ITALY AND HER INVADERS.

BOOK IX. THE FRANKISH EMPIRE.

CHAPTER II.

THE PONTIFICATE OF HADRIAN I.

 

WHEN Louis XVIII recovered the throne of his ancestors after the downfall of Napoleon, he said—or some astute person said for him “Rien n'est changé : il n'y a qu'un Français de plus.”

Something like this seems to have been the attitude of Charles the Great in 774 towards his new Italian conquest. There was no attempt to force the Lombard nation into the Frankish mould. Their laws were left substantially unchanged. Even the administration of those laws was often left in Lombard hands. Of the counts, who for the most part superseded the Lombard gastalds, many probably belonged to the conquered nation; nor does there appear to have been any extensive confiscation of the estates of the Lombard nobles. The authority which Charles now wielded (and which he doubtless meant, as he had leisure to extend his dominion, to wield over the whole peninsula) was appropriately expressed by the new title which he used for twenty-six years, till it was superseded by one yet more majestic. He was now Carolus Rex Francorum et Langobardorum atque Patricius Romanorum. He was king of the Franks by inheritance from his father; king of the Lombards by conquest, but also, as far as we can see, by the general consent of the Lombard people, tired of the passionate weakness of Desiderius and glad to have the great Teutonic hero for their king. But he also now began to make systematic use of that title ‘Patrician of the Romans' which Stephen II had bestowed upon his father, but which, so long as they held no territory south of the Alps, had been rather a burden than a delight to the Frankish sovereigns. Now that Charles was a great lord in Italy, it was worthwhile to try what rights were slumbering in that venerable designation, which the Popes had almost forced upon his family, but which now might be available for keeping the Pope himself in his proper place, as well as for winning the obedience of the non-Teutonic population of Italy.

It is not easy to ascertain what had been the ideal reconstitution of Italy which the Popes had floating before them when they invoked the intervention of the Frankish kings, but it is clear that the addition of the word “Langobardorum” to Charles’s royal titles by no means corresponded with their anticipations. It was soon seen that any one, were he ever so loyal a client of St. Peter, who claimed the rights of a Lombard king, must come into collision with the kingdom-cleaving designs of the Roman pontiff; and though expediency dictated the continued employment of such epithets as “mellifluous” and a “Deo servatus” in Hadrian’s correspondence with Charles, we may be pretty sure that there were times when a full-bodied “nefandissimus” or “Deo odibilis” would have better expressed the Papal emotions. The history of Italy during the quarter of a century before us, is almost entirely the history of the strained relations between the two men, Charles and Hadrian, who had sworn eternal friendship over the corpse of St. Peter.

I.   First of all in this correspondence we are met by Hadrian's complaints of the arrogance and cupidity of Leo, archbishop of Ravenna. “Soon after your return to Frank-land”, says the Pope, “this man, with tyrannical and most insolent intent, turned rebel to St. Peter and ourselves. He has brought under his sway the following cities of the Emilia: Faenza, Forlimpopoli, Forli, Cesena, Bobbio, Comacchio, the duchy of Ferrara, Imola and Bologna, asserting that they, together with the whole Pentapolis, were given to him by your Excellency; and he has sent his missus, Theophylact, through the Pentapolis, desiring to separate the citizens thereof from their service to us. These men, however, are not at all inclined to humble themselves under him, but wish to remain loyal to St. Peter and ourselves, as they were when Stephen II received from your pious father the keys of the cities of the Exarchate. But now that nefarious archbishop, detaining those cities of the Emilia in his own power, appoints such magistrates as he chooses, expelling those whom we have appointed, and drawing all suits to Ravenna, to decide them according to his own pleasure.

“Thus, to our great disappointment, your holy spiritual mother, the Roman Church, sustains a severe rebuff, and we ourselves are brought into great contempt, since the very territories which even in Lombard times we were known to govern with full powers, are now in your times being wrested from us by perverse and impious men, who are your rivals as much as ours. And, lo! this taunt is hurled in our teeth by many of our enemies, who say with scorn, ‘How have you profited by the wiping out of the nation of the Lombards and by their being made subject to the Frankish realm? Behold, none of those promises which were made to you are fulfilled, and even the possessions which were aforetime granted by Pippin to St. Peter are now taken from you”.

Next year Leo made his appearance at Charles’s court, and Hadrian, on being informed of his rival’s visit, professed a joy which was certainly mingled with alarm. “The Truth itself bears witness that we are always glad when we hear of any one approaching your royal footsteps. Had he informed us that he was about to enter your presence we would gladly have sent one of our own envoys along with him”. In the letter which follows this, a grave charge of disloyalty is brought against the detested archbishop. John, the patriarch of Grado, had sent an important letter to the Pope, probably announcing the imminent rebellion of Hrodgaud, count of Friuli. This letter as soon as it arrived in Rome was copied and sent off to Charles, both Hadrian and his clerk feeling the matter to be of so great importance that they would not touch meat or drink till they had despatched it to their patron. The letter however, on its way through Ravenna, had been tampered with by Archbishop Leo, who had broken the seals and redirected it to the Pope. Hadrian roundly accused him of having done this in order that he might communicate the contents to Arichis, duke of Benevento, and Charles’s other enemies, an accusation which was probably quite destitute of truth. In a postscript to this letter Hadrian asserts that the archbishop of Ravenna was puffed up with intolerable pride on his return from the Frankish court. The old complaints about his lawless proceedings in the Emilia and his vain attempts to seduce the men of the Pentapolis from their loyalty to St. Peter are renewed, and it is asserted that some of the judges who had been appointed by the Pope in the cities of the Emilia are actually kept in bonds by the arrogant archbishop. In November of the same year these charges are repeated in a more definite manner:

“We sent our treasurer Gregory to bring the magistrates of those cities hither, and to receive the oaths of fidelity of the citizens, but Leo would not allow him to continue his journey. Then there was Dominicus [possibly a Frankish official], whom you yourself recommended to us in the church of St. Peter, and whom we appointed count of the little city of Gabellum, giving him our written authority to govern that city. This man was prevented from exercising his office by Leo, who sent an army, brought him bound to Ravenna, and still keeps him in custody there. Puffed up with pride, he refuses, as aforetime, to obey our commands, and by the strong arm keeps possession of Imola and Bologna, declaring that you did in no wise grant those cities to St. Peter, but to him : and as to the remaining cities of Emilia, namely Faenza, the Duchy of Ferrara, Comacchio, Forli, Forlimpopoli, Cesena, Bobbio and Tribunatus-decimo, he allows none to come forth or to bring their actions to be pleaded before us, though they were all ready to seek our presence. As to all the other citizens of both the regions called Pentapolis, from Rimini to Gubbio, all come freely to us to have their suits decided and abide loyally in our service. Only that archbishop stands aloof in his ferocity and pride”.

Here, in November, 775, the correspondence leaves the question of the Exarchate. We see Hadrian, notwithstanding the cession of territory which was undoubtedly made by the Lombard king to his predecessor Stephen II, quite unable to assert his rights over Ravenna itself and the province of Emilia which lay to the west of it. In the Pentapolis, however, the provinces between the Adriatic and Apennines to the south of Ravenna, the Pope can reckon on the loyal subjection of the people, who probably, with that tendency towards municipal isolation and jealousy which was so marked a feature of the civic life of Italy, had their own reasons for hating Ravenna and preferring the distant Hadrian to the near and insistent Leo. There is no evidence that matters mended for the Papal jurisdiction during the rest of the life of Leo, but on the death of that ‘ferocious' archbishop, which probably occurred in June, 777, a successor was appointed, John VII, who apparently arranged terms of reconciliation with the Papal See.

II. Another burning question at this time, and one in which the Papal rights are more obscure than in the case of the Exarchate, is that of the duchy of Spoleto. A review of the various statements about this Umbrian province, so important to the consolidation of the Papal dominions, leads us to the conclusion that there was here a genuine misunderstanding, in the literal sense of the word, between the Pope and his powerful friend. As far back as the spring of 757 both Spoleto and Benevento had made some sort of ‘commendation' of themselves to Pippin, blending the Pope's name with his in a manner highly suggestive of future controversies. But Pippin, who in 758 had to lead an army against the Saxons, and from 760 to the end of his reign was involved in the arduous struggle with Waifar of Aquitaine, had no mind to leave these urgent affairs in order to cross the Alps and vindicate a shadowy supremacy over those distant Apennine provinces. Thus the matter remained, save that Desiderius made both Spoleto and Benevento feel the curb of their Lombard overlord more tightly than any prince since the days of Liutprand. In the crisis of the fate of the Lombard kingdom, the Spoletans deserted the cause of their nation and put themselves under the protection of the Pope, to whom the new duke Hildeprand swore fealty, his predecessor Theodicius having possibly fallen fighting for Desiderius against the Franks. This commendation of Spoleto to the Pope is, as we have seen, confirmed by a document of the year 774, which is dated by no regnal year either of Frank or Lombard, but “in the times of the thrice blessed and angelic lord, Hadrian, pontiff and universal Pope.”

It was with the consciousness of this peaceful victory won by the Church that Hadrian met Charles on the steps of St. Peter's on the 6th of April, 774. It seems probable that whatever may have been left unsaid or undefined, the Pope did mention his recent acquisition of the lordship of Spoleto, and that Charles did at the time consent to his retaining it, or was understood by Hadrian so to have consented. Not otherwise, as it seems to me, can we explain the clear statement made by Hadrian in a letter written about eighteen months afterwards to the Frankish king: “Moreover you offered the duchy of Spoleto itself, in your own proper person, to St. Peter, Prince of Apostles, through our Insignificance and for the ransom of your soul”. But to establish the Papal claim to Spoleto it was necessary that the new duke and his people should give their consent to its recognition, and this, notwithstanding their recent oath of fealty, they appear to have stubbornly refused. After the fall of the Lombard monarchy there was no longer any need to seek the protection of the Pope against the wrath of Desiderius, and both prince and people preferred to be under the yoke of the brilliant Teutonic warrior who called himself Rex Langobardorum, rather than under that of the unwarlike priest who could scarcely open his lips without showing his detestation of ‘the unutterable Lombards'. Hence it comes to pass that in January, 776, we find in a donation to the monastery of Farfa Hildeprandus gloriosus et summus dux ducatus Spoletani dating the document by the year of the reign of “Charles, the most excellent king of the Franks and the Lombards, in the second year, by Divine favour, of his reign in Italy.” And the same mode of dating (a clear indication that Charles and none other was Hildeprand's overlord) is found in two other documents of 776 and five of the year 777.

III. Not only in Spoleto was the newly-won Papal power endangered. It will be remembered that near the sources of the Tiber, on the Tuscan side of the Apennines, the little ‘Castle of Happiness' had commended itself to Hadrian's protection. Here too the claims of St. Peter were being trampled under foot. “We must tell you”, wrote the Pope to the King, “that that perfidious man, sower of tares and rival of the great Tempter of the human race, Raginald, formerly gastald in the Castellum Felicitatis, who appears now to be duke of Clusium, is by his unjust proceedings doing great harm to your holy mother the Church. For he seeks to wrest from us all the possessions which your Excellency offered to the Prince of the Apostles for the ransom of your soul, and to bring them into bondage to himself. Hastening with his army to our city, Castellum Felicitatis, he has carried off its inhabitants. I can in no wise believe that your Royalty, strengthened by God, together with our most excellent daughter the queen and your sweetest children, and all the God-marshalled army of the Franks, wrought the late mighty change in Italy for the exaltation of this duke Raginald, and not rather for the support of the holy Church of God which loves you, that by your benign championship she may shine in perennial glory.

“Therefore I pray and beseech you, for the love of St. Peter, not to allow the aforesaid Raginald (who was of old time a sower of strifes and scandals under King Desiderius) to remain in the regions of Tuscany nor to hold any delegated functions from you”.

This is a type of many letters from Hadrian which were addressed to the Frankish king during the first two years after his Italian campaign. Endless complaints of the unutterably wicked and diabolical neighbours of the Pope, perpetual reminders of the faith solemnly plighted over the body of St. Peter, words of honeyed sweetness for Charles himself, for Hildegard, for the little princes and princess, and the divinely-protected army of the Franks, but also faithful warnings of the punishment which will overtake the king at the last day if he has allowed any one of the rights of his patron St. Peter to fall to the ground,—such are the ever recurring themes of the Papal correspondence.

There are indications that this monotony of grumbling severely tried the long-suffering patience of Charles. He had done as much for the Pope and for himself also in Italy as suited his present purpose. The care of the Saxon war hung heavy upon his soul, and did not seem likely soon to be lifted from it. That also was surely an enterprise pleasing in the sight of God and St. Peter, for had he not solemnly vowed in his palace at Quierzy to prosecute ceaseless war with the Saxons till they should either become Christians or be swept from the face of the earth? And now when he returned weary and war-worn to his ‘villa' on the Oise or the Roehr he was sure to find some smooth-shaven, dark ecclesiastic from Rome, bearing one of these querulous letters from the Pope, and importuning Charles to lead an army across the Alps in order to enforce the ever-growing ‘justitiae' of St. Peter in the Exarchate or Spoleto or Tuscany.

IV. Not only were the letters irritating; the who bore them were not always well chosen, and sometimes failed in proper respect towards the most powerful prince in Europe. In 774, soon after Charles's return from Italy, the Pope sent as his representative his chamberlain Anastasius, commending him to the royal favour. How that mission sped we know not, but next year Anastasius was again sent on a similar errand, and this time he was accompanied by a certain Lombard named Gausfrid of Pisa, who had taken refuge in Rome with a story, probably untrue, of an attempt to assassinate him, at the instigation of a Lombard duke named Alio. “Pray receive Gausfrid kindly”, said Hadrian, “for the love of St. Peter and because we ask it of you, and deign to grant him the help of your favour and protection. We add also this request, that the generous exercise of your authority should secure him in the possession of those farms which you have bestowed upon him”.

This recommendation appears to have been a blunder on Hadrian's part. His next letter was in reply to one from Charles which told him that Gausfrid was a detected swindler, who for his frauds had been dismissed from the royal service and who had bribed the king's notary to issue forged letters of grant in the royal name, probably with reference to those very farms for his quiet possession of which Hadrian interceded. The Pope pleads, no doubt truthfully, his entire ignorance of these deceitful practices of his client, and hopes that no scandal may be thereby engendered between him and his royal friend, but the incident was not likely to improve the relations between the two potentates.

Even more serious was the difficulty caused at the same time by the insolence of the chamberlain Anastasius, who in pleading his master's cause (probably with reference to the affairs of Ravenna and Spoleto) used such ‘intolerable' words that the anger of the high- minded king was raised, and putting him in custody he refused to allow the chamberlain to return to Rome. What were these intolerable words? It seems highly probable that they amounted to a charge of breach of faith on the part of the Frankish king, a charge which the Teutonic warrior would resent more fiercely than one of the crowned diplomatists of Constantinople, and of which perhaps even the Roman courtier scarcely felt the whole insulting significance. Here, as in the interview at St. Peter's and all the transactions between Pope and King which rested on oral communications, we have once more to remember that the difference of language opened a wide door to mutual misunderstandings. Charles could read Latin, it is true, but we have on evidence that he spoke it fluently, and Hadrian, a Roman of the Via Lata, of course never demeaned himself to learn the barbarous Frankish tongue.

The Pope bitterly complained of the detention of his envoy, which, as he said, lowered him in the eyes of the Lombards and the citizens of Ravenna, making them think that he had altogether fallen out of Charles's favour. “Never since the beginning of the world”, as he averred, “had it been known that an envoy of St. Peter, great or small, had been detained by any nation” : an assertion which might safely be made for the centuries intervening between the creation of the world and the Christian era. He prayed that Anastasius might be sent back to Rome : “We will most severely enquire into the matter, and correct him according to his ascertained guilt”.

We hear in a later epistle of the return of Anastasius, but have no hint of his trial or punishment. Probably when the hot blood of the Frank had cooled, Charles perceived that it was better not to insist on the punishment of the Pope's too zealous representative.

V.  Towards the end of 775, Hadrian was thrown into alarm by the rumours of an impending combination of Lombards and Byzantines against himself and his Frankish patron. Hrodgaud, a Lombard whom Charles had allowed to remain as duke of Friuli, was probably the soul of this combination, perhaps its only zealous member: but Hadrian believed that Hildeprand of Spoleto, Arichis of Benevento, and his special foe Raginald of Clusium, were all working for the meditated revolution, and were all in communication with the Emperor at Constantinople, at whose court Adelchis, the dethroned son of Desiderius, was residing, an honoured guest. It is possible that some such combination was being formed, and that the death of Constantine Copronymus (which happened on the 14th of September, 775) struck the keystone out of the arch and relieved Charles from serious peril: but we have as yet only the word of Hadrian for the fact, and as far as Hildeprand and Arichis are concerned, it is probable that he accused them unjustly.

Evidently Charles thought, and had reason for thinking, that if he could free himself from the embarrassing schemes of the ambitious Hadrian he could settle the affairs of Central Italy by negotiation, better than by the sword. He sent two envoys, the Bishop Possessor and the Abbot Radigaud, into Italy, but not in the first place to Rome. Hadrian, who knew that such an embassy was coming, waited for it (as he told Charles) through September and October, on into November, but waited in vain. He wrote to the governor whom Charles had installed at Pavia, and received only the chilling reply, “The king's envoys are not coming to you” : a reply which filled him with sorrow. The next article of his indictment against the ambassadors (for he persisted in professing to believe that the ambassadors were in fault and not their master) must be told in his own words:—

“We were very desirous to receive your Excellency's envoys with due honour, and through them to be satisfied of your safety. Wherefore we made all the preparations which became your royal dignity, and sent horses on the road to meet them. But they, when they had arrived at Perugia, instead of coming right on to us—as you had enjoined them and as your letters to us set forth—despising us, went to Hildeprand at Spoleto, sending us word to this effect: ‘We are only going to converse with Hildeprand, and then, according to our orders, we will visit you at [the shrine of] our Apostolic Lord'.

“Afterwards, when they had talked with the aforesaid Hildeprand and were tarrying long time with him, we directed to them our apostolic letters to this effect: ‘By Almighty God and the life of our most excellent son the great King Charles, pray come to us at once that we may talk over the things which concern the exaltation of the Church and the praise of our King. Then we will leave you to go according to your orders to Benevento'. But they, we know not on what errand, went immediately from Spoleto to Benevento, leaving us in great disgrace, and have thereby increased the insolence of the Spoletans towards us.

“We pray you to remember, sweetest and most loving son, with what extreme kindness you addressed us, when you had hastened to the thresholds of St. Peter and St. Paul, saying that it was not in quest of gold or jewels, or silver, or letters (?), or men, that you and your God- protected army had undergone so great labour, but only to insist on the recovery of the rights of St. Peter, the exaltation of Holy Church, and our safety.

“As if actually present before your royal honey-flowing glances, we beg of you speedily to comfort and gladden us in the deep depression into which we have been thrown by the conduct of your envoys. Moreover, you yourself offered the duchy of Spoleto to St. Peter through us for the ransom of your soul. Therefore we earnestly pray you speedily to deliver us and the aforesaid duchy of Spoleto from this affliction, that by the intercession of St. Peter you may receive your due reward from our most merciful God”.

At last the long-expected messengers, Possessor and Radigaud, arrived in Rome, charged by Hildeprand with apologies and entreaties for forgiveness. Far from obtaining his pardon, they had doubtless enough to do to shield themselves from the storm of Hadrian's reproaches. He sent a messenger, his treasurer Stephen, to Spoleto, who returned with more circumstantial accounts of the great impending invasion.

All the four dukes, in combination with the mob of the Greeks and the exiled Adelchis, were going to swarm over land and sea to the attack on the Ducatus Romae. The City was to be stormed, all the churches to be sacked, the precious jewelled canopy of St. Peter's tomb was to be carried off, “we ourselves—which God forbid!—to be carried captive”, the kingdom of the Lombards to be restored, and Charles's power in Italy to be destroyed.

Hadrian sent up a piteous cry for help : “Do not leave us alone, nor postpone your consolation : lest the nations that are in all the world should say, ‘Where is the confidence of the Romans, which after God they placed in the king and kingdom of the Franks?'. Redeem those pledges which with your own hands you offered to God for the salvation of your soul, that in the great day of future judgment you may be able to say, ‘O my lord Peter! Prince of Apostles! I have finished my course; I have kept my faith towards thee; I have defended the Church of God committed to thee by Almighty goodness, and have freed her from the hands of her enemies. And now standing without spot before thee I offer to thee thy sons, whose deliverance from the power of the enemy thou didst commit to my hands. Lo! here they are, safe and sound'. Thus shalt thou, who holdest the reins of power in this present life, be permitted to reign with Christ in the life to come, hearing that welcome voice of His, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'.”

VI. Charles did march into Italy in the early part of 776, but his campaign, of which we have most meagre notices from the annalists, was all conducted within sight of the Alps. It seems to have been while he was keeping his Christmas (775) at Schlettstadt in Alsace that news was brought to him that ‘Hrodgaud, the Lombard whom he had himself given as duke to the men of Friuli, was making a rebellion in Italy, had declared himself king, and that many cities had revolted to him. He judged speed to be necessary for the repression of this uprising, and accordingly, having collected his bravest soldiers, he marched with haste into Italy, slew Hrodgaud, recovered Friuli, Treviso, and all the other cities which had rebelled, established Frankish counts in them, kept his Easter at Treviso, and then returned into Frank-land with the same speed with which he had come. Scarcely had he recrossed the Alps when he heard that the fortress of Eresburg had been taken by the Saxons, and the garrison of Franks expelled therefrom. Then followed one of Charles's splendid storm-sweeping marches over the land, his arrival at the sources of the Lippe-stream, and his meeting there with a vast number of the natives, who, cowering in fear, prayed his pardon for their rebellion, and were baptized by thousands in the waters of the Lippe. A conversion on a larger scale than any that rewarded the preaching of the first Apostles, but less durable in its results.

It was probably in part the fear of impending troubles in Saxon-land which caused King Charles to hasten his return across the Alps without paying the often-talked-of visit to Rome. Yet not entirely: the diplomacy which detached Spoleto and Benevento at this critical conjuncture from the threatened anti-Frankish confederacy had probably accomplished its purpose at the cost of some sacrifice of the Papal claims. As to Benevento, indeed, it is impossible for us to say what were the precise relations existing at this time between him who now called himself Prince of that city, Arichis, son-in-law of Desiderius, and the Frankish sovereign. But as we have already seen, Hildeprand of Spoleto seems to have remained satisfied with a condition, practically, of vassalage under Charles, and the negotiations carried on with him through the medium of Possessor and Radigaud had probably guaranteed him against any enforcement by Frankish arms of the claims of Papal sovereignty which he now set at defiance.

VII. It can hardly be doubted that at this time the relations between Pope and Emperor were strained almost to the point of breaking. There is an ominous interval of more than two years in the correspondence copied in the Codex Carolinus. Either no letters between the estranged allies in the period between February 776 and May 778, or those which were written and received were so bitter in their tone— like the ‘insupportable' words of Anastasius—that, when the reconciliation took place, they were by common consent blotted out of the book of remembrance.

It is to this interval that a recent enquirer assigns the signature of a convention whereby Hadrian claim to renounced all claim to sovereignty in Spoleto and Tuscany, in consideration of certain yearly revenues to be paid to him out of the taxes of those two provinces. The evidence for this ‘convention' rests on the alleged confirmation contained in the grant of Louis the Pious to Pope Paschal in 817, which has been before referred to. It is certainly possible so to interpret that document, but its language is perhaps intentionally obscure, and would be consistent with an entirely different series of transactions between Pope and King, nor is there anything which fixes the date of the ‘convention' to the year 777 or 778.

But however we may by our conjectures fill up this mysterious interval in the correspondence of the two statesmen, it is certain that after that interval is passed the correspondence begins again on an entirely different footing. Still is the Pope urgent for the satisfaction of the claims of St. Peter, still are the joys of heaven and the terrors of hell invoked to keep the Frankish sovereign up to the required pitch of devotion to the Apostolic service, but from this point onward the word ‘patrimonies', for which we have hitherto looked almost in vain in the earlier letters, is of continual occurrence. Claims of territorial sovereignty seem to be tacitly abandoned, and the one constant demand of the Pope is that the landed estates, which have been violently torn from him or his predecessors in the days of the Lombard oppression, shall now be restored to the Holy Church of God, which is ready to produce the necessary vouchers and title-deeds to show that they are rightfully hers.

VIII. Yet, though this is the general character of the correspondence, we find with some surprise, in the very first letter after communications are re-opened, an allusion—the first allusion in any authentic document—to the imaginary donation of Constantine. After expressing his regrets that Charles has not been able to fulfil his promise of coming to Rome at the Easter of 778 and bringing his infant son Carloman to be baptized, Hadrian continues : “And as in the time of St. Silvester the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome was exalted by the generosity of the most pious Constantine, the great Emperor, of holy memory, and he deigned to bestow on it power in these regions of Hesperia, so in these times, which are so prosperous for you and for us, may the Holy Church of God, that is of the blessed Apostle Peter, grow and flourish and be more than more exalted, that all the nations when they hear of it may shout, ‘0 Lord, save the King, and hear us in the day when we call upon Thee, for, lo, a new and most Christian Emperor Constantine has arisen in our day, through whom God has been pleased to bestow all gifts on His Holy Church'.”

We surely cannot be mistaken in thinking that this passage, with its pointed allusion to ‘the regions of Hesperia', refers to the celebrated fictitious document which was discussed in a previous chapter. But the Pope in this same letter goes on to claim, not widespread territorial sovereignty, but the restitution of “those possessions which Emperors, Exarchs, and other God­fearing men have for the good of their souls bestowed on the Church in the regions of Tuscany, Spoleto, Benevento and Corsica, together with the Sabine patrimony. Let these possessions, which have been abstracted by the unutterable Lombards through long periods of years, be restored in your days. We have many deeds of donation relating to these in our bureau at the Lateran; and these for your satisfaction we have sent by our aforesaid missi. We pray your Excellency therefore to order the patrimonies in their entirety to be restored to St. Peter and ourselves. So may the Prince of Apostles plead before the tribunal of Almighty God for your safety and long life and the exaltation of your kingdom”.

The language of such a letter seems quite clear. It is specific estates—of vast extent it is true—secured by special title-deeds, not the sovereignty of two-thirds of Italy, for which the Pope here pleads in the name of St. Peter.

IX: The Pope speaks here of “these days of your and our prosperity”. The times seem to have been less prosperous for the people than for their rulers. There was a terrible earthquake (778) in the territory of Treviso, by which many persons perished; forty-eight, we are told, in a single night in one village. “Great tribulations”, says a ninth-century chronicler, “fell upon Italy after the Frankish conquest: by the sword, by famine, by wild beasts many persons perished, so that some towns and villages were left altogether bare of inhabitants”. Hadrian himself in a singular way bears unconscious witness to the same fact, the misery of the people. It seems that Charles had enquired as to an ugly rumour which had come to his ears that Roman citizens were engaged in selling slaves to ‘the unspeakable Saracens'. Such a charge in the honey­ flowing letter of his illustrious friend was passionately repelled by Hadrian: “Never have we fallen into such wickedness, nor has any such deed been done with our permission. It is true that the unspeakable Greeks have traded along the Lombard shore and bought families from thence, and have formed a friendship for slave-trading purposes with the Lombards themselves. Wherefore we ordered duke Alio to prepare many ships that he might capture the Greeks and burn their fleet, but he refused to obey our commands. As for us, we have neither ships nor sailors to catch them with. But God is our witness that we have done all that we could to repress this mischief, for we ordered the ships of the Greeks that were in our harbour of Centumcellae to be burned, and we detained the crews in prison for a long time. But the Lombards themselves, as we have been told, constrained by hunger, have sold many families into slavery. And others of the Lombards have of their own accord gone on board the slave ­ships of the Greeks, because they had no other hope of a livelihood”.

The chronological order of the letters which relate to the seventeen years now before us is so uncertain that it will be better to deal with them in their geographical relations.

X.  We begin with the province of Istria, that long peninsula studded with cities which crowns the Adriatic gulf, and which played such an important part in the long controversy concerning the Three Chapters. Here, as we learn from a letter of Hadrian, the bishop Maurice, a loyal adherent of the Roman See, was employed to collect certain revenues due to St. Peter and transmit them to Rome. A suspicion arose that in his journeyings to and fro on these errands he was secretly stirring up the inhabitants to throw off the Byzantine yoke and acknowledge themselves subjects of Charles. The ‘most nefarious Greeks' together with some of the natives of Istria arrested him, and in Byzantine fashion plucked out his eyes. He escaped to Rome, and the Pope sent him to Marcarius, duke of Friuli, at the same time addressing a letter to Charles begging him, as he valued his soul, to order Marcarius to reinstate him in his bishopric. As Istria was still a province of the Empire, it is not easy to see how this could be done without an actual declaration of war.

XI. We pass from Istria to the Venetian Islands, not yet the Venice of medieval history, for the city on the Rialto was still unbuilt, and Heraclea and Equilium were the chief cities of the confederation After the fall of the Exarchate, followed by the overthrow of its Lombard conquerors, the Venetians seem to have clung more tightly than ever to their connection with Constantinople, and to have been willing, in their loyalty to the Empire, to brave even the anger of the Pope. “We beg to bring to the notice of your Excellency”, writes Hadrian to Charles, “that as you in your day of triumph directed that the Venetian traders should be expelled from the regions of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, we immediately sent our orders to those regions that we might give effect to your royal will. Moreover we have directed our precept to the archbishop of Ravenna, that wherever, in the lands subject to our sway, the Venetians hold either forts or property, he should absolutely expel them from thence, and resuming such possessions keep them in his own hands as property of the Church”.

XII. The expulsion of the Venetians, it will be seen, extended to Ravenna as well as to the Pentapolis. As we have no more complaints of the usurpations of the archbishop of Ravenna, it may be inferred that the successors of Leo were during this period accepting quietly the yoke of St. Peter. Here, however, as well as elsewhere, we have evidences of the extreme difficulty with which the Popes, with the scanty material forces at their command, maintained the dominion which in theory was theirs. Strangely helpless is the letter which Hadrian addresses to Charles in 783 concerning the wicked deeds of ‘those foolish and useless triflers' Eleutherius and Gregory, who appear to have been magistrates at Ravenna. “In their insolent obstinacy they have been grievously oppressing the poor and weak inhabitants in their district, selling men into slavery among the pagan natives, and greedily devouring their bread without compassion. Moreover, collecting a crowd of base and bloody men, they have not ceased daily to perform shameful murders. Once, when mass was being celebrated in the church, at the same hour when the deacon was preaching the Gospel to the people, these most impious men were shedding innocent blood in the self-same sanctuary, accomplishing the murder of men instead of sacrifice to God. These men, puffed up in arrogance, are about to appear in your royal presence, and dare to cherish the hope that they will separate you from St. Peter and our­selves. Pray let their impertinence not be permitted to behold your glorious countenance smiling upon them, but send them back to us, dishonoured and disgraced, under the charge of your most faithful missi, that so you may be rewarded in the day of judgment by your patron St. Peter”.

The whole tenour of the communication indicates the strange, the almost indescribable, relation which existed between the Pope and the Frankish King of the Lombards and Patrician of the Romans. Ravenna was undoubtedly one of the cities included in the Donations of Pippin and Charles. Here, if anywhere, the Pope, unless thwarted by the archbishop of the city, might claim to exercise jurisdiction as a sovereign. Yet even here he seems to be unable by his mere authority to punish magistrates who have so flagrantly abused their powers as Eleutherius and Gregory have done, and there is evidently a virtual right of appeal from his decision to that of the Frankish king.

In ecclesiastical matters, however, as we might expect, Hadrian takes a different tone. He absolutely refuses to admit Charles's claim to interfere in the election of a new archbishop of Ravenna; he repels, almost with acrimony, the charge of the king’s missi that he has connived at simoniacal practices in that church; but on the other hand (though this is not a purely ecclesiastical affair), he graciously concedes to his royal friend the right to transport some of the mosaics of Ravenna to his palace at Aachen. The letter giving this permission is so curious that it deserves to be quoted :—

“We have received your bright and honey-sweet letters brought us by Duke Arwin. In these you expressed your desire that we should grant you the mosaics and marbles of the palace in the city of Ravenna, as well as other specimens to be found both on the pavement and on the walls [presumably of the churches]. We willingly grant your request, because, by your royal struggles, the church of your patron St. Peter daily enjoys many benefits, for which great will be your reward in heaven. By the hands of the same Arwin we have received one sound horse sent to us by you. The other, which was despatched at the same time, died on the road. For your remembrance of us in this thing we return you thanks.

“But in consideration of the love which in our inmost heart we do bear towards your glorious kingdom, pray send us such splendid horses, shapely in bone and fullness of flesh, as may be worthy of our riding. Such animals, in all respects worthy of praise, will cause your illustrious name to shine in triumph; and for this you will receive your wonted and worthy reward from God's own apostle, so that after reigning in this world with the queen and your most noble progeny, you may deserve to obtain eternal life in the citadels of heaven”.

XIII.     Travelling southward along the great Flaminian Way we come to the Umbrian duchy of Spoleto, where the Lombard Hildeprand, first the client and afterwards the pertinacious opponent of the Pope, held sway for fifteen years after the fall of the Lombard monarchy. We have seen that, though recalcitrant to the yoke of St. Peter, he was willing, perhaps eager, to profess himself the loyal adherent of Charles. This dependent relation (which it is hardly permitted us yet to speak of technically as vassalage) was owned and emphasized when, in 779, Hildeprand, having crossed the Alps, presented himself before Charles at the villa of Virciniacum and offered great gifts to his lord. We may reasonably conjecture that then at least, if not before, the Frankish king assured the Spoletan duke that his act of ‘commendation' should protect him from all claims of a similar kind that might be urged against him by the bishop of Rome. With this state of things Hadrian had perforce to rest content, though it was certainly not without a pang that he saw himself constrained to abandon the project of adding the duchy of Spoleto to the territories on the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian seas which it would so admirably have welded together. But that he did thus accept his defeat seems to be shown by a letter in which he submissively begs for the supply of certain woods which could be furnished only in the regions about Spoleto, and which were required for renewing the wainscotings in the basilica of St. Peter.

We shall find Duke Hildeprand in the year 788 taking part with other Lombards and Franks in resisting a Byzantine invasion, probably on the coast of Apulia. In the next year (789) he died, and was succeeded, not by any Lombard, but apparently by a Frankish warrior named Winichis, who had taken a leading part in resisting the same invasion. This man was ruler of Spoleto during all the rest of the life of Charles, and at last, in 822, he resigned his ducal rank and retired into a monastery.

XIV. At Rome itself the chief events during the twenty-one years that we are now reviewing were the second and third visits of Charles to ‘the threshold of the Apostles', which took place in the years 781 and 787 respectively, each time at the great festival of Easter. We will deal here with the first of these visits.

He started from Worms in 780 to fulfil his long-delayed project of presenting his son Carloman to the Pope for baptism. He was accompanied by Hildegard, and by his two younger children, Carloman and Louis, the former three, and the latter two years old

In the four years which had elapsed since Charles was last in Italy, quelling the revolt of Hrodgaud of Friuli, memorable events had happened. Besides the endless invasions of the land of the Saxons, he had removed his court and his army into the province of Aquitaine (April 778), had crossed the Pyrenees, besieged Saragossa, and suffered in his retreat at Roncesvalles, that great disaster to his rear-guard which will forever be as world-famous in song as it is insignificant in history.

Having crossed the Alps, Charles took up his quarters in the old Lombard palace of Pavia, where the new Rex Langobardorum kept his stately Christmas. He lingered for some time in Upper Italy, where there were doubtless many disorders which needed his strong, reforming hand. On the 15th of March (781) he was at Parma, giving a charter to the merchants of Mantua, where, (according to the generally received opinion,) he held a solemn placitum for the enactment of the decree which goes by the name of the Capitulare Mantuanum. By Easter Day, 15 April, he was in Rome, face to face with Hadrian after seven years of absence and chilling correspondence.

We have no such detailed account of his entry into Rome as on his first and last visits to the City, but assuredly the Roman populace had no lack of gorgeous ceremonies on the occasion of this visit. In the first place, there was the baptism of the four-year-old son, who entered the baptistery as Carloman and emerged from it as Pippin, having received that royal name from his godfather Hadrian. Why the name was thus changed we are not informed, but it seems probable that it was in order to publish to the world that Pippin the Hunchback, son of Charles and Himiltrud, was on account of his deformity excluded from succession to the throne. It is noteworthy that after this ceremony Hadrian always studiously addresses Charles as his spiritual co-father, and Hildegard as spiritual co-mother, a designation which helps us to distinguish between the letters written before 781 and those subsequent to that date.

After the baptism of Pippin, he and his baby brother Louis were crowned by the Pope, to denote that they had been named by their father as kings of Italy and Aquitaine respectively. It was perhaps not altogether politic on the part of Charles to give the Pope so prominent a place in the investiture of his sons with the regal dignity. A few more precedents of like kind, and the opinion might grow-up that no one could be a rightful king of the Franks and Lombards who had not received his crown from the hands of the pontiff.

Again another sight for the spectacle-loving citizens of Rome. It was while Charles still abode in the City that the ambassadors of Irene, Constantine the Treasurer and Mamulus the Grand Chamberlain entered it, doubtless with imperial pomp, in order to conclude the treaty of marriage between their young lord Constantine and the Frankish maiden Hrotrud. One marvels how Hadrian comported himself between the representatives of the old and the new regime; between the ambassadors of the sovereign de jure and the visible sovereign de facto. It was indeed a strange complication. Here was the eunuch Elisha, whose name went back to the days of Hebrew prophets, come to instruct a daughter of the Franks in ‘the language and literature of the Greeks and the customs observed in the monarchy of the Romans'. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the three languages of the superscription on the cross, were blended in the commission of this envoy from Constantinople.

The monarchy of the Romans; that was still the name borne by the state whose centre was the city of Constantine, a name to which it could prove its right by an unquestioned pedigree. And here was the bishop of Rome, who till nine years before this time had dated all his documents by the year of the Byzantine sovereign, who had never been formally released from his allegiance to the Roman Emperor, who could not now plead that heresy unloosed all bonds (for Irene was an orthodox image-worshipper), treating probably the envoys from Constantinople as the representatives of a foreign though friendly power, and professing himself the comrade, friend, or subject of a certain ‘Patrician of the Romans' who was also king of a German tribe settled on the lower Rhine. Alas! that no historian has recorded for us the artifices by which diplomacy veiled this strange entanglement.

Soon after Easter, Charles appears to have left Rome and to have journeyed leisurely through Upper Italy, visiting the monastery of his late uncle Carloman on Mount Soracte, settling disputed claims in the neighbourhood of Florence, making grants to ecclesiastics at Pavia and Brescia, assisting at the baptism of his youngest daughter Gisila at Milan, and finally returning across the Alps about the month of August. This year 781 was one of those which were more especially dedicated by the great monarch to Italian affairs. He doubtless perceived that many disorders had crept into the Frankish administration of the country during the seven years that it had been deprived of “the master’s eye.” He now left it under the nominal vice­royalty of his son Pippin, the newly-crowned king of Italy. The child-king, still only four years old, was destined to grow up into a strong and capable if somewhat hot-tempered man. Meanwhile the kingdom was probably administered in his name by Frankish regents or governors, the name of one of whom, Rotchild, has been preserved to us. We hear very little as to his deeds or character, and that little is not favourable.

XV. Some weeks after Charles had left Rome and while he was still in Italy he received an interesting letter from the Pope. “We have greatly rejoiced”, says Hadrian, “to receive your wise and God-inspired letters in which you say that your cause is ours and ours is yours. We trust that this truth, which has certainly been taught you by divine inspiration, will shine forth manifest to all men”. The Pope then goes on to describe the disputes which had arisen between the monks of the great monastery of St. Vincent on the Vulturno and their abbots. Of these abbots, one, Autbert, had by Charles’s command been summoned to Rome to justify himself before the Papal tribunal, but had died suddenly, worn out by the fatigues of the journey. A synod was then held at Rome to investigate a charge of treason against his rival and successor, Abbot Potho. Before this synod appeared the monk Rothgaud, and gave testimony as follows : “My lord, when we were performing the service for Sexts, and according to custom were singing, for the safety of the king and his progeny, the psalm ‘Save me, 0 God, by Thy name,’ suddenly the abbot stood up and refused to sing. Afterwards, as we were walking together, the abbot began to say, ‘What do you think of our cause, for I expected to see a sign and have not seen it?.” Rothgaud uttered a pious commonplace about God’s power to humble the heart of man, and the abbot (according to his statement) answered, “If it were not for the monastery and my Beneventan land, I would hold him [King Charles] of no more account than one dog.” Then he added, “There are only as many Franks left [in the country] as I could carry on my shoulders.”

Abbot Potho being asked what he had to say in answer to this charge, said, “Of course our congregation always prays for his Excellency and his children. But while I was at the service, when the prayers were ended and the boys began to sing Domine in nomine tuo salvum me fac, I suddenly rose in order to attend to some business for the good of the monastery. As for our talk on the road, what I said was, If it were not that it would seem like desertion of the monastery and its property, I should certainly go to some place where I need not care for anybody. As for the Franks, I said nothing at all of the kind which he alleges against me.”

Rothgaud was re-examined, and could produce no testimony in confirmation of his charge. He was alone with the abbot when the conversation took place. Evidence was given that he was himself a man of bad character, who having committed incest with his niece had been obliged to leave the priesthood and turn monk.

Then three monks who had belonged to the party of Autbert complained that they had been illegally detained and imprisoned to prevent them from resorting to Charles's court for justice. Potho replied that he certainly did station guards upon the bridge [over the Vulturno] to prevent these and all other monks from violating their rule and ‘going back to their vomit in the world'.

The result of the trial was that Potho was acquitted on the oath of ten monks, five Franks and five Lombards, that they had never heard him utter any treasonable sentiments against King Charles’s Excellency.

XVI. Many letters passed soon after this about the great affair of the Sabine Patrimony. Unfortunately neither they nor any of the chroniclers of the time appear to give us any precise indications of what this Sabine territory was. All that can be said is that it was situated in the neighbourhood of Rieti. We saw that Liutprand restored to Pope Zacharias a Sabine territory of which the Popes had been despoiled thirty years before. Possibly it had again fallen back into Lombard hands. What we know is that Charles during his second visit to Rome appointed two missi, Itherius and Maginarius, to go with the Pope's envoys to investigate St. Peter's claim to the territory in question. They went, and assembled about a hundred men, who swore on the Virgin's altar that this patrimony had of old belonged to St. Peter and the Roman Church. But ‘perverse and unjust men', as the Pope complained, hindered the restitution of the patrimony. Letter after letter was sent. Hadrian declared that the imperial envoy, Maginarius, had seen the whole claim of St. Peter to the territory, as it resulted both from old Imperial donations and from grants made by the insolent kings of the Lombards themselves, indicating the territory in question and the farms belonging to it; a claim which even the faithless Desiderius himself had not dared to dispute in its totality, though he had denied it as to some individual farms. Hadrian quoted Scripture, ‘Thy God hath commanded thy strength', from the 68th Psalm, and—not too reverently—applied the opening verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews to God's marvellous working ‘in these latter days' by the hand of Charles in favour of St. Peter. At last after five letters had been written, and probably a couple of years had elapsed, the royal missi were successful in completing the transfer of the Sabine patrimony to the Pope and setting up boundary-stones to mark off its precise limits where it touched the territory of Reate.

XVII. The chief anxiety of Hadrian during all these years came from the principality of Benevento on his southern border. Here was one of the hated Lombards, a son-in-law of the arch-enemy Desiderius, reigning in glory and in virtual independence. Extension of the Ducatus Romae in the direction of Campania, recovery of some of the lost patrimonies in the south of Italy, were both difficult while that strong and detested Lombard held the ‘Samnite' principality. There was also a fear, perhaps a genuine fear, that someday, when Charles, the champion, was fighting far away in the forests of Saxon-land, the prince of Benevento might join forces with ‘the most wicked' Greeks, besiege Rome by sea and land, ‘and even carry us captives—God forbid!—into their own land.

Prince Arichis, who now ruled in Benevento, and had held sway there since 758, was in some respects the finest specimen of a ruler whom the Lombard race produced. Brave in war, capable in administration and diplomacy, able to hold his own and to guide his bark through the troubled sea of Italian politics, he was also a man of considerable intellectual culture, generous towards the Church (like so many others of the ‘unutterable' Lombards), and able to share and sympathize with the literary interests of his wife, the accomplished Adelperga.

This princess, the daughter of Desiderius, was apparently the pupil of Paulus Diaconus, who for her composed that history of the Roman Empire (the so-called Historia Miscella) which has been so often quoted in the foregoing pages, and the object of which was to continue the work of Eutropius and to enrich it with those notices as to ecclesiastical history which Adelperga looked for in vain in the pages of the heathen historian.

Though not apparently descended from the dukes of the old Beneventan line whose names were borne by himself and his sons, and though originally planted in the Samnite duchy as the friend and relation of Desiderius, Arichis seems to have been gladly accepted by the inhabitants of that duchy as their sovereign, and to have rooted his dynasty deep in their affections.

He was evidently a great builder, and we may well suppose that the splendid Roman monuments which adorned the city (some of which, like Trajan's noble arch, remain to this day) had an influence in directing the minds of the prince and princess of Benevento towards the literature of the wonderful race who had spanned the Calore and the Vulturno with their bridges, and had carried the Via Appia straight over hill and dale to Brindisi from Rome.

But not only were the princely pair attracted towards the literature of the Latins. With the Greeks of Constantinople (Romans as they persisted in calling themselves) they had, after the revolution of 774, a strong tie, in the fact that Adelperga’s brother Adelchis was now living at the Imperial court, slowly subsiding into middle age and the condition of a great Byzantine noble, but ever and anon making desperate attempts, with the help of Greek soldiers and sailors, to recover his lost Lombard throne. It was probably this Byzantine influence which caused Arichis to build what Erchempert calls “a most wealthy and becoming temple to the Lord, which he named after the two Greek words Hagia Sophia, that is Holy Wisdom; and having founded there a monastery and endowed it with most ample farms and various wealth, he handed it over for ever to the Order of St. Benedict V”.

The church and the monastery still remain, and the cloister of the latter, with its pillars bearing capitals of strange devices, is one of the loveliest in Italy, but successive earthquakes ruined the stately building of Arichis, and two tombs and a few columns are all that now remain thereof, save a bas-relief in the tympanum over the church-portal, depicting St. Mercury in soldier's attire presenting to the Saviour the kneeling Arichis, who wears the crown and the princely mantle.

The fortification of Salerno on the sea-coast was doubtless significant of this altered attitude of Benevento towards Constantinople. Hitherto the Lombard had looked upon the sea as his enemy, fearing invasion by the fleets of the Emperor or the Caliph. Now, however, that the Frank was the dominant power in Italy, and that help in resisting his menaces might come from a friendly Byzantium, it was important to have a stronghold upon the sea-coast. For this purpose Arichis fortified with massive walls the city which gives its name to the beautiful bay of Salerno, which at the same time he adorned with stately buildings seen from afar by mariners, and turned into a second capital of his principality.

About the year 778 the Pope found himself confronted by the allied Greeks and Beneventans in his attempt to retain his hold on some part of Campania. “Know” (he says to Charles) “that your and our rivals, the most unutterable Beneventans, are trying to seduce our people in Campania from their allegiance, working to this end in concert with the [Imperial] Patrician of Sicily, who is now residing at Gaeta and to whom they have bound themselves by strong oaths, as well as with the men of Terracina. We have, by means of the bishops, ordered the Campanians to come into our presence or to send five of the principal men of each city to your Excellency. This they refuse to do, though we have sent another urgent message to that effect by Bishop Philip and our nephew Paschalis. We have therefore decided to send our militia thither in order to compel their obedience. We pray you in the presence of the living God to order these most unutterable and God-hated Beneventans to cease from thus tempting our Campanian subjects. We for our part will hold no communication with them, nor will we receive their envoys or have aught to do with the consecration of their bishop, since they have become contrary to St. Peter, to us, and to you”.

Hadrian seems, perhaps by means of his generalis exercitus, to have recovered possession of Terracina for a short time; but it was soon again wrested from him by ‘the most wicked Neapolitans, together with the Greeks hateful to God, Arichis, duke of Benevento, giving them his malignant counsel.' This manner of speaking of the Neapolitans seems to show that Naples, though essentially a Greek city and nominally belonging to the Empire, was beginning to take a somewhat independent position in South Italy, as Venice was doing in the North.

Hadrian implored Charles to send his officer Wulfin speedily to his aid, so as to arrive before the 1st of August. “Let him order all the Tuscans and Spoletans and even the wicked Beneventans who are in your service and ours to come and recover Terracina, and if possible to capture Gaeta and Naples also, recovering our patrimony in that territory”. He proceeds to describe a scheme, so clever as to be almost unintelligible, by which he had hoped apparently to get hold of Naples without losing his claim on Terracina :—

“We made a compact with the false Neapolitans last Easter through their envoy Peter, by which we sought to recover the patrimony of St. Peter which is in that city, and at the same time to subdue them to your service. It was agreed that they should give us fifteen hostages of the noblest of their sons, and that we should abandon our claim to Terracina. Then they were to go to their Patrician in Sicily [to obtain his permission to] hand over to us our patrimony, which being done they should recover both the city and their hostages. But we on our part could not give up either the city or the hostages without your sanction, and so we hoped to keep these hostages for your service. All this, however, was hindered by that most unfaithful Arichis, duke of Beneventum, who, continually entertaining the envoys of the most wicked Patrician of Sicily, prevented our receiving the hostages from the aforesaid Neapolitans. For he is daily expecting; to his own perdition, the son of Desiderius the long-ago-not-to-be- mentioned king of the Lombards, that together with him they may attack both us and you. Pray let nothing cool your love to St. Peter. We care nothing for the city of Terracina itself; we only wish that the faithless Beneventans may not in this thing find the desired loophole for escaping from their allegiance to you”.

XVIII. As I have before said, it is the misfortune of a history compiled from a one-sided correspondence like the Codex Carolinus that it is always describing the beginning of transactions of whose end it is ignorant. We know nothing as to the final settlement of the disputes last recorded, save that it is clear that the Pope's schemes for obtaining a footing in Naples were not successful.

As far as Beneventan affairs are concerned, there is an eventless interval of about seven years (780-786). This lull in the storm is doubtless due to the death of Leo the Khazar (September, 780), the accession of Irene and her son, and the friendly relations which were almost immediately established between the Greek and Frankish courts. Not even on the occasion of Charles's second visit to Rome (Easter, 781) do we hear of any direct communications, friendly or unfriendly, between him and Arichis of Benevento.

The years which intervened between the second and third visits of the Frankish monarch to Rome were some of the most memorable ones in his Thirty Years' War with the Saxons.

In 782, supposing the subjugation of the Saxons to be complete, he convened an assembly at the sources of the Lippe, and there promulgated that stern and rigorous Act of Uniformity which was called Capitulatio de Partibus Saxoniae, and which denounced death, not merely on those who were guilty of sacrilege or other obvious crimes such as the murder of a priest; not merely on those who still openly celebrated the old heathen sacrifices; but even on those who only negatively disobeyed the rule of the Catholic Church, for instance by not fasting in Lent or by hiding in order to escape from baptism.

Soon did Charles discover that he had not yet quelled the spirit of Saxon heathenism. Widukind returned from Denmark and preached everywhere revolt against the tyranny of the new lords. At Mount Suntal three Frankish generals were defeated by the Saxons; two of their number, together with four counts and twenty other nobles, were slain, and the Frankish army was almost annihilated. Then came Charles’s terrible campaign of revenge, and that atrocious massacre of 4,500 Saxon prisoners by the banks of the Aller, which is in Charles’s history what the massacre of Drogheda is in that of Cromwell, the one fatal blot on a career otherwise noble and magnanimous. Before this invading army Widukind fled, and after two more years of Frankish triumph he came in, made his full submission to Charles, and underwent the rite of baptism (785), the Frankish king himself acting as his godfather.

So, for a time, the Saxon storm was laid, but during these later years the relations with Constantinople had been growing steadily worse, the marriage treaty was collapsing, and, as an inevitable consequence, trouble for Charles and the Pope was brewing in Southern Italy.

In 786 (apparently) Hadrian wrote to Charles with a requisition for 1,000 pounds of tin for the roofing of St. Peter's, and informed him that Arichis was trying to wrest Amalfi—that near neighbour of Salerno— from the duchy of Naples and add it to his dominions. The Neapolitans resisted by force of arms, and many Beneventans were slain. Soon, however, Arichis, hearing rumours of an impending visit of Charles to Italy, decided to end this quarrel and to close up the ranks of the dwellers in Campania ere the Frank approached their borders. He made over to the Neapolitans some long-desired lands and revenues in the Terra di Lavoro and the district of Nola, strengthened the fortifications of Benevento and Salerno, and probably re-opened the long-closed negotiations with the Greek Empress and her son.

XIX. The time had evidently come, after more than five years’ absence, for another visit of the Rex Langobardorum to Italy. Accordingly at the end of autumn (786) he crossed the Alps, and, apparently without visiting his palace at Pavia, journeyed straight to Florence, where he spent his Christmas. He came not now, as on his previous visit, accompanied by wife and children. The much-loved Hildegard was dead, and the proud and difficult-tempered Fastrada had for three years shared his throne. Possibly he was not unwilling to escape from her harsh companionship for some months, while his paternal heart was gladdened by the thought of seeing again the young king Italy, Pippin, now a bright boy in the tenth year of his age.

Early in the year, Charles arrived in Rome, and probably remained there a month or more, but of his entry into the City and his interviews with Hadrian we have nothing recorded. With reference to both his second and third visits we have good reason to complain of the utter silence of the so-called Vita Hadriani in the Liber Pontificalis, which is in fact only a history of two years of that long pontificate. We learn, however, from the annalists that while he was in Rome, Romwald, the eldest son of Arichis, a youth of great intellectual promise, the joy and stay of his parents, appeared in the presence of Charles, offering on his father's behalf great gifts and a promise of perfect obedience to the will of his overlord if only he would refrain from invading the territory of Benevento. The submission seemed sufficient to the Frankish King, but the Pope, ever hostile to the Lombard duchy, counselled war, and the fiery nobles in Charles's train echoed his words. Into the Beneventan territory he accordingly marched, visiting the venerable monastery of Monte Cassino on his way, and by the 22nd of March he had taken up his quarters at Capua. According to one late and doubtful authority a battle followed between Charles and Arichis, but it seems more probable that no battle was fought. Arichis shut himself up in his strong city of Salerno, and looked doubtless over the sea for the hoped-for Grecian galleys. Meanwhile the Frankish host was quartered in the land, and, ‘like locusts', were eating up the fruits thereof. The prince of Benevento saw that his case was desperate, and sent another humble message to Charles, offering as before “that he and his people would willingly obey all Charles's commands, that he would pay a yearly tribute of 7,000 solidi, and, as a pledge for his fulfilment of these conditions, he proposed the surrender of thirteen noble Beneventan hostages and two of his children, his younger son Grimwald and his daughter Adelgisa”. The last condition, as both poets and annalists agree in telling us, was especially hard to the paternal soul of Arichis. Erchempert tells us that it was included in the conditions that the Beneventans should shave their beards after the manner of the Franks, and that all charters and coins should bear the name of Charles.

Large treasure was at the same time brought by the ambassadors. Charles accepted their terms, being as we are told, especially desirous to spare the churches and monasteries of the land from the ravages of an invading army. Romwald, who had hitherto been kept a prisoner, was released and allowed to return home. Grimwald followed in Charles's train beyond the Alps. Adelgisa, on her father's earnest prayer, was restored to her parents.

It was apparently during Charles’s stay in Capua that he received the Imperial ambassadors who came to make the final demand for the hand of the princess Hrotrud, and to whom he gave his final answer, that he would not allow his daughter to be carried away from him into that distant land.

At the end of March he left Capua for Rome, kept his Easter there (April 8, 787), then visited Ravenna (where he was the guest of the Archbishop Gratiosus), spent the early summer in Upper Italy, and, before the middle of July, had crossed the Alps and was back in his own Rhine-traversed city of Worms. So ended this Italian journey. Thirteen years were to pass before he again appeared in Italy to make his fourth, his last and his most famous pilgrimage to Rome.

XX. Soon after these events death laid a heavy hand on the princely house of Benevento. On the 21st of July, 787, died the heir of the house, Romwald, in the 26th year of his age. A month later (August 26, 787) died Arichis himself, after living fifty-three years and reigning thirty. Another son, Gisulf, had apparently died some years before. Only Grimwald remained, and he was a hostage and a captive in the hands of the Frankish king. Now all the efforts of the widowed Adelperga's diplomacy were put forth to obtain the surrender of Grimwald, that he might return and take his place on his father's throne, and all the efforts of Hadrian's diplomacy were put forth to prevent that surrender.

The story is complicated by the fact that Hadrian, ever mindful of the interests of St. Peter, had asked for and apparently obtained from Charles a concession of certain towns in the Beneventan territory. It seems probable that the consent of Arichis to this diminution of his principality had been one of the conditions of the treaty which was the price of Charles's withdrawal from his land. The names of these towns (if we may trust the enumeration of them in the grant which is called the Ludovicianum) were Sora, Arce, Aquino, Arpino, Teano and Capua—certainly a goodly addition to the Ducatus Romae on its eastern and south-eastern border.

As to Capua, there was clearly a party in that city, headed by a certain presbyter Gregory, which was willing to accept the Papal yoke. In January, 788, Gregory came with nine of his fellow-citizens (who, it Capua, is to be observed, nearly all bore Lombard names) to swear allegiance to St. Peter.

Hadrian evidently had some fear of offending his great patron by accepting the proffered allegiance, but in any case, as he shrewdly remarked, “our doing this will sow dissension among them, and when they are thus divided they will be more easily overcome by our excellent son, for his benefit and St. Peter’s.” The purport of the oath was “to keep fealty to Peter the Apostle of God, and to the royal power of the Pope and the Frankish King”.

After the oath had been administered, Gregory sought a private interview with the Pope, saying, “I have a secret which I must impart to you after swearing that oath”. The secret was that immediately after Charles's return from Capua the preceding year, the late prince Arichis had opened disloyal negotiations with Constantinople, praying for the honour of the Patriciate, the addition of Naples to his dominions, and an armed force to protect him from the anger of Charles and to replace his brother-in-law Adelchis on the Lombard throne. In return for these concessions he was willing to become a subject of the Empire, and, as the outward sign of his submission, to adopt the Grecian garb and the Grecian mode of trimming his hair and his beard. On receiving these overtures, the Emperor, according to Gregory, had sent two of the officers of his guard along with the governor of Sicily, bearing gold-enwoven robes, a sword of honour, and a comb and tweezers for the important operation of dressing the converted Lombard’s hair. They were at the same time instructed to claim the surrender of Romwald as a hostage for his father’s good faith.

All these elaborate negotiations however—for which we have only the word of the intriguing Gregory, and which are probably untrue as far as Arichis is concerned—were snapped in twain by the sudden deaths of Arichis and his son. The Greek ambassadors however—and here we have no reason to doubt the truth of Gregory’s statement—had landed at Acropolis in Lucania, had thence journeyed by land to Salerno (January 20, 788), had had an interview with Adelperga and the nobles of Benevento, but had been adjured by them not to bring them into trouble with Charles (whose envoy, Atto, was then in their city) by their presence at Salerno till the much-desired Grimwald was safe at home again. They had therefore betaken themselves to Naples, where they had been received by the Neapolitans with banners and standards—(why should they not, since Naples was still an Imperial city?)—and were there watching their time for the renewal of negotiations with the young Grimwald as soon as he was once more in his father's palace. Adelchis meanwhile was hovering about the Adriatic: ‘”t Treviso or Ravenna” said one account, “at Taranto” said another, which added that Adelperga was meditating a pilgrimage, in company with her two daughters, to the shrine of St. Michael on Mount Garganus, doubtless not for the sole purpose of kissing the Archangel’s footprints, but in order to creep round to Taranto—only eighty miles distant from Sant' Angelo—and greet her brother on his landing.

Such was the tangled web of truth and error which was laid before Charles in the early months of 788 by the successive letters of the importunate Hadrian. The one piece of advice which he urged with most monotonous pertinacity was, “Do not let young Grimwald go”; and next to that was the exhortation to move his troops into the south of Italy before the 1st of May, and not to allow the Beneventans to put him off with excuses and perjured promises till the spring season, which was most suitable for warlike operations, should be passed.

Charles however, who had spent so large a part of the year 787 in Italy, was by no means disposed to undertake an expedition thither in 788 in order to soothe the nervous fears of the Pope, or assist him to nibble off some further portions of the Beneventan principality. As for keeping the young prince Grimwald in captivity and so making his father's house desolate, there was something in Charles's nature too magnanimous to accept so mean a policy. Moreover, Paulus Diaconus, who had been the constant companion of his leisure for the last six years, had probably instilled into his mind some of his own love and admiration for Adelperga and her children. And though it was manifest that the Court of Constantinople was making desperate efforts to bring about the restoration of Adelchis and so overthrow the Frankish dominion in Italy, it was by no means clear to the statesmanlike intellect of Charles that the best way of guarding against such an attack was to refuse the reasonable request of the Beneventans for the return of their prince, and so drive them into irreconcilable hostility. He held his hand therefore for the present, and meanwhile despatched two successive embassies to Italy in order to examine the state of affairs in that country and report to him thereon. The first embassy consisted of a deacon, named Atto and Guntram the Keeper of the Gate in the royal palace. The second embassy included Maginarius, abbot of S. Denis, a deacon named Joseph, and Count Liuderic. Maginarius had already been often sent to the Papal Court, and had been especially concerned in the affair of the restoration of the Sabine patrimony. Atto had been before engaged in Beneventan business, and it is perhaps allowable to suppose that he had some leaning towards Adelperga’s, as Maginarius had towards Hadrian’s side of the controversy. However this may be, it is worthwhile to glance at two letters written by the Pope and one by Maginarius, which relate the somewhat adventurous story of the two embassies, and which shed a valuable light on the political condition of South Italy in the year 788.

The two embassies apparently arrived in Rome at the same time, but Maginarius and Joseph had not yet been joined by their colleague Count Liuderic. The other two envoys, Atto and Guntram, went forward to a little place called Valva, while Maginarius and Joseph, after they had been joined by their belated companion, travelled by way of the river Sangro to the Beneventan territory. There seems to have been some misunderstanding between the two parties as to the rendezvous, and thus it happened that, in spite of Hadrian's earnest entreaties that they would all keep together, the Atto embassy reached Benevento four days before the Maginarius embassy, and after waiting some little time, pushed on to Salerno, where the princess was abiding, and where alone they could discharge their commission. What happened to Maginarius when he in his turn arrived at Benevento shall be told in his own words, as he described it to his royal master :—

“But when we arrived at the Beneventan frontier, we perceived that the inhabitants had no loyal feeling towards your Excellency. We therefore wrote to the other envoys, begging them to wait for us at Benevento, that we might act in concert as the Apostolic Lord [Hadrian] had counselled us, and if we found the men of Benevento loyal, proceed together to Salerno, and if not, consult together what was best to be done. We had been told that they wished to wait for us, and thus take counsel together before proceeding to Salerno. But when we had passed through the ranks of the people disloyal to you (God be contrary to them!) and had arrived at Benevento, hoping there to find our comrades and to consult with them as to the discharge of your commission, we found that one day before our arrival they had departed for Salerno.

“This brought us into great tribulation, both because we had not got our comrades with us, and because the men who were loyal to you told us that if ever we reached Salerno we should be detained there till they knew what was to be done with Grimwald and with their envoys to you. And they assured us that if we could not give them a sufficient guarantee that you would let them have Grimwald for their duke and that you would restore to them those cities of theirs which you had given to St. Peter and the Apostolic Lord, they would not fulfill your orders, but would keep us fast bound as their prisoners. If we could make these promises, however, then they would obey all your orders.

“On receipt of this intelligence, I, Maginarius, pretended to be very sick, so that it was impossible for me to journey to Salerno. Then in order that we might have our colleagues restored to us, I wrote a letter to Adelperga and the other Beneventan nobles to this effect; that I, Maginarius, wished to forward Joseph and Liuderic on their journey to her, but that they entirely refused to go without me. Let them therefore send to us Atto and Guntram, and twelve or fourteen, or as many as they pleased, of the nobles of Benevento. We would then disclose to them the nature of our commission, and discuss as to the best course to be pursued for your advantage and the safety of their land. After I had recovered my health, if it were possible, I would go with them to Salerno, but if not, the other four would all revisit Salerno and there treat of all things with the nobles.

“Adelperga, however, refused to send any of the nobles to us, but Guntram alone was allowed to rejoin us at Benevento. Then when we had learned from your faithful subjects that they were determined to ruin us, we told Guntram all that we had heard of their disloyalty to you, and he told us the same story. And Guntram wished for Atto's sake to return to Salerno; but we said that it was better that one should be detained prisoner than two.

“Having heard much more about the disloyal designs of the Beneventans, and seeing that we could in no wise serve your interests by remaining, we departed at cock-crow without their consent, and by the help of God fought our way through till we reached the territory of Spoleto in safety”.

The same story substantially is told by the Pope, with this additional information, that the plan of the ruling party at Salerno had been, if the envoys went thither, to entice them out to some spot by the seaside, and there to have a sham-fight with their neighbours of Amalfi, Sorrento and Naples, in the course of which Charles's envoys might be slain as if accidentally, while no blame for their death would attach to anyone. The story of this plot, like so much else to the discredit of the Beneventans, came from that marvellous story-teller, Gregory of Capua. He was probably also responsible for the statement, admitted to be made only on loose hearsay, that the envoy Atto, when he heard that his colleagues had fled, took refuge at the altar in the church of Salerno. “But the Beneventans”, said Hadrian, “persuading him, and as I think dissembling their real intentions, soothed his fears, and hypocritically sent him back to your Excellency, professing themselves your faithful subjects in all things”.

On a review of the whole story it seems probable that there was no justification for the fears, in their extreme form, of the nervous and timid Maginarius. There was evidently a strong anti-Frankish party at Benevento and Salerno, and men's minds were in an excited state, so long as it was deemed possible that Charles would abuse the advantage which he possessed in the possession of the person of young Grimwald, to terminate the line of the princes of Benevento. But, guided by the advice of his one brave envoy, Atto, Charles adopted the nobler course. In the spring of 788 Grimwald returned to his native land and was received by his subjects with great joy. It was of course stipulated that he should accept the same position of dependence towards Charles which his father had occupied in the last year of his reign. He swore that deeds should be dated and coins engraved with the name of the Frankish king, and in the important matter of hair-dressing that the Lombards should shave their beards in Frankish fashion, wearing only the moustache.

XXI. Doubtless the dependence of the Beneventan prince on his Frankish overlord was of a somewhat slight and shadowy character. The coins and the deeds did not always bear the name of Charles, nay, in later years there was actual warfare between Grimwald and his young overlord Pippin. But, in the main, the generous policy of the king was proved to be also true statesmanship. Especially was this made manifest in the autumn of 788, when the long- threatened Greek invasion of Italy at last became a reality. The exiled prince Adelchis, with Theodore the administrator of Sicily, and John, treasurer and paymaster of the Imperial army, having landed their troops in Calabria (which still designated the district near Brindisi, the ‘heel' and not the ‘toe' of Italy), moved westwards and began to ravage the territory of the Beneventans. To meet them, advanced a mingled armament of Lombards and Franks. Hildeprand, duke of Spoleto, and Grimwald of Benevento—loyal to Charles though the invader was own brother of his mother—fought under the generalship of Winichis, who, notwithstanding his Lombard-sounding name seems to have been an officer on the staff of Charles, and at any rate commanded the detachment—not a large one—of Frankish troops. The battle may very likely have been joined somewhere in Horace's country, within sight of the volcanic cone of Monte Vulture. It resulted in the complete defeat of the invaders, a defeat admitted by the Greeks, as it is claimed by the Frankish historians. Four thousand of the Greeks were slain, and one thousand taken prisoners. John the Sacellarius probably fell on the battle-field. It is clear that the Franks alone could not have won this victory, and that the policy of King Charles in dealing tenderly with the great Lombard dukes was abundantly justified by the issue of this campaign.

As for Adelchis, he appears to have escaped from the field of battle and returned to Constantinople, where he probably reached old age in inglorious ease, a well-fed Byzantine patrician. Charles Edward Stuart had played his part and was transformed into the Cardinal of York.

XXII.    The return of the young Beneventan prince to his father's palace was regarded with much disfavour by Pope Hadrian. He wrote to Charles, saying, “We beg of your Excellency that no man may be allowed to hinder your own holy desires, and that you will not treat Grimwald, son of Arichis, better than your own patron Peter, the blessed key-bearer of the kingdom of heaven. That Grimwald when he was at Capua in the presence of your envoys congratulated himself thus : Our lord the king has ordered that any one, whether great or small, who wishes to be my man shall without doubt be my man or any one else's whom he may choose'. [That is, there was to be no compulsory allegiance to the Pope, but anyone who pleased might change his service for that of Grimwald.] And, as we have heard, some Greek nobles residing at Naples said with howls of insulting laughter, ‘Thank God! all their promises [that is the promises of the Franks] are brought to nought'. For our part we care nothing for their laughs and their mockeries, though the Greeks themselves remarked that the apostolic envoys had now twice returned without effect”.

How the question of the Beneventan cities was left is not clear from the Papal correspondence, but it seems doubtful whether Capua at any rate was firmly bound over to the Papal service. In the letter just quoted Hadrian complains that the fair words of Charles as to Populonia and Rosellae and the Beneventan cities are not backed by corresponding deeds on the part of Charles's envoys: “We sent dukes Crescentius and Hadrian together with your envoys into the regions of Benevento to accomplish your royal wishes; but [the latter] would not hand over to [our representatives] anything except bishops' houses, and monasteries, and court-houses, and at the same time the keys of cities without the men, for the men themselves have it in their power to go in and out as they please. And how can we keep the cities without the men, if their inhabitants are allowed to plot against [our rule]? But we want to have freedom to rule and govern these cities in the same way and by the same law as we do the other cities in Tuscany which are comprised in your gift”.

Evidently there was a fault in the working of the political machine, for which neither Charles nor Hadrian could be considered altogether responsible. It was admitted that certain large portions of Central Italy were to be held and governed by the Pope—possibly with a certain reservation of supreme rights to the Patrician of the Romans—but the Pope had no army worth notice under his command, no organized system of police, and as his orders were thus destitute of material sanction, his dominions from Ravenna to Capua were constantly on the point of slipping from his hold.

XXIII. In order to continue the story of ‘the Samnite Duchy' it may be stated that Grimwald began gradually to disregard the command to date his charters by the years of his lord paramount and to stamp his effigy on his coins, and that his attitude towards the Frankish king became more and more obviously that of a revolted subject. He also obtained in marriage the hand of a Greek princess, named Wantia, said to have been the niece of an Emperor. The marriage indeed did not turn out happily, and eventually his love was turned into such bitter hate that (as the chronicler tells us) “he made the opposition of the Franks an excuse for sending her in Hebrew fashion a writing of divorcement,” and forcibly transporting her to her own home. That quarrel may, however, have happened some years later. Meanwhile the Greek alliance and the signs of impending revolt caused Charles to send one, or perhaps two, hostile expeditions into the Beneventan territory. In 791, we are told, Charles, on his return from a victorious expedition against the Avars, ordered his son Pippin to march into the land of Benevento and lay it waste with fire and sword. In the following year two of the young princes were sent against the rebellious duchy. Louis, then a lad of fourteen, who had been staying with his father at Ratisbon, was ordered to return to his own kingdom of Aquitaine, collect troops, and march over the Mont Cenis into Italy. He accomplished the journey in the autumn, reached Ravenna, spent his Christmas there, and then, with his Aquitanians, joined his brother Pippin. Together they invaded the Samnite duchy, and at least succeeded in ravaging it so thoroughly that their own soldiers were well-nigh reduced to starvation, and had to receive the Church's pardon for eating flesh in Lent, no other victuals being accessible. No victories, however, are placed to the credit of the young invaders, and the campaign was probably an inglorious one, as it is not even mentioned by the official chroniclers.

XXIV. The remaining seven years of Hadrian’s pontificate (788-795) have not left any great mark on the Codex Carolinus. These were the years of great and victorious campaigns against the Avars (791-795), and of a revival of the long duel with the Saxons, who took the opportunity of Charles's absence in the Danubian lands to attack and to inflict a crushing defeat on the Frankish general Theodoric (793). Their land, in reprisal for this attack, was again laid waste by Charles’s armies (794), and they had to submit to the transportation of more than 7,000 men—a third of the whole population—from Bardengau (the old home of the Lombards on the left bank of the Elbe), and to their replacement by colonists of pure Frankish blood (795).

To this period also belong the commencement of one of King Charles’s most magnificent undertakings, the digging of a canal in North Bavaria between the Danube and the Rhine (793), and the assembling of a general council of bishops from all parts of Charles’s dominions, held at Frankfurt-on-the-Main (794). At this council Charles presided like another Constantine, the heresy of the Adoptionists was condemned, and the declaration against image-worship was promulgated in defiance of the decrees of the Second Nicene Council.

As to the domestic relations of the great king during the interval before us, the one most conspicuous and most sorrowful event was the conspiracy of his eldest son Pippin the Hunchback, the offspring of his marriage with Himiltrud. This conspiracy, which was hatched during Charles's absence in Bavaria, in connection with his Avar campaigns, was partly caused by the cruelty and arrogance of queen Fastrada, but was joined by many noble Franks, both old and young, and aimed we are told at nothing less than the murder of Charles himself and all his sons by Hildegard, that Pippin might be his unquestioned heir. It was discovered through the information given by a Lombard named Fardulf, faithful now to Charles, as he had been to his former sovereigns Desiderius and Adelchis. On its detection the chief offenders were put to death, all save the Hunchback himself, who received the tonsure and passed the remaining nineteen years of his life (792-811) in monastic seclusion at Prum, in the Moselle country. Three years afterwards (795) Fastrada died, little regretted by the subjects of her husband.

As has been said, few important letters passed between the Pope and King during this last period of seven years. We find with interest and some surprise that Hadrian has to reassure himself with the text “If God be for us who can be against us?” on hearing of an alleged scheme of our own countryman, Offa, king of Mercia, to thrust him down from the papacy and elect another in his stead. Offa's own relations with Charles were generally but not uniformly amicable. Here too the breakdown of a marriage treaty produced a temporary rupture between the two courts. Offa's daughter was sought in marriage for the young Charles, but when he proposed to enlarge the treaty so as to obtain the hand of Charles's daughter Bertha for his son, the Frankish king, indignant and always averse to his daughter's leaving him for any husband, broke off the negotiations, and for a time put an embargo on all the English merchant-ships. But the dispute was ere long settled, probably by the mediation of Alcuin, Offa's subject and Charles's friend.

In a letter written about the year 791 the Pope exhorts Charles not to listen to any complaints made against his administration by the men of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, and insists that, even as he does not receive any of Charles's ‘men' coming without their lord's licence to the thresholds of the Apostles, so Charles shall not give admittance to any of the Pope's ‘men' who seek audience at his court unless they bring the Pope's licence and letters dimissory. In the same letter he uses the following remarkable words:

“We pray your Excellency not to allow any change to be made in that whole burnt- offering which your sainted father offered and you confirmed to St. Peter. But even as you assert that the honour of your patriciate has been irrefragably guarded and ever more and more increased by us, similarly may the patriciate of your patron St. Peter, granted in writing in its fullness by lord Pippin and more amply confirmed by you, remain ever his by irrefragable right”.

This expression ‘the patriciate of St. Peter' has been much commented on by scholars, and has been thought by some to express in juristic terms the relation of the Pope to that part of Italy which was under his sway. It is perhaps safer, however, to look upon it as a mere rhetorical phrase employed by the Pope to urge his suit with Charles. “You are Patrician, and I have ever honoured you as such; but I too, as representing St. Peter, and the rights which you have conferred upon him, may claim to be in a certain sense a Patrician, and I claim that you shall respect those rights as I respect yours”.

At length the long pontificate of Hadrian came to an end. He died on Christmas Day, 795, and was buried in St. Peter's on the day following. Charles, who was on the point of despatching for his acceptance certain rich presents, part of the vast treasure taken from the Ring or circular city of the Avars, had now to send them to his successor, Leo III, who was elected on the very day of Hadrian's funeral and enthroned on the day following (December 27, 795).

As we have seen, the relations between the Frankish King and the Roman Pope had not been uniformly of a friendly character, but we are assured by Einhard, Charles's friend and biographer, that when he heard of Hadrian's death he wept for him, as if he had been a brother or the dearest of his sons.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE. TASSILO OF BAVARIA.