BOOK IV.

FROM THE ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE,

A.D. 590-814

 

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 arch-chaplain 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 calligraphy 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 (Mainz), 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 skilful 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.