook the branches, and the oak fell to the ground, broken into four equal pieces. The pagans at once renounced their gods, and with the wood of the tree Boniface built a chapel in honour of St. Peter.

After this triumph the success of his preaching was rapid. He founded churches and monasteries, and was reinforced by many monks and nuns from his own country, who assisted him in the labours of conversion and Christian education. Gregory III, soon after being raised to the popedom, in 732, conferred on him the pall of an archbishop; and when in 738 Boniface paid a third visit to Rome, he was received with the honour due to a missionary who had by that time baptized a hundred thousand converts. On his return northwards, he was induced by Odilo, duke of Bavaria, to remain for a time in that country, where he had already laboured about three years before. He found there a general profession of Christianity; but there was only one bishop, Vivilus by name; there was no system of ecclesiastical government; and, as in other parts of Germany, he had to contend with the rivalry of the irregular missionaries from Ireland. Boniface divided the country into four dioceses—Salzburg, Passau (which was assigned to Vivilus), Ratisbon, and Freising; and, having thus organized the Bavarian church, he returned to the more especial scene of his labours.

The name of Charles Martel is memorable in the history of the church and of the world for having turned back the course of Mahometan conquest. The Saracens of Spain had overrun the south of France, had made their way as far as the Loire, and were marching against Tours, with the intention of plundering the treasures which the devotion of centuries had accumulated around the shrine of St. Martin, when they were met by Charles, at the head of an army collected from many races—Franks, Germans, Gauls, men of the north, and others. His victory near Poitiers (although the slaughter has been greatly exaggerated by legendary writers) put a stop for ever to the progress of their arms towards the north; and while they were further weakened by internal dissensions, Charles, following up his advantage, succeeded in driving them back beyond the Pyrenees. But the vast benefit which he thus conferred on Christendom was purchased at a cost which for the time pressed heavily on the church of France. In order to meet the exigencies of the war, he seized the treasures of churches, and rewarded the chiefs who followed him with the temporalities of bishoprics and abbeys; so that, notwithstanding his great services to the Christian cause, his memory is branded by the French ecclesiastical writers as that of a profane and sacrilegious prince, and a synod held at Quiercy, in the year 858, assured one of his descendants that for this sin Eucherius, bishop of Orleans, had seen him tormented “in the lower hell”.

Boniface, although he found the name of the Frankish mayor a powerful assistance in his labours beyond the Rhine, was thwarted at the Frankish court by the nobles who had got possession of ecclesiastical revenues, and by the rude, secular, fighting and hunting bishops, who were most congenial to the character of Charles. In a letter to Daniel of Winchester, he complains of being obliged to have intercourse with such persons. The bishop in reply wisely advises him, on scriptural authority, to keep himself pure, and to bear with such faults in others as it may not be in his power to amend.

Both Gregory III and Charles Martel died in 741. The new pope, Zacharias, extended Boniface’s power by authorizing him to reform the whole Frankish church. The sons of Charles were glad to avail themselves of the assistance of Rome in a work of which they felt the necessity; and from Carloman, who had succeeded to the mayoralty of Austrasia, while Pipin held that of Neustria, Boniface received an amount of support which he had hitherto in vain endeavoured to obtain. He now erected four bishoprics for Hesse and Thuringia; and in 742, at the request of Carloman (as he says), was held a council for the reformation of the church—the first Austrasian council which had met for eighty years. This council was for some years followed by others, collected from one or from both divisions of the Frankish territory. They were not, however, composed of ecclesiastics only, but were mixed assemblies of the national estates; and, while Boniface was acknowledged in his high office as the pope's commissioner, the decrees were set forth by the Frankish princes in their own name, and appointments which had been already made by the papal authority were again made, afresh and independently, by the secular power. Even the jurisdiction of Boniface over other bishops was thus granted anew to him. The canons of these assemblies were directed towards the establishment of order in the church, by providing for annual synods, by forbidding ecclesiastics to hunt, to hawk, to serve in war; by the enforcement of celibacy on the clergy; by subjecting the clergy to the bishops and discountenancing such as were under no regular discipline. An attempt was made to recover to their proper uses the ecclesiastical revenues which had been alienated by Charles Martel. The first council ordered their restoration, but this was not to be so easily effected. The council of the following year was reduced to attempt a compromise, by allowing that, in consideration of the wars and of other circumstances, the property should for a time be retained by the lay holders, but that for each casata a solidus should be paid to the ecclesiastical owners. But in the later councils the subject does not appear, and it would seem that the attempt was given up as hopeless. The councils also made enactments for the suppression of heathen practices, such as divination, the use of amulets, need-fire (i.e. the production of fire by the friction of wood and tow), and the offering of sacrifices, whether to the old pagan deities, or to the saints who with some converts had taken their place—practices of which some, with a remarkable tenacity, have kept their hold on the northern nations even to our own day.

In 742 Boniface laid the foundation of the great abbey of Fulda, through the agency of Sturmi, a noble Bavarian, whom he had trained up in his seminary at Fritzlar. The original intention was unconnected with educational or missionary plans—to provide a place for ascetic retirement. Sturmi and his companions were charged to seek out a remote and lonely position in the Buchonian forest, between the four nations to which their master had preached; and when they had chosen a suitable spot, on the banks of the river Fulda, they had to clear it by cutting down trees, which furnished them with materials for a little chapel. Sturmi was afterwards sent to Monte Cassino and other Italian monasteries, in order that he might become acquainted with the best monastic systems, and the rule established at Fulda was more rigid than that of St. Benedict. The monks were never to eat flesh; their strongest drink was to be a thin beer, although wine was afterwards allowed for the sick. They were to have no serfs, but were to subsist by the labour of their own hands. The new foundation soon became important, and was extended to purposes beyond those which Boniface had had in view. Princes and nobles enriched it with gifts of land, and both from the Frankish kings and from the popes it enjoyed special privileges; although grave doubts have been cast on the documents by which some of these are said to have been conferred, and especially on the grant by which Zacharias is represented as exempting it from all jurisdiction save that of the apostolic see.

Boniface continued to meet with difficulties. His scheme of a regular organization, by which bishops were to be subject to metropolitans, and these to the successor of St. Peter, did not find favour with the Frankish prelates. Of three on whom the pope intended to confer the pall, and who had been persuaded to apply for it, two afterwards refused it, probably in consequence of having further considered the obligations to Rome which it involved. And he still had to encounter the opposition of irregular or heretical teachers, whom he describes as far more numerous than those of the catholic communion, and as stained in many cases with the most infamous vices.

Of these opponents the most noted were Adelbert and Clement. Adelbert was of Gaulish descent, and had obtained uncanonical consecration as a bishop from some ignorant members of the order. He is described as affecting extraordinary sanctity, and the accounts of him lead us to suppose him a person of fanatical character. He relied much on a letter which was written in the name of the Saviour and was said to have been sent down from heaven. He said that an angel had brought him some relics of surpassing sanctity from the ends of the earth. In opposition to the regular bishops and clergy, he held meetings in fields and at wells; and in such places he set up crosses and built little oratories. He opposed the practice of pilgrimage to Rome. He prayed to angels of names before unknown, such as Tubuel, Sabuoc, and Simiel. He is said to have disparaged the saints and martyrs, refusing to dedicate churches in their honour, while, with a self-importance which, however inconsistent, is certainly not without parallels, he dedicated them in his own name instead. A life of him, filled with tales of visions and miracles, was circulated; and—whether from vanity or in order to ridicule the relics which Boniface had brought from Rome—he distributed the parings of his own nails and hair among his admirers. These, it is said, spoke of his merits as something on which they might rely for aid ; and, when they prostrated themselves at his feet, for the purpose of confessing their sins, he told them that it was needless—that he knew all things and had forgiven ail their misdeeds, so that they might go home in peace, with the assurance of pardon.

While Adelbert gathered his sect in Austrasia, Clement was preaching in the German territory. Of this person, who was a Scot from Ireland, we are told that he set at nought all canons and all ecclesiastical authority; that he despised the writings of the most esteemed fathers, such as Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory; that he had two sons born in “adultery” (i.e. in wedlock), and yet considered himself to be a true Christian bishop; that hejudaically held marriage with a brother’s widow to be lawful; that he believed our Lord’s descent into hell to have delivered the souls of unbelievers as well as believers; and that on the subject of predestination he held horrible opinions contrary to the catholic faith.

Boniface brought the case of Adelbert before a Neustrian council at Soissons in 744, and obtained a condemnation of the heretic, with an order that the crosses which he had erected should be burnt. But in the following year Adelbert as well as Clement appear to have been in full activity. Boniface procured a censure of both from another council, and reported the matter for investigation to pope Zacharias, whom he requested to obtain from Carloman an order that they should be imprisoned and debarred from communication with all faithful Christians. In consequence of this application, the documents of the case were examined by a Roman synod, which sentenced Adelbert to be deposed, put to penance, and, in case of obstinacy, anathematized with all his followers; while Clement was to be forthwith subjected to deposition and anathema. Two years later, however, the two again appear; it would seem that, besides enjoying a great amount of veneration with the common people, who had persecuted Boniface for his proceedings against Adelbert, they even had some influence over Carloman himself; and it was probably in consequence of this that Zacharias now advised a course of dealing with them which is hardly consistent with the decided condemnation before passed on them. The further history of Clement is utterly unknown; as to Adelbert it is stated by a writer of questionable authority that he was imprisoned at Fulda, and made his escape from the abbey, but was murdered by some swineherds whom he met with in his flight.

Another person with whom Boniface came into collision was an Irish ecclesiastic named Virgil. Virgil, when ordered by him to rebaptize some persons at whose baptism the words of administration had been mutilated by an ignorant priest, appealed to Rome against the order, and Zacharias pronounced that the sacrament was valid, inasmuch as the mistake did not proceed from heresy, but only from grammatical ignorance. Some time after this, Virgil was nominated to the see of Salzburg, when Boniface objected to him that he held the existence of another world below ours, with a sun, a moon, and inhabitants of its own. Zacharias condemned the opinion, and summoned Virgil to Rome, but it would seem that he was able to clear his orthodoxy, as he was allowed to take possession of Salzburg, and eventually attained the honour of canonization.

The German church had now advanced beyond that stage in which its primate might fitly be a missionary, without any determinate see. Boniface wished to fix himself at Cologne—probably with a view to Frisia, which, since the death of Willibrord, in 739, he had regarded as included within his legatine care; and to this he obtained the consent of the Frankish chiefs, and the sanction of Pope Zacharias. But before the arrangement could be carried into effect, events occurred which caused it to be set aside. In 744, the same year in which Cologne became vacant by the death of Raginfrid, Ceroid, bishop of Mentz (Mayence), was slain in a warlike expedition against the Saxons, and his son Gewillieb, who until then had been a layman of Carloman’s court, was consecrated to the see. In the following year the new bishop accompanied the mayor of the palace to war, with a resolution to avenge his father's death; he discovered the Saxon by whose hand it had been caused, and, while the Frankish and the Saxon armies were encamped on opposite banks of the Weser, invited him to a conference in the midst of the stream. The two rode into the water, and at their meeting, the bishop stabbed the Saxon—an act which was the signal for a battle, in which the Franks were victorious. Gewillieb returned to his see as if he had done nothing inconsistent with his episcopal character; nor does it appear that any disapprobation of it was felt by Carloman or his nobles. But Boniface, after having so lately exerted himself to procure the enactment of canons against clerical warriors, now felt himself bound to enforce them, and submitted the case of Gewillieb to a council, which declared the bishop guilty of blood. Gewillieb yielded, resigned his see, and spent the remainder of his life in the enjoyment of some lesser benefices; and Boniface was unwillingly obliged by the Frankish nobles to accept the bishopric thus vacated as the seat of his metropolitan jurisdiction, instead of that which he had himself chosen. The pope acquiesced in the change, and subjected to him, as archbishop of Mayence, the dioceses of Worms Spires, Tongres, Cologne, and Utrecht, with all the nations of Germany which had received the gospel through his labours.

In 747 Carloman resigned his power, and became a monk on Mount Soracte, from which, on finding himself disquieted by the visits of his countrymen, he afterwards withdrew to Monte Cassino. This change, by which the whole power of the Frankish kingdom was thrown into the hands of Pipin, would seem to have operated to the disadvantage of Boniface. It has been very generally believed that he officiated at the coronation of Pipin at Soissons, when the mayor of the palace at length assumed the name of king (A.D. 752); but the evidence of this is open to some doubt, and it has even been argued that, instead of promoting, he opposed the revolution which transferred the crown from the descendants of Clovis to another dynasty. The duties of his office began to weigh heavily on him. He had still to struggle against much opposition on the part of bishops and clergy, while his labours were greatly disturbed by the frequent incursions of pagans, by whom he reported to Pope Stephen in 752 that thirty churches in his diocese had been burnt or demolished. He had, with some difficulty, obtained permission from Rome to nominate a successor to the see of Mayence when he should feel the approach of death, and, with Pipin’s consent, he now raised to it his countryman and disciple Lull, who, however, had a much more limited authority than Boniface, and did not receive the pall until twenty years later.

It had been Boniface’s intention to spend his last days in his monastery of Fulda, but he felt himself once more attracted to Frisia, the scene of his early labours. He again set forth as a missionary bishop, descended the Rhine, and, having consecrated Eoban to the see of Utrecht, laboured with his assistance among the Frisian tribes. Many thousands were baptized, and Boniface had appointed the eve of Whitsunday for the meeting of a large number of converts at a place near Dockum, in order that he might bestow on them the rite of confirmation. But instead of the neophytes whom he expected, an armed band of pagans appeared and surrounded his tent. The younger members of his party were seizing weapons for defence, but he exhorted them to give up the thoughts of preserving the life of this world, and to submit to death in the hope of a better life. The pagans massacred the whole company —fifty-two in number. They carried off from the tent some chests which they supposed to be full of treasure, but which in reality contained books and relics; and it is said that, having drunk up a quantity of wine which they found, they were excited to quarrel about the division of the fancied spoil, and avenged the martyrs by almost exterminating each other. Eoban had shared the fate of Boniface, but their missionary labours were continued by Gregory, abbot of Utrecht, another disciple of the great missionary, and before the end of the century, the conversion of the Frisians was completed by Lebuin, Liudger, and others.

The body of Boniface was conveyed up the Rhine to Mayence, and thence, in compliance with a wish which he had often expressed, was carried to the abbey of Fulda; and, although no miracles are related of him during his lifetime (unless the destruction of the oak of Geismar be reckoned as an exception), it is said that his remains were distinguished by profuse displays of miraculous power, both on the way to their resting-place and after they had been deposited there. His name for ages drew pilgrims and wealth to Fulda, and he was revered as the apostle of Germany—a title which he deserved, not as having been the first preacher of the gospel in the countries where he laboured, but as the chief agent in the establishment of Christianity among the Germans, as the organizer of the German church. The church of Saxon England, from which he proceeded, was immediately, and in a more particular manner than any other, a daughter of the Roman. Teutonic by language and kindred, Latin by principles and affection, it was peculiarly fitted to act in the conversion of the German nations and to impress its converts with a Roman character. And this was especially the work of Boniface. He went forth to his labours with the pope’s commission. On his consecration to the episcopate, after his first successes, he bound himself by oath to reduce all whom he might influence to the obedience of St. Peter and his representatives. The increased powers and the wider jurisdiction bestowed on him by later popes were employed to the same end. He strove continually, not only to bring heathens into the church, but to check irregular missionary operations, and to subject both preachers and converts to the authority of Rome. Through his agency the alliance naturally prompted by the mutual interest of the papacy and the Frankish princes was effected. And, whether he shared or not in the final step by which the papal sanction was used to consecrate the transference of the crown from the Merovingian to the Carolingian line, his exertions had undoubtedly paved the way for it. To him belongs in no small measure the authorship of that connexion with the northern rulers which encouraged the popes to disown the sovereignty of Constantinople; and, on the other hand, to him is to be traced the character of the German church in its submission to Rome from the time of the first council held under Carloman in 742.

But these facts afford no warrant for the charges brought against Boniface by writers of the last century. One who, after having passed his seventieth year, resigned the primacy of the Frankish church to set out as a simple missionary to the barbarous Frisians, with an expectation (as it would seem) of the violent death which he found, may safely be acquitted not only of personal ambition, but of having been a missionary of the papacy rather than of Christianity. His labours for the papacy were really performed because, trained as he had been under the influences communicated to his native church by Theodore and Wilfrid, he believed the authority of Rome to be the true means of spreading Christianity among the heathen, and of reviving it from decay in countries where it was already established. It may have been that in his zeal for unity he made too little allowance for the peculiar tempers and positions of men, or that he was sometimes guilty of injustice towards his opponents; nor can it be pretended that his opinions were in advance of the age in which he lived, whereas ingenious conjecture may ascribe to the sectaries Adelbert and Clement all the spiritual enlightenment of modern Heidelberg or Berlin. But let it be considered how little such men, however highly they may be estimated, could have effected in the circumstances with which Boniface had to deal; how powerless such teaching, the offspring of their personal discoveries or fancies, must have been for the great work of suppressing heathenism; how distracting to the heathen must have been the spectacle of rival and discordant types of Christianity; how necessary the operation of one uniform and organized system must have reasonably appeared to Boniface, whether for the extension of the gospel or for the reform of the church, for an effective opposition to the rudeness, the violence, the lawless passions with which he had on all sides to contend. That Boniface ever used force as an instrument of conversion there is no evidence whatever; his earnestness in the promotion of education proves how thoroughly he desired that understanding should accompany the profession of belief. And that the knowledge which he wished to spread by his educational instructions was to be drawn from the Scriptures, of which he was himself a diligent student, appears from the eagerness with which he endeavoured to obtain as many copies as possible of the sacred books for the instruction of his converts. His letters and other writings give us the impression, not only of a great missionary, but of a man abounding in human feelings and affections.

Strenuous as Boniface was in the cause of the papacy, his conception of it was far short of that which afterwards prevailed. He regarded the pope as the supreme ecclesiastical judge, the chief conservator of the canons, the highest member of a graduated hierarchy, superior to metropolitans, as metropolitans were to ordinary bishops, but yet not as belonging to a different order from other bishops, or as if their episcopacy were derived from him and were a function of his. Much has been said of the strange questions on which he sometimes requests the pope’s advice—as to the lawfulness of eating horseflesh, magpies, and storks; as to the time when bacon may be eaten without cooking, and the like. Such questions have been regarded as proofs of a wretched scrupulousness in themselves, and the reference of them to Rome has been branded as disgraceful servility. But—(besides that we are not in a condition to judge of the matter without a fuller knowledge of the circumstances)—it is easy to discover some grounds of justification against these charges. Thus the horse was a favourite victim of the gods among the northern nations, so that the eating of horseflesh was connected with the practice of heathen sacrifice. And the real explanation of such questions would seem to be, not that Boniface felt himself unable to answer them, or needed any direction from the pope, but that he was desirous to fortify himself with the aid of the highest authority in the church for his struggle against those remnants of barbaric manners which tended to keep up among his converts the remembrance of their ancient idolatry.

If Boniface’s zeal for Rome was strong, his concern for religion and morality was yet stronger. He remonstrated very boldly against some regulations as to marriage which were said to have the authority of Rome, but which to him appeared to him immoral; he denied that any power on earth could legalize them. He remonstrated also against the Roman view which regarded “spiritual affinity”—i.e., the connection formed by sponsorship at baptism—as a bar to marriage. He strongly represented to Zacharias the scandal of the heathenish rejoicings and banqueting which were allowed at Rome at the beginning of the year, and the manner in which persons who had visited Rome referred to these as a warrant for their own irregularities. He protested against the simoniacal appearance of the charges exacted for palls by the papal officials, whether with or without their master’s knowledge. And, as a counterpoise to all that is said of Boniface’s deference to popes, we must in fairness observe (although his assailants have not adverted to it) the tone of high consideration in which Zacharias answers him, and the earnestness with which the pope endeavours to vindicate himself from the suspicion of countenancing abuses—a remarkable testimony to the estimation in which the apostle of Germany was held. Nay, if an anonymous biographer may be believed, Boniface, towards the end of his life, protested against Stephen II for having, during his visit to France, consecrated a bishop of Metz—an act which the archbishop regarded as an invasion of the metropolitical privileges of Treves; and Pipin’s mediation was required to heal the difference between the pope and him whom many writers have represented as the abject slave of Rome.

The spirit of unfair disparagement, however, has now passed away; and both the church from which Boniface went forth and the nations among which he ministered may well combine to do honour to his memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VI

 

PIPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE.  A.D. 741-814.

 

 

The alienation which the iconoclastic controversy tended to produce between the Byzantine emperors and the bishops of Rome was increased by other circumstances. The nearest and most dreaded neighbours of the popes were the Lombards. The hatred with which the Romans had originally regarded these on account of their Arianism had survived their conversion to orthodox Christianity, and had been exasperated by political hostility. During the iconoclastic troubles, the Lombards, under Liutprand, appear by turns to have threatened the popes and to have affected to extend alliance and protection to them, with a view of using them as instruments for weakening the imperial influence in Italy. When that influence seemed to be irreparably injured by the course which events had taken, the Lombards overran the exarchate, and advanced to the walls of the pope's own city. In this extremity, Gregory III, after a vain attempt to obtain aid from Constantinople, resolved to call in new allies from beyond the Alps—the nation of the Franks, who had been catholic from the beginning of their Christianity, with whom he had lately formed a closer connexion by means of Boniface, and whose virtual sovereign, Charles Mattel, was marked out by his triumph over the Mahometan invaders of his country as the leader and champion of western Christendom. As, however, it was natural to suppose that the Frankish mayor would prefer the prosecution of his victories on the side of Spain to engaging himself in new quarrels elsewhere, the pope strengthened his petition for aid by the most persuasive gifts and proposals; he sent to Charles the keys of St. Peter’s tomb, with some filings of the apostle's chains; it is said that he offered to bestow on him the title of consul or patrician of Rome, and even to transfer the allegiance of the Romans from the empire to the Frankish crown. A second and a third application followed soon after. The pope’s tone in these is extremely piteous ; but he endeavours to excite Charles against the Lombards by motives of jealousy as well as of piety.

Not only, he says, have they laid waste the estates of St. Peter, which had been devoted to the purposes of charity and religion, but they have plundered the apostle’s church of the lights bestowed on it by the Frankish viceroy's ancestors and by himself; nay, Liutprand and his son Hildebrand are continually mocking at the idea of relief from the Franks, and defying Charles with his forces. It would seem that the letters were favourably received; but they produced no result, as the deaths of both Gregory and Charles followed within the same year.

In the room of Gregory, Zacharias, a Greek by birth, was chosen by the Romans, and was established in the papacy, without the confirmation either of the emperor or of the exarch—the first instance, it is said, of such an omission since the reign of Odoacer. By repeated personal applications to Liutprand, the pope obtained the forbearance of the Lombards and recovered some towns which they had seized. His relations with the empire are obscure; the state of affairs was indeed so unsettled that these relations were full of anomaly and inconsistency. But under his pontificate took place an event which produced an important change in the position of the papacy towards the Franks, and consequently in its position towards the empire. Pipin, whose accession, first to a portion of his father's power, and afterwards to the remainder, on the resignation of his brother Carloman, has already been mentioned, now thought that the time was come for putting an end to the pageant royalty of the Merovingians. A confidential ecclesiastic, Fulrad, abbot of St. Denys and archchaplain of the court, was sent to Rome, with instructions to ask, in the name of the Frankish nation, whether the holders of power or the nominal sovereigns ought to reign. The answer of Zacharias was favourable to the wishes of those who proposed the question; and at the national assembly of Soissons, in the year 752, Pipin was raised aloft on a buckler, amid the acclamations of his people, and was crowned as king of the Franks, while the last of the long-haired Merovingians, Childeric III, was tonsured and shut up in the monastery of Sithiu.

The amount of the pope’s share in this revolution, and the morality of his proceedings, have been the subjects of much controversy. Einhard, in the earlier part of the following century, speaks of the deposition as effected by the “command”, and of the coronation as performed by the “authority”, of the Roman pontiff : but (besides that this writer may have misapprehended the real course of the affair) a comparison of other passages will show that the meaning of his words is less strong than might at first sight appear, and is reconcilable with the facts which are otherwise ascertained. The matter really came before Zacharias in the form of a question from the Frankish estates; his answer was an opinion, not a command; and the sovereignty was bestowed on Pipin, not by the pope, but by the choice of his own countrymen, although the pope's opinion was valuable to him, as assisting him to supplant the nominal king, and yet throwing over the change an appearance of religious sanction which might guard it from becoming a precedent for future breaches of fealty towards Pipin’s own dynasty. The view afterwards maintained by Gregory VII and his school—that the successor of St. Peter exercised on this occasion a right inherent in his office, of deposing sovereigns at will—is altogether foreign to the ideas of the time, and inconsistent with the circumstances of the case.

It is evident that the pope’s answer was prompted rather by a consideration for his own interest in securing the alliance of Pipin than by any regard for strict moral or religious principle. Yet we should do Zacharias injustice by visiting it with all the reprobation which modern ideas of settled and legitimate inheritance might suggest. The question proposed to him was one which must have seemed very plausible in times when might went far to constitute right, and when revolutions were familiar in every state. The Frankish monarchy had been elective at first, and had never been bound down to the rule of strictly hereditary succession. It was held that any member of the royal house might be chosen king; thus Clotaire IV had been set up by Charles Martel in 717, and the deposed Childeric himself was a Merovingian of unknown parentage, whom Pipin and Carloman had found it convenient to establish in 742, after the nominal sovereignty had been five years vacant. It was also held among the Franks that kings might be set aside on the ground of incapacity. The only principle, therefore, which was violated in the transference of the crown was that which limited the choice of a sovereign to the Merovingian family; and, in order to cover this irregularity in the eyes of the nation, it was afterwards pretended that Pipin was himself a Merovingian. Moreover, by whatever means the change of dynasty may have been vindicated or disguised, it does not appear to have shocked the general moral feeling of the age; and this, although it will not suffice to justify Zacharias, must be allowed in some measure to excuse him.

Zacharias died in March 752, a little before or after the consummation of the act which he had sanctioned. Stephen, who was chosen in his room, did not live to be consecrated, and is therefore by most writers not reckoned in the list of popes, so that his successor, another Stephen, is sometimes styled the second, and sometimes the third, of that name. Aistulf was now king of the Lombards, and renewed the aggressions of his predecessors on Rome. Stephen, by means of splendid presents, obtained from him a promise of peace for forty years; but the treaty was almost immediately broken by Aistulf, who seized Ravenna and required the Romans to own him as their lord. The pope, in his distress, sent envoys to beg for aid from the emperor, and in the meantime he affixed the violated treaty to the cross, and occupied himself in imploring the help of God by solemn prayers and penitential processions. But the mission to Constantinople proved fruitless; and when Stephen, relying on the success of his predecessor Zacharias in similar attempts, repaired to Pavia, in the hope of moving Aistulf by personal entreaties,—although he met with respectful treatment, he was unable to obtain any promise of forbearance. His only remaining hope was in Pipin, with whom he had opened a secret negotiation. He therefore resolved to proceed into France, and, as Aistulf endeavoured to dissuade him, the fear lest the Lombard should detain him by force added speed to his journey across the Alps. On hearing of the pope's approach, Pipin sent his son Charles—the future Charlemagne—to act as escort; and he himself, with his queen, the younger princes, and the nobles of his court, went forth a league from the palace of Pontyon-le-Perche to meet him. Stephen and his clergy appeared in sackcloth and ashes, and, throwing themselves at the king's feet, humbly implored his assistance against the Lombards. Pipin received the suppliants with marks of extraordinary honour; he prostrated himself in turn before the pope, and, holding the rein of his horse, walked by his side as he rode.

Stephen’s stay in France was prolonged by illness, which compelled him to remain until the summer at St. Denys. During this time an unexpected opponent of his suit appeared in the person of the abdicated Carloman, who, at the instigation of Aistulf, had been compelled by the abbot of Monte Cassino to leave his monastic retreat for the purpose of urging his brother to refuse the desired assistance. But Stephen exerted his pontifical authority over the monk, and Carloman was shut up in a monastery July 28, at Vienne, where he died soon after. A second coronation, in which Pipin’s sons were included, was performed at St. Denys by the pope’s own hands; and in the hope of securing the new dynasty against a repetition of the movements by which its own royalty had been won, the Frankish nation was charged, under pain of excommunication, never to choose any other king than a descendant of him whom God and the vicar of the apostles had been pleased to exalt to the throne. Pipin was also invested with the dignity of patrician of Rome.

In the same year Pipin, although some of the Frankish chiefs opposed the expedition, and even threatened to desert him, led an army into Italy, and compelled Aistulf to swear that he would restore to St. Peter the towns which he had seized. But no sooner had the northern forces recrossed the Alps than the Lombard refused to fulfil his engagements, invaded the Roman territory, wasted the country up to the very walls of Rome, and laid siege to the city itself. As the way by land was blocked up, the pope sent off by sea a letter entreating his Frankish ally once more to assist him. Another and a more urgent entreaty followed; and finally the pope despatched at once three letters, of which one was written in the name of St. Peter himself—an expedient which may perhaps have been suggested or encouraged by the impression as to the character of the Franks which he had derived from his late sojourn among them. In this strange document the apostle is represented as joining the authority of the blessed Virgin with his own; supplication, threats, flattery are mingled; and, in consideration of the aid which is asked for the defence of the papal temporalities, assurances are given not only of long life and victory, but of salvation and heavenly glory—apparently without any reserve or condition of a moral kind. Whether induced by these promises or by other motives, Pipin speedily returned to Italy, besieged Aistulf in Pavia, and forced him as a condition of peace to make a large cession of cities and territory, which were transferred to the Roman see, and for the first time gave the pope the position of a temporal prince. Some Byzantine envoys, who were present at the conclusion of the treaty, urged that the exarchate should be restored to their master, to whom it had belonged before it was seized by the Lombards; but Pipin replied that he had conquered for St. Peter, and could not dispose otherwise of that which he had offered to the apostle. Yet it does not appear that the gift was one of independent sovereignty; for the territories bestowed on the pope were held under the Frankish crown, and, on the other side, the anomalies of the relation between the popes and the empire became now more complex than ever. While Pipin was patrician of Rome by the pope's assumption of a right to confer the title—while the pope received from the Frankish king lands which the emperor claimed as his own—while Rome continued to be virtually separated from the empire by the consequences of the iconoclastic controversy—the popes were still regarded as subjects of the emperors, and dated by the years of their reign.

In 757 Stephen II was succeeded by his own brother  Paul, who held the pontificate ten years. While Paul was on his death-bed, Toto, duke of Nepi, made his way into Rome, at the head of an armed multitude, forced some bishops hastily to ordain his brother Constantine through all the grades of the ministry, and put him into possession of the papal chair. The intruder had occupied it for thirteen months, when he was ejected by an opposite party, and Stephen III (or IV) was established in his stead. Constantine’s partisans were subjected to the barbarous punishments usual in that age—such as the loss of the eyes or of the tongue; he himself, after having been thrust into a monastery by one faction of his enemies, was dragged out of it by another, was blinded, and in that condition was left in the public street.

A council was held under the sanction of Charles and Carloman, who had just succeeded their father Pipin in the sovereignty of the Franks and in the patriciate of Rome. Constantine was brought before this assembly, and was asked why he had presumed, being a layman, to invade the apostolic see. He declared that he had been forced into the office against his will; he threw himself on the floor, stretched out his hands, and with a profusion of tears entreated forgiveness for his misdeeds. On the following day he was again brought before the council, and was questioned about the “impious novelty” of his proceedings with a strictness which drove him to turn upon his judges by answering that it was not a novelty, and naming the archbishop of Ravenna and the bishop of Naples as having been advanced at once from a lay condition to the episcopate. At this reply the members of the council started from their seats in fury. They fell on the blind man, beat him violently, and thrust him out of the church in which their sessions were held. They then proceeded to annul the ordinations and other official acts which he had performed as pope, burnt the records of his pontificate, and denounced anathemas against any one who should aspire to the papacy without having regularly passed through the grade of cardinal priest or cardinal deacon. The new pope Stephen, with all the clergy and a multitude of the Roman laity, prostrated themselves, and with tears professed contrition for having received the Eucharist at the usurper’s hands; and a suitable penance was imposed on them.

It was the interest of the popes to prevent the formation of any connexion between their Frankish allies and the hated Lombards. Stephen, therefore, was beyond measure disquieted when intelligence reached him, in 770, that Desiderius, the successor of Aistulf, had projected the union of his family with that of Pipin by a double tie—that he had offered his daughter in marriage either to Charles or to Carloman, and that their sister was engaged to Adelgis, son of the Lombard king. The pope forthwith addressed an extraordinary letter to the Frankish princes. As they were both already married, he tells them that it would be sin to divorce their wives for the sake of any new alliance. But moral or religious objections hold a very subordinate place in the remonstrance, while the pope exhausts himself in heaping up expressions of detestation against the Lombards, and in protesting against the pollution of the royal Frankish blood by any admixture with that “perfidious and most unsavoury” nation—a nation from which the race of lepers was known to originated The epistle concludes with denunciations of eternal fire, and the pope states that, in order to give it all possible solemnity, it was laid on St. Peter's tomb, and the Eucharistic sacrifice was offered on it.

Charles, unmoved by this appeal, repudiated his wife and espoused the Lombard princess; but within a year—for what reason is unknown, but certainly not out of any regard to Stephen's expostulation—she was sent back to her father's court, and Hildegard, a lady of Swabian family, took her place as the consort of Charles.

In his relations with Stephen, Desiderius was studious to maintain a specious appearance of friendship, while he resisted or eluded all applications for the restoration of what were styled “the rights of St. Peter”. On the election of Adrian as Stephen’s successor, the Lombard king made overtures to him, and promised to satisfy all his demands, if the pope would visit him at Pavia; but the invitation was refused. Desiderius avenged himself by ravaging the borders of the papal territory, and Adrian invoked the aid of Charles. Carloman had died in 771, and Charles, without any regard to the rights of his brother’s family, had united the whole of the Frankish dominions under his own rule. Desiderius, stimulated perhaps rather by his own daughter’s wrongs than by a disinterested regard for justice, had espoused the cause of the disinherited princes, and had requested the pope to crown them, but Adrian, from unwillingness to embroil himself with Charles, and consequently to place himself at the mercy of the Lombards, had refused. Charles now readily listened to the petition of his ally. He asked Desiderius to give up the disputed territory, and offered him a large sum of money as compensation, while the pope sent repeated embassies to the Lombard king, and at last proposed to pay him the desired visit, on condition that Desiderius should first perform his part of the agreement by restoring the rights of St. Peter.

Desiderius, supposing that Charles must be fully occupied by his war with the Saxons, attempted to satisfy him with evasive answers, and even assured him that the papal territory had already been restored; but his representations had no effect on Charles, who in 773 invaded Italy, besieged him in Pavia, and overthrew the Lombard dominion. Desiderius was compelled to become a monk at Liege. His son Adelgis escaped to Constantinople, where, although the honour of the patriciate was conferred on him, Charles was able to prevent him from obtaining any effective aid for the recovery of his inheritance. Twelve years later, by a convention with the Lombard duke of Benevento, Charles became lord of the remaining part of Italy.

During the siege of Pavia in 774, Charles paid his first visit to Rome, where he arrived on Easter-eve. The magistrates were sent by the pope to meet him at the distance of thirty miles from the city. A mile outside the walls the soldiery appeared, with all the children of the schools, who bore branches of palm and olive, and hailed him with hymns of welcome. In honour of his patrician dignity, the sacred crosses were carried forth as for the reception of an exarch, and Charles, dismounting from his horse at the sight of them, proceeded on foot towards St. Peter's, where the pope and all his clergy were assembled on the steps and in the principal portico of the church. The king, as he ascended, kissed each step; on reaching the landing-place he embraced the pope, and taking him by the right hand, entered the building, while the clergy and monks loudly chanted Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord". He kept the festival season with a great appearance of devotion; he enlarged the donation which Pipin had made to the church, confirmed it by an oath, and solemnly laid the deed of gift on the apostle’s tomb. The actual extent of his donation is, however, uncertain. It is said to have included not only the exarchate of Ravenna, but the dukedoms of Spoleto and Benevento, Venetia, Istria, and other territories in the north of Italy—in short, almost the whole peninsula—together with the island of Corsica; yet some of these had not as yet been acquired by the Franks, and in the event the papal rule seems to have been really limited to the exarchate, which was itself held not in absolute sovereignty, but in dependence on the Frankish monarchs. It would appear, therefore (if the report of the donation may be trusted), that Charles, in his gratitude for the opportunity of interfering in the affairs of Italy, professed to bestow on the pope spoils which had not at the time been fully won, and that he was afterwards indisposed to carry his promises into effect. The king visited Rome again in 781, and a third time in 787; and on each occasion the church was enriched by gifts, bestowed, as he professed in the language of the age, "for the ransom of his soul." His connection with Adrian was cemented not only by interest, but by personal regard, and on hearing of the pope's death, he is said to have wept for hi in as for a brother.

In 795 Adrian was succeeded by Leo III. The political condition of Rome for many years before this time is very obscure. According to some writers, it had been a republic, under the popes, from the date of Pipin’s donation (A.D. 755); but against this view it has been urged that the letter of Adrian to the emperor Constantine and his mother, on occasion of the second council of Nicaea, proves that even so late as 785 the imperial sovereignty continued to be in some degree acknowledged. Although, however, the Byzantine rulers were now in agreement with Rome on the question of images, the older differences as to that question had produced a lasting estrangement; so that Leo, in announcing his election to Charlemagne, sent him the banner of Rome with the keys of St. Peter’s tomb, and begged him to send commissioners for the purpose of administering to the citizens an oath of allegiance to the Frankish crown. Whether we regard this as an illustration of the relations which already existed between Rome and the Franks, or as a voluntary act, by which the pope, for the sake of gaining a powerful protector, placed himself and his people in a new relation of dependence— it proves both that the connection with the eastern empire was severed, and that, if Rome had for a time been independent, it was no longer so.

The promotion of Leo deeply offended some relations of Adrian who had occupied high positions in the papal government. They waited upwards of three years for an opportunity of gratifying their enmity; and at length, as the pope was conducting a procession through the streets of Rome, a party of his enemies rushed forth near the monastery of St. Sylvester on the Quirinal, dispersed his unarmed companions, threw him from his horse, and attempted to deprive him of his eyes and tongue. Whether from haste or from pity, they did their work imperfectly; but Paschal and Campulus, two of Adrian's nephews, who had been the chiefs of the conspiracy, dragged the wounded pope into the church of the monastery, threw him down before the altar, attempted to complete the operations which had been begun, and, after having beaten him cruelly with sticks, left him weltering in his blood. Notwithstanding all these outrages, Leo retained his sight and his speech; it was popularly believed that he had recovered them through the help of St. Peter. By the aid of his friends, he was enabled to escape from Rome; under the escort of the duke of Spoleto, a vassal of the Frankish king, he reached that city; and Charles, who was detained in the north by the Saxon war, on receiving a report of his sufferings, invited him to Paderborn, where he was received with great honour.

About the same time that Leo arrived at Paderborn, some envoys from Rome appeared there with serious charges against him. Charles promised to investigate these charges at Rome ; and, after having sent back the pope with a convoy of two archbishops, five bishops, and five counts, who re-established him in his see, the king himself proceeded by slow and indirect journeys towards the city, where he arrived in the end of November 800. The inquiry into Leo’s case was opened before an assembly of arch­bishops, bishops, abbots, and nobles; but no testimony was produced against the pope, and the prelates and clergy who were present declined the office of judging, on the ground of an opinion which had gradually grown up, that the successor of St. Peter was not amenable to any human (or rather perhaps to any ecclesiastical) judgment. On this Leo declared himself ready to clear his innocence by an oath; and on a later day he ascended the pulpit, and solemnly swore on the Gospels that he had neither committed nor instigated the offences which were laid to his charge. The conspirators who had been concerned in the assault on him were soon after tried, and, as they could make no defence, were condemned to death; but at the pope's request the sentence was commuted to banishment.

But between the purgation of Leo and the trial of his assailants an important event had taken place. On Christmas-day—the first day of the ninth century, according to the reckoning then observed in the west—Charles attended mass in St. Peter’s, when, as he was kneeling before the altar, the pope suddenly placed a splendid crown on his head, and the vast congregation burst forth into acclamations of “Life and victory to Charles, crowned by God emperor of Rome!”. Leo then proceeded to anoint Charles and his son Pipin, king of Italy, and led the way in doing homage to the new emperor. In conversation with his attendants, Charles professed great surprise, and even displeasure, at the coronation declaring that, if he had expected such a scene, not even the holiness of the Christmas festival should have induced him to go into the church on that day. There can, however, be little question that his elevation to the imperial dignity had been before arranged. Perhaps the idea had been suggested to him by a letter in which his confidential friend Alcuin spoke of the popedom, the empire, and the sovereignty of the Franks as the three highest dignities in the world, and pointed out how unworthily the imperial throne, the higher of the two secular monarchies, was then filled. On his way to Rome, the king had visited Alcuin at Tours; and he now received from him as a Christmas-gift a Bible corrected by the learned abbot's own hand, with a letter in which the present was said to be intended in honour of the imperial power. It may therefore be conjectured that the assumption of the empire had been settled between Charles and Leo during the pope's residence at Paderborn; or at least that Leo had there discovered the king's inclination, and that Alcuin had been for some time in the secret.

Yet we need not tax Charles with insincerity in his expressions of dissatisfaction after the coronation; rather, as dissimulation was no part of his general character, we may suppose that, while he had desired the imperial title, he was displeased at the manner in which it was conferred. He may have regarded the pope's act as premature, and as an interference with his own plans. He may have seen that it was capable of such an interpretation as was afterwards actually put upon it—as if the pope were able to bestow the empire by his own authority—a pretension altogether inconsistent with the whole spirit of Charlemagne’s policy. Perhaps it had been the king’s intention to procure his election by the Romans, and afterwards to be crowned by the pope, as the Greek emperors, after having been elected by the representatives of their subjects, were crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople; whereas he had now been surprised into receiving the empire from the pope, when the acclamations of the Romans did not precede, but followed or, the imposition of the crown by Leo. Although, however, the pope's act was capable of an interpretation agreeable to the claims of his successors in later times, such claims appear to have been unknown in the age of Charlemagne; and Leo, after having placed the crown on his brow, was the first to do homage to him as a subject of the empire.

By the coronation of Charles, Rome was finally separated from the Greek empire, and again became the acknowledged capital of the west, while the emperor was invested with the double character of head of western Christendom and representative of the ancient civilization

The Byzantine court was naturally offended by a step which appeared to invade its rights both of dignity and of sovereignty; but Charles, by a conciliatory policy, overcame the irritation : his imperial title was acknowledged by the ambassadors of Nicephorus in 812, and the Greek emperors addressed his son as emperor, although not of Rome, but of the Franks

The reign of Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, from the time of his father's death, extended to nearly half a century. His fame rests not only on his achievements as a warrior and as a conqueror, but on his legislation and administration both in civil and in ecclesiastical affairs; on his care for the advancement of learning, of commerce, of agriculture, of architecture, and the other arts of peace; on the versatility and capacity of a mind which embraced the smallest as well as the greatest details of the vast and various system of which he was the head. His wars, aggressive in their form, were essentially defensive; his purpose was to consolidate the populations which had settled in the territories of the western empire, and to secure them against the assaults of newer migrations. Carrying his arms against those from whom he had reason to apprehend an attack, he extended his dominions to the Eider and to the Ebro, over Brittany and Aquitaine, far towards the south of Italy, and eastward to the Theiss and the Save. The impression which he produced on the Greeks is shown by their proverb,“Have the Frank for thy friend, but not for thy neighbour”. His influence and authority reached from Scotland to Persia; the great caliph Haroun al Raschid exchanged presents with him, and sent him by way of compliment the keys of the holy sepulchre; and, although the empire of Charlemagne was broken up after his death, the effect of its union remained in the connexion of western Christendom by one common bond. With so much that is grand and noble, there was, indeed, in Charlemagne not a little that deserves reprobation. The seizure of his brother's dominions to the exclusion of his nephews was an injustice altogether without excuse; his policy was sometimes stern, even to cruelty; and his personal conduct was stained by an excessive dissoluteness, which continued even to his latest years, and of which the punishment was believed to have been revealed by visions after his death. But with this exception, his private character appears such as to increase the admiration which is due to his greatness as a sovereign. He was in general mild, open, and generous; his family affections were warm, and his friendships were sincere and steady.

The wars of Charlemagne against the barbarians were not religious in their origin; but religion soon became involved in them. His conquests carried the gospel in their train, and, mistaken as were some of the means which were employed for its propagation, the result was eventually good. Of his fifty-three campaigns, eighteen were against the Saxons of Germany. Between this people and the Franks war had been waged from time to time for two hundred years. Sometimes the Franks penetrated to the Weser, and imposed a tribute which was irregularly paid; sometimes the Saxons pushed their incursions as far as the Rhine; and on the borders of the territories the more uncivilized of each nation carried on a constant system of pillage and petty annoyance against their neighbours. The Saxon tribes were divided into three great associations—the Westphalians, the Angarians, and the Ostphalians; they had no king, and were accustomed to choose a leader only in the case of a national war. Their valour is admitted even by the Frankish writers; the perfidy which is described as characteristic of them may in some degree be explained and palliated by the fact that they were without any central government which could make engagements binding on the whole nation.

The war with the Saxons lasted thirty-three years—from 772 to 805. In the first campaign, Charlemagne destroyed the great national idol called the Irminsul, which stood in a mountainous and woody district near Eresburg (now Stadtberg). The Saxons retaliated in the following year by attacking the monasteries and churches planted on their frontiers, killing or driving out the monks and clergy, and laying the country waste as far as the Rhine. Sturmi, the successor of Boniface, was obliged to fly from Fulda, carrying with him the relics of his master. The Saxons associated their old idolatry with their nationality, and the gospel with the interest of the Franks.

A passage in the life of St. Lebuin has been connected with the origin of the Saxon war, but ought probably to be referred to a somewhat later date. Lebuin, an Englishman, had preached with much success and had built several churches among the Frisians about the Yssel, when an incursion of the neighbouring heathens disturbed him in his labours. On this he determined boldly to confront the enemies of Christianity in all their force, and, undeterred by the warnings of his friends, he appeared in his pontifical robes before the national assembly of the Saxons, which was held at Marklo, on the Weser. He spoke to them of the true God, he denounced their idolatry, and told them that, unless they would receive the gospel and be baptized, God had decreed their ruin by means of a powerful king, not from afar, but from their own neighbourhood, who would sweep them away like a torrent. The effect of such an address was to exasperate the Saxons violently; and it was with difficulty that some members of the assembly saved the zealous missionary from the rage of their brethren. The pagans burnt his church at Deventer, and in consequence of this outrage Charlemagne with the Franks, who were informed of it when met in council at Worms, resolved on an expedition against them.

The absence of Charlemagne on expeditions in other quarters, as in Italy or in Spain, was always a signal for a rising of the Saxons. After a time, as we are told by an annalist of his reign, he was provoked by their repeated treacheries to resolve on the conversion or extermination of the whole race. In his attempts at conversion, however, he met with difficulties which it would seem that he had not expected. Whenever the Saxons were defeated, multitudes of them submitted to baptism without any knowledge or belief of Christian doctrine; but on the first opportunity they revolted, and again professed the religion of their fathers. The long war was carried on with much loss on both sides; on one occasion Charlemagne beheaded 4500 prisoners, who had been given up to him as having shared in the last insurrection; and this frightful bloodshed, instead of striking the expected terror into the barbarians, excited them to an unusually widespread and formidable rising in the following year. A chief named Widikind had thus far been the soul of the Saxon movements. After every reverse, he contrived to escape to Denmark, where he found a refuge with the king, who was his brother-in-law; and when his countrymen were ripe for a renewal of their attempts, he reappeared to act as their leader. But in 785, having secured a promise of impunity, he surrendered himself, together with his brother Abbo, and was baptized at Attigny, where Charlemagne officiated as his sponsor; and—whether an intelligent conviction contributed to his change of religious profession, whether it arose solely from despair of the Saxon cause, or whether his conversion was merely to a belief in that God whose worshippers had been proved the stronger party — his engagements to the king were faithfully kept. The Saxons were now subdued as far as the Elbe, and many of the fiercer idolaters among them sought an asylum in Scandinavia, where they joined the piratical bands which had already begun their plundering expeditions, and which were soon to become the terror of the more civilized nations of Europe.

Charlemagne proceeded to enact a law of extreme severity. It denounced the penalty of death against the refusal of baptism; against burning the bodies of the dead, after the manner of the pagans; against eating flesh in Lent, if this were done in contempt of Christianity; against setting fire to churches or violently entering them and robbing them; against the murder of bishops, priests, or deacons; against the offering of human sacrifices, and against some barbaric superstitions. All persons were to pay a tenth part of their “substance and labour” to the church. All children were to be baptized within a year from their birth, and parents who should neglect to comply with the law in this respect were to be fined in proportion to their quality. Fines were also enacted against those who should sacrifice in groves or do any other act of pagan worship. In the case of those offences which were punishable with death, the law did not admit the pecuniary commutations which are commonly found in the Germanic codes; but instead of them there was the remarkable provision, that, if any person guilty of such offences would of his own accord confess them to a priest, and express a desire to do penance, his life should be spared on the testimony of the priest. The rigour of this decree was unlike the general spirit of Charlemagne's legislation, nor was it intended to be lasting. After having been in force twelve years, the capitulary was modified by one of milder character, which again allowed the principle of composition for capital offences.

The conversion of the Saxons was urged on by a variety of measures. Gifts and threats were employed to gain them. Charlemagne offered them union with the Franks on equal terms, freedom from tribute, and exemption from all other imposts except tithes. Bishoprics were gradually established among them, monasteries were founded in thinly inhabited districts, towns grew up around these new foundations, and each became a centre for diffusing the knowledge of religion and of civilization. The Saxon youths who were received as hostages were committed to bishops and abbots for instruction; and by a strong measure of policy, ten thousand Saxons were in 804 removed from their own country into the older Frankish territory, where they became incorporated with the conqueror's original subjects.

A like system of extending the profession of the gospel with his conquests was pursued by Charlemagne in other quarters—as among the Frisians, the Wiltzes (a Slavonic people north of the Elbe), the Bavarians, the Avars in Pannonia, and the Bohemians. Among the missionaries who were most distinguished in the work of conversion were Gregory, abbot of Utrecht; Liudger, a Frisian, who had studied under Alcuin at York, and became bishop of Mimigardeneford (Munster); Willehad, a Northumbrian, bishop of Bremen; Sturmi, of Fulda, and Arno, archbishop of Salzburg. Ingo, who laboured in Carinthia, may be mentioned on account of the singular means which he took to convince the heathens of their inferior condition—admitting some Christian slaves to his own table, while for their unconverted masters food was set outside the door, as for dogs. The inquiries to which this distinction gave rise are said to have resulted in a great accession of converts.

But although the policy of Charlemagne did much to spread the profession of Christianity, the means which he employed were open to serious objection. The enforcement of tithes naturally raised a prejudice against the faith of which this payment was made a condition, and in 793 it even produced a revolt of the Saxons. Alcuin often remonstrated against the unwise exaction. He acknowledged the lawfulness of tithes; but how, he asked, would an impost which was ill borne even by persons who had been brought up in the catholic church, be endured by a rude and barbarous race of neophytes? Would the apostles have enforced it in such circumstances? When confirmed in the faith, the converts might properly be subjected to burdens of this kind; but until then, it would be a grievous error to risk the faith itself for the sake of tithes. In like manner he argued against the indiscriminate administration of baptism. Instruction, he said, should first be given in the great heads of Christian doctrine and practice, and then the sacrament should follow. Baptism may be forced on men, but belief cannot. Baptism received without understanding or faith by a person capable of reason, is but an unprofitable washing of the body. He urges that new converts should be treated with great tenderness, and that able preachers, of such character as may not bring discredit on their teaching, should be sent to instruct them.

During the latter part of the Merovingian period, learning had continually declined. A new era of intellectual activity now began. Charlemagne himself made earnest efforts to repair the defects of his early training. He began in mature age to learn the art of writing; but, although he practised diligently, he never attained facility in it, or, at least, he was unable to master the difficulties of the ornamental caligraphy on which the professional scribes of the time prided themselves. We are told that he became as familiar with Latin as with his mother tongue, and that, although he could not express himself with readiness in Greek, he was well acquainted with the language. The object of his endeavours was necessarily rather to revive the ancient Roman culture than to originate a new literature; yet, while he encouraged the study of the classic languages among his subjects, he did not neglect his native German; he laboured to raise it to the rank of a cultivated tongue by reducing it to a grammatical system, he collected its old heroic ballads, and gave Teutonic names to the winds and to the months. Nor, although his care for the German speech was little seconded in his own time, and although Latin had become the authorized language of the church, were the emperor's exertions in this respect without effect; for a vernacular literature now arose which had much influence on the education of the people. Among its remains are poems and hymns, metrical harmonies of the Gospels, and glosses on the Bible for the use of the clergy.

The instruments of the intellectual reform which Charlemagne contemplated were not to be found in his own dominions. He therefore sought for them from Italy and from the British islands, the only countries of the west in which the study of general learning was then pursued. The chief of these were Paul Warnefrid, a Lombard, Peter of Pisa, and—the most important for talents, for influence, and for the length of his labours among the Franks—Alcuin, a native of Northumbria.

Alcuin (or Albinus) was born about the year 735. After having studied in the cathedral school of York, under archbishop Egbert, brother of the Northumbrian king Eadbert, he was ordained a deacon, and became master of the school, which he raised to such reputation that many foreigners resorted to it for instruction. He had already visited the Continent, when Eanbald, his old fellow-pupil, on being promoted to the see of York in 782, sent him to Rome for the purpose of bringing back the pall, the symbol of the archiepiscopal dignity which had been recovered for York by Egbert after having been suspended since the time of Paulinus. At Parma, Alcuin fell in with Charlemagne, who invited him to settle in France. With the permission of his own king and of Eanbald, he accepted the proposal; and was appointed to the mastership of the Palatine school, an institution which had existed under the Merovingians, and was now revived. This school accompanied the movements of the court. The pupils were the members of the royal family, with noble youths who belonged to the household, or had been permitted by the sovereign to partake of the education thus provided. Charlemagne himself, his sons, his daughters, and some of his courtiers, became the scholars of Alcuin. It has been supposed that they formed an academy, in which each bore the name of some ancient worthy; thus Charles himself is styled David, Alcuin is Flaccus, Angilbert (son-in-law of Charlemagne, and afterwards abbot of Centulles) is Homer. But the only evidence in favour of the supposition is the fact that such names are used in correspondence. Alcuin’s instructions were given rather in the form of conversation than of lectures. He taught the seven sciences which were distinguished as liberal, and were afterwards classified under the titles of Trivium and Quadrivium—the Trivium consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; the Quadrivium comprising arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; while above these two classes theology held a place by itself. Alcuin's writings on these subjects contain little of an original kind, and may be regarded as mere notebooks of his teaching. His other works are very various—commentaries on Scripture, liturgical treatises, tracts on the controversies of the age and on practical religion, poems, lives of saints, and a large collection of letters. They appear to be justly described as displaying more of labour than of genius, more of memory than of invention or taste ,m but in estimating the merit of the man we are bound to compare him with his contemporaries. His work was that of a reviver.

Alcuin was not only the instructor of Charlemagne in religion and letters, but his most confidential adviser in affairs of state. After having taught the Palatine school for fourteen years (with the interval of a visit to his native country), he became weary of a court life, and expressed a wish to retire to Fulda for the remainder of his days; but Charlemagne provided another retreat for him, by bestowing on him the abbacy of St. Martin at Tours, a monastery of great wealth, but then notorious for the disorderly character of its inmates; and with this he retained some other preferments which he had before received. Alcuin in some measure reformed the monks of St. Martin’s, although an affray in which they were concerned towards the end of his life proves that the reformation was by no means perfect. He enriched the library of the abbey by importing books from England, and under his government its school attained great fame. We are told by his old biographer that he would not allow the pupils to read the “falsehoods” of Virgil, in which he had formerly delighted, and that when one of them secretly transgressed the rule, Alcuin by supernatural knowledge detected him. Among his scholars during this period were Raban Maur, afterwards abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mayence, Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt, and other eminent men of the next generations He kept up a frequent correspondence with Charlemagne on politics, literature, science, and theology; and (as we shall see hereafter) he continued to take part in the controversies of the time. From some expressions in his letters it appears that he was dissatisfied on account of the novelties introduced into the teaching of the Palatine school by his successor, an Irishman named Clement. At length he obtained the emperor’s leave to devolve the care of discipline in each of his monasteries on younger men, and he died in 804.

Charlemagne was bent on promoting education among every class of his subjects. He urged his nobles to study, and loudly reproved those who considered their position as an excuse for negligence. The laity were required to learn the creed and the Lord's prayer,—in Latin, if possible, with a view to bringing them within the Roman influence. Fasting and blows were sometimes denounced against any who should disobey. But it was found that the hardness of the task was regarded by many persons as even more formidable than such penalties; and it also appeared that many of the clergy were themselves unable to teach the forms in Latin. The reenactments and the mitigations of such rules sufficiently prove how difficult it was to carry them into execution. The clergy were charged to explain the creed and the Lord’s prayer to their people, and sponsors at baptism were required to prove their acquaintance with both forms.

With a view to improve the education of the clergy, Charlemagne ordered in 769 that any clergyman who should disregard his bishop’s admonitions to learn should be suspended or deprived. In 787 he issued a circular to all metropolitans, bishops, and abbots, complaining of the incorrect style which appeared in many letters addressed to him from monasteries. This want of skill in writing, he says, leads him to apprehend that there may be also an inability to understand the language of Scripture rightly; he therefore orders that competent masters should be established, and that study should be diligently urged on. Two years later he ordered that there should be a school in every cathedral and monastery, open not only to the servile class (from which the clergy were usually taken), but to the free-born; that instruction should be given in psalmody, music, grammar, and computum(a term which denoted the art of reckoning in general, but more especially the calculation of the calendar); and that care should be taken for the correct transcription of the service-books. He employed Paul Warnefrid to compile a book of homilies from the fathers, and published it with a preface in his own name. These homilies were arranged according to the ecclesiastical seasons. It seems to have been at first intended that they should be read in Latin, the language of both the church and the state; and that it was a concession to national feeling when councils of the emperor’s last year directed the clergy, in using them, to render them into a tongue intelligible to the people—whether the “rustic Roman” of Gaul, or the Teutonic. As the manuscripts of the Scriptures had been generally much corrupted by the carelessness of copyists, Charlemagne, with Alcuin’s assistance, provided for the multiplication of correct copies. While the pupils of the schools were employed in transcribing the less important books for churches, none but persons of mature age were allowed to write the gospels, the psalter, or the missal. Manuscripts were acquired for libraries from England, Italy, and Greece. Presbyters were before ordination to be examined as to their faith, as to their knowledge of the creed and the Lord's prayer, of the canons, the penitential, the gospels, the homilies, the public services, the rites of baptism and the Eucharist, and their power of instructing their flocks.

In addition to the education of the clergy, a new feature appears in the articles of Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, where it is ordered that in every parish the clergy should provide a school for free-born children as well as for serfs. The payment for instruction was to be only such as the parents of the pupils should freely give. The bishop also invites the clergy to send their relations to the monastic schools. But the attempt to establish parochial schools does not appear to have been carried far even in the diocese of Orleans, and there is no evidence of its having been imitated elsewhere.

Charlemagne paid much deference to the usages of Rome, as the most venerable church of the west. He obtained from Adrian the Roman code of canons (which was founded on the collection of Dionysius Exiguus), and in 789 he published such of them as he considered necessary for his own dominions. The Roman method of chanting had already been introduced into Gaul. Pope Paul had sent books of it to Pipin, and had endeavoured to procure its establishment; but although he was supported by Pipin in the attempt, the Gallican chant still prevailed. During Charlemagne’s third visit to Rome, in 787, disputes arose between the Frankish and the Roman clergy on the subject of the liturgy and the chant. The Franks relied on the king’s protection; but to their dismay he asked them, “Which is the purer—the stream or the source?”—a question which admitted but of one answer; and on this answer he acted. He carried back into France two skillful clerks to teach the Roman chant, and stationed one of them at Metz, while the other was attached to the court. He also established the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great in the Frankish church; it is even said that, in his zeal for conformity to Rome, he endeavoured to suppress the Ambrosian forms at Milan, by destroying the service-books, or carrying them “as if into exile” across the Alps; but that miracles came to the rescue of the venerable ritual, so that Pope Adrian, who had instigated the attempt against it, was brought to acquiesce in the local use of it. Charlemagne paid special attention to the solemnity of divine worship. The great church which he built at his favourite place of residence, Aix-la-Chapelle, was adorned with marble pillars from Rome and Ravenna, and was furnished with vestments for all its clergy, down to the meanest of the doorkeepers. He diligently frequented the services of his chapel, both by day and by night, and took great pains to improve the reading and the singing; “for”, said Einhard, “he was very skilful in both, although he neither read publicly, nor sang, except in a low voice and together with others”. A biographer of more questionable authority tells us that he used to point with his finger or with his staff at any person whom he wished to read; and when thus ordered to begin, or when warned by a cough from the emperor to stop, the reader was expected to obey at once, without any regard to sense or to the division of sentences. Thus, it is said, all were kept in a state of continual attention, because each might be called on at any moment. No one could mark his own portion with his nail or with wax; and all became accomplished readers, even although they might be unable to understand the language and the matter. Charlemagne himself is said to have composed hymns—among them the “Veni Creator Spiritus”; but as to that hymn, at least, the statement appears to be groundless.

Charlemagne’s ecclesiastical legislation was carried on by his own authority. He regarded it as the duty of a sovereign to watch over the spiritual and moral well-being of his subjects; he alleges the reforms of Josiah as a scriptural precedent for the part which he took in the regulation of the church. Ecclesiastical subjects occupy more than a third of his capitularies. The ecclesiastical as well as the other laws were proposed in the assemblies which were held yearly in spring and in autumn, and which bore at once the character of synods and of parliaments. The clergy and the laity sat together or separately, as was most convenient, according to the nature of the subjects proposed to them. Discussion was allowed; but both the initiative and the decision belonged to the sovereign, and in his name the decrees were published.

The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor, although it did not add to the power which he before possessed over his subjects, invested him with a new and indefinite majesty. He was no longer the chief of a nation of warriors, but the representative of the ancient Roman traditions and civilization—the anointed head of western Christendom. The empire was to be a consecrated state, with the same ruler in ecclesiastical as in civil affairs, and this ruler directing all to the glory of God. In 802 an oath of allegiance to Charles as emperor was required of those who had already sworn to him as king; and whereas such oaths had not before been imposed among the Franks, except on persons who held office or benefice under the crown, all males above the age of twelve were now required to swear. The civil hierarchy in all its grades corresponded to the ecclesiastical; and forthwith a new system of commissioners (Missi Dominici) was set on foot. These were chosen partly from the higher ecclesiastics and partly from the laity. They were to be men superior to all suspicion, fear, or partiality; they were to make circuits for the inspection of both secular and spiritual matters; they were to control the local administrations; to take care of churches, of widows, orphans, and the poor; to exercise a censorship of morals; to redress wrongs, or to refer to the emperor such as were beyond their power; to see to the due execution of the laws which were passed in the national assemblies. In spiritual as well as in temporal affairs, the emperor was regarded as the highest judge, beyond whom no appeal could be made; in authorizing the canons of Adrian’s collection, he omitted that canon of Sardica which prescribed in certain cases a reference to the bishop of Rome. While he cultivated friendly relations with the popes, while he acknowledged them as the highest of bishops, and often consulted them and acted on their suggestions, the authority by which these were enforced on his subjects was his own; nor did the popes attempt to interfere with the powers which he claimed. On the conquest of Italy, he assumed the same control over the ecclesiastical affairs of that country which he had been accustomed to exercise in his hereditary kingdom, and the popes submitted to him as their lord and judge. Lofty titles and flattering language were, indeed, often addressed by bishops and others of the Franks to the successors of St. Peter; but the real amount of the authority which these enjoyed during this period is to be measured by the facts of history, not by the exaggerations of rhetorical or interested compliment.

  

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII.

 

THE EASTERN CHURCH — CONTROVERSIES OF CHARLERMAGNE’S AGE

A.D. 775-814.

 

 

Constantine Copronymus was succeeded in 775 by his son Leo IV, who, although opposed to the worship of images, was of gentler and more tolerant character than the earlier princes of the Isaurian line. Although the laws of the iconoclastic emperors remained unaltered, the monks who had been persecuted and banished were now allowed to return; and a great excitement was raised by the reappearance of these confessors in the cause of the popular religion. The empress, Irene, was of an Athenian family noted for its devotion to image; she herself cherished an enthusiastic reverence for them, and, although her father-in-law Constantine had compelled her to forswear them, she appears to have thought that in so sacred a cause her oath was not binding. She now exerted her influence as far as she dared, and by her means some monks and other friends of images were promoted to bishoprics, although for the time they were obliged to conceal their opinions. For notwithstanding the general mildness of Leo’s disposition, his feeling on the subject of images was strong; so that, when some of them had been found under Irene’s pillow, he ordered certain great officers, who had been concerned in introducing them into the palace, to be flogged and tonsured; he put one of these officers, who had especially provoked him, to death; and he separated from the empress, although she denied all concern in the affair.

After a reign of four years and a half Leo died,—more probably by a natural consequence of the illness with which he had long been afflicted, than either by a miracle of judgment on his impiety, or (as some modern writers have supposed) by poison; and Irene was left in possession of the government, as guardian of her son Constantine VI, a boy only ten years old. The empress, however, felt that it was necessary to proceed with caution in carrying out her wishes. She was, indeed, sure of the monks and of the populace : but the authority of a council which claimed the title of ecumenical was against her; the great body of the bishops was opposed to images; and although the well-tried pliancy of the eastern clergy gave reasons for hoping that these might be gained, there was a strong iconoclastic party among the laity, while the soldiery adhered to the principles of the late emperor Constantine, whose memory was cherished among them as that of a brave and successful general. At first, therefore, Irene ventured no further than to publish an edict for general liberty of conscience. The monks who were still in exile returned, images were again displayed, and many tales of past sufferings and of miracles swelled the popular enthusiasm.

In August 784, Paul, patriarch of Constantinople, suddenly resigned his dignity, and retired into a monastery, where he was visited by Irene and some high officers of the empire. When questioned as to the cause of his resignation, he professed deep remorse for having consented to accept the patriarchate on condition of opposing the restoration of images; he deplored the condition of his church, oppressed as it was by the tyranny of the state, and at variance with the rest of Christendom; and he declared that the only remedy for its evils would be to summon a general council for the purpose of reversing the decrees of the iconoclastic synod which had been held under Constantine V. We need not seek for an explanation of the patriarch’s motives in the supposition of collusion with the court. He may, like many others, have been sincerely attached to the cause of images, and, when seized with sickness, may have felt a real compunction for the compliances by which he had gained his elevation. And his death, which followed immediately after, is a strong confirmation of this view.

Irene summoned the people of the capital to elect a new patriarch. No one possessed of the requisite qualifications was to be found among the higher clergy, as the bishops were disaffected to the cause of images, while the abbots were too ignorant of the management of affairs to be fit for such promotion. The person selected by the court, (and, according to one writer, suggested by Paul himself,) was Tarasius, a secretary of state, a man of noble birth, of consular dignity, and of good personal reputation. The multitude, who had no doubt been carefully prompted, cried out for his election, and the few dissentient voices were overpowered. Tarasius with an appearance of modesty professed his reluctance to accept an office so foreign to his previous habits, and declared that he would only do so on condition that a general council should be forthwith summoned for the consideration of the all-engrossing subject. With this understanding he was consecrated; and Adrian of Rome, on receiving a statement of his faith, admitted him to communion, professing to consider the exigency of the case an excuse for the irregularity of his promotion.

A council was now summoned, and measures were taken to render it yet more imposing than the numerous synod by which images had been condemned under the last reign. The pope was invited to send representatives, if unable to attend in person. He deputed Peter, chief presbyter of his church, with Peter, abbot of St. Saba’s, and furnished them with a letter, in which he hailed the emperor and his mother as a new Constantine and a new Helena, and exhorted them to repair the misdeeds of their predecessors by restoring images in the church. Some things of a less agreeable kind were added:—a demand for the restoration of all that the iconoclastic emperors had taken from St. Peter, remarks on the irregularity of raising a layman to the patriarchate of Constantinople, and objections to the title of ecumenical, which had been given to the patriarch in the imperial letter

As the empire was at peace with the Saracens, invitations were also addressed to the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. But the bearers of these letters fell in with some monks, who, on learning the object of their journey, earnestly implored them to proceed no further, since any such communication from the empire would be sure to exasperate the jealousy of the Mahometan tyrants, and to bring additional oppressions on the church. The monks offered to send to the council two of their own number, whom they proposed to invest with the character of secretaries to the patriarchs; these, they said, would sufficiently represent the faith of the eastern church, and the personal attendance of the patriarchs was no more requisite than that of the Roman bishop. To this strange proposal the messengers agreed, and they returned to Constantinople with two monks named John and Thomas.

The council was to meet at Constantinople in the beginning of August 786. But during the week before the appointed day, the opponents of images held meetings for the purpose of agitation, and, although Tarasius ordered them to leave the city, many of them still remained. On the eve of the opening, there was an outbreak of some imperial guards and other soldiers belonging to the iconoclastic party; and on the following day a still more serious tumult took place. When Tarasius and other members of the council were assembled in the church of the Apostles, a multitude of soldiers and others, abetted by some iconoclastic bishops, broke in on them, and compelled them to take refuge in the sanctuary. The soldiers who were summoned to quell the uproar refused to obey orders. Tarasius ordered the doors of the sanctuary to be shut. The iconoclasts forced them; but, without being dismayed by the threatening appearance, the patriarch opened the council, and conducted its proceedings until a message arrived from Irene, desiring her friends to give way; on which the iconoclastic bishops raised a shout of victory. The empress allowed the matter to rest until, having lulled suspicion, she was able quietly to disband the mutinous soldiers and to send them to their native places; and in September of the following year, a synod of about 350 bishops, with a number of monks and other clergy, met at Nicaea, a place at once safer from disturbance than the capital, and of especially venerable name, as having been the seat of the first general council.

The first places of dignity were given to the Roman envoys, who had been recalled, after having proceeded as far as Sicily on their way homeward. Next to these was Tarasius, the real president of the assembly; and after him were the two representatives (if they may be so styled) of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. A number of civil dignitaries were also presents The first session took place on the 24th of September, and the business proceeded with great rapidity. Six sessions were held within thirteen days, a seventh followed a week later, and the final meeting was held at Constantinople on the 23rd of October.

From the beginning it was assumed that the purpose of the council was not to discuss the question of images, but to re-establish them as objects of worship; bishops who were known to be opposed to this design had not been invited to attend. The pope’s letter was read at the second session, but with the omission of the reflections on Tarasius, and of the request that the rights of the Roman see might be restored. A number of bishops, who had taken part in the iconoclasm of the last reigns, came forward to acknowledge and anathematize their errors, and humbly sued for admission to communion. In answer to questions, some of them said that they had never until now had the means of rightly considering the subject; that they had been educated in error: that they had been deceived by forged and garbled authorities : or that they had been sealed up under a judicial blindness. Questions arose as to admitting them to communion, as to acknowledging them in offices to which they had been consecrated by heretics, and with respect to some, whether, as they had formerly been persecutors of the faithful, they ought not to be treated with special severity. The monks were throughout on the side of rigour; but the majority of the council, under the guidance of Tarasius, was in favour of a lenient course. The canons were searched for precedents; and a discussion ensued as to the application of these—with what class of heretics were the iconoclasts to be reckoned? Tarasius was for putting them on the footing of Manichaean’s, Marcionites, and monophysites, as these sects had also been opposed to images; all heresies, he said, were alike heinous, because all did away with the law of God. The monastic party declared that iconomachy was worse than the worst of heresies, because it denied the Saviour’s incarnation. But the majority was disposed to treat the penitents with indulgence, and they were received to communion. There were loud outcries against the iconoclasts, as atheists, Jews, and enemies of the truth; and when a proposal was made to call them Saracens, it was answered that the name was too good for them.

According to the usual practice of councils, authorities were cited in behalf of images, and the opposition to them was paralleled or connected with all sorts of heresies. The extracts produced from the earlier fathers are really irrelevant; for the images of which they speak were either scenes from sacred history, or memorial portraits (like that of Meletius of Antioch, which is mentioned by St. Chrysostom1), and they afford no sanction for the practices which were in question before the council. A large portion of the quotations consisted of extracts from legendary biographies, and of tales of miracles wrought by images, to which some of the bishops were able to add similar marvels from their own experience. From time to time the reading of these testimonies was interrupted by curious commentaries from the hearers. Thus, after a passage from Gregory of Nyssa, in which he spoke of himself as having been affected to tears by a picture of the sacrifice of Isaac, a bishop observed, “The father had often read the history, but perhaps without ever weeping; yet, as soon as he saw the picture, he wept”.

“If”, said another, “so great a doctor was edified and moved even to tears by a picture, how much more would it affect lay and unlearned people!”.

Many exclaimed that they had seen such pictures of Abraham as that which Gregory described, although it does not appear whether they had felt the same emotion at the sight.

“If Gregory wept at a painting of Abraham”, said Theodore, bishop of Catana, “what should we do at one of the incarnate Saviour?”.

“Should not we too weep," asked Tarasius, “if we saw a picture of the Crucifixion?” and his words were received with general applause.

A famous story, which had already served the uses both of controversial and of devotional writers, was twice read. An aged monk on the Mount of Olives, it was said, was greatly tempted by a spirit of uncleanness. One day the demon appeared to him, and, after having sworn him to secrecy, offered to discontinue his assaults if the monk would give up worshipping a picture of the blessed Virgin and the infant Saviour which hung in his cell. The old man asked time to consider the proposal, and, notwithstanding his oath, applied for advice to an abbot of renowned sanctity, who blamed him for having allowed himself to be so far deluded as to swear to the devil, but told him that he had yet done well in laying open the matter, and that it would be better to visit every brothel in Jerusalem than to refrain from adoring the Saviour and His mother in the picture. From this edifying tale a twofold moral was drawn with general consent,—that reverence for images would warrant not only unchastity, but breach of oaths; and that those who had formerly sworn to the iconoclast heresy were no longer bound by their obligations.

At the fifth session, the Roman legates proposed that an image should be brought in and should receive the adoration of the assembly. This was solemnly done next day; and at the same session the conclusions of the iconoclastic synod of 754 were read, each paragraph being followed by the corresponding part of a long refutation, which was declared to have been evidently dictated by the Holy Ghost.

At the seventh session, the decree of the council was read and subscribed. It determined that, even as the figure of the cross was honoured, so images of the Saviour and the blessed Virgin, of angels and of saints, whether painted or mosaic or of any other suitable material, are to be set up for kissing and honourable reverence, but not for that real service which belongs to the Divine nature alone. Incense and lights are to be offered to them, as to the cross, the gospels, and other holy memorials, “forasmuch as the honour paid to the image passeth on to the original, and he who adoreth an image doth in it adore the person of him whom it doth represent”. An anathema was pronounced against all opponents of images, and the signing of the decree was followed by many acclamations in honour of the new Constantine and Helena, with curses against iconomachists and heretics of every kind.

These outcries were repeated at the eighth session, when the members of the council appeared at one of the palaces of Constantinople, and both the emperor and his mother subscribed the decree. The council, which after a time came to be regarded both by the Greeks and by the Latins as the seventh general council, also passed twenty-two canons, chiefly relating to ecclesiastical and monastic discipline. It is to be observed that the images sanctioned at Nicaea were not works of sculpture, but paintings and other representations on a flat surface —a limitation to which the Greek church has ever since adhered; and that there is as yet no mention of representing under visible forms the Trinity, the Almighty Father, or the Holy Spirit.

Constantine VI grew up in the society of women and eunuchs, and in entire subjection to his mother. With a view, perhaps, of cutting off from the iconoclasts the hope of assistance from the west, Irene had negotiated for him a marriage with one of Charlemagne’s daughters; but soon after the Nicene synod, as the iconoclasts were no longer formidable, while she may have feared that such a connexion might endanger her own ascendency, she broke off the engagement, greatly to the indignation of the Frankish king, and compelled her son against his will to marry an Armenian princess named Marina or Mary. Instigated, it is said, by some persons who professed to have discovered by magic that the empire was to be her own, she paved the way for a change by encouraging her son in cruelties and debaucheries which rendered him odious to his subjects, and especially to the powerful monastic party. At the age of twenty, Constantine resolved to throw off the yoke of his mother and her ministers; he succeeded in possessing himself of the government, and for some years the empire was distracted by revolutions, carried on with all the perfidy and atrocity which were characteristic of the later Greeks. Constantine was at length persuaded to readmit his mother to a share of power, and she pursued towards him the same policy as before. He fell in love with a lady of her court, Theodote, and resolved to divorce his wife and to marry the object of his new attachment. The patriarch Tarasius at first opposed the scheme, but Constantine, it is said, threatened that, if the Church refused to indulge him, he would restore idolatry; and Tarasius no longer ventured to resist. Marina was shut up in a convent, and the second nuptials were magnificently celebrated in September 795. Some monks who vehemently objected to these proceedings, and went so far as to excommunicate the emperor, were treated with great cruelty. It has been supposed that Irene even contrived the temptation to which her son yielded; she at least beheld his errors with malicious satisfaction, and fomented the general discontent which they produced. By degrees she secured to her own interest all the persons who were immediately around him; and at length, when her scheme appeared to be matured, he was by her command seized at his devotions, was carried into the purple chamber in which he had been born, and was deprived of his eyesight with such violence that the operation almost cost him his life. Immediately after this, a fog of extraordinary thickness obscured the air and hid the sun for seventeen days. By the people of Constantinople it was regarded as declaring the sympathy of heaven with the horror generally felt at the unnatural deed by which Irene obtained the empire.

Irene reigned five years after the dethronement of her son. According to the Greek writers (whose testimony, however, is unsupported by those of the west), she was engaged in a project for reuniting the empires by a marriage with Charlemagne, when, in October 802, she was deposed by the secretary Nicephorus, and was banished to Lesbos, where she died within a few months.

Nicephorus, who is described as having surpassed all his predecessors in rapacity, lust, and cruelty, was bent on subjecting the hierarchy to the imperial power. He forbade the patriarch to correspond with the pope, whom he considered as a tool of Charlemagne; and he earned the detestation of the clergy by heavily taxing monastic and ecclesiastical property, which had until then been exempt, by seizing the ornaments of churches, by stabling his horses in monasteries, and by extending a general toleration to iconoclasts and sectaries. In 811 Nicephorus was killed in a war with the Bulgarians, and his son Stauracius, after a reign of little more than two months, was thrust into a monastery, where he soon after died of wounds received before his accession. On the deposition of Stauracius, his brother-in-law, Michael Rhangabe, was compelled to accept the empire, and images were again restored to honour. The iconoclastic party, however, continued to exist. An attempt was made by some of its members to set a blinded son of Constantine Copronymus on the throne; and on the alarm of a Bulgarian invasion, soon after the elevation of Michael, a very remarkable display of its spirit took place. While the clergy, the monks, and vast numbers of the people were deprecating the danger by processions and prayers, some iconoclastic soldiers broke open the mausoleum of the emperors, prostrated themselves on the tomb of Copronymus, and entreated him to save the state; and they asserted that, in answer to their prayers, he had appeared to them on horseback, and had gone forth against the barbarians; “whereas”, says Theophanes, “he dwells in hell with devils”. Although the motive of these men was more probably fraud than fanaticism—(for, besides the story of the apparition, they pretended that the mausoleum had been opened by miracle)—we may infer the existence of a strong attachment to the memory of Constantine among the party to which such an imposture could have been addressed with any hope of finding believers

Michael, although a man of estimable character, proved unequal to the government of the empire, and after a reign of two years he was deposed and tonsured, while a general named Leo was raised to the throne. Michael, who by a clemency unusual in such cases was allowed to retain not only his life but his eyesight, survived his dethronement thirty-two years.

While the decree of the second council of Nicaea established a reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople, and was gladly confirmed by the Pope, it met with a less favourable reception north of the Alps. In the Frankish church a middle opinion on the subject of images had prevailed; as the eastern Christians had been led to cherish their images for the sake of contrast with their Mahometan neighbours, so the Franks were restrained from excess in this kind of devotion by the necessity of opposing the idolatry of the unconverted Germans. The question had been one of those discussed at a mixed assembly of clergy and laity which was held under Pipin at Gentilly in the presence of envoys from Pope Paul and of ambassadors from Constantine Copronymus; and, although their decision on this point is not recorded, there can be no reasonable doubt that it agreed with the general views of the national church.

Adrian, on receiving the acts of the Nicene council, sent a copy of them to Charlemagne, with an evident expectation that they would be accepted by the Franks. But the late rupture of the match between the king’s daughter and the son of Irene had not tended to bespeak from him any favourable consideration of the eastern decrees; and his own convictions were opposed to them. He sent them to Alcuin, who was then in England; and it is said that the English bishops joined in desiring their countryman to write against the council. Alcuin made some remarks on the Nicene acts, in the form of a letter; and out of these probably grew a treatise in four books, which was put forth in the name of Charlemagne, and is known by the title of the Caroline Books. It has been commonly supposed that Alcuin, who returned to France in 793, was the chief author, but that he was assisted by other ecclesiastics, and that the king himself took part in the revision of the work. The tone of this treatise is firm and dignified. Although great deference for the apostolic see is professed, the writer resolutely maintains the Frankish view as to images, and unsparingly criticises the grounds alleged for the doctrine which was held in common by the east and by Rome. While the iconoclasts and the Byzantine council of 754 are blamed for overlooking the distinction between images and idols, their mistake is declared to be much less than that committed by the Nicene synod in confounding the use of images with the worship of them; the one error is ascribed to ignorance, the other to wickedness. Much is said against the style of language officially employed by the Byzantine court, which is censured as trenching on the honour due to God. The synod is blamed for having allowed itself to be guided by a woman, contrary to St. Paul’s order that women should not be admitted to teach. Its pretension to be ecumenical is denied, on the ground that it neither was assembled from all churches, nor held the faith of the universal church; its claim to Divine sanction is also disallowed. It is said to be madness for one portion of the church to anathematise other portions in a matter as to which the apostles had not laid down any rule; and much more so when the opinions so branded are agreeable to the earlier councils and fathers. The passages which had been cited at Nicaea from Scripture and the fathers are examined, and are cleared from the abuse there made of them. The council is censured for having admitted many stories of a fabulous or apocryphal kind. The account of our Lord’s correspondence with Abgarus is questioned; the legend of the monk and the unclean devil is strongly reprobated; doubts are expressed as to the truth of many miraculous tales; and it is argued that, even if the miracles were really wrought by the images, they would not warrant the worship of these. Remarks are made on expressions used by individual bishops at the council. Among these there is the important misrepresentation that Constantius, of Constantia in Cyprus, is charged with having placed the adoration of images on the same level with that of the Trinity, and as having anathematized all who thought otherwise; whereas in reality he had distinguished between the devotion paid to images and that which was to be reserved for the Trinity alone. The arguments advanced in behalf of images are discussed and refuted. The honours paid in the east to the statues of emperors had been dwelt on by way of analogy; but it is denied that this is any warrant for the worship of images,—“for what madness it is to defend one unlawful thing by another!”—and the conduct of Daniel in Babylon is cited as proving the sinfulness of the eastern practice. It is derogatory to the holy mystery of the Eucharist—to the cross, the symbol of our salvation and the sign of our Christian profession —to the consecrated vessels, and to the sacred books,— that the veneration paid to these should be paralleled with the worship of images. The reverence due to relics, which had either been part of the bodies of saints or had been in some manner connected with them, is no ground for paying a like regard to images, which are the mere work of the artist, Christ and his saints desire no such worship as that in question; and, although the more learned may be able to practise it without idolatry, by directing their veneration to that which the images signify, the unlearned, who have no skill in subtle distinctions, will be drawn to worship that which they see, without thought of any object beyond it. The guilt of causing offence must rest, not on those who allow images and only refuse to worship them, but on those who force the worship on others. The only proper use of images is by way of ornament, or as historical memorials; it is absurd to say that they represent to us the merits of the saints, since these merits are not external. The right use of them for remembrance is strongly distinguished from the plea that it is impossible to remember God without them; those persons (it is said) must have very faulty memories who need to be reminded by an image—who are unable to raise their minds above the material creation except by the help of a material and created object. The king concludes by declaring to the pope that he adheres to the principles laid down by Gregory the Great in his letters to Serenus of Marseilles, and that he believes this to be the rule of the catholic church. Images are to be allowed, but the worship of them is not to be enforced; and it is forbidden to break or to destroy them.

These books (or perhaps the propositions which they were intended to enforce, rather than the treatise itself, were communicated to the pope, and drew forth from him a long reply. But the arguments of this attempt are feeble, and its tone appears to show that Adrian both felt the weakness of his cause, and was afraid to offend the great sovereign whose opinion he was labouring to controvert.

It is doubtful whether these communications took place before or after the council which was held, under the presidency of Charlemagne, at Frankfort, in 794. This council was both a diet of the empire and an ecclesiastical synod. Bishops were assembled from Lombardy and Germany as well as from France; some representatives of the English church, and two legates from Rome, were also present; and, at the king's suggestion, Alcuin was admitted to a place on account of the service which he might be able to render by his learning. The question of images was dealt with in a manner which showed that the council had no idea of any right on the part of Rome to prescribe to the Frankish church. The second canon adverts to “the late synod of the Greeks, in which it was said that those should be anathematized who should not bestow service or adoration on the images of the saints, even as on the Divine Trinity”. In opposition to this, the fathers of Frankfort refuse “both adoration and service of all kinds” to images; they express contempt for the eastern synod, and agree in condemning it. The passage especially censured by this canon is the speech wrongly ascribed in the Caroline Books to the Cyprian metropolitan Constantius, and the misrepresentation is probably to be charged on the defectiveness of the translation in which the Nicene acts were presented to the Frankish divines.0But whatever the reason of it may have been, and however the members of the Frankfort council may have misapprehended the opinions of the Orientals, there is no ground for arguing from this that they did not understand and plainly state their own judgment on the questions.

Notwithstanding the opposition to his views on the subject of images, Adrian continued to cultivate friendly relations with Charlemagne; the political interest which bound Rome to the Franks was more powerful than his sympathy with the Greeks as to doctrine. The retention of Calabria and Illyricum, which had been taken from the Roman see by the iconoclastic emperors in the earlier stage of the controversy, alienated the popes more and more from the Byzantine rule, until in 800 the connexion with the east was utterly severed by the coronation of Charlemagne as the sovereign of a new empire of Rome.

Before proceeding to the question of images, the council of Frankfort had been occupied with the doctrine of Felix, bishop of Urgel in Catalonia, on the relation of our Lord's humanity to the Almighty Father. The termadoption had been applied to the incarnation by some earlier writers and in the Spanish liturgy; it appears, however, not to have been used in its strict sense, but rather as equivalent to assumption. The passages which Felix and his party produced from the fathers, as favourable to their view, spoke of an adoption of nature, of flesh, or of manhood; whereas they themselves made an important variation from this language by speaking of an adoption of the Son.

The adoptionists were charged by their opponents with Nestorianism, and in spirit the two systems are unquestionably similar. Yet the adoptionists admitted the doctrine which had been settled as orthodoxy for three centuries and a half: they made no objection to the term Deipara (or Theotokos), as applied to the mother of the Saviour’s humanity; they allowed the union of natures in Him. The distinctive peculiarity of the party was, that, while they granted the communication of properties between the two natures, they insisted on distinguishing the manner in which the predicates of the one nature were given to the other; they regarded it as a confusion of the natures, and a virtual merging of the humanity, to say that Christ was proper and real Son of God, not only in his Godhead but in his whole person. He cannot, they said, be properly Son of God as to his human nature, unless it be supposed that the humanity and fleshly substance were derived from the very essence of God. The highest thing that can befall humanity is to be adopted into sonship with God: more than this would be a change of nature. Christ's humanity, then, is adopted to sonship; in one sense this adoption existed from the moment of his conception; in another, it began at his baptism, when he passed from the condition of a servant to that of a Son; and it was consummated in his resurrection. He cannot have two fathers in the same nature; in his humanity he is naturally the Son of David, and by adoption and grace the Son of God. By nature He is the “only-begotten” Son of God; by adoption and grace, the “first-begotten”. In the Son of God the Son of man becomes very Son of God; but it is only in a nuncupative way, as was the case with those of whom He himself said that the Scripture “called them gods to whom the word of God came”; his adoption is like that of the saints, although it is after a far more excellent fashion. The adoptionists also pressed into their service texts which were in truth meant to set forth the reality of our Lord's manhood, and its inferiority to, or dependence on, his Divinity.

Felix of Urgel, who became noted as a chief assertor of this doctrine, was a man of great acuteness and learning; his reputation was such that Alcuin sought his correspondence, and, even after the promulgation of his heresy, continued to speak with much respect of his sanctity. The other head of the party, Elipand, bishop of Toledo, and primate of Spain under the Mahometan dominion, was far advanced in life when the controversy broke out. He appears to have been a man of violent and excitable temper, and very jealous of his dignity. His style is described as more obscure than that of Felix, and it is therefore inferred that he was more profound.

The early history of the adoptionist doctrine is unknown. It is probable that Felix was the originator of it, and perhaps he may have been led into it by controversy with his Mahometan neighbours, to whom this view of our Lord's humanity would have been less repulsive than that which was generally taught by the church. At least, it appears certain that, whether Felix was the author of the doctrine or not, it was he who did most to reduce it to a system. A correspondence took place between him and Elipand; and the primate employed the influence of his position in favour of the new opinion, which soon gained many adherents. The first opponents who appeared against adoptionism were Beatus, an abbot, and Etherius, bishop of Osma, who had formerly been his pupil. Elipand, in a letter to an abbot named Fidelis, denounced the two very coarsely; he even carried his intolerance so far as to declare that all who should presume to differ from him were heretics and slaves of Antichrist, and that as such they must be rooted out. Etherius and Beatus rejoined at great length in a book which as to tone appears almost worthy of their antagonist. The pope, Adrian, now had his attention drawn to the controversy, and in 785 wrote a letter to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as an error such as no one since Nestorius had ventured on.

This letter, however, failed to appease the differences which had arisen. A council which is said to have been held against the adoptionists at Narbonne, in 788, is generally regarded as fictitious. In 792 Charlemagne summoned Felix (who was his subject) to appear before a council at Ratisbon, where the bishop abjured and anathematized his errors; but Charles, who in person presided at the council, appears to have doubted either the sincerity of his new profession, or his steadiness in adhering to it, and therefore sent him in chains to Rome, where he was imprisoned by order of the pope. Felix obtained his liberty by drawing up an orthodox confession of faith, to which he swore in the most solemn manner, laying it on the consecrated elements and on St. Peter’s tomb. But on returning to Urgel, he again vented his heresy, and, in fear of Charlemagne's resentment, he fled into the Mahometan part of Spain. Elipand and other Spanish bishops wrote to Charlemagne and to the bishops of France, requesting that Felix might be restored to his see, and that measures might be taken for suppressing the opinions of Beatus, who was charged in the letters with profligacy of life, and was also styled a false prophet, on account of some speculations as to the fulfilment of the Apocalypse, into which he had been led by the oppressed condition of the Spanish church. These letters were forwarded by Charlemagne to the pope, who thereupon despatched a second epistle into Spain, denouncing the doctrine of the adoptionists, and threatening to excommunicate them if they should persist in it.

The council of Frankfort was held between the time of Charlemagne’s application to Adrian and the receipt of the pope’s answer. No representative of the adoptionist party appeared; but Alcuin, who had been summoned from England to take part in the controversy, argued against their doctrine, and the council in its first canon unanimously condemned it as a heresy which “ought to be utterly rooted out of the church”. The Italian bishops gave their sanction to a treatise against adoptionism drawn up by Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia; and this was sent into Spain, together with a letter from the bishops of Gaul, Aquitaine, and Germany to the Spanish bishops, and with one from Charlemagne to Elipand and his brethren. Alcuin addressed a tract against the adoptionists to the bishops of the south of France and also wrote in a respectful tone to Felix himself, urging him to give up the term adoption, which he professed to consider as the only point in which the bishop of Urgel varied from the Catholic faith. In consequence of this letter, Felix addressed a defence of his doctrine to Charlemagne, who thereupon desired Alcuin to undertake a formal refutation of the adoptionists. The abbot accepted the task, but stipulated that time should be allowed him to examine their citations with the help of his pupils, and begged that the book of Felix might also be referred to the pope, to Paulinus of Aquileia, and to other eminent bishops; if, he said, all should agree in their judgment on the point in question, it might be concluded that they were all guided by the same Holy Spirit.

Alcuin then produced a treatise in seven books— “these five loaves and two little fishes”, as he styles them. The foundation on which he chiefly grounds his argument is the unity of the Saviour's person. Although Felix had not ventured to deny this, it is urged that in consistency he must do so, like Nestorius, since he divides Christ into two sons, the one real, the other nuncupative. The same person cannot be at once the proper and the adopted son of the same father; Christ alone has by nature that which we have through Him by adoption and grace. The Sonship is not founded on the nature, but on the person; the two natures do not form two sons, since they are themselves not separate, but inseparably united in the one Christ. The whole Christ is Son of God and Son of man; there is no room for an adoptive sonship. Christ was very God from the moment of his human conception. Felix, it is argued, had erred through supposing that a son cannot be proper unless he be of the same nature with the father; whereas the term proper does not necessarily imply identity of substance between that which is so styled and that to which it is ascribed; as may be seen by our speaking of “proper names” and “proper [i.e. own] possessions”. A man is the proper son of his parents both in body and in soul, although the body only be of their seed; and in like manner Christ in his whole person, in manhood as well as in Godhead, is proper Son of God. But moreover (says Alcuin), the whole matter, being supernatural, cannot be fitly measured by human analogies. Christ is Son of God the Father, although his flesh be not generated of God; and to deny the possibility of this is to impugn the Divine omnipotence.

The censure of Frankfort was followed up by a council held at Friuli, under Paulinus of Aquileia, in 796, and by one which met at Rome under Leo III in 799. At Friuli it was laid down that the Saviour is “one and the same Son of man and Son of God; not putative but real Son of God; not adoptive, but proper; proper and not adoptive in each of his natures, forasmuch as, after his assumption of manhood, one and the same person is inconfusibly and inseparably Son of God and of man”." The Roman council also condemned the adoptionists, but with so little knowledge of the matter as to accuse them of denying that the Saviour had any other than a nuncupative Godhead.

In the meantime Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons, Nefrid, bishop of Narbonne, and Benedict, abbot of Aniane, were sent into the district in which Felix had spread his opinions. They laboured with much success in confutation of adoptionism, and, having met Felix himself at Urgel, they persuaded him by an assurance of safety to proceed into France, in order that he might answer for himself before a council, which was to be held at Aix-la-Chapelle. At Aix the adoptionist was confronted by Alcuin, who had been drawn from his retirement at Tours for the purpose. The discussion lasted for six days, and Felix at length professed to be convinced by some passages from the fathers which had not before been known to him. He retracted his errors, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith. As, however, his former changes suggested a suspicion of his constancy, he was not allowed to return into his diocese, but was committed to the care of the archbishop of Lyons. Leidrad and his brother commissioners went again into Catalonia for the purpose of rooting out the heresy; and it is said by Alcuin that during their two visits they made 20,000 converts—bishops, clergy, and laity.

Elipand, not being a subject of Charlemagne, was more difficult to deal with than his associate. He now entered into controversy with Alcuin, whom he treated with his usual rudeness, reproaching him as the chief persecutor of Felix, and taxing him (among other things) with having 20,000 slaves, and with being proud of his wealth. Alcuin replied in four books, and the death of Elipand (whom some writers improbably represent as having at last renounced his heresy), followed soon after. Felix remained at Lyons with Leidrad, and afterwards with his successor Agobard. He occasionally vented some of his old opinions, but, when Agobard argued with him, he professed to be convinced. After his death, however, which took place in 818, it was found that he had left a paper containing the chief points of his heresy in the form of question and answer; and Agobard found himself obliged to undertake a refutation of this, in order to counteract the mischief which it was likely to produce, as coming from a person who had been much revered for sanctity. Although the adoptionist doctrine has been revived or justified by some writers of later times, it never afterwards gained any considerable influence.

Towards the end of Charlemagne’s reign, a controversy arose as to the procession of the Holy Spirit. In the Latin church it had always been held that the Third Person of the Godhead proceeds from the Second as well as from the First. The same doctrine which the Latins thus expressed—that the Godhead of the Holy Spirit is communicated not only from the Father but from the Son—had also been held by the Greeks in general; but, as the word proceed is in Scripture used only of his relation to the Father, they had not applied it to express his relation to the Son. Thus the second general council, in the words which it added to the Nicene creed in opposition to the Macedonian heresy, defined only that the Holy Ghost proceedeth from the Father. Theodoret, indeed, had used language which seems irreconcilable with the western belief; but it is not to be understood as expressing more than the private opinion of a writer whose orthodoxy was not unimpeached on other points; and as yet no controversy either of fact or of expression had arisen as to this subject between the two great divisions of the church.

In the west, the procession of the Spirit from the Son was in time introduced into creeds. It is found in the Athanasian creed, a form which was undoubtedly of western composition, but of which the date is much disputed. The first appearance of the doctrine in the Nicene or Constantinopolitan creed was at the third council of Toledo, in 589; and it was often enforced by later Spanish councils, under the sanction of an anathema. It would seem to have been from Spain that the definition made its way into France, where the truth of the double procession was not controverted, but some questions were raised as to the expediency or lawfulness of adding to the Nicene creed.

The origin of the differences on this subject in the period now before us is not clear. There was some discussion of it at the council of Gentilly, where the ambassadors of Constantine Copronymus were present; but (as has been already stated) the details of that council are unknown. At the council of Friuli, in 796, Paulinus maintained the expediency of the definition, on account of those heretics who whisper that the Holy Spirit is of the Father alone, and proceedeth from the Father alone; he defended it against the charge of novelty, as being not an addition to the Nicene creed, but an explanation of it; and the council adopted a profession of faith in which the double procession was laid down.

The matter came in a more pressing form before a synod held at Aix in 809, when a complaint was made that one John, a monk of St. Saba's at Jerusalem, had attacked the Frankish monks and pilgrims there on account of this doctrine, and had attempted to drive them away by force. The council approved of the addition to the creed, and Charlemagne sent two bishops, and Adelhard, abbot of Corbie, to Rome, with a request that the pope would confirm the judgment. Leo, at a conference with the envoys, of which a curious account is preserved, expressed his agreement in the doctrine of the double procession, but decidedly opposed the insertion of it into the creed. It would, he said, be wrong to insert it, since a council guided by wisdom from above had omitted it; and, moreover, the point was one of those which are not necessary to salvation for the mass of ordinary Christians.

It is said that he put up in St. Peter’s two silver shields engraved with the creed of Constantinople in Greek and in Latin, and that on both the words which express the procession of the Spirit from the Son were omitted. But, in order that there might be no doubt as to his opinion on the question of doctrine, he sent into the east a confession of faith in which the double procession was twice distinctly affirmed. We hear no more of the difference between the eastern and western churches on this subject until at a later time it was revived and led to important consequences.

It may be difficult to follow, and impossible to read with interest, the history of such controversies as those on monothelism and adoptionism; and the church has often been reproached with the agitation into which it was thrown by questions which never enter into the consideration of the great body of Christian believers. We ought, however, to remember that an error which is to agitate the church internally must not begin by setting at nought the decisions of former times; the spirit of speculation must fix on some point which is apparently within the limits already prescribed for orthodoxy. Hence, in the controversies which relate to the highest Christian doctrines, the ground is continually narrowed, as we proceed from Arianism to Nestorianism and Eutychianism, and from these to the errors which have lately come before us; while each question, as it arose, required to be discussed and decided by the lights of Scripture and of the judgments which had been before pronounced. It is not, therefore, the church that deserves to be blamed, if the opinions against which its solemn condemnations were directed became successively more and more subtle; and the reader must be content to bear with the writer, if their path should sometimes lie through intricacies which both must feel to be uninviting and wearisome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

THE ORIENTAL SECTS.

 

 

It has been mentioned, in the sketch of the Mahometan conquests, that the Arabs took advantage of the enmity between the Catholics and the Jacobites (or monophysites) to enlist the depressed and persecuted sectaries on their side. For the services thus rendered, the Jacobites were repaid by a superior degree of favour from their new masters when Egypt and Syria had fallen under the rule of the caliphs. Many of those whom the measures of Heraclius had driven to profess Catholicism now returned to the open avowal of their old opinions; and the church further lost, not only by the progress of the sword and doctrines of Islam, but by the defection of many of its own members to the heretical Christianity.

The Jacobites continued to be strong in Egypt, and also in the more westerly countries of Asia, where they were now under the government of a patriarch resident at Amida. But the party had been extirpated in Persia, and it made no further progress towards the east.

 The history of the Nestorians during this period was more remarkable. They, like the opposite sect, were at first courted and afterwards favoured by the Mussulmans on account of their hostility to the orthodox church. At their head was a bishop known by the title of catholic or; patriarch of Babylon; his residence was originally at Seleucia or Ctesiphon, but on the foundation of Bagdad by Almansur, in 762, the patriarch removed his seat to that city. In the eighth century, the Nestorians got a footing in Egypt; and in the east they laboured with great activity to propagate their form of Christianity, without, apparently, meeting with any rivalry on the part of the catholics. Following the course of trade, Nestorian missionaries made their way by sea from India to China, while others penetrated across the deserts to its northern frontier. A stone discovered at Singanfoo in 1625 bears a long inscription, partly Syriac and partly Chinese, recording the names of missionaries who had laboured in China, with the history of Christianity in that country from the year 636 to 781. Its fortunes had been varied by success and persecution; but in the eighth century it had usually, enjoyed great favour from the emperors, and many churches had been built. With these details the inscription contains a summary of Christian doctrine and practice, in which a tinge of Nestorianism is discernible. It would seem that this early Christianity of China fell with the dynasty which had encouraged it; for some missionaries who about the year 980 were sent by the catholic of Babylon into that country found the churches destroyed, and could hear of only one native who continued to profess their own religion.

The patriarch Timothy, who held his office from 777 to 820, reduced the Nestorian metropolitan of Persia to subjection, and was especially active in organizing missions. By the preachers whom he sent out a knowledge of Christianity was spread in Hyrcania, Tartary, Bactria, and other countries of central Asia, where it long retained a hold. Bishops and metropolitans, owning allegiance to the patriarch of Babylon, were established in those vast regions, and with a view to this a singular ritual provision was made by Timothy—that, if no more than two bishops could be procured for the consecration of a brother, the canonical number should be made up by allowing a book of the Gospels to supply the place of the third consecrator.

The tenets and character of the Paulicians have been the subject of controversy, which too often has been largely influenced by the party interests of those who have shared in it. Writers of the Roman church have professed to discover in the Paulicians the ancestors of the protestant reformers, and have transferred to these the charges of Manichaeism which are brought against the ancient sect. On the other hand, some protestants have ventured to accept the pedigree, and, with a confidence which equally disdains facts and reason, have asserted that the Paulicians were guiltless of the heresies imputed to them—that they were the maintainers of what such writers suppose to be a purely scriptural Christianity. It would be useless to enter here into a dis­cussion of these rival extravagances.

Although it is agreed that the word Paulician is a barbarous formation from the name Paul, there is a question as to the person from whom the designation was taken. Some trace it to one Paul of Samosata—not the notorious bishop of Antioch, in the third century, but a Manichaean of later, although uncertain, date; others to an Armenian who was eminent in the sect about the time of Justinian II. But the most probable supposition appears to be that it is derived from the name of the great apostle, whom the Paulicians affected especially to regard as their master.

Gnosticism, banished from other parts of the empire, had taken refuge in the countries bordering on the Euphrates, where in course of time the remnants of its various parties had come to be confounded under the general name of Manicheans. In this region, at the village of Mananalis, near Samosata, lived about the year 653 one Constantine, who is described as descended from a Manichaean family. A deacon, who was returning from captivity among the Saracens, became his guest, and in acknowledgment of his hospitality left with him a manuscript containing the Gospels and St. Paul’s Epistles. Constantine read these, applying the principles of his old belief to the interpretation of them; and the result was, that he renounced some of the grosser absurdities in which he had been trained, burnt the heretical books which it was a capital crime to possess, and put forth a system which, by means of allegorical and other evasions, he professed to reconcile with the letter of the New Testament, while in reality it was mainly derived from the doctrines of his hereditary sect. Although he is usually styled a Manichaean, it would appear that the term is not to be strictly understood. His opinions were probably more akin to Marcionism, which is known to have been strong in the region of the Euphrates two hundred years earlier; and his followers freely anathematized Manes, among other heresiarchs.

Constantine styled himself Silvanus, and the leaders who succeeded him assumed the names of Titus, Epaphroditus, Timothy, and others of St. Paul’s companions. In like manner they affected to transfer to the chief communities of their sect the names of churches in which the apostle and his associates had laboured. The Paulicians acknowledged St. Paul’s epistles, with those of St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, and the Acts of the Apostles. They also originally admitted the four Gospels, although it would seem that they afterwards rested exclusively on those of St. Luke and St. John, if they did not absolutely reject the others. They rejected the Old Testament, and they especially denounced St. Peter, as a betrayer of his Lord and of the truth; nor was their enmity without reason, says Peter of Sicily, since that apostle had prophesied against their misuse of St. Paul.

The Paulicians held that matter was eternal; that there were two Gods—the one, generated of darkness and fire, the creator and lord of the present world, the God of the Old Testament and of the church; the other, the Supreme, the object of their own worship, the God of the spiritual world which is to come. They held that the soul of man was of heavenly origin, and imprisoned in a material body. They not only refused to the blessed Virgin the excessive honours which the Catholics had gradually bestowed on her, but are said to have altogether disparaged her; they denied her perpetual virginity, while they maintained that our Lord did not really take of her substance, but brought his body from heaven, and that his birth was only in appearance. They objected to the order of presbyters, because the Jewish presbyters or elders had opposed the Christ; their own teachers were not distinguished by any special character, dress, manner of life, or privileges. Of these teachers several grades are mentioned, but they did not form a permanent hierarchy; thus, when the “companions in travel”, who had been associated with the last great master of the sect, died out, the “notaries”, whose business it was to copy the writings which were acknowledged as authoritative, became its chief instructors. The Paulicians reverenced Constantine and three others of their leaders as apostles or prophets. They rejected the sacraments : Christ, they said, did not give his disciples bread and wine, but by the names of these elements He signified his own sustaining words; and the true baptism is He Himself, who declared Himself to be the “living water”. They spat on the cross and attacked the Catholics on account of their reverence for images, while they themselves paid reverence to the book of the Gospels, as containing the words of Christ. They allowed themselves a great license of equivocation as to their opinions; and in the same spirit they did not scruple to attend the catholic worship or sacraments. They claimed for themselves exclusively the title of Christians, while they styled the Catholics Romans, as having merely a political religion. Their own places of worship were not styled temples or churches, but houses of prayer. By the modern patrons of the Paulicians, their opposition in some of these points to the current errors or superstitions of the time has been traced to an unbiassed study of holy Scripture; but it may be more truly explained by their connexion with older sects, which had become separate before the corruptions in question were introduced into the church itself.

Constantine fixed himself at Cibossa, in Armenia, where he presided over his sect for twenty-seven years, and made many converts, both from the church and from the Zoroastrian religion. At length the matter was reported to the emperor Constantine Pogonatus, who sent an officer named Symeon to Cibossa, with orders to put the heresiarch to death, and to distribute his followers among the clergy and in monasteries, with a view to their being reclaimed. Symeon carried off Constantine and a large body of the sectaries, whom he drew up in a line, and commanded to stone their chief. Instead of obeying, all but one let fall the stones with which they were armed; but Constantine was killed, like another Goliath (as we are told), by a stone from the hand of a youth—his own adopted son Justus. As the sectaries proved obstinate in their errors, Symeon entered into conference with some of them; the effect was, that, being ignorant as to the grounds of his old religion, he became their convert, and, after spending three years at Constantinople in great uneasiness of mind, he fled, leaving all his property behind him, and took up his abode at Cibossa, where, under the name of Titus, he became the successor of Constantine. After a time, Justus was struck by the seeming inconsistency of the Paulician doctrines with a text which refers the spiritual as well as the material world to the same one Creator. He proposed the difficulty to Symeon, expressing a fear that they might both have been in error, and might have misled their followers; and, on finding that Symeon would not satisfy him, he went to the bishop of a neighbouring town, Colonia (now About Calahissar), and exposed the tenets of the sect. The bishop reported the case to the emperor, Justinian II, and in consequence of this information, Symeon, Justus himself, and many of their followers, were burnt to death on one large pile.

Among those who escaped this fate was an Armenian named Paul, who took up his abode near Phanaroea, at a place which is said to have derived its name, Episparis, from the sowing of spiritual tares there by the elder Paul, the Samosatenian. The sect revived under the Armenian Paul, but at his death the headship of it was contested his two sons. Gegnaesius, the elder, to whom his father had given the name of Timothy, rested his claims on hereditary succession, while the younger, Theodore, relied on an immediate commission from heaven and their dispute reached the ears of Leo the Isaurian, who ordered Germanus, patriarch Constantinople, to examine Gegnaesius. The Paulician was skillful enough to meet all questions with answers which appeared satisfactory. He anathematized all who denied the orthodox faith, for by that name he secretly intended his own heresy. He anathematized all who refused to worship the cross, for by the cross he meant our Lord Himself stretching out his arms in prayer or benediction. He anathematized all who refused worship to the Theotokos, into whom the Saviour entered—understanding under this description the heavenly Jerusalem, into which Christ has entered as the forerunner of his elect. By the catholic church he meant his own sect; by baptism, Christ the living water by the body and blood of Christ, the Saviour’s words of instruction : he therefore anathematized all who rejected any of these, and having thus satisfied Germanus, he was sent home with favourable letters from the emperor.

The abhorrence which the Paulicians professed for images might have been supposed likely to recommend the party to the iconoclastic emperors. But it would seem that these princes rather feared to connect themselves with the disrepute which its other opinions had brought on it; and thus we find that Leo and his son, instead of favouring the Paulicians, transported many of them from Armenia into Thrace. After various fortunes, the headship of the sectaries had fallen to one Baanes, who is styled “the filthy”, and may therefore be probably supposed to have sanctioned some of the immoralities which are too often lightly imputed to all heresiarchs. But when the Paulicians had sunk thus low, a reformer appeared in the person of a young man named Sergius.

Sergius was converted to Paulicianism by a female theologian. The historians of the sect relate that this woman, having fixed on him as one whom it was desirable to gain, entered into conversation with him, and, after some compliments on his learning and character, asked him why he did not read the Scriptures. He answered that such studies were not lawful for Christians in general, but only for the clergy—an idea which Chrysostom had strongly opposed, but which since his time had become fixed in the popular belief, although without any formal authority from the Church. “It is not as you think”, she rejoined; “for there is no acceptance of persons with God, since He will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth”. And she went on to tell him that the clergy mutilated and corrupted the word of God, and that such of them as did miracles would be found among those to whom Christ will say in the judgment day, “I never knew you”. Sergius began to read the Scriptures, and under the tuition of his instructress, he learnt to apply to the Catholics all that is there said against the fleshly Israel, and to regard the Paulicians as the true spiritual church of Christ. He assumed the name of Tychicus and became a new founder of the sect, which is said to have held his writings in equal veneration with the Scriptures themselves. His own morals would seem to have been unimpeachable, since Photius and Peter of Sicily can only charge him with hypocrisy; and he reformed the morality of the Paulicians, in opposition to the principles of Baanes. For thirty-four years—from the reign of Irene to that of Theophilus—Sergius laboured indefatigably in the cause of Paulicianism. He is said to have indulged in unseemly boasting of his success; to have preferred himself to the earlier teachers of the party; to have styled himself the resplendent lamp, the shining light, the life-giving star, and even the Paraclete.

The emperor Nicephorus was friendly to the sect, and granted it toleration in Phrygia and Lycaonia. Theophanes tells us that he engaged in magical practices with the Manicheans who are called Paulicians, in order to obtain victory for his arms. Under Michael Rhangabe severe laws were enacted against these heretics; such of them as should be obstinate in their errors were to be put to death. A party in the church, headed by Theodore the Studite, opposed the infliction of death as the punishment of heresy; but Theophanes argues that this view is absurd, since St. Peter inflicted death on Ananias and Sapphira, and St. Paul says that persons who are guilty of certain sins are worthy of death. To these scriptural authorities for persecution Peter of Sicily adds another—the command, “Those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me”.

Leo the Armenian, iconoclast as he was, continued the persecution of the Paulicians. The sectaries, as usually happens, were exasperated by such treatment. The deaths of some of their chiefs were avenged by the slaughter of a prefect and a bishop who had been active against them. They lived in constant hostility to their neighbours, and, as opportunity favoured, they broke out from their bounds, devastated, plundered, and slaughtered. Their female captives, it is said, were given up to promiscuous lust; the children were either killed or sold to the Saracens; and Sergius found himself unable to restrain the excesses of his followers. Sergius himself was slain with his own axe by a man who had found him cutting wood, in the year 835. His reforms had led to the separation of the sect into two hostile branches; and after his death, his followers, wishing to clear themselves from the obloquy attached to the Baanites, fell on these, and carried on a bloody contest with them, until a“companion in travel” of Sergius, named Theodotus, succeeded in recalling both parties to a remembrance of their common faith.

  After the re-establishment of images, under the regency of Theodora, the empress was urged by the victorious party to undertake the suppression of Paulicianism, whether by conversion or by force; and, as the sectaries resisted all attempts which were made to gain them, the fury of persecution was let loose among them. It is said that not less than 100,000 were slain by the sword, beheaded, drowned, or impaled. Among the victims was the father of Carbeas, captain of the guard to the prefect of the east. Carbeas, on hearing of his parent’s fate, renounced his allegiance to the empire, and, with 5000 companions, sought a refuge among the Saracens. The caliph gladly welcomed the fugitives, and granted them leave to settle within his territory, where, on the same principle by which they had justified their occasional conformity to the church, they adopted externally the rites of Islam. Carbeas built or enlarged and fortified several towns, of which Tephrica was the chief and became the headquarters of the sect. Paulicians from other quarters flocked to the new home which was opened for them; and the numbers of the party were swelled by refugees who sought an asylum from the imperial laws, and, according to its enemies, by others who found an attraction in the license of morals which it granted to its members. The Paulicians harassed their neighbours of the empire by continual aggressions. Under the command of Carbeas, their forces, in conjunction with the Saracens, gained a great victory over Michael, the son of Theodora, under the walls of Samosata; and in the reign of the emperor Basil, Chrysocheir, the son-in-law of Carbeas, advanced through Asia Minor with an army made up of Paulicians and saracens, pillaged Ancyra, Nicaea, Nicomedia, and other cities, gave up images and relics to his followers for profanation, and stabled his horses in the cathedral of Ephesus. Basil was reduced to sue for peace; but Chrysocheir refused it except on the intolerable condition that he should give up the east to “the servants of the Lord”. The emperor had no choice but to carry on the war; he advanced into the Paulician country, and took some of the towns, but was obliged to relinquish the siege of Tephrica. Chrysocheir again invaded the imperial territory; but his troops were defeated by one of Basil's generals, and he himself, as he fled, was closely followed by one Pylades, who had formerly been his captive. It was in vain that he reminded his pursuer of the kindness with which he had treated him; a wound from the lance of Pylades compelled him to drop from his horse, and, as he lay stunned by the fall, some other Greeks despatched him. His head was carried to the emperor, who fulfilled a vow and gratified his enmity by piercing it with three arrows. After the death of Chrysocheir, the Paulicians ceased to be formidable. Tephrica was destroyed, yet a remnant of the sect continued to assert its independence for a century later.

In another quarter, the heresy had been kept up by the descendants of those who were transported into Thrace by Constantine Copronymus. It was in order to guard the newly-founded church of Bulgaria from the infection of its Thracian neighbours, that Peter of Sicily, about the year 870, addressed to the archbishop of the Bulgarians the tract which is a chief source of information as to the sect, drawing his materials in part from the observations and inquiries which he had made during a residence of nine months at Tephrica, on a mission for negotiating an exchange of prisoners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

SUPPLEMENTARY.

 

Influence of the Papacy.

 

The preceding chapters have set before us the changes which took place in the position of the patriarchs during the seventh and eighth centuries—the sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem reduced to subjection under the Mahometan rule; the bishops of Constantinople becoming more and more tools and slaves of the imperial court; while in the west the power of the Roman bishop is greatly and rapidly increased. This advance of the papacy was much aided by the circumstance that Rome, although often taken by barbarians, never remained long in their possession. It alone retained its ancient character, while in all other quarters the old national distinctions were obliterated by successive invasions. The popes alone kept their ground amid the revolutions of secular powers; and their authority was vastly extended as nation after nation of the barbarian conquerors was brought within the sphere of Christian influence. As in former times the bishop of Rome had been considered by the orientals to represent the whole western church, so he now appeared to the new nations of the north and of the west as the representative and source of Christianity on earth. St. Peter was regarded as holding the keys of heaven, and as personally connected with his successors. The popes strengthened their position at once by detaching themselves from the Byzantine empire, and by entering into an alliance with the princes of the west on terms such as the empire had never admitted.

They were connected by mutual interest with the Frankish kings, especially with those of the second dynasty, and Charlemagne's conquests gave them a supremacy over the church of northern Italy, which they had in vain desired in the time of the Lombard princes. By the donations of Pipin and of Charlemagne they acquired a new secular power; and it would seem to have been in the latter half of the eighth century, or early in the ninth, that the forged donation of Constantine appeared, to assert for them a more venerable claim to a wider jurisdiction, and to incite the Frankish sovereigns to imitate the bounty of the first Christian emperor. Constantine, it was said, was baptized by Pope Sylvester, and at his baptism received the miraculous cure of a leprosy with which he had been afflicted; whereupon, in consideration of the superiority of ecclesiastical to secular dignity, he relinquished Rome to the pope, conferred on him the right of wearing a golden crown with other ensigns of sovereignty, and endowed the apostolic see with the Lateran palace, and with all the provinces of Italy or the western regions. This forgery seemed to justify the Romans in withdrawing themselves from the empire; it seemed to legitimatize the possession of all that the popes had gained, since this was but a part of what was said to have been bestowed on their see by the first Christian emperor; and the fable retained its credit, although not altogether unquestioned, throughout the middle ages.

The mission of Augustine introduced the papal influence into England, where a new church arose, strongly attached to Rome, and fruitful in missionaries who established the Roman ascendency in Germany and in Gaul. The English church owned subjection to the pope, not so much on account of his supposed succession to St. Peter, as because it derived its origin from Rome, and thus was included in the Roman patriarchate by the same principle which subjected the Abyssinians to the see of Alexandria. But as the papal power increased elsewhere, the subjection of England to it became also greater. The council of Cloveshoo, assembled by Ethelbald, king of Mercia, opened with the reading of two letters from Zacharias, “the pontiff and apostolic lord, to be venerated throughout the world”; and it is acknowledged that the recital of these documents, in which he exhorts the English of every degree to reformation, under the threat of an anathema, was in obedience to his “apostolical authority”. In 785, two Roman legates— the first (as they said) who had been sent into England since the time of Augustine—visited this country, and with a view to the reformation of the church, councils were held in their presence in Mercia and in Northumbria. Offa, king of Mercia, then the most powerful of the English kingdoms, attended the Mercian assembly at Chalchythe. In consequence of some offence which he had taken, on political or other grounds, at Janbert, archbishop of Canterbury, he wished that Lichfield should be erected into an archiepiscopal see. Janbert strongly opposed a scheme by which his metropolitan authority was to be limited to the kingdoms of Kent and Sussex; but it is supposed that the legates at Chalchythe favoured the change, and with the sanction of Pope Adrian, Higbert, who had been bishop since 779, received the title of archbishop. Some years later, however, Kenulph, the second successor of Offa, having annexed Kent to Mercia, and being desirous to conciliate the clergy of his new territory, joined with Athelard, archbishop of Canterbury, in a request that Leo would again reduce the see of Lichfield to its original condition. Athelard went to Rome in order to press the suit; the pope consented, and with his license the new archbishopric was abolished by a council held at Cloveshoo in 803.

Ina, king of Wessex, in 725 resigned his crown, and went on pilgrimage to Rome, where he ended his days as a monk; and his example was followed by other Anglo-Saxon sovereigns. It has been said that the tribute of a penny from every hearth in England, afterwards known as Romescot or Peterpence, was first granted by Ina, and was confirmed by Offa in 794. But it would seem that the donation of Ina is imaginary, and that in the case of Offa a payment of 365 marks towards the lighting of St Peter's and the relief of pilgrims—an eleemosynary grant from the crown—has been confounded with the Romescot of a later time, which was a tax levied on the subject, and was interpreted by the advocates of the papacy as an acknowledgment that this island was held in fee under the successors of St. Peter.

 

Relations of Church and State. 

 

The right of confirming elections to the papacy had been exercised by the Byzantine emperors, either personally or through their representatives, the exarchs, from the reconquest of Italy under Justinian until the iconoclastic disputes led to the omission of the form in the case of Zacharias; and the Carolingian emperors assumed the same privilege as a part of their sovereignty. The story that, during Charlemagne's visit to Rome in 774, Adrian, with a synod of a hundred and fifty-three bishops, bestowed on him and his successors the right of nominating the popes, is now rejected, and, with other such inventions, is supposed to have originated in later times from the wish of the Roman party to represent the superintendence which the Frank princes undeniably exercised over ecclesiastical affairs as if it were derived from the gift of the popes.

In the East, where no political power was attached to the episcopal office, the emperors had not usually interfered in the appointment of bishops, except at Constantinople and other cities in which they themselves resided. The second council of Nicaea enacted that bishops should be chosen by their episcopal brethren, and that any nomination by princes should be invalid. But in the new states of the west, the position of the bishops as great landowners, and the political importance which they acquired, occasioned a remarkable mixture of secular and spiritual things. Although it was again and again laid down by Frankish councils that the elections of bishops should be free, without any other condition than the approbation of the sovereign, the usual practice throughout the period appears to have been that bishops were appointed by the crown, whether the nomination were or were not followed by a formal election on the part of the clergy and people. In 614 a synod at Paris enacted that a bishop should be appointed without any payment, by the concurrence of the metropolitan and bishops of the province with the clergy and people of the city. But Clotaire II, in ratifying the canons, introduced considerable alterations in favour of the royal prerogative; among them, he required that a bishop should be consecrated under a mandate from the crown, and reserved to himself the power of naming a clerk from his household to a vacant see, although he promised in so doing to have regard to the learning and merit of the nominee. It has been supposed that Charlemagne, by a capitulary of 803, professed to restore the ancient usage of election by the clergy and people; but no such enactment was really issued until the reign of Lewis the Pious, while it is certain that in the appointment of bishops the great emperor practically followed the example of his predecessors, and that he was imitated by his descendants.

In Spain, the fourth council of Toledo, in 633, enacted that a bishop should be chosen by the clergy and people of his city, and that the election should be approved by the metropolitan and synod of the province. But at the twelfth council of the same place, in 681, the appointment of bishops by the royal authority alone is mentioned as a matter of settled custom. The process by which this change was effected is unknown.

In England, although Wihtred, king of Kent, in 696, disclaimed the right of appointing bishops the royal authority influenced their appointment, as they were chosen by the witenagemot of each state in the presence of the king. And here, as in other countries, the influence of the crown gradually became more absolute. From letters written by Alcuin, a century after Wihtred’s time, on a vacancy in the archbishopric of York, it appears that the ancient freedom of election was then giving way; that kings assumed an increased control over the choice of bishops, or even disposed of sees by gift. In the ninth century, the nomination of bishops had passed into the hands of the sovereign, while a shadow of the earlier system was kept up in a formal election of the person so appointed, and in the publication of his name from the pulpit of the cathedral, to which announcement the people replied by acclamations and wishes of long life to their new pastor.

The Frankish sovereigns, in their continual movements, required a staff of clergy to attend on them for the performance of divine service. At the head of this body was placed the archchaplain, whose office became one of great importance. Sometimes it was filled by a presbyter, sometimes by a bishop, who in such a case required a special dispensation for absence from his diocese; but, whether bishop or presbyter, the arch-chaplain stood next in dignity to the family of the sovereign, and at synods he took precedence even of archbishops. Combining the functions of chancellor with those of chaplain, he acted as a minister of the crown for spiritual affairs; he received reports from the bishops as to the state of their churches, prepared the king's ecclesiastical capitularies and other documents, and conducted his correspondence on matters which concerned the church. Such being the archchaplain’s position, it depended on individual character whether he should sway the prince in the interest of the hierarchy, or the prince should by means of him obtain a control over the administration of the church.

The mixture of clergy and laity in the Frankish councils has been already mentioned. The capitularies bear a marked impress of clerical influence; but it was often possible for sovereigns, by the help of their lay vassals, to overrule the proposals of the bishops as to ecclesiastical affairs, or to carry measures notwithstanding their opposition. Sometimes, however, the clergy were assembled by themselves, as at Verne or Verneuil, in 755, where abbots for the first time appear as members of a Frankish council.

In Spain, from the time when king Recared and his nobles appeared at Toledo, for the purpose of arranging the change from Arianism to the catholic faith (A.D. 589), mixed councils of clergy and laity, summoned by the sovereign, were frequently held. At the earlier sessions of these, from the seventeenth council of Toledo, in 694, the affairs of the church were first discussed by the bishops and abbots, without the presence of the laity; but on the fourth day, the nobles, the judges, and others, were called in to take a part in their deliberations.

Among the Anglo-Saxons, the kings and other laymen attended ecclesiastical synods, while the bishops sat in the witenagemots, or national assemblies. The part which the laity took, however, in councils, did not extend to matters purely spiritual, although it was for the witenagemot to confirm, by the authority of law, the decisions of the clergy in such matters. Bishops took precedence of the lay nobility; and sometimes the archbishops signed the acts of synods before the king himself, as was the case at Chalchythe in 785.

The claims of the ecclesiastical and secular judicatures in France were variously settled by successive enactments. It may be said in general, that, while the clergy were not amenable to secular judgment in questions between members of their own order, or in the case of ecclesiastical offences, the trial of questions between clerks and laymen belonged to a mixed tribunal of lay and spiritual judges. Priests and deacons were in no case to be tried except with the bishop's knowledge or co-operation; and in important criminal charges, this privilege was extended to the lower clergy. The principle of mixed tribunals was approved by Charlemagne; and although he seems to have in some of his laws exempted the clergy from all secular judgment in questions which concerned their own persons, this exemption was far short of that for which the high hierarchical party contended at a later time. For in cases which related to the possessions of clergymen, the secular judges still had a share the right of judicature was not regarded as inherent in the episcopal office, but as granted, and therefore revocable, by the sovereign, so that in the ninth century bishops are threatened with the loss of it if they neglect to exercise it rightly; and from metropolitans, as from secular judges, the appeal lay to the emperor, beyond whom there was no appeal. Among the Franks, as formerly under the Roman empire, there were many canons to prohibit clerks from carrying their grievances to the sovereign without abiding the judgment of their immediate superiors, or obtaining the leave of these Clotaire II, in his edict of 614, ordered that no such recourse to the king should be allowed, except in order to sue for pardon; but the royal letter of pardon was a protection against all punishment, and the bishops were bound to obey it.

In Spain, canons are found which forbid ecclesiastics to judge in cases of blood, or to inflict mutilation of the members.

In England, the judgment of clerks was as yet on the same footing with that of the laity. But this was before a mixed tribunal—the bishop sitting in the county-court with the ealdorman or earl, as the priests of the old Saxon heathenism had done; and the papal legates at the council of Chalchythe objected to the custom, as tending to implicate the bishops too much in worldly affairs. Notwithstanding their remonstrance, however, the practical usefulness of the system secured its continuance, until the spiritual jurisdiction was separated from the secular by William the Conqueror, at the instance of his Norman ecclesiastical advisers.

 

The Hierarchy.—Administration of the Church.

 

The metropolitan organization had originally grown out of an analogy with the civil divisions of the Roman empire. In the Frankish kingdom, where no such division existed, the system fell into decay, and although Boniface, under the authority of Pope Zacharias and with the countenance of Pipin and Carloman, attempted to restore it, his success was very imperfect. Charlemagne, when at Rome in 774, was urged by Adrian to undertake the revival of the metropolitan jurisdiction and established it not only in his original dominions, but in those which he acquired. But the new metropolitans had not the same influence as those of earlier times. In the national assemblies the metropolitan met the suffragan bishops as his peers, and a suffragan might by character or ability become more important than his ecclesiastical superior; while the growing connexion between France and Rome, and the increase of the papal power, drew the Frankish clergy to look beyond their metropolitans to the yet higher authority of the popes.

In the eighth and ninth centuries we find frequent mention of Chorepiscopi—a title which in this period has some variety of application. Of those who were subject to the diocesan bishops, some had episcopal consecration, while the greater number were merely presbyters, enjoying a delegated authority in rural places. But besides these, there are frequent denunciations of chorepiscopi who were in the habit of wandering about, without any local authority, and of interfering with the rights of the established bishops by conferring orders and performing other episcopal acts. The chorepiscopi of this class who disturbed the Frankish church were for the most part from Ireland, where the peculiar system of the church encouraged the multiplication of bishops without local jurisdiction; while others may have been consecrated by chorepiscopi who had themselves received consecration as assistants to the diocesan bishops. But even when the original appointment and consecration were regular, chorepiscopi were often disposed to presume beyond their proper function. Charlemagne, in a letter, states that the proceedings of these persons had caused great trouble and scandal; that priests, deacons, and sub-deacons, who had been ordained by bishops, denied the validity of orders conferred by chorepiscopi; and that Pope Leo had disallowed the acts of these intruders. They are (he continues) not really bishops, since they neither have been consecrated by three bishops, nor possess episcopal titles to sees. Ordination, confirmation, veiling of nuns, consecration of churches and of altars, belong only to diocesan bishops —not to chorepiscopi or presbyters, who correspond to the seventy disciples, and not to the apostles. The emperor says that chorepiscopi had been made by bishops in ignorance of ecclesiastical decrees, and from a wish to devolve their own labour on others; and he forbids that any should be made in future. But in the following century we again meet with notices of this class, most commonly in the way of censure, or of prohibition from exceeding the limits of their commission.

Towards the end of the eighth century, the office of archdeacon acquired a new character and importance. In earlier times, there had been only one archdeacon in each diocese; but, with a view to a better superintendence of the clergy, the dioceses of the Frankish empire were now divided into archdeaconries, in which the arch­deacons, although themselves of a lower degree, had jurisdiction over presbyters, and exercised all the ordinary administration except such acts as especially belonged to the episcopal order. The office became so lucrative that laymen attempted to intrude into it—an abuse which was forbidden by a capitulary of 805, and by many canons of later date. As the archdeacons were not removable except for some grave offence, it was soon found that many of them endeavoured to render themselves independent of their bishops and from canons of the ninth century it would appear that their exactions and the insolence of their followers were severely felt by the clergy subject to their jurisdiction.

The archdeaconries of the new organization were divided into deaneries (decania), each under an archpriest or rural dean (archi-presbyter) The clergy of each deanery met on the first of every month for conference on spiritual and ecclesiastical affairs. The conference was followed by a dinner; but complaints soon arose that these entertainments led to excesses which more than counterbalanced the benefits of the meeting. Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, in his injunctions of 852, found it necessary to denounce the abuse, and to lay down rules for moderation, restricting the allowance of the clergy on such occasions to three cups for each.

The bishops were required to visit throughout their dioceses every year. The expense of entertaining them on their circuits was often complained of by the clergy; with a view to limiting it, the seventh council of Toledo ordered that the bishop should not on such occasions take more than five (or, according to another reading, fifty) horses in his train, and that his stay in each parish should not exceed one day. But even after this limitation, the expense continued to be heavy, as appears from the list of provisions required by a Lombard capitulary of 855, which includes a hundred loaves, four large swine, a lamb, a pig, fifty pints of wine, and a sufficiency of honey, oil, and wax. Lewis the Pious, in 829, charges his commissioners to inquire whether the bishops in their visitations are burdensome to the clergy. A capitulary of Charles the Bald, in 844, denounces the misbehaviour which was common among the attendants of bishops when on visitation, and provides that the clergy of five neighbouring parishes shall combine to supply provisions for the usual hospitality to their diocesan. The priest at whose house the entertainment is held is to contribute in the same proportion as the others, with "perhaps" the addition of firewood and utensils. The third council of Valence, in 855, censures an abuse which some bishops had introduced by exacting visitation-dues of their clergy at times when they omitted to visit.

The parochial system was not yet completely organized in the Frankish church; the people in country places were often dependent for divine offices on the clergy of the cathedral city, or on the chaplain of some neighbouring castle. The division of England into parishes has (as we have already seen) been ascribed to the Greek archbishop, Theodore; but, whatever his share in promoting it may have been, the general establishment of the system appears to have been slowly and gradually effected.

With a view of enforcing ecclesiastical discipline, it was attempted by frequent enactments to bind the clergy by strict local ties. No stranger was to be admitted to officiate without producing letters of license and recommendation from his bishop. Fugitive clerks were to be examined and sent home; wandering clergy or monks, who disturbed the church by teaching error or by raising unnecessary questions, were to be apprehended, carried before the metropolitan, and put to suitable penance; all the clergy of a diocese were to be subject to the bishop’s jurisdiction. Presbyters were obliged to remain in the diocese where they were ordained; some councils required a promise that they would do so, and Charlemagne even imposed an oath to that effect. No bishop was to receive a clerk from another diocese, or to promote him to a higher degree; but, while this was absolutely forbidden in a capitulary for France, the corresponding enactment for Lombardy allows it with the consent of the bishop to whose diocese the clerk had belonged. And it is evident, from facts which continually meet us in history and biography, that with such consent it was not unusual for clergymen to pass from one diocese, or even from one kingdom, to another.

During the earlier ages, ordination had not been conferred without a title (i.e. without assigning a particular sphere of labour), except in rare and extraordinary instances, such as that of St. Jerome. The same rule was now often re-enacted; but an exception was necessarily made in the case of missionaries, and was by degrees extended to other cases. Although the ancient canons as to the requisites for ordination were still in force, an important novelty was introduced, after the sixth century, by means of the tonsure. This was regarded as conferring the character of a clerk, without ordination to any particular grade of the ministry; and thus clerks were made in great numbers, without any regard to the canonical conditions or impediments of ordination. It may easily be conceived that much disorder was introduced by these “acephalous” (or headless) clerks, who enjoyed the immunities of the clerical state without being bound by its obligations.

The example of the royal household in France induced persons of rank to establish domestic chaplains. These were often disposed to set the bishops at defiance; and it appears from the testimony of many councils that the institution had an unfavourable effect on the religion of the people in general. It is represented that the absence of the lord from the parish-church encourages   his dependants to absent themselves; that the clergy have no opportunity of enforcing the duties of the rich and powerful; and there are frequent complaints of attempts to withdraw the ecclesiastical dues from the bishops and parochial clergy, in order to provide for the chaplains by means of them. But in addition to these evils, the chaplains were usually persons of low and disreputable character; they were miserably paid, disrespectfully treated by their employers, and required to perform degrading services. The position and habits of chaplains were found to bring discredit on the whole body of the clergy; and hence Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, in the reign of Lewis the Pious, took occasion to write a treatise in vindication of “the privilege and rights of the priesthood”. After showing from Scripture the estimation in which the clergy ought to be held, he proceeds by way of contrast to describe the abuses of his own time. Every person of any pretension to station, he says, then kept a priest of his own—“not to obey him, but continually to exact obedience from him, and that in unlawful as well as in lawful things”. The chaplains were employed to do the work of bailiffs, butlers, grooms, or dog-keepers, to wait at table, to lead ladies’ horses. As no respectable clergyman would accept such a position, the patrons, whose chief object was to obtain an excuse for deserting the public offices of religion and emancipating themselves from the control of the clergy, cared nothing how gross the ignorance of their chaplains might be, or how infamous their lives. They usually took one of the serfs on their estates, or procured a person of servile birth for the purpose, and were offended if the bishop hesitated to ordain him as a matter of course. Even if we might implicitly believe all that has lately been written against the English domestic chaplains of the seventeenth century, it would appear that the class had lost nothing in dignity between the age of Agobard and that of Eachard.

A new species of ecclesiastical officers arose in Gaul during the sixth and seventh centuries, under the title of advocates, defensors, or vicedomini. Except in name, these bore no resemblance to the defensors of the earlier ages; the new office grew out of the peculiar circumstances of the Frankish church. The bishops and clergy required the assistance of force to protect them against the outrages of their rough and lawless neighbours. Their landed possessions imposed on them duties which, if not altogether inconsistent with their spiritual office, might, at least, be more conveniently performed by laymen—such as the exercise of secular judicature, and the leading of the contingents which their estates were required to furnish to the national army. Moreover, as, by the Germanic laws, none but freemen, capable of bearing arms, were entitled to appear in law-suits, the clergy (like women, old or infirm persons, and children) required substitutes who might appear for them, and, if necessary, might go through the ordeal of battle in their behalf. For such purposes it was found expedient to call in the aid of some neighbouring layman, distinguished by influence or by personal prowess; and his services were usually recompensed by the use of lands belonging to the church, and adjacent to his own, in addition to a share of the fines inflicted in his court, and to other pecuniary dues. The appointment of an advocate was at first a voluntary act; but Charlemagne ordered that every church should be provided with such a champion. The qualifications for the office were very particularly defined, with a view of guarding against misconduct or encroachment; and the advocates were subject to the inspection of the imperial commissioners. The sovereign assigned advocates to churches which were themselves unable to find any. As such grants had the nature of a favour, the advocates thus appointed required higher terms than those whom churches chose for themselves; and from them the others gradually learnt to assume a superiority over the ecclesiastical bodies with which they were connected, to claim dues which absorbed a large portion of the revenues, and to become tyrants instead of protectors, both to the clergy and to their tenants. It was not, however, until after the period which we are now surveying that their relation to the church assumed this character.

Another encroachment on the church arose out of the system of lay patronage, which had become general throughout the west. In some cases, the right of presentation to a church expired with the founder, while in others it was continued to his representatives. But patrons were not always content with the power of nominating clerks. Sometimes the builder of a church reserved to himself a certain portion of its revenues; sometimes the church was built on speculation—the founder expecting to get more than a reimbursement from the oblations, while he made a composition to pay the incumbent a certain allowance. Against this practice canons were directed, which forbade bishops to consecrate churches erected on such conditions; but the patron was considered to have a legal interest in the preservation and right disposal of the property belonging to his church. Charlemagne allows the sale of churches and Lewis the Pious enacted that, if the incumbent of a church should have a surplus of income, he should pay “due service” to his landlord. The division of inheritance was some times carried into the disposal of church-patronage, so that an “altar” might be divided into several portions, belonging to a like number of priests; such partitions were forbidden by a capitulary of Lewis the German, in 851.

A canon of the fourth council of Toledo provides that, if the founder or benefactor of a church, or his descendants, fall into poverty, an allowance shall be made to them out of its revenues.

The question of patronage was a fruitful source of disagreements between bishops and secular lords. Canons were passed for the purpose of guarding against abuses on both sides—enacting that no layman should present or eject a clerk without the consent of the bishop, while, on the other hand, the bishop was forbidden to reject a presentee except on good and valid grounds.

In the beginning of the period, we find many denunciations of simony in the writings of Gregory the Great. He complains of this “first of heresies”, this “buying and selling of doves in the temple”, as prevailing in all quarters—in Gaul, in Germany, in Africa, in Greece and Epirus, in the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem; and he continually urges both princes and high ecclesiastics to join with him in labouring to suppress it. But in defiance of all denunciations and penalties, the evil continued, and from age to age there are frequent complaints both against patrons who, for the sake of gifts, nominated worthless persons to ecclesiastical office, and against bishops who corruptly conferred ordinatio.

The Frankish church continued to increase in wealth. Estates, sometimes of very great extent, were bestowed on it with the declared object of securing for the giver the remission of his sins and the salvation of his soul. And the inducements to make such donations were increased by the system of precarious contracts—so called because the giver, in endowing the church with his lands, prayed that the use of them might be allowed him for his lifetime, or perhaps that it might be continued to one or more persons in succession after him. Thus many who would have scrupled to deprive themselves of the income arising from an estate, were enabled to perform an act of bounty without expense to themselves, or even to make a profit by it; for the church, in consideration of the reversion assured to itself, in many cases allowed a donor to enjoy not only his own land, but other lands of perhaps much greater value than that of which his gainful piety was to deprive his heirs. With a view to the limitation of this abuse, it was enacted by the council of Epernay in 846, that a donor of land should not be allowed to receive more than twice the value of his gift by way of addition; that kings should not sanction precarious contracts except at the request of the church ; and that, agreeably to ancient custom, the contract should require renewal every fifth year.

The lands of the church were either cultivated by its serfs for the benefit of the owners, or they were let to tenants, whether free or servile, who paid a fixed proportion of the produce by way of rent. In addition to these lands and to the oblations, the ecclesiastical revenues were now swelled by the general imposition of tithes. Under the old Roman system, a tenth of the produce of land was paid by the coloni to the state as rent; and when lands were granted on this condition to a corporation, a second tenth—a ninth of the remaining produce—was paid by the tenant to whom it was under­let. These two payments were known by the name of “tenths and ninths”. The church, as a large holder of lands under the state, exacted the ninths from its tenants; while sometimes, by special grant, it was excused from the payment of the fiscal tenth, and consequently was entitled to receive tenths as well as ninths for its own benefits.

The ecclesiastical or Levitical tithe was a third charge, distinct from these rent-payments. The earliest canon which required it, was passed by the council of Macon in 585. But it would seem that this canon had little effect, and no attempt to reinforce it was made by the Frankish councils during the remainder of the Merovingian period. Pipin for the first time added the authority of the secular power to that of the church for the exaction of tithes; but little was done until the reign of Charlemagne, who by a capitulary of 779 enacted that they should be paid. The payment was enforced, not only by excommunication, but by heavy civil penalties, graduated according to the obstinacy of the delinquent and the obligation was extended to the newly-acquired territories beyond the Rhine, where (as we have already seen) it had the effect of exciting a strong prejudice against the Christian faith. The council of Frankfort (A.D. 794) represents the opposition to tithes as one of the offences by which a late scarcity had been provoked; devils, it is said, had been seen devouring the hoarded corn of those who refused the church its due, and voices had been heard in the air, uttering reproof of the general sin. The tithe had at first been exacted only for corn. It was then extended to other productions of the soil, such as flax and wine, and in some places to the increase of animals. The enactments of Charlemagne’s time usually speak of it as payable on the “whole property”; but it was long before the clergy succeeded in establishing a general compliance with their claims in this respect.

The capitulary of 829 forbids the receiver of tithe to give the payers food, or any other consideration which might lead them to suppose that the payment depended on their own will.

In England it appears that tithes were not enforced until about the end of Bede’s lifetime. The mention of them in the so-called “Excerptions of Egbert”, archbishop of York, is not to be relied on; but Boniface, whose exertions contributed to the establishment of the impost among the Franks and their dependents, is a witness for the payment of it in his native country.

The abuse by which the Frankish princes granted the beneficial use of church-lands to laymen had defied the efforts of Boniface, and continued throughout the reign of Charlemagne. The holders of such benefices were now required by canons to pay tenths and ninths to the church, and also to repair, or contribute to repair, the churches which were situated on their lands. But it would appear that great difficulty was found in enforcing the canons against this powerful class; the council of Tours, in the last year of the reign, states that complaints had often been made to the missi of their neglect to pay tenths and ninths, but that such complaints met with no attention.

The disposal of the church's income was still in the hands of the bishops; but in the new kingdoms of the west the deacons did not, as such, take the same part in the administration of it by which their order had become so important in the earlier ages. The steward, by whom the bishop was assisted in this part of his administration, might be either a deacon or a priest; his dignity was next to that of the bishop, and he had the guardianship of the see when vacant. In some places the division of the funds was quadripartite—one portion being assigned to the bishop and his household, one to the rest of the clergy, one to the poor and strangers, and one to the fabric and expenses of the church; in other places, it was tripartite—a third to the bishop, one to the clergy, and one to the necessities of the church. The tripartite division was known as the Spanish custom; the quadripartite, as the Roman : and bishops are found announcing that, although entitled to the third part which was prescribed by the canon of Toledo, they will be content with a quarter, agreeably to the usage of Rome. The bishops were sometimes charged by the inferior clergy with taking more than their due proportion, and from the sixth century downwards canons were passed in order to restrain them from doing so. Even where the full amount of the clergy’s share was fairly paid to them as a body, the allowance of each individual still depended on the will of the bishop, who thus had every clerk at his mercy. Where the tithe was paid in kind, it is probable that some composition was agreed on between the local clergy and the bishops, in order to avoid the inconveniences of removing it. The council of Worms, in 829, ordered that bishops who had a sufficient income from other property should relinquish their canonical share of the tithes for the uses of the church and of the poor.

Capitularies were often passed to prevent the payers of tithes from taking the disposal of them into their own hands, instead of leaving it to the bishops; and from making the payment to some church which private reasons might lead them to prefer, rather than to that church which was rightfully entitled to it. In such cases, themissi were to take care that proper restitution should be made.

There is some inconsistency in the enactments of Spanish councils as to the dues which should be paid to the bishops. The second council of Braga, in 572, forbids them to take the third part of the oblations, and instead of it allows them only a yearly payment of two solidi from each parish. The fourth council of Toledo, held in 633, under a different government, in enacting that the bishop should not take more than a third, makes no reference to the canon of Braga. But another council at Toledo, in 646, re-enacts that canon; and one yet later, in 655, reverts to the system of allowing the bishop a third. The exaction of two solidi afterwards found its way into France; but there, in course of time, the bishops, instead of acknowledging it as a substitute for the third part, required it as an additional due, under the name of cathedraticum.

The burdens imposed on the clergy by the expenses of the bishop’s visitation have already been mentioned. The new institution of archdeacons, who claimed dues in right of their office, also contributed to impoverish the parochial clergy.

The estates of the church in France, with the exception of the parish-priest’s mansus or glebe, were subject to the payment of all the ordinary taxes, unless exempted by special privilege. The case was very different in England, where church-land was exempt from all but what was styled the “threefold necessity”—the obligation to contribute towards the national forces, the building of fortresses, and the expenses of bridges and highways.

As in earlier ages, canons continued to be passed forbidding the clergy to engage in secular employments.

In England, the mass-priests were required to learn some handicraft, to practise it, and to teach it to their clerks; not, however, with a view to their own gain, but in order that they might avoid the temptations of idleness, and might have the means of relieving the poor. And similar orders are found in France and elsewhere.

The high social position of ecclesiastics in the Germanic kingdoms appears from the rates at which their lives were valued. The payment known by the name of wehr, an institution common to the whole German race, (but by no means limited to it), was originally intended as a composition which should satisfy the relations of a slain person for his life, and re-establish peace between them and the slayer, so that the nation might not, on account of private enmities, be deprived of the service of its members. The principle by which the female relations of the slain man were excluded from any share of this payment—namely, that they were not capable of carrying on a feud—might naturally have been considered as extending to the clergy; but when these became a powerful order, the church claimed a wehr for their death. In France, the wehr of a presbyter was equal to that of a count; the wehr of a bishop, to that of a duke. In England an archbishop was rated in this respect as equal to an atheling, or prince of the blood; a bishop, to an ealdorman, or earl; a mass-priest, to a thane or lesser noble.

In days when the lay nobles were unable to read or write, the possession of learning marked out ecclesiastics as the only persons qualified for many important offices. The bishops, as men of counsel, got precedence of the counts, the men of the sword. It was the policy of Charlemagne to elevate the hierarchy by way of a counterpoise to the power of his rude vassals. He orders that all shall pay obedience to the bishops, and declares that those who refuse it shall have no home within the empire, “even if they were his own sons”.

As the secular advantages of the clerical profession became greater, it was sought by members of the dominant race, who had before left it in the hands of the conquered. The occurrence of barbaric names among the clergy from the seventh century indicates the time when Franks began to enter into ecclesiastical orders; and very soon after, the effect of the change is seen in the necessity of laws to restrain the clergy from secular habits and occupations. Bishops led to the field the troops which their lands were required to furnish towards the national army, and not only gave their personal attendance (which was a matter of obligation, and might in some respects have been beneficial), but engaged in bodily service. They were unwilling to admit that their spiritual calling could deprive them of the birthright which belonged to every free Frank, to share in the wars of his people; they wished, too, by proving themselves men of action, to show that their property was not to be invaded with impunity by their lay neighbours, and possibly to preserve their estates from being applied by the sovereign to reward the military services of other men. Boniface endeavoured to suppress such practices: it was enacted that the clergy should not carry arms; that only so many of them should accompany the army as might be requisite for the duties of chaplains, and that these should confine themselves to their proper functions. But the reform seems not to have lasted long ; Charlemagne renews the orders of his father’s time, and exhorts the clergy, instead of bearing arms, to trust in God for protection. A suspected document represents him as explaining that the object of such enactments was not, as the bishops had supposed, to deprive them of their honours. But even during the remaining years of his reign fresh prohibitions were necessary; and when the strong hand of the great emperor was removed, the warlike inclinations of the Frank bishops were displayed in a greater degree than ever. In England also the clergy were disposed to bear arms, as a right belonging to their free condition, and canons were passed to check the practice.

While the Frankish laws restrained the pugnacity of the clergy, care was also taken to prevent the owners of property from evading the obligations attached to it under colour of ordination, or of the monastic profession.

Thus we find an order in 799 that no noble should receive the tonsure unless after an examination of his case before the bishop of the diocese, and that if such a clerk should afterwards wish to reside on his own land, he should perform the same military service as others.

With the. carrying of arms other secular habits and amusements are forbidden to the clergy—as the keeping of hounds and hawks, games of chance, noisy entertainments, worldly songs and instrumental music, and the company of minstrels and buffoons.

The most remarkable regulations as to the marriage of the clergy during this period belong to the east—being those of the Trullan council (A.D. 691). This council is strongly opposed to second marriages. Presbyters who persist in such marriages are to be deposed; if the second wife be dead, or if the husband separate from he, he shall be allowed to hold his rank, but shall be excluded from priestly functions. If a priest, a deacon, or a subdeacon marry a widow, he shall separate from his wife, shall be suspended, and shall be incapable of higher promotion. The council forbids, under pain of deposition, the practice of African and Libyan bishops, who were reported to cohabit with their wives; the wife of a bishop is ordered to separate from him, and to go into a convent. It censures the practice of the Armenians, who required that the clergy should be of priestly family, and allowed those who were so born to officiate as singers and readers without receiving the tonsure; and it forbids the clergy to marry after their ordination as subdeacons. But in its 13th canon, after stating that the Roman church exacted of persons ordained as presbyters or deacons a promise to abstain from their wives, the council expressly sanctions the contrary practice, and grounds its sanction on the “apostolical canons”. No promise is to be required, no separation is to be enforced; deposition is threatened against any one who shall deprive priests, deacons, or subdeacons of their wives, and against all members of these orders who under pretence of religion shall forsake their partners. And, while the 29th canon allows the clergy of “barbaric” churches to separate, if they think it their duty to do so, and if their wives consent, the permission is declared to be granted only in condescension to the narrow scrupulousness r which may be expected in such churches.

A council which in this and other points directly and avowedly contradicted the principles and usages of Rome was not likely to find favour with the popes, and as we have seen, it was rejected by Sergius I. But the sanction which it gave to the marriage of the clergy has ever since continued to regulate the discipline of the Greek church.

In the west, the period presents us with many enactments against the marriage of the clergy. The Merovingian kings added their authority to confirm the ecclesiastical canons which forbade it. But it would seem that, notwithstanding the frequency of the prohibitions, many of the clergy continued to marry—more especially where the authority of the popes was not fully established, as in Lombardy, Spain, and some parts of Gaul and of Germany. The see of Chur, in the Grisons, was hereditary in a family of bishops who combined the powers of spiritual and civil government. The wife of one of these, about the middle of the seventh century, in signing documents, styled herself episcopa; and the marriage of the bishops implies that the clergy were also at liberty to marry.

A question put by Augustine to Gregory the Great seems to show that marriage had been usual among the British clergy. The law of the Anglo-Saxon church on this subject was the same with that of Rome; but here too there is frequent proof that the clergy continued to enter into the married state; nor was their marriage annulled or the issue of it declared illegitimate until the latter part of the twelfth century.

As in the earlier periods, the canons for the enforcement of celibacy are accompanied by many which indicate the disastrous effects of such measures. There are very frequent enactments as to the entertainment of women in the houses of the clergy. The fourth council of Toledo (A.D. 633) renews the orders of earlier Spanish councils that the concubines of clerks shall be sold; the ninth council of the same place (A.D. 655) adds that their children shall be serfs of the church. Some canons forbid the clergy to have as inmates of their houses even those nearest female relatives who had been allowed by the council of Nicaea,—alleging by way of reason that other persons had often been introduced under the pretence of relationship, and that even the laws of nature had been violated. The councils of Charlemagne’s reign in general, however, are content with renewing the Nicene rule.

An important attempt at reform was made about the year 760 by the institution of the canonical life. The title of canons (canonici), which had formerly been given to all the clergy, on account of their being enrolled in the canon or register of the church, and entitled to maintenance from its funds, was now applied in a new meaning, to designate clergy who lived under a canon or rule, resembling that of the monastic communities. The idea of such an institution was not new; for in earlier times Eusebius of Vercelli, Hilary of Arles, and the great Augustine had shown the example of living together with their clergy; and more recently a like practice had been usual in missionary bodies, where the bishop lived with his staff of clergy and monks. But it was now reduced to a regular system by Chrodegang, a nephew of Pipin, and archbishop of Metz.

Chrodegang’s scheme was in great measure an adaptation of the Benedictine rule to the different circumstances of the clergy. The bishop held a place corresponding to that of the Benedictine abbot, the archdeacon answered to the provost or prior, the seniors had the same oversight in both systems. Like Benedict, the father of the canonical institute prescribed a common dwelling, an uniform dress, a common table, a common dormitory, unless where the bishop should be pleased to allow an exception. The clergy were required to attend certain services daily. Every day they were to practise manual labour, and were to devote certain portions of their time to study. The younger members of the society were to show respect to the elders, as by rising and bowing when they passed, by asking their benediction, and by standing in their presence, unless specially permitted to sit down. All were to confess to the bishop in Lent, and again in autumn; stripes or imprisonment were threatened as the penalties for going to any other confessor. All who were not prevented by sin were to communicate every Sunday and on other chief festivals. Articles of clothing were to be supplied at stated times; the elders were then to give up the clothes which they had worn, and these were to be transferred to the juniors. All were to take their turns in the services of the house; each was in his order to cook for a week, the archdeacon and the cellarer being the only exceptions. Laymen were not to be admitted, except for some special purpose, such as that of assisting in the kitchen and they were to leave the house as soon as their work was done.

The dietary of the canons was more liberal than that prescribed by the Benedictine rule. They were permitted to eat flesh, except during penitential seasons. They had an allowance of wine (or of beer, if they preferred it), graduated according to their rank—for priests and deacons, three cups at dinner and two at supper; for subdeacons, two at each meal; for the lower orders, two at dinner and one at supper. There were to be seven tables in the hall, appropriated respectively to the bishop, to the various orders of canons, to strangers, and to the clergy of the city, who on Sundays and other festivals dined in the college, and partook of the instruction which was given in the chapter-house. Edifying books were to be read at meals, and, in order that they might be heard, silence was to be kept, “because it is necessary that, when one taketh his bodily food, then also the soul should be refreshed with spiritual food”.

The most important difference from the Benedictine rule was, that the canons were allowed to enjoy individual property—whether that which they had possessed before entering into the society, or such fees and presents as they might receive for the performance of religious offices. They were, however, obliged at their death to leave all to the brethren

From Metz the rule of Chrodegang soon made its way to other cities. The number of its chapters was increased by additions from 34 to 86. Charlemagne even wished to reduce the whole of the clergy to this system; and, although the attempt failed, and the great majority of the clergy continued to live as seculars, many colleges of canons were formed under the government of abbots, in addition to the cathedral bodies for which the scheme had originally been intended. The rule was sanctioned for general use by a great council at Aix-la-Chapelle under Lewis the Pious, in 816; and by the middle of the ninth century it was established in almost all the cathedrals of France, Germany, and Italy, and had also been adopted in England. The clergy found their account in the apparent strictness of the new system, as a means of recovering much of that popular admiration which the monks had long enjoyed to the prejudice of the hierarchical orders; and in consequence of this strictness, donations were largely bestowed on the canonical societies. The cathedral chapters became wealthy and powerful, and soon began to assert a claim to act as the bishop's advisers, and to share in the administration of the diocese.

 

Monasticism

 

During these centuries the monks played an important part in western Christendom. The missions to the Germanic nations were chiefly their work; they planted colonies in lonely places, where towns soon grew up, as at Fulda, St. Gall, Eichstedt, and Fritzlar; and with the knowledge of religion they spread that of agriculture and civilization among the people. Through the employment of monks in missionary labour, ordination was more largely introduced into their ranks, as a necessary qualification for missionary duties. In some cases, sees were usually filled with monks from certain abbeys—an arrangement the more natural because learning was chiefly cultivated in the monastic societies. Thus Strasburg received its bishops from Munster in Alsace, Spires from Weissenburg, Constance from Reichenau or St. Gall.

The reputation of sanctity continued to wait on the monks. The term religion, which had been specially applied to the monastic profession by a council at Orleans as early as 549, became more and more restricted to it. Entrance on the monastic state was regarded as a second baptism. The Penitential ascribed to Theodore of Canterbury curiously follows out this idea by ordering that the novice shall for seven days have his head covered with the cowl, as the head of the newly-baptized was covered with the chrism or veil; and a like order, although with an abridgment of the time to three days, was made under Lewis the Pious in 817. Persons of high rank flocked into the cloisters; it was no unusual thing even for kings and queens to resign their royalty and to assume the monastic habit.

During the earlier part of the period there was a considerable variety of rules. That of St. Columban for a time appeared to rival the Benedictine code in popularity. It became not uncommon to combine the two; but by degrees the rule of St. Benedict triumphed, as being marked in a greater degree by practical sense, less rigorous, and more elastic than the others. With slight modifications in particular cases, it was commonly adopted in France, where a great excitement in its favour was produced about the middle of the eighth century by the alleged relics of the founder, which were said to have been translated to Fleury on the Loire about a hundred years before, when the parent monastery of Monte Cassino had been laid waste by the Lombards. In England, too, where the Benedictine rule was introduced by Wilfrid, it soon became general, although not without some mixture of the old national usages. But the Spanish monasteries continued until the ninth century to be governed by rules which had been compiled, partly from eastern sources, by Isidore of Seville, Fructuosus of Braga, and other native bishops.

The monasteries in general continued to be subject to the jurisdiction of their diocesan bishops; but exemptions, of which we have already seen traces in the sixth century, now became more common, and the authority of Gregory the Great had an important share in advancing the practice. It would appear, however, that the reason of such exemptions in this period is not to be sought in any ambition or assumption on the part of the monks, but in the oppressive conduct of bishops. These from the seventh century began to claim a share in the gifts bestowed on monasteries. They exacted unreasonable payments from the monks for the dedication of their churches, for the consecration of chrism, for ordaining their clergy and installing their abbots. A large part of the revenues was absorbed by the expense of visitations; and in addition to this, the bishops extorted heavy fees under the names of cathedralicum and the like. Where the choice of an abbot belonged to the monks, the bishops often endeavoured to wrest it from them, and exercised it without any regard to the welfare of the house, or to the pretensions of the more eminent members, who might have reasonably expected to succeed to the headship. The grossness of the tyranny practised by some prelates may be inferred from the fact that the monastic bodies often appealed against it to synods, and that these, although composed of bishops, felt themselves obliged to condemn it in strong terms, and to forbid its continuance. In some cases during the eighth century, it was provided that, if the diocesan bishop would not perform his functions with respect to a monastery on reasonable terms, the abbot might apply to another. On the whole, it may be said that the exemptions of this period were sought not so much for the sake of emancipation from the rightful authority of the bishops, as for relief from their rapacity. The bishop still retained his general supervision of religion and morals in the exempt monasteries; he was even entitled to inquire into the administration of the temporalities, while he was restrained from acts of plunder and oppression.

When some monasteries had obtained such privileges, it became usual with founders to insist that those which they established should stand on a level with others in this respect. There were, too, certain monasteries which were styled royal—either from having been founded by princes, or from having obtained their special protection; and these were exempt from all jurisdiction except that of the sovereign, which was exercised through the missi and the bishops. Some monastic houses, of more than ordinary dignity, had bishops of their own, resident within their walls, as was the case at St. Denys. And in addition to these, it appears that the popes had already commenced a practice of granting exemption from all authority but their own. The first instance is commonly said to have been a grant from Zacharias to the abbey of Fulda; but the genuineness of the document is much questioned. If genuine, it was granted at the request of Boniface himself, and therefore not with an intention to injure the rights of the diocesan. But when the archbishopric and the abbacy which had been united in the apostle of Germany were separated, the privileges conferred on Fulda, and the renown which it acquired as the resting-place of his remains, excited the jealousy of Lull, his successor in the see of Mayence. The archbishop complained that the exemption wrongfully interfered with his jurisdiction. He is said to have persecuted the abbot, Sturmi, by unscrupulous means—even inducing Pipin, by a charge of treason, to banish him for two years; and the enmity between the two continued to the end of the abbot’s life, so that, on his death-bed, in declaring his forgiveness of all men, he thought it necessary to mention Lull by name, as being the person who most especially needed it.

Exemptions existed also in the patriarchate of Constantinople, where some monasteries were discharged from the bishop’s authority and subject to the metropolitan, while others were subject to the patriarch only. In token of these privileges, the metropolitan or patriarchal crosier was erected over the altar in the chapel of the monastery. The second council of Nicaea allowed abbots, if they were presbyters, to ordain the lower clergy of their monasteries. The rule was adopted in the west, and from this and other circumstances it came to pass that the inmates of a monastery, instead of being mostly laymen, as in earlier ages, now belonged, with very few exceptions, to some grade of the hierarchy.

The age of admission to the monastic community was variously fixed. The Trullan council lays down that it ought not to be under ten. Theodore of Canterbury names fifteen as the age for monks, and sixteen or seventeen for nuns. The capitularies of 789 re-enact the old African canons which forbade the reception of women before the age of twenty-five, unless for some special reason. But besides those who took the vows on themselves, children might be devoted by their parents to the monastic state; and in this case, as in the other, there was no release from its obligations. Charlemagne, however, endeavoured to put some limit to the practice, by ordering that, “saving the authority of the canons”, girls should not be veiled until they were old enough to understand their engagement.

Many orders are found against the admission of serfs into monasteries without the consent of their masters, and of freemen without licence from the sovereign. It was not unusual to make a false profession of withdrawing from the world, for the sake of escaping from military service. In order to check this abuse, Charlemagne orders, in 805, that those who forsake the world shall be obliged to live strictly according to rule, either as canons or as monks.

Although the observance of the same rule was a bond of union between monastic societies, no more intimate connexion was as yet organized in the west. Some of the greater monasteries had cells or priories dependent on them; but, except on this very limited scale, there was no affiliation of one religious house to another, nor was there any subjection of many to a common head, as had been the case in the system of St. Pachomius. It was usual for an abbot, in sending forth one of his monks to found a new community, to release him from the vow of obedience so soon as he should be able to establish a footing. During the earlier part of the period, it was forbidden to an abbot to have more than one monastery, although Gregory the Great allowed it in some cases; but this rule was afterwards disregarded. Pluralities, both ecclesiastical and monastic, became frequent, and sometimes both kinds were held by the same person. Thus about the year 720, Hugh, a member of the Carolingian family, was at once bishop of Paris, Rouen, and Bayeux, and abbot of Fontenelle and Jumieges. In the instances where a see was usually filled from a particular monastery, the bishops often united the abbacy with their higher dignity; and where bishops were able to usurp the power of nomination to an abbacy, they sometimes took the office for themselves. In this manner Sidonius, bishop of Constance, who had already got possession of the abbey of Reichenau, resolved in 759 to make himself master also of that of St. Gall; and, although we are told by the monastic historians that his rapacity was punished by a death like that of Arius, the next bishop, John, not only engrossed the same rich preferment, but towards the end of his life formed a scheme of providing for his three nephews by transferring the bishopric to one of them, and an abbacy to each of the others.

Many of the monastic societies were specially exempted by sovereigns from all public imposts and tolls. But such exemptions were as often tokens of poverty on the part of the house as of extraordinary royal favour. Thus in a list of the Frankish monasteries, drawn up at Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, where they are ranged in three classes, as owing to the prince both gifts and military service, as owing gifts only, or as free from all duty except prayer, the most distinguished foundations are for the most part included in the most heavily burdened class.

As monasteries grew rich, some evil consequences followed. The vow of poverty was considered to be satisfied by the renunciation of individual property. Where its obligation was felt as matter of conscience, the monks retained their original simplicity of dress and food, while their superfluous wealth was spent on other objects, such as the erection of costly buildings. But very commonly the possession of the means of luxury introduced the enjoyment of it. In the east, the confessor Maximus, in the middle of the seventh century, denounces the disorderly lives of monks, and says that their profession of piety was no better than hypocrisy. Charlemagne in 811 censures the abbots as caring only to swell the numbers of their monks, and to obtain good chanters and readers, without any solicitude as to their morals. He sarcastically asks how the monks and clergy understand the text against entangling themselves with the affairs of this life; whether they suppose the only difference between themselves and secular men to consist in their being unmarried and carrying no arms; whether those can be said to have forsaken the world who are incessantly striving to increase their possessions by all sorts of means—who use the hopes of heaven and the terrors of hell, the names of God and the saints, to extort gifts not only from the rich but from the poor and ignorant, and by diverting property from the lawful heirs drive many to theft and robbery. How, he continues, can they be said to have forsaken the world who suborn perjury in order to acquire what they covet? or those who retain their secular property, and are surrounded by bands of armed men?

Abbots, as well as bishops, were addicted to war, to hunting and hawking, to games of chance, to the company of minstrels and jesters. There are many ordinances against irregularities of this kind—some of them extending to abbesses also; and there are frequent complaints of gross immorality among recluses of both sexes, with attempts to restrain such practices.

The wealth of monasteries, like that of churches, suffered from the exactions of their advocates, and from alienation to laymen. A remarkable instance of such alienation is recorded as to the abbey of Stablo, in the diocese of Liege, where, in consequence of the conversion of the revenues into a lay “benefice”, there were two successions of abbots, the one line being generally made up of the bishops of Liege, while the other consisted of powerful laymen.

Towards the end of the period, a remarkable reformer of the monastic life appeared in France. Witiza, afterwards known as St. Benedict of Aniane, was of Gothic descent, and son of the count of Maguelone in Septimania. When a boy, he was placed in the court of Pipin, to whom he became cupbearer, and he continued in the service of Charlemagne. In 774 he accompanied his master to Rome; and on his way homeward he narrowly escaped from drowning in a vain attempt to save his brother, who had rashly plunged into a swollen ford. In gratitude for this preservation, he carried out a thought which he had already for some time entertained, of embracing a monastic life, by entering the monastery of St. Seine, in Burgundy. Although he had assumed the name of Benedict, the rule of the Nursian monk appeared to him fit only for weak beginners and he rushed into the austerities of eastern monachism. He macerated his body by excessive fasting; his dress was of rags, swarming with vermin, and patched with a variety of colours; he took very little sleep, and that on the bare ground; he never bathed; he courted derision and insult as a madman, and often expressed his fear of hell in piteous outcries; and, although his abbot repeatedly urged him to relent from these severities, Benedict's resolution was inflexible

On the death of the abbot, Benedict was chosen as his successor; but he fled from St. Seine, and built himself a little hermitage on his father's estate, by the bank of the river Aniane. Some monks who attempted to live with him, found themselves unable to support the excessive severity of his system; but in course of time a considerable society was gathered around him, and a monastery was erected near his cell. Benedict himself took part in the building of it; he and his monks were obliged to carry the materials, as they were unable to provide oxen for the work. The walls were of wood; the roof was thatched with straw the vestments for divine service were coarse, whereas silk was usually employed for such purposes; the eucharistic vessels were of wood, afterwards of glass, and finally of pewter. The monks lived chiefly on bread and water, varied sometimes by milk, and on Sundays and holydays by a scanty allowance of wine. If the rigid simplicity of Benedict’s first arrangements was partly dictated by fear lest richness of architecture and of ornament should prove injurious to monastic discipline, he must afterwards have changed his opinion on the subject; for in 782 the humble wooden buildings made way for a splendid monastery. The church was adorned with marble pillars; there were several costly chapels; and all that belonged to the furniture and to the services was of unusual magnificence. Charlemagne, who had contributed to the expense, exempted the monastery from all taxes, and from the jurisdiction both of bishops and of counts.

Benedict became a man of great note and influence. His name has already come before us, as one of the commissioners employed by Charlemagne to reclaim the adherents of Felix of Urgel; Lewis the Pious, while king of Aquitaine, employed him to reform the monasteries of that country; and the effect of his institutions was widely felt. He collected into two books the monastic rules of the east and of the west; in a third book he added the rules for nunneries; and from the whole he composed a “Harmony of the Rules”, in which the precepts of the earlier St. Benedict on every subject are illustrated by those of other monastic legislators. In his reforms he was content to enforce the Benedictine system, which experience had shown him to be better suited for general use than the rigours of oriental monachism. In his own practice, he was obliged to abate somewhat of the violence with which he had begun; but his life continued to be strictly ascetic, and he shared with his monks in the labours of ploughing, digging, and reaping. Soon after the accession of Lewis to the empire, Benedict resigned the abbacy of Aniane, and removed to a new royal foundation on the bank of the Inda, near Aix-la-Chapelle; and, after having played an important part during the earlier years of his patron’s reign, he died at the age of seventy, in 821.

In England, monachism fell into decay from the earlier part of the eighth century. The monasteries were often invaded and occupied by secular persons, and although a canon of Cloveshoo was directed against this evil, the terms which are used significantly prove that the council had little hope of being able to suppress it. Boniface in his letters to Archbishop Cuthbert, and to Ethelbert. king of Mercia, complains that the English monasteries are oppressed beyond any others in Christendom; that their privileges are violated, that they are heavily and unjustly taxed, that they are ruined by the expense of entertaining the king and his hunting train; that the monks are forced to labour at the royal buildings and other works.

But much blame is also laid on the communities themselves. The monks are often charged with riotous living and with drunkenness, which Boniface describes as a peculiarly national vice; and the fondness for gay clothing, which was another characteristic of the English, defied all monastic rules. Aldhelm strongly reproves the indulgence of this taste. Boniface complains of it to Cuthbert; the council of Cloveshoo censures it in clergy, in monks, and in nuns, denouncing especially in men the affectation of a laical headdress, and the fashion of adorning the legs with fillets of various colours; the council of Chalchythe desires monks and canons to use the same habit with those of the continent, and not dyed with Indian dye, or very costly. But some years later Alcuin is found continuing the complaint against such vanities; and the love of them was not to be overcome.

In addition to the causes which have been mentioned —the secular oppression to which the monks were subjected, and their own unwillingness, when the first period of fervour had passed away, to bear the restraints of the monastic rule—the introduction of the canonical life contributed to the decline of English monachism. The occupants of religious houses became canons instead of monks; and about the middle of the ninth century the Benedictine order was almost extinct in England.

The regulations of this period as to female recluses correspond in general character with those for monks. Abbesses are required to be subject to their bishops; they are censured for interfering with the sacerdotal function by presuming to veil virgins, and to give benedictions and imposition of hands to men—apparently by way of ordination to the lower grades of the ministry. There are frequent complaints of dissolute life in nunneries, and the abbesses themselves are sometimes charged with a share of the guilt. Other canons are directed against the practice of allowing widows to take the veil during the first agitation of their bereavement, as it had been found that such nuns often relapsed into worldly business or gaieties, and endeavoured to secure at once the privileges of the monastic and of the secular life.

The Benedictine rule was adapted to the use of female societies; and towards the end of the period the example of Chrodegang's rule led to the institution of canonesses, who lived together under a less rigid code than nuns, and without being obliged to give up their private property.

 

Rites and Usages.

 

Throughout the west, Latin had from the first been used as the language of divine service. As it was spoken in all the western provinces of the empire, there was no necessity for translating the liturgy into other tongues; and after the barbarian conquests Latin remained as the language of superior civilization, and especially as that of the clergy, whose ranks were for a long time generally filled from among the Romanized inhabitants. It was the medium by which nations carried on their official intercourse; it alone remained stable, while the dialects of the invaders were in a course of fluctuation and change; and where new languages were formed on its basis—a process in which the ecclesiastical use of the Latin contributed greatly to secure its predominance—the formation was gradual, so that it would have been impossible to fix on any time at which the ancient Roman tongue should have been disused as obsolete. The closer connexion established with Rome by Pipin and Charlemagne confirmed the use of Latin in the Frankish church. And thus an usage which originally arose out of circumstances, came at length to be regarded as necessary, and at a later time to be justified by theoretical argument, although confessedly as contrary to the practice of the early church n as it appears to be to reason. Charlemagne, however, notwithstanding his attachment to the Roman ritual, combated the growing opinion on this point. “Let no one”, it is said in his capitulary at the council of Frankfort, “suppose that God may not be prayed to except in three languages; forasmuch as in every tongue God is worshipped, and man is heard if he ask the things which are right”.”

The chanting was now left to the choir, and the people joined only in the Kyrie eleison. But Charlemagne and others were careful that preaching—which by means of missions regained an importance which it had once appeared likely to lose—should be frequent, and in the vulgar tongue. His measures for the instruction of the people in the creed and in the Lord's prayer have been noticed in a former chapter.

In England, Latin was employed as the ritual language, not only by Augustine and his followers, but by the Scottish and Irish teachers, who had been accustomed to it in their native churches. The epistle and gospel, however, were read in the vernacular tongue, and in it sermons were delivered. The Scottish or Irish liturgy was suppressed by the council of Cloveshoo in those parts of southern England where it had before been used; but, notwithstanding the influence of Wilfrid, it kept possession of the church of York until the time of Alcuin, who is found recommending that it should be abandoned. It would, however, seem that, in the adaptation of the Roman ritual for England, some use was made of that license of selection from other formularies which had been granted by Gregory to Augustine.

In the east, Greek had been the usual language of the church, and continued to be so under the Mahometan rule, where Arabic was used for the ordinary business of life. The monophysites of Egypt, however, employed the Coptic in their service, and the Nestorians the Syriac.

The use of organs was now brought into the service of the Latin church. The earliest mention of such instruments (as distinguished from the ancient hydraulic organ, of which the invention is by some ascribed to Archimedesa) is perhaps in a passage of St. Augustine. Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers about the year 600, compares the voices of boys and men in a choir to the smaller and the larger pipes of an organ respectively, but does not speak of the instrument itself as used in churches; so that his words are not inconsistent with the opinion which ascribes the introduction of organs into churches to Pope Vitalian (A.D. 65 7-672) . It appears from the testimony of Aldhelm that they were known in England at the beginning of the eighth century; but it would seem that, after the age of Venantius, the organ had again become a novelty to the Franks when one was sent by Constantine Copronymus as a present to Pipin in 757. The St. Gall biographer of Charlemagne tells us that a similar instrument, “emulating at once the roar of thunder and the sweetness of the lyre”, which was brought by some Greek ambassadors to the great emperor, excited the imitative talent of the Franks. Under Lewis the Pious, a Venetian priest named George was employed by the emperor to build an organ at Aix-la-Chapelle, and is said to have performed his task “with marvellous skill”; but it would seem that the instrument was of the hydraulic kind. So skillful, however, did the Franks become in the manufacture of organs, that about a century after the date of Constantine’s gift to Pipin, Pope John VIII is found requesting a bishop of Freising to send him one, with a person skilful in the use of it, because the organs of the north were superior to any that could be made in Italy. Some of the great organs of those days must have been very formidable instruments, if we may take literally the poetical description of one which was erected in Winchester cathedral by Bishop Alphege (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), in the end of the tenth century; for it is said to have been blown by twenty-six pairs of bellows, which required the hard labour of seventy men to work them.

To this period also is ascribed the introduction of church bells. The belief which was long current, that they were invented by St. Paulinus of Nola in the end of the fourth century, is without historical support, and rests only on a mistaken etymology. According to some writers, they were first used in churches by Sabinian, the successor of Gregory the Great in the see of Rome; but in any case it is certain that in the course of the seventh and eighth centuries the use of them spread widely throughout France and other countries. Bells are familiarly mentioned by Bede, and in St. Boniface’s letters. Under Charlemagne, we find the legendary St. Gall biographer relating that a monk of his own community, named Tancho, having received a commission from the emperor for a great bell, substituted tin for silver in the composition of the metal, and was punished for his fraud by a miraculous death; and in the capitulary of 789 there is a prohibition of the baptism of bells—a superstition which was afterwards carried further, by conferring baptismal names on them, and furnishing them with sponsors.

The history of the eucharistic doctrine during this period has been disputed with as much zeal and partiality as if the question between modern Rome and its opponents depended on the opinions of the seventh and eighth centuries. The word figure, when it occurs, is hailed by one party, and such words as body, blood, or changed, by the other, as if they were sufficient to determine the matter. But the truth seems to lie between the extremes. Both in language and in opinion there was a progress towards the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the feeling of individuals may have closely bordered on it; but there was no acknowledgment, nor apparently even any assertion, of more than an effective grace, by which the consecrated elements, while retaining their original substance, convey to the faithful receiver the benefits of the Saviour’s death. Some passages of Bede and of Alcuin, for example, which are produced by Romanists as favourable to their views, appear really to maintain nothing beyond the doctrine of the English Reformation. Thus, when Alcuin speaks of a bishop as consecrating bread and wine into the substance of our Lord's body and blood, it would seem that by “substance” he does not mean anything material; that he does not even use the word in the scholastic sense, as denoting that by which a thing is what it is, but that he intends only a virtual efficacy. And after this, the Caroline Books, in which Alcuin himself is supposed to have been largely concerned, express themselves in a manner entirely accordant with our own eucharistic doctrine.

John of Damascus appears to have gone further than any of the western teachers. He rejects the term“figure”, as unauthorized by Scripture, and declares the consecrated elements to be “the very deified body of the Lord”. Yet the sense of this startling expression may be reduced by a comparison with the language then current as to the union of our Lord’s natures or wills—where it was said that the flesh or the human will was “deified” by its connexion with the Godhead. If the meaning were more than this parallel would warrant—if John intended to maintain that the material elements were changed, instead of being united with something higher—it is certain that the eastern church did not adopt his view. The Eucharist was mentioned in the controversy as to images by the hostile synods of Constantinople and Nicaea. The iconoclastic assembly declares that the only true image of the Saviour is the Eucharist—meaning that the union of the Divine grace with the earthly elements represents that union of Godhead and manhood in his person which images failed to convey, inasmuch as they could only set forth the humanity. The Nicene council, in answering this, finds fault with the term image, as being one which no father had applied to that which is His body and blood. Yet no objection is made to the substance of the comparison; nor do we find anywhere in this controversy the distinction which must have occurred if the modern Roman doctrine as to the sacrament had been then received—that the consecrated elements are unlike images, forasmuch as they are not a representation, but are really Christ Himself.

Instead of the common bread in which the Eucharist had originally been administered, wafers were now substituted in the west. They were of very fine flour unleavened, round in shape, and stamped with an instrument. The communion of infants appears to have been still in use, and many superstitions were practised with the consecrated bread—such as giving it to the dead and burying it with them. The cup continued until the twelfth century to be administered to all communicants

The height to which the idea of a sacrifice in the Eucharist was carried (an idea which appears in the earliest ages of the church, although with some indefiniteness of meaning), now led to some important consequences. The sacrifice was supposed to avail not only for those who were present but for the absent; for the dead as well as for the living. One result of this was, that the obligation of receiving the sacrament was less felt, so that there is much complaint as to the rarity of communion, and that canons are passed for restoring the three recep­tions yearly which had been prescribed by the council of Agde. At length masses came to be celebrated privately, and by the priest alone. This practice was forbidden by Theodulf of Orleans; it is censured, although not in absolute terms, by the council of Mentz in 813, is more decidedly condemned by the sixth council of Paris, in 829, and in the following century is again forbidden by Atto, bishop of Vercelli.

From the time of Gregory the Great, the doctrine of Purgatory spread and was developed. In the English church, the offspring of Gregory’s own exertions, it appears to have especially taken root. Bede relates stories of persons who had been transported in vision to the regions of the dead; they returned to consciousness with a sad and awestruck air, told their tale, and soon after died. Thus Fursey and Drithelm were permitted to see the punishments of hell and purgatory, and the bliss of the righteous who were awaiting their consummation in paradise. The vision of Drithelm was versified by Alcuin; other narratives of the same kind appeared; the idea of such visions became familiar to men's minds; and, six centuries later, the dreams of the obscure Irish or Northumbrian monks issued in the great poem of the middle ages.

With the belief in purgatory, that in the utility of the masses for the departed advanced. Fraternities were formed, especially among monks, with the obligation to say a certain number of masses for the soul of every brother at his death, and on the anniversary of it, or to provide for the purchase of them by a payment which in England was called soulscot. The performance of these masses became an important source of income to the clergy. It is recognized as such by Chrodegang’s rule; and for this purpose additional altars were erected in churches which before had only one. Masses were also used in order to obtain temporal benefits, such as fair weather or seasonable rain.

A greater strictness in the observance of the Lord’s-day had gradually been introduced into the church, and occupations which councils of the sixth century had vindicated against a judaizing tendency. were now forbidden as contrary to the sanctity of the day, which it became usual to ground on the fourth commandment. Many canons throughout this period, and shortly after, enact that it should be kept by a cessation from all trade, husbandry, or other manual labour. No law-courts or markets may be held, men are to refrain from hunting, women must not sew, embroider, weave, card wool, beat flax, shear sheep, or publicly wash clothes. No journeys were to be taken except such as were unavoidable; and these were to be so managed as not to interfere with the duty of attending the church-service. The Penitential ascribed to Theodore of Canterbury states that the Greeks and the Latins agree in doing no work on Sunday; that they do not sail, ride, drive except to church, hawk, or bathe; that the Greeks do not write in public, although at home they write according to their convenience. Penalties were enacted against such as should violate the sanctity of the day. Thus the council of Narbonne, in 589, condemns a free­man to pay six solidi, and a serf to receive a hundred lashes. Ina, king of Wessex (A.D. 688-725), directs that, if a serf work on the Lord’s-day by his master's order, he shall be free ; if at his own will, he shall pay a fine or shall “suffer in his hide”. The council of Berghamstead (A.D. 696), enacts that a freeman breaking the rest of the day shall undergo the healsfang and imposes a heavy fine on any master who shall make his servant work between the sunset of Saturday and that of Sunday. The authority of pretended revelations was called in to enforce the observance of the Lord’s-day. It appears that this was the object of a letter which was said to have fallen from heaven in 788, and of which Charlemagne, in his capitulary of the following year, orders the suppression; and the same pious fraud, or something of the same kind, was employed in England. Under Lewis the Pious, councils are found speaking of judgments by which persons had been punished for working on the Lord’s-day—some had been struck by lightning, some lamed in their members, some reduced to ashes by visible fire. The clergy, the nobles, and the emperor himself, are desired to show a good example by a right observance of the day.

But notwithstanding the increased severity as to the Lord’s-day, the idea of identifying it with the Jewish Sabbath was condemned. Gregory the Great speaks of this as a doctrine of Antichrist, who, he says, will require the observance of both days—of the Sabbath for the sake of Judaism; of the Lord’s-day, because he will pretend to rival the Saviour’s resurrection. Gregory goes on to notice the scruples of some who held that it was wrong to wash the body on the Lord’s-day. It is allowed, he says, for necessity, although not for luxury, alike on this and on other days, and he adds a curious attempt at scriptural proof. The councils of Lestines and Verne censure an extreme rigour in the observance of the day, as “belonging rather to Jewish superstition than to Christian duty”.

The Lord’s-day was commonly considered to begin on Saturday evening, and to reach to the corresponding hour on Sunday. Such, as we have seen, was the length of the labourer’s rest in England at the time of the council of Berghamstead (A.D. 696); but by the middle of the tenth century it was extended, and reached from nones (3 p.m.) on Saturday to the dawn of Monday

The festival of All Saints (which was intended to make up for the defects in the celebration of saints individually) has been generally connected with the beginning of this period, when Boniface IV obtained a grant of the Pantheon at Rome from Phocas, and consecrated it as the church of St. Mary ad Martyres in 609. It would, however, appear that a festival of martyrs, on May 13, which arose out of the consecration of the Pantheon, has been confounded with All Saints’ day (Nov. 1), and that the latter was not observed at Rome until the eighth century. It was raised to the first class of festivals, and was recommended for general celebration, by Gregory IV in 835. In the east, the Sunday after Whitsunday had been connected with the memory of all saints as early as the time of St. Chrysostom.

The growing reverence for the blessed Virgin led to an increase of festivals dedicated to her. The“Presentation in the Temple” became the “Purification of St. Mary”. Her Nativity (Sept. 8) was already celebrated both in the east and in the west, and her own “Presentation” (i.e. her supposed dedication to the service of the temple) was established as a festival in the Greek church (Nov. 21), although it was not adopted in the west until the fourteenth century. In Spain, the appearance vouchsafed to Ildefonso of Toledo led to the institution of the “Expectation of St. Mary” (Dec. 18). The Assumption (Aug. 15) was also now introduced. In the silence of Scripture as to the blessed Virgin’s death, legends on the subject had arisen. At the time of the council of Ephesus (A.D. 431), she was supposed to have spent her last years with St. John in that city, and to have been interred in the church where the council met. But afterwards it came to be believed that she had been buried in the valley of Jehoshaphat, and thence had been caught up to heaven. From this tale, which originated in a conjecture of Epiphanius that she never died, and was afterwards supported by sermons falsely ascribed to Jerome and Augustine, the festival of the Assumption took its rise. In one of the capitularies it is mentioned as a subject for inquiry; but the observance of it is sanctioned by the council of Mayence, in 813. The other festivals named in the same canon are—Easter with the week following, Ascension-day, Whitsunday and the week after it, the Nativity of St. John Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Michael, St. Remigius, St. Martin, St. Andrew, four days at Christmas, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, and the Purification with the dedication of each church, and the feasts of the martyrs and confessors whose relics are preserved in the diocese or parish. This last provision contained the germ of a great multiplication of festivals, which naturally ensued as saints of local fame became more generally celebrated, and as their relics became more widely dispersed.

The council of Mayence also sanctions the celebration of the Ember-weeks, which was now generally established

The superstitions connected with an excess of reverence for saints were continually on the increase. Stories of visions in which saints appeared, and of miracles performed by them, are found in immense profusion—so great, indeed, that even some contemporaries began to murmur. Thus we are told by the biographer of St. Hildulf, abbot of Moyen-Moutier, in the Vosges, who died in 707, that the death of one of his monks named Spinulus was followed by a number of miracles. Three mineral springs burst forth in the abbey garden, and crowds of people were attracted to the place. Hildulf understood the advantages which his house was likely to derive from the offerings of pilgrims; but he feared that the monks might be drawn away from their proper work to attend to earthly business. He therefore knelt down at the tomb of Spinulus, and, after having thanked God for the assurance of his brother's beatification, charged the deceased monk, by the obedience which he had owed him while alive, to save the society from the threatened danger. Spinulus complied; the springs dried up, and the miracles ceased. Other stories might be produced, which show that some persons felt the general craving after miracles to be unwholesome in its effects, even where they did not venture to question the reality of the wonders which were reported.

The passion for relics was more and more developed. The second council of Nicaea orders that no church should be consecrated without some relies, and imputes a disregard of them to the opponents of images; but these, as we have seen, were eager to relieve themselves of the odium. Relics of our Lord and his virgin mother, the most precious class of all, were multiplied. The seamless coat and the napkin which had bound the Saviour’s head in the sepulchre were each supposed to be preserved in more than one place. Among the treasures of the monastery of Centulles, under abbot Angilbert, who died in 801, were fragments of the manger in which our Lord was laid, of the candle lighted at his birth, of his vesture and sandals, of the rock on which he sat when he fed the five thousand, of the wood of the three tabernacles, of the bread which he gave to his disciples, of the cross, and of the sponge; with portions of the blessed Virgin's milk, of her hair, her dress, and her cloak. In honour of the cross were instituted festivals of its Invention and Exaltation.

Other relics were also diligently sought for, and were highly prized. Not only are saints said to have appeared, as in former ages, for the purpose of pointing out the resting-places of their remains, but it was believed that sometimes, in answer to earnest prayer, relics were sent down from heaven. A great impulse was given to this kind of superstition when, on the approach of the Lombards to Rome in 761, Pope Paul removed the bodies of saints from their tombs outside the city to churches within the walls. The Frankish records of the time abound in accounts of the translation of relics to various places in France, and of the solemnities with which they were received. The mere connexion with Rome was supposed to confer a sanctity and a miraculous power. Thus it is related that Odo, duke of Aquitaine, a contemporary of Charles Martel, having got possession of three sponges which had been used in wiping the pope’s table, divided them into little morsels, which he caused his soldiers to swallow before a battle; that no one of those who had partaken was wounded, and that, while 375,000 Saracens were slain in one day, the duke’s losses throughout the war amounted to only 1500 men

Charlemagne repeatedly condemns some ecclesiastical superstitions, as well as those of the heathens whom he subdued. He forbids the veneration of fictitious saints and doubtful martyrs the invocation or worship of any saints except such as the church had approved, or the erection of memorials to them by the wayside; the circulation of apocryphal or questionable narratives; the introduction of new names of angels, in addition to those for which there is scriptural authority—Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. The council of Mayence forbids the translation of the bodies of saints, unless with permission from the sovereign and the bishops.

Legendary lives of saints were now produced in wonderful abundance, and were the most popular literature of the times. In addition to their falsehood (which, where consciously introduced, may have been held excusable by the writers for the sake of the expected good effects) and to their enforcement of all the errors which had grown upon the church, they were blameable as teaching men to look for visible prosperity and chastisement according to individual desert in the ordinary government of the world. Yet the evil of such legends was not with-put a large compensation of good. They set forth the power of religion, not only in miracles but in self-denial and renunciation of earthly things. In contrast with the rudeness and selfishness which generally prevailed, they presented examples which taught a spirit of .gentleness and self-sacrifice, of purity, of patience, of love to God and man, of disinterested toil, of forgiveness of enemies, of kindness to the poor and the oppressed. The concluding part of the legend exhibited the saint triumphant after his earthly troubles, yet still interested in his brethren who were engaged in the struggle of life, and manifesting his interest by interpositions in their behalf. And above all there was the continual inculcation of a Providence watching over all the affairs of men, and ready to protect the innocent, or to recompense and avenge their sufferings.

Even as early as the fourth century, some of the evils attendant on the general practice of pilgrimage had been noticed by Gregory of Nyssa and others; and strong complaints of a like kind continue to be found from time to time. Gregory the Great tells Rusticiana, a lady of the imperial court, that, while she had been on a pilgrimage to Sinai, her affections had been at Constantinople, and expresses a suspicion that the holy objects which she had seen with her bodily eyes had made no impression on her heart. But the idle spirit in which pilgrimages were often undertaken was not the worst mischief connected with them. Boniface writes to archbishop Cuthbert that of the multitude of English women who flocked to Rome, only a few escaped the ruin of their virtue; that it was rare to find a town of Lombardy or France in which some dishonoured English nun or other female pilgrim had not taken up her abode, and by her misconduct brought disgrace on the church of her native land. Another unhappy effect of pilgrimages was, that for the sake of it bishops and abbots absented themselves for years from their proper spheres of labour, to the great injury of religion and discipline among those committed to their care.

From Britain pilgrimages were most commonly made to Rome, where the English had, in the neighbourhood of the Vatican basilica, a quarter of their own, which was known by the Saxon name of Burg,—the Borgo of later times. Some pilgrims from our island even found their way to the Holy Land. In France the chief place of pilgrimage was the shrine of St. Martin, at Tours; but the resort from that country to Rome became greater after the accession of the Carolingian dynasty. The lives of pilgrims were regarded as sacred, and many hospitals were built for their reception; among these was one founded at Jerusalem by Charlemagne for the benefit of Latin pilgrims. The emperor in 802 orders that no one, whether rich or poor, shall refuse to pilgrims a roof, fire, and water, and encourages those who can afford more to greater hospitality by a consideration of the recompence which Scripture promises. There are, however, canons against some of the abuses connected with pilgrimage. The council of Verne, in 755, orders that monks shall not be allowed to wander to Rome without their abbot's consents The council of Chalons, in 813, forbids the clergy to go either to Rome or to Tours without leave from their bishop; and, while it acknowledges that pilgrimage is profitable for those who have confessed their sins and have obtained directions for penance, who amend their lives, give alms, and practise devotion, it denounces the error of such as consider pilgrimage a licence to sin, and begs the emperor to take measures against a common practice of nobles, who extorted from their dependents the means of paying the expense of their own pilgrimages.

In some cases, persons who had been guilty of grievous sin were condemned by way of penance to leave their country, and either to wander for a certain time, or to undertake a pilgrimage to some particular place. These penitents were furnished with letters from their bishops, which at once made known their guilt and bespoke the charity of Christians for them. Many of them were loaded with chains, or with rings which ate into the flesh and inflicted excessive torture. Ethelwulf, the father of Alfred the Great, at his visit to Rome in 855, obtained from Benedict III the privilege that no Englishman should ever be obliged to leave his own country for this sort of penance; but long before his time impostors had found their account in going about naked and in irons under the pretence of having been sentenced to pilgrimage for some fearful crime. The capitulary of 789 forbids such vagabonds to roam about the country, and suggests that those who have really been guilty of some great and unusual offence may perform their penance better by remaining in one place

The discipline of the church in dealing with sin was now regulated by penitential books. These books were of eastern origin; the earliest of them was drawn up by John, patriarch of Constantinople, the antagonist of Gregory the Great; the first Penitential in the western church was that which is commonly ascribed to Theodore, the Greek archbishop of Canterbury. As the impossibility of fulfilling the requirements of the ancient canons had led to a general evasion or disregard of them, a scheme of commutation was introduced; for example, a certain amount of fasting might be redeemed by the recitation of a prescribed number of psalms. From this the transition was easy to a system of pecuniary commuttions—a system recommended by the analogy of the wehr. That institution had been extended from its original character of a composition for life to the case of lesser bodily injuries, so that the loss of a limb, an eye, a finger, or a tooth was to be atoned for by a fixed pecuniary fine; and the principle was now introduced into the penitentials, where offences were rated in a scale both of exercises and of money nearly resembling that of the civil damages. As yet, however, these payments were not regarded as a source of profit to the church, but were to be given to the poor, according to the penitent’s discretion. In England, the rich were able to relieve themselves in their penance by associating with themselves a number of poor persons for the performance of it. By such means it was possible to clear off seven years of penitence within a week; and, although the practice was condemned by the council of Cloveshoo, it was afterwards formally sanctioned.

The necessary effect of the new penitential system was not only to encourage the fatal error of regarding money as an equivalent for sin—an error against which some councils protested in vain, while the language of others seems to countenance it—but to introduce a spirit of petty traffic into the relations of sinners with their God. In opposition to this spirit Gregory III said that canons ought not to lay down exactly the length of time which should be assigned to penance for each offence, forasmuch as that which avails with God is not the measure of time but of sorrow. The council of Chalons denounces the penitential books, of which it says that “the errors are certain and the authors uncertain”; it charges them with “sewing pillows to all arm-holes”, and requires that penance should be restored to the footing of the ancient canons; and there are similar passages in other French councils of the ninth and tenth centuries.

Confession of secret sins was much insisted on; but the priest was regarded rather as an adviser than as a judge, and the form of his absolution was not judicial but precatory. Absolution was usually given immediately after confession, and the prescribed penance was left to be performed afterwards, so that, whereas in earlier ages the penitents had been excluded for a time from the full communion of the church, they now remained in it throughout.

The penalty of excommunication became in the Frankish church much more severe than it had formerly been. The council of Verne lays down that an excommunicate person “must not enter the church, nor partake of food or drink with any Christian; neither may any one receive his gifts, or kiss him, or join with him in prayer, or salute him”. It has been supposed that the new terrors of this sentence were borrowed from the practice of the druids, with a view to controlling the rude converts who would have disregarded a purely spiritual penalty. The power of wielding it must doubtless have added greatly to the influence of the clergy, although this effect did not yet appear so fully as at a later period.

The trial of guilt or innocence by means of a solemn appeal to heaven had been practised among many heathen nations, including those of the north. The Mosaic law had sanctioned it in certain cases; it fell in with the popular appetite for miracles, and the church now for a time took the management of such trials into her own hands. The ordeal, or judgment of God, was not to be resorted to where the guilt of an accused person was clear, but in cases of suspicion, where evidence was wanting or insufficient. The appeal was conducted with great solemnity. The accuser swore to the truth of his charge; the accused (who for three days had been preparing himself by fasting and prayer) asserted his innocence in the same manner; and he was adjured in the most awful terms not to approach the Lord's table if he were conscious of any guilt in the matter which was to be submitted to the Divine judgment. Both parties then communicated; and after this, the clergy anointed the instruments with which the trial was to be made.

The ordeal was of various kinds. That by judicial combat or wager of battle was employed, not only for the discovery of crime but in civil matters, such as disputes relating to the boundaries of property. Otho the Great even resorted to it as a means of determining a legal principle—whether at a man's death the children of a deceased son should share in the inheritance with their surviving uncles. This manner of appeal to the Divine judgment was introduced into the Burgundian law by the Arian king Gundobald, the contemporary of Clovis, against the remonstrances of Avitus, bishop of Vienne. It was not uncommon among the Franks, but appears to have been unknown in England until after the Norman conquest. Persons who were disqualified for undergoing this ordeal by age, sex, bodily weakness, or by the monastic or clerical profession, were allowed to fight by champions, who were usually hired, and were regarded as a disreputable class. In like manner corporations or societies committed their interests to champions. In the trial by hot iron, the accused walked barefoot over heated ploughshares, or (which was the more usual form), he carried a piece of glowing iron in his hand nine times the length of his foot. The foot or the hand (as the case might be) was then bound up and sealed until the third day, when it was examined, and according to its appearance the guilt or innocence of the party was decided. The trial of hot water consisted in plunging the arm into a boiling caldron, and taking out a stone, a ring, or a piece of iron, which was hung at a greater or less depth in proportion to the gravity of the offence in question. That of cold water was performed by throwing the accused into a pond, with a cord attached to him, by which he might be drawn out. If he were laden with weights, sinking was a proof of guilt; if not, it was held to prove his innocence. In the ordeal of the “cross” (which, notwithstanding the name which it acquired, was probably of heathen origin), the accused or his proxy held up the right arm, or both arms y psalms were sung during the trial, and the sinking or trembling of the arms was evidence of guilt. Among other kinds of ordeal were—holding the hand in fire; walking in a thin garment between two burning piles; eating a1 cake, which in England was called the corsned; and receiving the holy Eucharist.

Some of these practices were condemned after a time. Lewis the Pious, after having in 816 prescribed the trial of the cross as a means of deciding between contradictory witnesses, abolished it in the following year, “lest that which hath been glorified by the passion of Christ should through any man's rashness be brought to contempt”. Under the same emperor, the ordeal of cold water was forbidden in 829, although in 824 it had been sanctioned by Eugenius II—the only pope who ever countenanced the system of ordeals. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, a strenuous opponent of popular superstitions, addressed to Lewis two tracts against the judicial combat. He reflects on the heresy of the Burgundian king who had sanctioned it. He denounces such duels as unchristian, and as involving a breach of charity more important than any good which could be expected from them. He argues that, if truth might be thus ascertained, all judges are superfluous; that the system holds out a premium to brute strength and to perjury; that the idea of its efficacy is contrary to Scripture, since we are there taught to despise the success of this world—since God suffers his saints to be slain, and has allowed believing nations to be overcome by unbelievers and heretics; and he appeals to instances in which the vanity of such trials had been manifested. The ordeal, however, continued to be supported by the popular feeling, and the cause which Agobard had opposed soon after found a powerful champion in Hincmar.

The privilege of asylum in the Germanic kingdoms differed considerably from that which had existed under the Roman empire. It arose out of the ancient national usages; the object of it was not to bestow impunity on the criminal, but to protect him against hasty and irregular vengeance, to secure for him a legal trial, to afford the clergy an opportunity of interceding for him, and, if possible, of mitigating his punishment. The operation of this institution was aided by the system of pecuniary composition for wrongs. The clergy were usually able to stipulate for the safety of the offender’s life and limbs on condition that he should pay a suitable fine, or perhaps that he should submit to a course of penance. Charlemagne in 779 limited the right of sanctuary by enacting that murderers or other capital offenders should not be allowed to take refuge in churches, and that, if they gained admittance, no food should be given to them. According to the ancient Roman idea of asylum, the denial of food would have been an impiety sufficient to draw down some judgment from the patron saint of a church; but it was not inconsistent with the German view. The clergy, however, soon discovered a way of evading this law, by construing it as applicable to impenitent criminals only—i.e. to such as should refuse to confess to the priest and to undergo ecclesiastical penance—a refusal which was not likely to be frequent, where it involved the choice between death by hunger and the forfeiture of sanctuary. The prohibition of food does not appear in later enactments of the reign.

The church could not fail to derive popularity from the power of offering shelter within its precincts against the lawlessness of which the world was then so full. With a view of investing it with such popularity among his new subjects, Charlemagne ordered, in his capitulary for Saxony (A.D. 785), that any person who should take sanctuary should, for the honour of God and His church, be safe in life and limb, and should be unmolested until the next court-day, when he was to be sentenced to make suitable amends for his offence. In legislating for the country after it had been reduced to a more settled state, this privilege was withdrawn, and the church was required to surrender up persons convicted of capital crimes

Among the Anglo-Saxons, the earliest law on the subject of asylum was that of Ina, in 696, which ordered that fugitives guilty of capital crimes should have their life protected by the church, but should be bound to make legal satisfaction; and that delinquents who had "put their hide in peril"—i.e. who had incurred the penalty of whipping—should be forgiven. But the shelter of the church was only to be granted for a certain time. The laws of Alfred (A.D. 877) limit it in some monasteries to three days; but it was afterwards extended, and even in the same laws a longer term is allowed to other places. Persons guilty of murder, treason, or crimes against religion, might ordinarily be dragged even from the altar; but some churches of especial sanctity, among which that of Croyland enjoyed the most extensive immunities, had the right of protecting all fugitives whatever. The effect of such a privilege was probably felt as a serious hindrance to the execution of justice; for when Croyland, after having been laid waste by the Danes, was restored in the reign of Edred by his chancellor Turketul, the aged statesman declined to accept a renewal of its ancient rights of sanctuary.

 

Slavery.

 

Instead of absolutely condemning slavery as an unlawful institution—a course which would probably have introduced anarchy into society, and would have raised a serious hindrance to the progress of the Gospel—the New Testament had been content to prepare the way for its gradual abolition by exhorting both master and slave to the performance of their mutual duties on the ground of their common brotherhood in Christ. And as yet the church aimed only at a mitigation, not at an extinction, of slavery.

Servitude was of two kinds—that of slaves properly so called, and that of the coloni. The slaves were individually liable to removal and sale; they were incapable, under the Roman empire, of contracting a legitimate marriage, and their property belonged to their master. The coloni were regarded as freeborn, so that, unlike slaves, they might become soldiers; they were attached to the land, so that they could not be separated from it, nor could it be sold without them. They were capable of marriage and of possessing property; for the land which they cultivated they paid a fixed rent, generally in kind, and they were subject to the land-tax and to a poll-tax. It would, however, seem difficult to distinguish thoroughly between these classes in the canons which relate to the subject.

The Penitential ascribed to Theodore of Canterbury notes it as a point of difference between the eastern and the western monks, that, while the Latins have slaves, the Greeks have none. The oriental monks themselves performed the labour which was elsewhere devolved on slaves; it was usual for persons entering on the monastic life to emancipate their slaves; and some teachers, as Isidore of Pelusium in the fifth century, and Theodore the Studite in the ninth, altogether questioned, or even denied, the lawfulness of having such property. In the west there are occasional appearances of a like kind. Thus Wilfrid, on getting possession of the isle of Selsey, emancipated all the serfs who were attached to the soil, and Benedict of Aniane, whose ideas were chiefly drawn from the eastern monastic rules, on receiving gifts of land for his monasteries, refused to accept the serfs with it. Somewhat in the same spirit was the enactment of the council of Chalchythe, in 816, that a bishop at his death should liberate such of his English slaves as had been reduced to bondage in his own time. But the usual practice of the west was different. In donations of land to the church, the serfs passed with the soil, as in other transfers. Bishops were restrained by a regard, for the property of their churches from emancipating the serfs who belonged to these; the fourth council of Toledo (A.D. 633) declared such emancipation to be a robbery of the church; it enacted that the next bishop should assert his right over any persons whom his predecessor had thus wrongfully liberated, and that any bishop wishing to emancipate a slave should indemnify the church by providing another in his stead. An earlier council— that of Agde, in 506—had restrained the power of bishops to alienate slaves; and, in a spirit curiously opposed to the oriental principles, it forbade monks to manumit their slaves, “lest they should keep holiday while the monks work”. It was even found that some persons—whether from a reckless spirit of mistaken devotion, or from a calculation of the advantages and disadvantages of the two conditions—voluntarily made over themselves and their descendants in servitude to some church; and for such an act special forms were provided.

Yet with all this the church did very much to abate the evils of slavery. It insisted on the natural equality of men and on the brotherhood of Christians, as motives to kindness towards slaves; and in the treatment of its own dependants it held out an example to lay masters. It threw open its sanctuaries to those who fled from cruelty; it secured their pardon before surrendering them to their owners; it denounced excommunication against any master who should break a promise made to a fugitive slave.

It placed the killing of a slave without judicial authority on the same footing of guilt as the killing of a freeman. It endeavoured to restrain the sale of slaves, by limiting the power which parents among the heathen nations exercised over their own offspring, and by prohibiting that any should be sold to Jews or heathens. It encouraged the redemption of captives, and declared the enfranchisement of slaves to be a work conducive to salvation; and it was through the influence of the church that innumerable masters directed by their wills that their slaves should be set free “for the deliverance of their own souls”. The liberation was often, as under the Roman law, visibly associated with religion by being performed at the altar, where the master resigned his slave to the church, with which the freedman was thenceforth connected by a peculiar tie—he and his descendants paying some slight acknowledgment to it, while, in the failure of posterity, the church was heir to his property.

There was also another way by which the church signally contributed to raise the estimation of the servile classes. As the freemen of the conquering nations were prevented from becoming clergy or monks without the sovereign’s leave, in order that he might not lose their military service, the bishops were obliged to recruit the ranks of their clergy chiefly from the classes which were below the obligation to such serviced The fourth council of Toledo requires that serfs ordained to be clergymen should be emancipated; but it was not until the year 817, in the reign of Lewis the Pious, that a similar law was established in France, although before that time the clergy of servile race had been exempted from servile duties. The serf, when ordained, became capable of rising to honour and power; when promoted beyond the minor orders, he was assessed at a wehr corresponding to that of high secular rank; and this rose with each step to which he was advanced in the hierarchy. The clergy who had thus been raised from a servile condition to dignity and influence felt themselves bound (apart from all religious motives) to labour for the benefit of the class to which they had originally belonged, and a general elevation of that class was the result.

The advancement of persons servilely born to high ecclesiastical station was not, however, unattended by a mixture of bad effects. Thegan, the biographer of Lewis the Pious, gives a very unfavourable representation of such clergy. He tells us that, when they have attained to offices of dignity, the gentleness of their former manners is exchanged for insolence, quarrelsomeness, domineering, and assumption; that they emancipate their relations, and either provide for them by church-preferment or marry them into noble families; and that these upstarts are insufferably insolent to the old nobility. The picture is no doubt coloured both by Thegan’s prejudices as a man of high birth, and by his indignation at the behaviour of some ecclesiastics towards his unfortunate sovereign; but the parallels both of history and of our own experience may assure us of its substantial truth.