ITALY AND HER INVADERS.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ACCESSION OF POPE HADRIAN
Pope Stephen III died, as we have seen, on the 3rd of February, 772. The
waves of strife which had tossed him to and fro during his short and troubled pontificate were still raging round his deathbed.
To the fierce and unscrupulous Paulus Afiarta it was a matter of life and death
to preserve the ascendency of the Lombard faction and to crush any attempt of
the Roman or Frankish parties to elect a Pope who would reverse the
recently-adopted policy. Many of the clergy and civil magistrates of the City
were sent into exile, even while Stephen III was dying, and a more terrible
vengeance was taken on the hapless Sergius, who, though blinded and in prison,
was still formidable to the imagination of Paulus. There seems to have been a
junta of counsellors who at this time of crisis wielded all the power of the
dying Pope. They were Paulus himself (who held the office of chamberlain), John
the dux Romae (who was brother of the Pope, and whose
implication in these deeds of violence renders it probable that Stephen himself
had really concurred in the recent revolution), Gregory the defensor regionarius, and another chamberlain named Calvulus. These men signed an order to the warders of the
prisons in the Lateran for the delivery of the body of the captive Sergius. In
the of first hour of the night, eight days before the Pope's Sergius-death, Calvulus presented himself at the dungeon door with two men
of Anagni, Lumisso a priest
and Leonatius a military officer, and obtained
possession of the person of the blind captive. The course of the narrative
looks as if the two men of Anagni had some private
resentment of their own to gratify by the murder of the fallen minister.
However this may be, he was straightway slain and buried in a street close to
the Arch of Gallienus.
Happily for the fame of the Holy See, these unscrupulous attempts to
silence the voice of opposition to Paulus Afiarta and his party were not
successful. We may perhaps conjecture that if there was a Lombard party in the
Papal Curia represented by Paulus, and a Frankish party of which Christopher
and Sergius had been the heads, there was also a Roman party representing the
best traditions both of the City and the Church, who were determined that the
most exalted office in Christendom should no longer be made the prize of
victory in the bloody strife of cubicularii and primicerii. It was probably the voice of
this respectable middle party which secured the election of one of the greatest
Popes of the eighth century.
Hadrian I, son of Theodore, was a pure Roman by birth, born at a house
in the Via Lata, near to where the modern Corso opens out into the Piazza di
Venezia. His parents, who belonged to the highest nobility of Rome, died in his
childhood, and he was brought up in the house of his uncle Theodotus, who had
been formerly consul and duke, but afterwards filled the office of primicerius of the Roman Church. Hadrian grew up, a young
man of handsome presence and generous and manly character, conspicuous while
still a layman for his devout attendance at the neighbouring church of St.
Mark, his almsgiving, his austerities, his study of the canons of the Church.
Such a man, in the intellectual atmosphere of Rome, was naturally attracted
within the ecclesiastical orbit. At the urgent invitation of Pope Paul he
became first notarius regionarius,
then sub-dean; and the succeeding Pope Stephen III advanced him to the rank of
deacon, and admitted him to his intimate confidence. Though the biographer
speaks of the devotion to study which marked him from his earliest youth, his
learning, if measured by classical standards, would probably have been found
woefully deficient. His letters, contained in the Codex Carolinus,
swarm with grammatical blunders of which a schoolboy would be ashamed : and
this is the more extraordinary, because (as was explained in an earlier volume)
Hadrian was the Pope by whose orders the letters of his renowned predecessor
Gregory I were collected into the great Register in which most of them have
become known to later ages. And those letters, though not written exactly in
the style of Cicero or even of the younger Pliny, are at least free from the
solecisms which disfigure the letters of Hadrian. However, in the country of
the blind the one-eyed man is king, and in the dense ignorance which prevailed
at Rome in the middle of the eighth century Hadrian seems to have been reputed
a learned man. He soon became a great and popular preacher, and this undoubted
popularity caused him to be elected (9th of February, 772) as successor of
Stephen III on the Papal throne.
The new Pope at once showed that he did not intend to be a mere
instrument in the hands of Paulus Afiarta. On the very day of his election,
even before his consecration, he ordered— and this prompt exercise of his power
shows how truly monarchical was now the Papal character—that all the nobles of
Church and State whom Paulus had banished from the City should be at once
invited to return, and that all the political prisoners should be liberated.
For the hapless Sergius, whom men doubtless expected to see now emerging from
the dungeons of the Lateran, the order of release came too late.
Desiderius heard with concern that a new Pope who was not amenable to
the counsels of his partisan was sitting in the palace of the Lateran. He sent
an embassy, consisting of Theodicius duke of Spoleto,
Tunno duke of Ivrea, and Prandulus the keeper of his
wardrobe, to propose a renewal of the same friendly relations which had of late
subsisted between Pavia and Rome. The speech in which Hadrian replied to the
smooth words of these ambassadors was one of startling and undiplomatic frankness.
“I for my part wish to live in peace with all Christians, including your king
Desiderius, and in that covenant of peace which had been established between
Romans, Franks and Lombards I shall study to abide. But how can I trust that
same king of yours when I remember what my predecessor in this office, lord
Stephen of pious memory, told me confidentially concerning his broken faith.
For he told me that he had lied to him in everything which he had promised with
an oath on the body of the blessed Peter, as to restoring the rights of God's
holy Church : and further that it was only under the persuasion of the unjust
arguments of the same Desiderius that he caused the eyes of Christopher and
Sergius to be dug out, and executed the will of the Lombard on those two
officers of the Church”.
(It was not therefore wholly without the consent of Stephen III that
that barbarous deed was done.)
“And in this way he caused us great harm and loss, for [the alleged
reconciliation] brought no advantage at all to the apostolic cause. All this my
predecessor, for the love which he bore unto me in my humble station, confided
unto me : and moreover he shortly after sent unto him his own messengers,
exhorting him to fulfil his promises to St. Peter. But this was the [insulting]
reply which those messengers brought back with them :—
“It is enough for the apostolic Stephen that I have cut off Christopher
and Sergius from the world, since they were domineering over him. He need not
talk about recovering the rights of the Church ; for if I do not myself help
the apostolic man, he himself will soon be ruined, since Carloman, king of the
Franks, the still surviving friend of Christopher and Sergius, is making ready
an army to avenge their fate by marching to Rome and taking the pontiff himself
captive.
“That was his reply. Lo! there you have the honour of King Desiderius
and the measure of the confidence that I may repose in him”.
After Hadrian had liberated his soul by this outburst, the Lombard
emissaries assured him with solemn oaths that their master was this time in
earnest in his desire for a league of amity with the Holy See, and would
purchase it by the surrender of all the territory for which Pope Stephen III
had striven. Once again the blandishments of the Lombard prevailed. Hadrian believed
their words, and sent two ambassadors, of whom Paulus Afiarta was one, to
receive the surrender of the desired territory.
Hardly, however, had the Papal messengers reached Perugia on their
journey towards the Exarchate when they learned that Desiderius, far from
preparing to cede any more cities to the Roman See, had appropriated Faenza,
Ferrara and Comacchio, that is, had resumed possession of the cities which he
surrendered in 757, and had added thereto Comacchio, which formed part of the
territory ceded by Aistulf to Pippin's representative in 756. The
faithlessness, and more than that, the inconsistency, the childish levity of
purpose which characterize these Lombard kings, exasperate the chronicler of
their deeds and make him almost ready to acquiesce in the ‘unspeakable' names
hurled at them by Papal biographers.
It may be suggested with some probability that the cause of this sudden
change of front on the part of Desiderius was the arrival of the widow and
children of Carloman at the Lombard court. To understand the bearing of this
event we must go back to the closing month of 771, in which the opportune death
of Carloman relieved the Frankish world of the fear of a civil war between the
two brothers. Charles's measures were taken with such exceeding promptitude as
to suggest the thought that his plans had been matured while Carloman was
dying. He hastened to Carbonacum, a royal ‘villa' in
Champagne, just over the frontier, and there met a number of the most eminent
nobles and ecclesiastics of his late brother's kingdom. Chief among them were
the venerable Fulrad, abbot of S. Denis, and Wilchar, archbishop of Sens, both of whom had often carried
Pippin's messages to Rome. Carloman had left two infant sons, and the claims of
both of these to share their father's inheritance were doubtless discussed in
the assembly of Carbonacum. But the evil result of
these divisions of the kingdom was too obvious, the lately impending danger of
civil war was too terrible. The majority of the counsellors of the late king
gave their voices for reunion under Charles, who celebrated his Christmas at
Attigny as sole lord of all the Frankish dominions.
On learning the decision of the assembly, Gerberga, the widow of
Carloman, taking with her the two infant princes, crossed the Alps and sought
shelter at the court of Desiderius. With her went some, apparently not a large
number, of the courtiers of her late husband, pre-eminent among whom was Duke Autchar, the same doubtless who eighteen years before had
escorted Stephen II on his memorable journey Italy. King Charles, we are told,
took very patiently his sister-in-law’s flight to the court of his enemy,
though he considered it ‘superfluous', or, as a modern would probably express
the matter, “in bad taste.”
The arrival of Gerberga with her children and counsellors put a new
weapon in the hand of Desiderius for revenge on the husband of his daughter.
For to that revenge all calculations of mere policy had now to yield, the pale
figure of the divorced and uncrowned queen of the Franks, ‘not quite a widow,
yet but half a wife', being ever in his sight and mutely appealing for the
redress of her wrongs. Nor as a question of mere policy did the scheme which
now shaped itself in his mind seem an unwise one. If he could have Carloman's
children (the sole strictly legitimate heirs of Pippin, since Charles was not
born in wedlock) confirmed in the succession to their father's kingdom; a
barrier thus erected between him and the Austrasian king ; his son-in-law
Tassilo of Bavaria united to him, both by kinship and alliance; Desiderius
might reasonably reckon on being left at liberty to pursue his designs for the
subjugation of the whole of Italy, unhindered by meddlers from beyond the Alps.
Obviously the doubtful element in the calculation was the degree of support
which Gerberga could obtain in Frank-land itself for the claims of her infant
sons. The chances of that support were no doubt overestimated both by her and
by her right-hand man, Autchar; but when have the
exiled pretenders to a throne rightly calculated the chances of a Restoration?
For the fulfilment of the designs of Desiderius it was desirable that he
should make the Pope his confederate, in order to obtain the religious sanction
conveyed by his consecration of the infant princes as kings of the Franks. The
Lombard king evidently hoped to wrest this concession from the Pope by the same
mixture of flattery and intimidation which had been so successful with his
predecessor. He had yet to learn how different from the wavering will of
Stephen III was the steadfast mind of Hadrian.
It was doubtless in order to execute these projects that Desiderius, not
two months after the accession of Hadrian, made that fierce dash across the
Apennines in the course of which, as already related, he wrested from the Roman
See its newly-acquired cities of Faenza, Ferrara and Comacchio. At the same
time the territory round Ravenna was ravaged by the Lombards, who ransacked the
farms and cottages, and carried off the herds of cattle and the slaves of the
farmers and the stored-up provisions of the peasants. Two tribunes brought to
Hadrian from Leo the new archbishop of Ravenna the tidings of these outrages,
with a piteous appeal for help, “since no hope of living was left to him or his
people.”
A fresh embassy from the Pope—since the mission of Paulus Afiarta and
his colleague had proved so fruitless—brought to Desiderius the grave rebuke of
Hadrian for these repeated outrages and violations of his promise. And now in
his answer to this embassy the Lombard king showed at what he was aiming: “Let
the Pope come to hold a conference with me, and I will restore all those cities
which I have taken”. The Papal messengers, who doubtless saw Gerberga and Autchar at the court of Pavia, perceived that this personal
conference would involve a request or a command to anoint with the holy oil the
children of Carloman.
Meanwhile what was Paulus Afiarta, so lately the omnipotent minister of
the Pope, doing at the court of his friend Desiderius ? He lingered on there,
perhaps conscious of the peril which awaited him at Rome, but seeking by
braggart words to reassure the king as to his undiminished credit at the Papal
court: “You desire, O king, to have colloquy with our lord Hadrian. Trust me to
bring it to pass. If needs be, I will tie a rope to his feet, but I will by all
means bring him into your presence”. And so saying he started on his return
journey to Rome.
At Rome, meanwhile, in the absence of Paulus Afiarta, the murmurs and
the suspicions caused by the disappearance of Sergius had grown stronger and
stronger. At last the Pope summoned all the keepers of the cellarium in the
Lateran and began a formal enquiry into the fate of their late prisoner. The
warrant for his delivery to the chamberlain Calvulus was produced, and he, being questioned, admitted having transferred Sergius to
the keeping of the two men of Anagni. They were sent
for from Campania, brought into the Papal presence, and, apparently, examined
by torture Thus urged they confessed that they had slain Sergius, and were
sent, under the guard of some of the Pope's most trusted servants, to show his
place of burial. They came to the Merulana, to the
Arch of Gallienus, near to which they dug for a
little while, and then showed the guard the body of the ill-fated secundicerius, his neck bound tight with a rope and all his
body gashed with wounds. Whereupon the beholders concluded that he had been
suffocated, and then buried while still alive.
The bodies of the two fallen ministers Christopher and Sergius were now
taken up and buried with honour in the basilica of St. Peter. The sight of the
mangled body of Sergius stirred his late colleagues, the officials of the
Church and State, to such a passion of indignation that they with a whole crowd
of the commonalty of Rome rushed to the Lateran palace and clamorously besought the pontiff to take summary vengeance on the torturers and murderers
of a blind prisoner. Accordingly Calvulus the
chamberlain and the two men of Anagni being handed
over to the secular arm, as represented by the Prefect of the City, were led
down to the public prison and there examined in the presence of the people. The
meaner criminals, the two men of Anagni, repeating
the same confession which they had already made in presence of the Pope, were
transported to Constantinople, there to be dealt with as should seem fitting to
the Emperor. Of their further fate we hear nothing. Calvulus refused to confess his share in the crime, and, as we are told, ‘expired by a
cruel death in prison'. Probably this means that he died under the torture
which failed to extract the desired confession.
Two men, who from their exalted position deserved the severest
punishment of all, Duke John the late Pope's brother and Gregory the defensor regionarius,
seem from the Papal biographer's silence as to then cases to have been left
unmolested. But for Paulus Afiarta, the friend of the Lombard, the recreant
servant of the Pope, another fate was in store. He had already left Pavia, and
had been arrested by the Pope's orders at Rimini, the reason for that detention
being apparently his treasonable practices with the Lombard. Now the minutes of
the proceedings during the enquiry into the murder of Sergius were forwarded to
Archbishop Leo at Ravenna, with instructions to deal with the case according to
the ordinary course of justice. On receipt of these instructions the archbishop
handed the prisoner over to the consularis of
Ravenna, the officer who, now that the Exarch was gone, appears to have wielded
the highest secular authority in the city. A public examination took place; the
minutes forwarded from Rome were read; Paulus Afiarta confessed his guilt. The
Roman pontiff expected that his brother at Ravenna would make a formal report
of the case to him, but the archbishop having now got an old enemy into his
power had no intention of allowing him to escape out of his hands.
In these circumstances, strange to say, Pope Hadrian, who seems to have
been sincerely anxious to save the life of Paulus though desiring his
punishment, tried the desperate expedient of an appeal to Constantinople. To
Constantine Copronymus and his son Leo, now associated with him in the Empire,
he sent a memorandum setting forth the crime of Paulus, and praying them to
arrest him and keep him in close confinement in ‘the regions of Greece'. A
chaplain named Gregory, who was being dispatched to Pavia on one of the usual
embassies of complaint to Desiderius, was instructed to halt at Ravenna and
give to Archbishop Leo the necessary orders for the transmission of the culprit
to Constantinople on board a Venetian vessel. The archbishop, however, somewhat
insolently replied that it would be a mistake to send Paulus Afiarta to
Venetia, since Maurice the duke of that district was in anxiety about his son,
a captive in the hands of Desiderius, and would be tempted to make an exchange
of prisoners, surrendering Paulus to his Lombard friend and receiving back his
son. The Papal messenger proceeded on his journey, after giving a solemn charge
to the archbishop and all the magistrates of Ravenna that not a hair of the
prisoner's head was to be touched : but on his return from Pavia he found that
the consularis, by order of the archbishop, had put
Paulus Afiarta to death. Great was his indignation at this act of disobedience
to his master, and sharply was expressed. Archbishop Leo, perhaps somewhat
terrified by the thought of what he had done, wrote to Hadrian praying for a
consoling assurance that he had not sinned in avenging the innocent blood. He
received however only a curt reply: ‘Let Leo consider for himself what he has
done to Paulus. I wished to save his soul, by enjoining him to lead a life of
penance, and gave my orders to my chaplain accordingly'.
The proceedings in this complicated affair are narrated in the Liber Pontificalis with a tedious minuteness which suggests the
probability that the chaplain Gregory himself composed this part of the
narrative and desired to clear himself and his master of all complicity in the
death of Paulus Afiarta. The narrative however is not without its value, since
it shows that still, so late as the year 772, the Pope was willing to recognize
a certain jurisdiction over Roman citizens as vested in the Emperors at Constantinople,
heretics and iconoclasts though they might be. It also illustrates the growing
independence of the archbishops of Ravenna and their determination not to
acknowledge the bishops of Rome as their superiors in any but purely
ecclesiastical concerns.
The fall of Paulus Afiarta destroyed the last link between the Roman
pontiff and the Lombard king. The latter now pursued without check or disguise
his brutal policy of forcing the Pope to become his instrument by despoiling
him of his domains. The summer 772 and autumn of 772 were occupied by a
campaign—if we should not rather call it a raid—on two sides of the Papal
territory. In the Pentapolis the Lombards seized Sinigaglia, Iesi, Urbino, Gubbio, Mons Fereti and several other
‘Roman' cities. In fact, when we consider how much Desiderius had abstracted
before, we may doubt whether in these Adriatic regions any city of importance
was left to St. Peter except Ravenna and Rimini. This raid was accompanied, as
we are told and we can well believe it, by many homicides, many conflagrations,
and the carrying off of much plunder.
Even more insulting; and more ruthless were the proceedings of the
Lombard ravagers in the near neighbourhood of Rome. Blera, only thirty miles north-west of Rome, was one of the
four cities which thirty years before had been surrendered by the great
Liutprand to Zacharias after the conference at Terni. It was assuredly the act
of a madman, made ‘fey' by the shadow of approaching doom, to harry the lands
which his great predecessor had formally handed over to St. Peter's
guardianship. Yet the word of command having been given, the rough Lombard
militia of Tuscany poured into the territory of Blera,
while the citizens, with their wives, their children, and their servants were
engaged in the peaceful labours of the harvest. The invaders slew the chief men
of the city (who were probably foremost in resisting the invasion), ravaged the
country all round with fire and sword, and drove off a multitude of captives
and of cattle into the land of the Lombards. Several other cities of the Ducatus Romae suffered more or
less from similar depredations, and Otricoli on the
Via Flaminia, a stage nearer to Rome than Narni, was
occupied by the Lombard host.
While these deeds of lawless aggression were being perpetrated, the
insolent diplomacy of Desiderius also held on its course. Several times did his
messengers, Andrew the referendarius and Stabilis the duke, appear at the Lateran desiring the Pope
to come and talk with their master ‘on equal terms'. The answer of Hadrian was
firm and dignified : “Tell your king that I solemnly promise in the presence of
the Almighty, that if he will restore those cities which in my pontificate he
has abstracted from St. Peter, I will at once hasten into his presence
wheresoever he shall choose to appoint the interview, whether at Pavia,
Ravenna, Perugia, or here at Rome; that so we may confer together about the
things which concern the safety of the people of God on both sides of the
frontier. And if he have any doubt of my keeping this engagement, I say at once
that if I do not meet him in conference he has my full leave to reoccupy those
cities. But if he does not first restore what he has taken away, he shall never
see my face”. There spoke the worthy successor of Leo and of Gregory, the truly
Roman pontiff, who showed that a citizen of the seven-hilled City had not quite
forgotten the old lesson ‘to spare the fallen and war down the proud'. In truth
this year 772, which might have been the Lombard's great opportunity, had he
known how to use it, was the year which brought out in strongest relief what
there was truly heroic in Hadrian's character. We hear at this time of no cry
for help to Frankish Charles. Both Hadrian and Desiderius knew full well that
such a cry would have been uttered in vain, Charles had now begun that which
was to prove the hardest and longest enterprise of his life, the subjugation
and conversion to Christianity of the fierce Saxon tribes who dwelt in the
regions which are now called Hanover and Oldenburg, on the north-eastern
frontier of the Frankish kingdom. Though in the course of Charles's great
career he was eventually carried across the Alps and the Pyrenees, though the
Volturnus and the Ebro saw the waving of his standards, his heart seems to have
been always in his own native Austrasia, and his conception of his kingly
duties was connected much more with the civilization of Central Europe than
with the extension of his dominions along the shores of the Mediterranean. Thus
it was that, carrying forward the policy of his father and the preaching of St.
Boniface, he determined that heathenism should cease throughout Saxonland, and devoted the first energies of his kingdom,
when consolidated by the death of Carloman, to the attainment of that great
object. Assuredly the work took longer time than he had expected. It began in
772, and was not completed till 804, after thirty-two years of almost incessant
war. Possibly, had he known how long a road lay before him, he might never have
entered upon the journey : but if so, it is fortunate for Europe that the
future was hidden from his eyes, for however ruthless were some of his methods,
however ghastly some pages of his slaughterous evangel, there can be no doubt
that, in one way or another, the work had to be done, and that the world is
better for the doing of it. If therefore, from an Italian point of view,
Charles's action shall sometimes seem to us fitful, capricious, and lacking in
unity of design, we must remember that during all the years of his vigorous
manhood this arduous Saxon problem was absorbing the best energies of his body
and his soul.
Intent on his great design Charles summoned his placitum—or, as we may
call it, using the language of later centuries, the diet of his kingdom—to meet
at Worms, probably in the early summer. From thence he advanced into the land
of the Saxons, accompanied not only by his stalwart Frankish soldiers, but by
bishops, abbots and presbyters—a numerous train of the tonsured ones. There
were three great divisions of the Saxon people, the Angarii in the middle of the country, the Westfali on their
western, the Ostfali on their eastern border. Charles
marched against the Angarii, laid waste their land
with fire and sword, and took their stronghold, Eresburg on the Diemel. From thence he marched to the Irminsul,
a gigantic treetrunk in a dense forest, which had
been fashioned into a resemblance of the ash Yggdrasil of the Edda, the
supporter and sustainer of the universe, and which was the object of the
idolatrous veneration of the Saxons. Having hewn down the tree-idol he remained
three days near the scene of his triumph. But a great drought prevailed in the
land, and the army suffered grievously for want of water. The drought might be
interpreted by the outraged idolaters as evidence of the anger of the gods; but
the torrent which burst forth from the mountain's side and saved the whole army
from perishing of thirst was a clear indication that the Christian's God was
mightier than they. In these labours and dangers the campaigning season of 772
passed away: Charles having carried his standards triumphantly to the Weser,
returned to Austrasia and celebrated his Christmas at Heristal in Brabant. The
months of February and March (773) he spent at the villa of Theodo in the
valley of the Moselle, sixteen miles north of Metz.
To this place (which is now called Thionville by the French and Diedenhofen by the Germans), in one of those winter months
at the beginning of 773, came the Pope's messenger Peter with a piteous cry for
help. Embassy after embassy had been sent in vain to Desiderius to beseech him
to restore the captured cities, and had only been answered by further outrages
on the Roman territory and by an announcement of his determination to march
upon Rome itself. So closely were the roads beset that Peter found it necessary
to make his journey by sea from the mouth of the Tiber to Marseilles.
Even while Peter was pleading the Papal cause at Thionville, Desiderius
in fulfilment of his threat was moving towards Rome. Taking with him his son
Adelchis, who had been for more than thirteen years the partner of his throne,
and the widow and children of Carloman with their counsellor Autchar, he marched southward at the head of his army. He
sent forward his messengers, Andrew and two other Lombard nobles, to inform the
Pope of his approach, and received the answer, already repeated to weariness,
“Unless he first repairs the wrongs done to St. Peter, he shall not be admitted
to my presence”. Still Desiderius pressed forward, and it seemed clear that an
armed invasion of the Ducatus Romae was imminent. In Roman Tuscany, in Campania, and in Perugia, something like a levée en masse was made, and even from the cities of
the Pentapolis, notwithstanding the presence of the Lombard garrisons, some men
came to help in the defence of the threatened pontiff. The two great basilicas
of St. Peter and St. Paul, being without the gates, were emptied of their most
costly treasures, which were brought within the City, and the doors of St.
Peter's were closed and barred with iron, to prevent the Lombard king from
entering the church, as he probably intended, in order to carry the election of
an anti-pope and the anointing by him of the infant princes. The great gates of
the City had already some months before been closed, and small wicket-gates had
been opened in them for the passage to and fro of the
citizens.
Having made all these material preparations, Hadrian began to ply the
spiritual artillery which had so often proved the best defence of Rome. Three
ecclesiastics, the bishops of Albano, Palestrina and Tivoli, sallied forth from
the City to the Lombard camp, which was fixed at Viterbo, fifty miles from
Rome, and there presented to Desiderius the Pope's word of anathema, protesting
against him by that word of command and exhortation, and adjuring him by all
the divine mysteries that he should by no means presume to enter the
territories of the Romans, nor to tread their soil, neither he nor any of the
Lombards, nor yet Autchar the Frank.
Wonderful to relate, this ‘word of anathema' was sufficient to foil the
whole scheme of invasion. As soon as he had received this word of command from
the aforesaid bishops, Desiderius returned immediately with great reverence and
full of confusion from the city of Viterbo to his own home. Either he had
overrated his own and his soldiers' courage in the face of the terrors of hell
with which he and they were threatened, or he found that the levee en masse of Roman citizens would make his task more
difficult than he had anticipated, or at last when too late he shrank from
encountering the wrath of the Frankish king. For Charles was now evidently at
liberty to attend to the affairs of Italy. In reply to the embassy of Peter he
dispatched three envoys to Rome, the bishop George, the abbot Gulfard, and his own intimate the friend Albuin, to enquire
into the truth of the Pope's charges against Desiderius. These men satisfied
themselves that the Lombard king's assertions that he had already restored the
cities and satisfied all the just claims of St. Peter were impudently false.
They heard from his own lips the surly statement that he would restore nothing
at all, and with this answer they returned to their master, who was probably at
this time keeping his Easter-feast at the ancestral villa of Heristal. They
carried also the Pope's earnest entreaties that Charles would fulfill the promises made by his father of pious memory,
and complete the redemption of the Church of God by insisting on the
restoration of the cities and the surrender of all the remaining territory
claimed by St. Peter.
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