ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
CHAPTER X.
A PAPAL CHAOS.
The death of Paul I brought out in strong relief the difficulties which
result from clothing a religious leader with temporal power. The arguments in
favour of that course are obvious, and have already been often referred to. The
cruelties inflicted on Popes who dared to differ from the Eastern Augustus on
questions of religious dogma, the transportation of Silverius to the desolate Palmaria, the attempt to drag Vigilius from the altar to
which he clung for refuge, the death of the persecuted Martin at inhospitable
Cherson, the attempts on the liberty of Sergius and on the life of the second
Gregory, might not unreasonably suggest, even to an unambitious Roman pontiff,
that if he was to be safe he must be also sovereign; nor can we deny that the
happy device of interweaving the claims of St. Peter and his Vicar with those
of the Holy Roman Republic seemed to offer a plausible means of obtaining this
sovereignty without too obviously abandoning the position assumed by Christ
when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world”.
But, however the truth might be veiled by the festoons of pious
rhetoric, the substantial fact remained that the bishop of Rome was now
virtually king over the central City of the world, and over fair domains
touching both the Tyrrhene and the Adriatic Seas; and
this proud position naturally attracted the ambition of men for whom the
spiritual prerogatives of the successor of St. Peter would have had no
fascination. In later centuries this motive was to be made miserably manifest
when the Papal See became for a time almost an appanage of the Counts of
Tusculum. We have some faint presage of those evil days in the scenes which
were now enacted before the bewildered gaze of the citizens of Rome.
The little town of Nepi, about thirty miles
from Rome, was, as we have already seen, one of the frontier towns of the Ducatus Romae looking towards
Lombard Tuscany. Here dwelt an ambitious citizen of doubtful nationality, named
Toto, who had by means unknown to us acquired the dignity of dukedom.
Conspiring with three of his brothers, named Constantine, Passivus and Paschalis, and with a troop of rustics, drawn apparently from both sides of
the border and devoted to his will, this adventurer conceived the daring design
of giving a Pope to Rome and of ruling the new Papal territory in his name,
Pope Paul was still lingering on his death-bed under the shadow of his
namesake's great basilica when Toto, his brothers, and his accomplices appeared
upon the scene. They intended—so we are told—to hasten events by cutting short
the feeble thread of the pontiffs life, but were prevented by the primicerius Christopher, who invited them and the rest of
the Roman nobility into his house and gave them ‘strong and salutary ' counsels
as to abstinence from crime. He even succeeded (so he averred) in inducing them
and the heads of the opposite party to bind themselves by mutual oaths not to
elect any Pope save from among the bishops, priests and deacons of the Roman
Church, and not to introduce any of the suburban rustics into the City in order
to carry the election. All this advice however was in vain, and the oaths
solemnly taken were only so many perjuries. Scarcely had Paul I sighed out his
latest breath, when Toto and his brothers with a horde of rustics from the
towns of Tuscany rushed into the City through the Gate of St. Pancratius on the Janiculan height, held a tumultuary election in the
house of Toto (who seems to have possessed a palace within the walls of Rome),
and chose as Pope, Constantine the layman, the brother of the invading chief.
This tumultuary election took place apparently on the evening of Sunday,
the 28th of June, 767, and was followed by the march of Toto, his brothers and
his rustics to the Lateran palace of the Patriarchate, where George, bishop of Praeneste, was ordered to admit the new Pope to the minor
orders, which were so to speak the threshold of the ecclesiastical state. The
bishop at first refused, cast himself at the feet of Constantine, and begged
him by the holy mysteries to cease from his presumptuous attempt and forbear
from introducing such an unheard-of innovation into the Church of God. But the
rough men who had just taken part in the election in Toto's palace gathered
round him, and with fierce threats ordered him to do as he was bid. Terrified,
the bishop consented, and ordained Constantine, who, now a cleric, stalked in
and seated himself in the patriarchal chair.
When Monday dawned the same unfortunate bishop George, who had now no
choice but to cast in his lot with the usurper, admitted Constantine to the
successive degrees of subdeacon and deacon in the oratory of St. Laurence at
the Lateran—otherwise called the Sancta Sanctorum—and presented him to the
people to receive their oath of obedience. On the following Sunday, Constantine
proceeded through the streets of Rome with his usual train of armed men
(doubtless marshalled by his truculent brothers), entered the great basilica of
St. Peter, and was there consecrated Pope by George of Praeneste and two other bishops, Eustratius of Albano and Citonatus of Porto.
The elevation of Constantine to the pontificate was certainly irregular,
for though there had been many instances (notably the case of the great Ambrose
of Milan) in which laymen had been suddenly raised to the presidency of other
sees, in Rome the practice was so rare as to be almost unknown, and the Pope,
by a rule which had not been broken for more than two centuries, ought to be
chosen from the ranks of either the deacons or the presbyters. But however
manifest the irregularity of the whole proceeding, the necessary formalities
had been in some fashion complied with. There had been a popular election, the
candidate had passed through the ecclesiastical grades up to that of deacon
(higher rank in the Church was not necessary), had been consecrated Pope by
three bishops of the Roman Church, and could now sit in the chair of St. Peter
and call himself ‘Servant of all the servants of God'. He did in fact for
thirteen months preside over the Apostolic See, though he is not reckoned in
the number of the pontiffs, nor is his face to be found in the long series
which gaze down upon the beholder from the walls of the great church of St.
Paul's Without the Gates.
Early tidings of these strange proceedings were brought by a notary
named Constantine to his official chief Christopher, who as Primicerius Notariorum should in due course have presided over the
election and formed one of the board of three which should have ruled Pome
during the vacancy of the Holy See. Terrible were the threats of which
Constantine the notary was the bearer from his namesake unless Christopher
would assist in making him Pope. This however he steadfastly refused to do, betaking
himself instead to tears and prayers to Almighty God for the preservation of
His Church from the impending scandal.
A certain Duke Gregory, a dweller in Campania, who probably attempted to
resist the usurping Pope by force of arms, was put to death, and Christopher
hearing that his own death also was decreed took refuge with his sons in the
church of St. Peter. He was at last induced to emerge from his place of refuge
on receiving from Pope Constantine a solemn assurance, confirmed by an oath
before St. Peter's tomb, that he and his sons should be allowed to dwell
peaceably in their homes till the approaching Easter-tide. After that he was to
be allowed to retire with his son Sergius to the monastery of the Saviour near
Rieti, in the district of Spoleto.
Meanwhile the new Pope had addressed two letters of the orthodox pattern
set him by his predecessor, to “his dear son Pippin, king of the Franks and
patrician of the Romans.” The ordinary phrases about the starry realms, the
honey-flowing Excellency of the Frankish king, his God-protected kingdom, the
duty which he owes to his protector St. Peter, and so forth, flow from the pen
of this suddenly-exalted layman as smoothly as from that of the ‘child of the
Lateran' who preceded him. Many no doubt of these sentences were ‘common forms'
which would be supplied by any of the clerks in the Papal chancery to his employer.
The solecisms in grammar and spelling, even more outrageous and more frequent
than those which we meet with in the letters of Pope Paul, suggest the idea of
a pattern set by such a clerk and imperfectly copied by an illiterate rustic.
The allusions, however, to the circumstances of his own elevation to the
pontificate are peculiar, and if there be any truth in the account of the
matter given by the Liber Pontificalis, are audacious
:—
“We expect you have already heard that our predecessor Paul, of blessed
memory, has by the call of God been withdrawn from the light of day, and that
the inhabitants of this City and of the surrounding towns have chosen my
Unhappiness to preside over them as their pastor”.
The allusion to the share which ‘surrounding towns' have had in the
election is a slight tribute to veracity.
“When I seriously consider with myself what are the duties of the office
into which I have crept, in respect of tending the rational sheep of the Lord,
I must confess that unbearable sadness fills my secret soul”. (The ‘office into
which I have crept' sounds like a very candid confession of the truth, but is
probably due to the new Pope's ignorance of the meaning of the words, which
some crafty clerk dictated for his adoption.)
“But I who am greatly weighed down and perceive that by no virtues or
attainments of my own have I been advanced to this dignity, conclude that the
Divine compassion working on the hearts of the people has brought about this
result : and therefore, like one awakened from a heavy sleep, I perceive with
stupefaction and ecstasy that an honour has been conferred upon me which I
never desired, which I never even thought of, and to which my little faint
heart never aspired. For suddenly being seized by the violent hands of an
innumerable multitude of people who all agreed in this thing, I was borne as it
were by a mighty blast of wind up to the great and awful height of this
pontificate. . . . Oh, how great and fearful a thing art thou, the
responsibility of the pastor! And how can I, unhappy one, fulfil the onerous
duty of the cure of souls!”.
The Pope then goes on to make a short confession of faith in order to
show his absolute orthodoxy. He alludes to Christ's converse with sinners, and
(with some dexterity) to the call of Matthew the publican from the
tax-gatherer's table, and he announces the arrival of a presbyter from
Jerusalem bringing the patriarch Theodore's synodical letter addressed to the
late pontiff Paul, from which it is clear that the patriarchal thrones of
Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria, all agree with that of Rome in upholding the
worship of images. Upon the whole this rustic brother of Duke Toto plays his
part so well and imitates so admirably the language of his predecessor—the
rough Esau this time counterfeiting the bland voice of the peaceful Jacob—that
one almost expects to see that he will succeed in carrying off the Church's
blessing.
That consummation was prevented by the energy of the two men,
Christopher and Sergius, father and son, who had held the two highest offices
in the Papal chancery, and who, whether from personal ambition or from honest
loyalty to the traditions of the See, were determined that Constantine's
usurpation of the papacy should not be legitimatized by success. We have seen
that they obtained leave to retire to a monastery near Rieti after Easter, 768.
The Papal biographer, who has his own reasons for disliking the two men, though
he approves their deed, says that they feigned the desire to become monks, and
swore that they would assume the monastic habit, in order to obtain from
Constantine the required permission to depart from Rome. Instead of resorting
to the convent of the Saviour at Rieti, where the abbot was waiting to receive
them, they made their way to Spoleto and besought the Duke Theodicius to escort them across the river Po to the court of Desiderius. He did so, and
the two ministers having been admitted to the presence of the Lombard king,
earnestly besought him to lend his aid ‘that the error of such a novelty might
be cut off from the Church of God'.
Desiderius appears to have authorized his the Duke of Spoleto to
interfere in the Roman troubles, but not to have sent any troops of his own for
that purpose. Probably the power of this suburban ‘Duke' Toto was
inconsiderable, and no great display of force was needed to crush him. In fact,
the only persons of whom we hear as sharing in the invasion of Rome are the
inhabitants of Rieti and Furcona, two insignificant
towns in the Apennine highlands belonging to the duchy of Spoleto. Under the
command of Sergius and a certain presbyter Waldipert,
who probably came as envoy from the Lombard king to control the impending
revolution, the rustic army marched suddenly on Rome by the Via Salara, and
reached the bridge over the Anio at twilight on the 29th of July (768). Next
day they crossed the Ponte Molle, and worked round on the north and north-west
of Rome, first to the Gate of St. Peter's and then to the Gate of St.
Pancratius. Some relations of Christopher opened the gate to his son, and there
the Lombards stood on the Janiculum, near the site of the present church of S.
Pietro in Montorio, overlooking the outspread City.
They displayed the Lombard banner, but ‘stood trembling on the walls, fearing
the Roman people, and not daring to descend'. So says the Papal writer, but it
is more probable that Sergius and Waldipert, knowing
that they had friends in the enemy's camp, determined to avoid the odium of a
victory won by the swords of the Lombards, and preferred to wait for the course
of events. Duke Toto with his brother Passivus mounted up to the gate, having in their train two of the ministers of the Papal
household, Demetrius and Gratiosus, whom they
believed to be their friends, but who were secretly in league with the
assailants. One of the Lombards named Racipert rushed
upon Toto, but was stoutly resisted, and met his own death from Toto's weapon.
The Lombards wavered, and were in act to flee, when Secundus and Gratiosus attacked Toto from behind with their lances and
slew him. Thereupon Passivus rushed across the City
to the Lateran palace and told his brother the Pope what things were being done
on the Janiculan hill. Then Constantine and Passivus, with the bishop Theodore, the Pope's delegate,
hastened to the great basilica of the Lateran, and fled from chapel to chapel
seeking some inviolable refuge. In vain : after they had undergone some hours
of suspense the officers of the Roman militia came and dragged them forth from
the oratory of St. Caesarius and put them in ward, perhaps in one of the
dungeons of the palace.
On the next day, which was a Sunday, Waldipert,
without consulting his confederate Sergius, gathered together a number of Roman
citizens, proceeded to the monastery of St. Vitus, and invited forth from
thence a certain priest named Philip, whom the crowd greeted with the
acclamation, ‘St. Peter has chosen Philip, Pope'. They then led him in state to
the Lateran basilica : a bishop offered the customary prayer; the new Pope
bestowed his blessing on the people from the balcony of the church, and entered
the palace of the pontiffs. Here he sat at the head of a banqueting company,
among whom were some of the great ecclesiastical dignitaries and officers of
the Roman militia.
But Philip, who was doubtless looked upon by the Lombard faction in the
City as one of their own partisans, was, though a priest, not one of the
regular parish-priests of Rome, and his election therefore, though not as
irregular as that of Constantine, was contrary to the established custom of the
Roman Church. As soon as Christopher (who had apparently travelled more slowly
than his son) appeared upon the scene and was informed of Philip's election, he
waited outside the gates of the City, and swore with a great oath in presence
of the assembled Romans that till Philip was expelled from the Lateran he would
not enter Rome. His word was recognized as decisive. Gratiosus the chartularius, the slayer of Toto, with no very
large troop of Roman citizens following him, marched to the Lateran and ordered
the new Pope to depart thence. Philip, who seems to have deserved a better fate
than to be made Pope at such a time, calmly descended the great staircase of
the Lateran palace, and returned amid the reverent greetings of the crowd to
his monastic seclusion.
The election of the new Pope was thus taken definitely out of the hands
of the Lombard faction, and was to be carried through by the primicerius Christopher alone. He convened an assembly of
all the orders of the state at the Tria Fata, the northeast corner of the Roman
Forum, in front of the church of S. Adriano, which probably occupied the site
of that which was known in republican times as the Comitium.
Here then, where once the Roman people had listened to the orators who
expounded to them the policy of the Senate, was now gathered the
strangely-mingled assembly which is thus described by the Papal biographer :
“All the priests and leaders of the clergy; the chiefs of the militia and the
whole army, and the honourable citizens and a concourse of the whole Roman
people from great to little”.
This assembly, unanimously as we are told, elected Stephen, priest of S.
Cecilia in Trastevere, to the vacant see. He was a
Sicilian by birth, son of a man named Olivus. He was
not more than fifty years of age, and had come as a boy to Rome in the time of
Gregory III, who placed him in his own recently-founded monastery of St. Chrysogonus. Zacharias transferred him from thence to the
Lateran ‘patriarchate', and gave him a place in his household, at the same time
consecrating him as priest of S. Cecilia. He thus became one of those
‘cardinal-priests' (as men were beginning to call them) from whose ranks and
those of the cardinal-deacons the Pope was now usually chosen. He is said to
have been learned (according to the very moderate standard of that age) in the
Scriptures and in the traditions of the Church, and he was probably a person of
some ability, as he was sent by Paul I on an important mission to Pippin.
Such was the man who was now raised by the influence of the primicerius Christopher to the vacant patriarchate.
The Lateran had again a lawful possessor : the interval of chaos was ended.
