READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
BOOK IV.
FROM THE
ELECTION OF GREGORY THE GREAT TO THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE,
A.D. 590-814
CHAPTER VI.
PIPIN AND CHARLEMAGNE. A.D. 741-814.
The alienation which the iconoclastic controversy
tended to produce between the Byzantine emperors and the bishops of Rome was
increased by other circumstances. The nearest and most dreaded neighbours of
the popes were the Lombards. The hatred with which the Romans had originally
regarded these on account of their Arianism had survived their conversion to
orthodox Christianity, and had been exasperated by political hostility. During
the iconoclastic troubles, the Lombards, under Liutprand, appear by turns to
have threatened the popes and to have affected to extend alliance and
protection to them, with a view of using them as instruments for weakening the
imperial influence in Italy. When that influence seemed to be irreparably
injured by the course which events had taken, the Lombards overran the
exarchate, and advanced to the walls of the pope's own city. In this extremity,
Gregory III, after a vain attempt to obtain aid from Constantinople, resolved
to call in new allies from beyond the Alps—the nation of the Franks, who had
been catholic from the beginning of their Christianity, with whom he had lately
formed a closer connexion by means of Boniface, and whose virtual sovereign,
Charles Mattel, was marked out by his triumph over the Mahometan invaders of his
country as the leader and champion of western Christendom. As, however, it was
natural to suppose that the Frankish mayor would prefer the prosecution of his
victories on the side of Spain to engaging himself in new quarrels elsewhere,
the pope strengthened his petition for aid by the most persuasive gifts and
proposals; he sent to Charles the keys of St. Peter’s tomb, with some filings
of the apostle's chains; it is said that he offered to bestow on him the title
of consul or patrician of Rome, and even to transfer the allegiance of the
Romans from the empire to the Frankish crown. A second and a third application
followed soon after. The pope’s tone in these is extremely piteous ; but he
endeavours to excite Charles against the Lombards by motives of jealousy as
well as of piety.
Not only, he says, have they laid waste the estates of
St. Peter, which had been devoted to the purposes of charity and religion,
but they have plundered the apostle’s church of the lights bestowed on it
by the Frankish viceroy's ancestors and by himself; nay, Liutprand and his son
Hildebrand are continually mocking at the idea of relief from the Franks, and
defying Charles with his forces. It would seem that the letters were favourably
received; but they produced no result, as the deaths of both Gregory and
Charles followed within the same year.
In the room of Gregory, Zacharias, a Greek by birth,
was chosen by the Romans, and was established in the papacy, without the
confirmation either of the emperor or of the exarch—the first instance, it is
said, of such an omission since the reign of Odoacer. By repeated personal
applications to Liutprand, the pope obtained the forbearance of the Lombards
and recovered some towns which they had seized. His relations with the empire
are obscure; the state of affairs was indeed so unsettled that these relations
were full of anomaly and inconsistency. But under his pontificate took place an
event which produced an important change in the position of the papacy towards
the Franks, and consequently in its position towards the empire. Pipin, whose
accession, first to a portion of his father's power, and afterwards to the
remainder, on the resignation of his brother Carloman, has already been
mentioned, now thought that the time was come for putting an end to the pageant
royalty of the Merovingians. A confidential ecclesiastic, Fulrad,
abbot of St. Denys and arch-chaplain of the court, was sent to Rome, with
instructions to ask, in the name of the Frankish nation, whether the holders of
power or the nominal sovereigns ought to reign. The answer of Zacharias was
favourable to the wishes of those who proposed the question; and at the
national assembly of Soissons, in the year 752, Pipin was raised aloft on a
buckler, amid the acclamations of his people, and was crowned as king of the
Franks, while the last of the long-haired Merovingians, Childeric III, was
tonsured and shut up in the monastery of Sithiu.
The amount of the pope’s share in this revolution, and
the morality of his proceedings, have been the subjects of much controversy.
Einhard, in the earlier part of the following century, speaks of the deposition
as effected by the “command”, and of the coronation as performed by the
“authority”, of the Roman pontiff : but (besides that this writer may have
misapprehended the real course of the affair) a comparison of other passages
will show that the meaning of his words is less strong than might at first sight
appear, and is reconcilable with the facts which are otherwise ascertained. The
matter really came before Zacharias in the form of a question from the Frankish
estates; his answer was an opinion, not a command; and the sovereignty was
bestowed on Pipin, not by the pope, but by the choice of his own countrymen,
although the pope's opinion was valuable to him, as assisting him to supplant
the nominal king, and yet throwing over the change an appearance of religious
sanction which might guard it from becoming a precedent for future breaches of
fealty towards Pipin’s own dynasty. The view afterwards maintained by Gregory
VII and his school—that the successor of St. Peter exercised on this occasion a
right inherent in his office, of deposing sovereigns at will—is altogether
foreign to the ideas of the time, and inconsistent with the circumstances of
the case.
It is evident that the pope’s answer was prompted
rather by a consideration for his own interest in securing the alliance of
Pipin than by any regard for strict moral or religious principle. Yet we should
do Zacharias injustice by visiting it with all the reprobation which modern
ideas of settled and legitimate inheritance might suggest. The question
proposed to him was one which must have seemed very plausible in times when
might went far to constitute right, and when revolutions were familiar in every
state. The Frankish monarchy had been elective at first, and had never been
bound down to the rule of strictly hereditary succession. It was held that any
member of the royal house might be chosen king; thus Clotaire IV had been set
up by Charles Martel in 717, and the deposed Childeric himself was a
Merovingian of unknown parentage, whom Pipin and Carloman had found it
convenient to establish in 742, after the nominal sovereignty had been five
years vacant. It was also held among the Franks that kings might be set aside
on the ground of incapacity. The only principle, therefore, which was violated
in the transference of the crown was that which limited the choice of a
sovereign to the Merovingian family; and, in order to cover this irregularity
in the eyes of the nation, it was afterwards pretended that Pipin was himself a
Merovingian. Moreover, by whatever means the change of dynasty may have been
vindicated or disguised, it does not appear to have shocked the general moral
feeling of the age; and this, although it will not suffice to justify
Zacharias, must be allowed in some measure to excuse him.
Zacharias died in March 752, a little before or after
the consummation of the act which he had sanctioned. Stephen, who was chosen in
his room, did not live to be consecrated, and is therefore by most writers not
reckoned in the list of popes, so that his successor, another Stephen, is
sometimes styled the second, and sometimes the third, of that name. Aistulf was
now king of the Lombards, and renewed the aggressions of his predecessors on
Rome. Stephen, by means of splendid presents, obtained from him a promise of
peace for forty years; but the treaty was almost immediately broken by Aistulf,
who seized Ravenna and required the Romans to own him as their lord. The pope,
in his distress, sent envoys to beg for aid from the emperor, and in the
meantime he affixed the violated treaty to the cross, and occupied himself in
imploring the help of God by solemn prayers and penitential processions. But
the mission to Constantinople proved fruitless; and when Stephen, relying on
the success of his predecessor Zacharias in similar attempts, repaired to
Pavia, in the hope of moving Aistulf by personal entreaties,—although he met
with respectful treatment, he was unable to obtain any promise of forbearance.
His only remaining hope was in Pipin, with whom he had opened a secret
negotiation. He therefore resolved to proceed into France, and, as Aistulf
endeavoured to dissuade him, the fear lest the Lombard should detain him by
force added speed to his journey across the Alps. On hearing of the pope's
approach, Pipin sent his son Charles—the future Charlemagne—to act as escort;
and he himself, with his queen, the younger princes, and the nobles of his
court, went forth a league from the palace of Pontyon-le-Perche
to meet him. Stephen and his clergy appeared in sackcloth and ashes, and,
throwing themselves at the king's feet, humbly implored his assistance against
the Lombards. Pipin received the suppliants with marks of extraordinary honour;
he prostrated himself in turn before the pope, and, holding the rein of his
horse, walked by his side as he rode.
Stephen’s stay in France was prolonged by illness,
which compelled him to remain until the summer at St. Denys. During this time
an unexpected opponent of his suit appeared in the person of the abdicated
Carloman, who, at the instigation of Aistulf, had been compelled by the abbot
of Monte Cassino to leave his monastic retreat for the purpose of urging his
brother to refuse the desired assistance. But Stephen exerted his pontifical
authority over the monk, and Carloman was shut up in a monastery July 28, at
Vienne, where he died soon after. A second coronation, in which Pipin’s sons
were included, was performed at St. Denys by the pope’s own hands; and in the
hope of securing the new dynasty against a repetition of the movements by which
its own royalty had been won, the Frankish nation was charged, under pain of
excommunication, never to choose any other king than a descendant of him whom
God and the vicar of the apostles had been pleased to exalt to the throne.
Pipin was also invested with the dignity of patrician of Rome.
In the same year Pipin, although some of the Frankish
chiefs opposed the expedition, and even threatened to desert him, led an army
into Italy, and compelled Aistulf to swear that he would restore to St. Peter
the towns which he had seized. But no sooner had the northern forces recrossed
the Alps than the Lombard refused to fulfil his engagements, invaded the
Roman territory, wasted the country up to the very walls of Rome, and laid
siege to the city itself. As the way by land was blocked up, the pope sent off
by sea a letter entreating his Frankish ally once more to assist him. Another
and a more urgent entreaty followed; and finally the pope despatched at once
three letters, of which one was written in the name of St. Peter himself—an
expedient which may perhaps have been suggested or encouraged by the impression
as to the character of the Franks which he had derived from his late sojourn
among them. In this strange document the apostle is represented as joining the
authority of the blessed Virgin with his own; supplication, threats, flattery
are mingled; and, in consideration of the aid which is asked for the defence of
the papal temporalities, assurances are given not only of long life and
victory, but of salvation and heavenly glory—apparently without any reserve or
condition of a moral kind. Whether induced by these promises or by other
motives, Pipin speedily returned to Italy, besieged Aistulf in Pavia, and
forced him as a condition of peace to make a large cession of cities and
territory, which were transferred to the Roman see, and for the first time gave
the pope the position of a temporal prince. Some Byzantine envoys, who were
present at the conclusion of the treaty, urged that the exarchate should be
restored to their master, to whom it had belonged before it was seized by the
Lombards; but Pipin replied that he had conquered for St. Peter, and could not
dispose otherwise of that which he had offered to the apostle. Yet it does not
appear that the gift was one of independent sovereignty; for the territories
bestowed on the pope were held under the Frankish crown, and, on the other
side, the anomalies of the relation between the popes and the empire became now
more complex than ever. While Pipin was patrician of Rome by the pope's
assumption of a right to confer the title—while the pope received from the
Frankish king lands which the emperor claimed as his own—while Rome continued
to be virtually separated from the empire by the consequences of the
iconoclastic controversy—the popes were still regarded as subjects of the
emperors, and dated by the years of their reign.
In 757 Stephen II was succeeded by his own brother
Paul, who held the pontificate ten years. While Paul was on his
death-bed, Toto, duke of Nepi, made his way into
Rome, at the head of an armed multitude, forced some bishops hastily to ordain
his brother Constantine through all the grades of the ministry, and put him
into possession of the papal chair. The intruder had occupied it for thirteen months,
when he was ejected by an opposite party, and Stephen III (or IV) was
established in his stead. Constantine’s partisans were subjected to the
barbarous punishments usual in that age—such as the loss of the eyes or of the
tongue; he himself, after having been thrust into a monastery by one faction of
his enemies, was dragged out of it by another, was blinded, and in that
condition was left in the public street.
A council was held under the sanction of Charles and
Carloman, who had just succeeded their father Pipin in the sovereignty of the
Franks and in the patriciate of Rome. Constantine was brought before this
assembly, and was asked why he had presumed, being a layman, to invade the
apostolic see. He declared that he had been forced into the office against his
will; he threw himself on the floor, stretched out his hands, and with a
profusion of tears entreated forgiveness for his misdeeds. On the following day
he was again brought before the council, and was questioned about
the “impious novelty” of his proceedings with a strictness which drove him
to turn upon his judges by answering that it was not a novelty, and naming the
archbishop of Ravenna and the bishop of Naples as having been advanced at once
from a lay condition to the episcopate. At this reply the members of the
council started from their seats in fury. They fell on the blind man, beat him
violently, and thrust him out of the church in which their sessions were held.
They then proceeded to annul the ordinations and other official acts which he
had performed as pope, burnt the records of his pontificate, and denounced
anathemas against any one who should aspire to the papacy without having
regularly passed through the grade of cardinal priest or cardinal deacon. The
new pope Stephen, with all the clergy and a multitude of the Roman laity,
prostrated themselves, and with tears professed contrition for having received
the Eucharist at the usurper’s hands; and a suitable penance was imposed on
them.
It was the interest of the popes to prevent the
formation of any connexion between their Frankish allies and the hated
Lombards. Stephen, therefore, was beyond measure disquieted when intelligence
reached him, in 770, that Desiderius, the successor of Aistulf, had projected
the union of his family with that of Pipin by a double tie—that he had offered
his daughter in marriage either to Charles or to Carloman, and that their
sister was engaged to Adelgis, son of the Lombard king. The pope forthwith
addressed an extraordinary letter to the Frankish princes. As they were both
already married, he tells them that it would be sin to divorce their wives for
the sake of any new alliance. But moral or religious objections hold a very
subordinate place in the remonstrance, while the pope exhausts himself in
heaping up expressions of detestation against the Lombards, and in protesting
against the pollution of the royal Frankish blood by any admixture with
that “perfidious and most unsavoury” nation—a nation from which the race
of lepers was known to originated The epistle concludes with denunciations of
eternal fire, and the pope states that, in order to give it all possible
solemnity, it was laid on St. Peter's tomb, and the Eucharistic sacrifice was
offered on it.
Charles, unmoved by this appeal, repudiated his wife
and espoused the Lombard princess; but within a year—for what reason is
unknown, but certainly not out of any regard to Stephen's expostulation—she was
sent back to her father's court, and Hildegard, a lady of Swabian family, took
her place as the consort of Charles.
In his relations with Stephen, Desiderius was studious
to maintain a specious appearance of friendship, while he resisted or eluded
all applications for the restoration of what were styled “the rights of St.
Peter”. On the election of Adrian as Stephen’s successor, the Lombard king made
overtures to him, and promised to satisfy all his demands, if the pope would
visit him at Pavia; but the invitation was refused. Desiderius avenged himself
by ravaging the borders of the papal territory, and Adrian invoked the aid of
Charles. Carloman had died in 771, and Charles, without any regard to the
rights of his brother’s family, had united the whole of the Frankish dominions
under his own rule. Desiderius, stimulated perhaps rather by his own daughter’s
wrongs than by a disinterested regard for justice, had espoused the cause of
the disinherited princes, and had requested the pope to crown them, but Adrian,
from unwillingness to embroil himself with Charles, and consequently to place
himself at the mercy of the Lombards, had refused. Charles now readily listened
to the petition of his ally. He asked Desiderius to give up the disputed
territory, and offered him a large sum of money as compensation, while the pope
sent repeated embassies to the Lombard king, and at last proposed to pay him
the desired visit, on condition that Desiderius should first perform his part
of the agreement by restoring the rights of St. Peter.
Desiderius, supposing that Charles must be fully
occupied by his war with the Saxons, attempted to satisfy him with evasive
answers, and even assured him that the papal territory had already been
restored; but his representations had no effect on Charles, who in 773 invaded
Italy, besieged him in Pavia, and overthrew the Lombard dominion. Desiderius
was compelled to become a monk at Liege. His son Adelgis escaped to
Constantinople, where, although the honour of the patriciate was conferred on
him, Charles was able to prevent him from obtaining any effective aid for the
recovery of his inheritance. Twelve years later, by a convention with the
Lombard duke of Benevento, Charles became lord of the remaining part of Italy.
During the siege of Pavia in 774, Charles paid his
first visit to Rome, where he arrived on Easter-eve. The magistrates were sent
by the pope to meet him at the distance of thirty miles from the city. A mile
outside the walls the soldiery appeared, with all the children of the schools,
who bore branches of palm and olive, and hailed him with hymns of welcome. In
honour of his patrician dignity, the sacred crosses were carried forth as for
the reception of an exarch, and Charles, dismounting from his horse at the
sight of them, proceeded on foot towards St. Peter's, where the pope and all
his clergy were assembled on the steps and in the principal portico of the
church. The king, as he ascended, kissed each step; on reaching the
landing-place he embraced the pope, and taking him by the right hand, entered
the building, while the clergy and monks loudly chanted Blessed is he that
cometh in the name of the Lord". He kept the festival season with a great
appearance of devotion; he enlarged the donation which Pipin had made to the
church, confirmed it by an oath, and solemnly laid the deed of gift on the
apostle’s tomb. The actual extent of his donation is, however, uncertain. It is
said to have included not only the exarchate of Ravenna, but the dukedoms of
Spoleto and Benevento, Venetia, Istria, and other territories in the north of
Italy—in short, almost the whole peninsula—together with the island of Corsica;
yet some of these had not as yet been acquired by the Franks, and in the event
the papal rule seems to have been really limited to the exarchate, which was
itself held not in absolute sovereignty, but in dependence on the Frankish
monarchs. It would appear, therefore (if the report of the donation may be
trusted), that Charles, in his gratitude for the opportunity of interfering in
the affairs of Italy, professed to bestow on the pope spoils which had not at
the time been fully won, and that he was afterwards indisposed to carry his
promises into effect. The king visited Rome again in 781, and a third time in
787; and on each occasion the church was enriched by gifts, bestowed, as he
professed in the language of the age, "for the ransom of his soul."
His connection with Adrian was cemented not only by interest, but by personal
regard, and on hearing of the pope's death, he is said to have wept for hi in
as for a brother.
In 795 Adrian was succeeded by Leo III. The political
condition of Rome for many years before this time is very obscure. According to
some writers, it had been a republic, under the popes, from the date of Pipin’s
donation (A.D. 755); but against this view it has been urged that the letter of
Adrian to the emperor Constantine and his mother, on occasion of the second
council of Nicaea, proves that even so late as 785 the imperial sovereignty
continued to be in some degree acknowledged. Although, however, the Byzantine
rulers were now in agreement with Rome on the question of images, the older
differences as to that question had produced a lasting estrangement; so that
Leo, in announcing his election to Charlemagne, sent him the banner of Rome
with the keys of St. Peter’s tomb, and begged him to send commissioners for the
purpose of administering to the citizens an oath of allegiance to the Frankish
crown. Whether we regard this as an illustration of the relations which already
existed between Rome and the Franks, or as a voluntary act, by which the pope,
for the sake of gaining a powerful protector, placed himself and his people in
a new relation of dependence— it proves both that the connection with the
eastern empire was severed, and that, if Rome had for a time been independent,
it was no longer so.
The promotion of Leo deeply offended some relations of
Adrian who had occupied high positions in the papal government. They waited
upwards of three years for an opportunity of gratifying their enmity; and at
length, as the pope was conducting a procession through the streets of Rome, a
party of his enemies rushed forth near the monastery of St. Sylvester on the
Quirinal, dispersed his unarmed companions, threw him from his horse, and
attempted to deprive him of his eyes and tongue. Whether from haste or from
pity, they did their work imperfectly; but Paschal and Campulus,
two of Adrian's nephews, who had been the chiefs of the conspiracy, dragged the
wounded pope into the church of the monastery, threw him down before the altar,
attempted to complete the operations which had been begun, and, after having
beaten him cruelly with sticks, left him weltering in his blood.
Notwithstanding all these outrages, Leo retained his sight and his speech; it
was popularly believed that he had recovered them through the help of St.
Peter. By the aid of his friends, he was enabled to escape from Rome; under the
escort of the duke of Spoleto, a vassal of the Frankish king, he reached that
city; and Charles, who was detained in the north by the Saxon war, on receiving
a report of his sufferings, invited him to Paderborn, where he was received
with great honour.
About the same time that Leo arrived at Paderborn,
some envoys from Rome appeared there with serious charges against him. Charles
promised to investigate these charges at Rome ; and, after having sent back the
pope with a convoy of two archbishops, five bishops, and five counts, who
re-established him in his see, the king himself proceeded by slow and
indirect journeys towards the city, where he arrived in the end of November
800. The inquiry into Leo’s case was opened before an assembly of archbishops,
bishops, abbots, and nobles; but no testimony was produced against the pope,
and the prelates and clergy who were present declined the office of judging, on
the ground of an opinion which had gradually grown up, that the successor of
St. Peter was not amenable to any human (or rather perhaps to any
ecclesiastical) judgment. On this Leo declared himself ready to clear his
innocence by an oath; and on a later day he ascended the pulpit, and solemnly
swore on the Gospels that he had neither committed nor instigated the offences
which were laid to his charge. The conspirators who had been concerned in the
assault on him were soon after tried, and, as they could make no defence, were
condemned to death; but at the pope's request the sentence was commuted to
banishment.
But between the purgation of Leo and the trial of his
assailants an important event had taken place. On Christmas-day—the first day
of the ninth century, according to the reckoning then observed in the
west—Charles attended mass in St. Peter’s, when, as he was kneeling before the
altar, the pope suddenly placed a splendid crown on his head, and the vast
congregation burst forth into acclamations of “Life and victory to Charles,
crowned by God emperor of Rome!”. Leo then proceeded to anoint Charles and his
son Pipin, king of Italy, and led the way in doing homage to the new emperor.
In conversation with his attendants, Charles professed great surprise, and even
displeasure, at the coronation declaring that, if he had expected such a scene,
not even the holiness of the Christmas festival should have induced him to go
into the church on that day. There can, however, be little question that his
elevation to the imperial dignity had been before arranged. Perhaps the idea
had been suggested to him by a letter in which his confidential friend Alcuin
spoke of the popedom, the empire, and the sovereignty of the Franks as the
three highest dignities in the world, and pointed out how unworthily the
imperial throne, the higher of the two secular monarchies, was then filled. On
his way to Rome, the king had visited Alcuin at Tours; and he now received from
him as a Christmas-gift a Bible corrected by the learned abbot's own hand, with
a letter in which the present was said to be intended in honour of the imperial
power. It may therefore be conjectured that the assumption of the empire had
been settled between Charles and Leo during the pope’s residence at Paderborn;
or at least that Leo had there discovered the king's inclination, and that
Alcuin had been for some time in the secret.
Yet we need not tax Charles with insincerity in his
expressions of dissatisfaction after the coronation; rather, as dissimulation
was no part of his general character, we may suppose that, while he had desired
the imperial title, he was displeased at the manner in which it was conferred.
He may have regarded the pope's act as premature, and as an interference with
his own plans. He may have seen that it was capable of such an interpretation
as was afterwards actually put upon it—as if the pope were able to bestow the
empire by his own authority—a pretension altogether inconsistent with the whole
spirit of Charlemagne’s policy. Perhaps it had been the king’s intention to
procure his election by the Romans, and afterwards to be crowned by the pope,
as the Greek emperors, after having been elected by the representatives of
their subjects, were crowned by the patriarch of Constantinople; whereas he had
now been surprised into receiving the empire from the pope, when the
acclamations of the Romans did not precede, but followed or, the imposition of
the crown by Leo. Although, however, the pope’s act was capable of an
interpretation agreeable to the claims of his successors in later times, such
claims appear to have been unknown in the age of Charlemagne; and Leo, after
having placed the crown on his brow, was the first to do homage to him as a
subject of the empire.
By the coronation of Charles, Rome was finally
separated from the Greek empire, and again became the acknowledged capital of
the west, while the emperor was invested with the double character of head of
western Christendom and representative of the ancient civilization.
The Byzantine court was naturally offended by a step
which appeared to invade its rights both of dignity and of sovereignty; but
Charles, by a conciliatory policy, overcame the irritation : his imperial title
was acknowledged by the ambassadors of Nicephorus in 812, and the Greek
emperors addressed his son as emperor, although not of Rome, but of the Franks.
The reign of Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, from
the time of his father's death, extended to nearly half a century. His fame
rests not only on his achievements as a warrior and as a conqueror, but on his
legislation and administration both in civil and in ecclesiastical affairs; on
his care for the advancement of learning, of commerce, of agriculture, of
architecture, and the other arts of peace; on the versatility and capacity of a
mind which embraced the smallest as well as the greatest details of the vast
and various system of which he was the head. His wars, aggressive in their
form, were essentially defensive; his purpose was to consolidate the
populations which had settled in the territories of the western empire, and to
secure them against the assaults of newer migrations. Carrying his arms against
those from whom he had reason to apprehend an attack, he extended his dominions
to the Eider and to the Ebro, over Brittany and Aquitaine, far towards the
south of Italy, and eastward to the Theiss and the Save. The impression which
he produced on the Greeks is shown by their proverb, “Have the Frank for thy
friend, but not for thy neighbour”. His influence and authority reached from
Scotland to Persia; the great caliph Haroun al Raschid exchanged presents with him, and sent him by way of compliment the keys of the
holy sepulchre; and, although the empire of Charlemagne was broken up after his
death, the effect of its union remained in the connexion of western Christendom
by one common bond. With so much that is grand and noble, there was, indeed, in
Charlemagne not a little that deserves reprobation. The seizure of his
brother's dominions to the exclusion of his nephews was an injustice altogether
without excuse; his policy was sometimes stern, even to cruelty; and his
personal conduct was stained by an excessive dissoluteness, which continued
even to his latest years, and of which the punishment was believed to have been
revealed by visions after his death. But with this exception, his private
character appears such as to increase the admiration which is due to his
greatness as a sovereign. He was in general mild, open, and generous; his
family affections were warm, and his friendships were sincere and steady.
The wars of Charlemagne against the barbarians were
not religious in their origin; but religion soon became involved in them. His
conquests carried the gospel in their train, and, mistaken as were some of the
means which were employed for its propagation, the result was eventually good.
Of his fifty-three campaigns, eighteen were against the Saxons of Germany.
Between this people and the Franks war had been waged from time to time for two
hundred years. Sometimes the Franks penetrated to the Weser, and imposed a
tribute which was irregularly paid; sometimes the Saxons pushed their
incursions as far as the Rhine; and on the borders of the territories the more
uncivilized of each nation carried on a constant system of pillage and petty
annoyance against their neighbours. The Saxon tribes were divided into three
great associations—the Westphalians, the Angarians,
and the Ostphalians; they had no king, and were
accustomed to choose a leader only in the case of a national war. Their valour
is admitted even by the Frankish writers; the perfidy which is described as
characteristic of them may in some degree be explained and palliated by the
fact that they were without any central government which could make engagements
binding on the whole nation.
The war with the Saxons lasted thirty-three years—from
772 to 805. In the first campaign, Charlemagne destroyed the great national
idol called the Irminsul, which stood in a
mountainous and woody district near Eresburg (now Stadtberg). The Saxons retaliated in the following year by
attacking the monasteries and churches planted on their frontiers, killing or
driving out the monks and clergy, and laying the country waste as far as the
Rhine. Sturmi, the successor of Boniface, was obliged
to fly from Fulda, carrying with him the relics of his master. The Saxons
associated their old idolatry with their nationality, and the gospel with the
interest of the Franks.
A passage in the life of St. Lebuin has been connected
with the origin of the Saxon war, but ought probably to be referred to a
somewhat later date. Lebuin, an Englishman, had preached with much success and
had built several churches among the Frisians about the Yssel,
when an incursion of the neighbouring heathens disturbed him in his labours. On
this he determined boldly to confront the enemies of Christianity in all
their force, and, undeterred by the warnings of his friends, he appeared in his
pontifical robes before the national assembly of the Saxons, which was held at Marklo, on the Weser. He spoke to them of the true God, he
denounced their idolatry, and told them that, unless they would receive the
gospel and be baptized, God had decreed their ruin by means of a powerful king,
not from afar, but from their own neighbourhood, who would sweep them away like
a torrent. The effect of such an address was to exasperate the Saxons
violently; and it was with difficulty that some members of the assembly saved
the zealous missionary from the rage of their brethren. The pagans burnt his
church at Deventer, and in consequence of this outrage Charlemagne with the
Franks, who were informed of it when met in council at Worms, resolved on an
expedition against them.
The absence of Charlemagne on expeditions in other
quarters, as in Italy or in Spain, was always a signal for a rising of the
Saxons. After a time, as we are told by an annalist of his reign, he was
provoked by their repeated treacheries to resolve on the conversion or
extermination of the whole race. In his attempts at conversion, however, he met
with difficulties which it would seem that he had not expected. Whenever the
Saxons were defeated, multitudes of them submitted to baptism without any
knowledge or belief of Christian doctrine; but on the first opportunity they
revolted, and again professed the religion of their fathers. The long war was
carried on with much loss on both sides; on one occasion Charlemagne beheaded
4500 prisoners, who had been given up to him as having shared in the last
insurrection; and this frightful bloodshed, instead of striking the expected
terror into the barbarians, excited them to an unusually widespread and
formidable rising in the following year. A chief named Widikind had thus far been the soul of the Saxon movements. After every reverse, he
contrived to escape to Denmark, where he found a refuge with the king, who was
his brother-in-law; and when his countrymen were ripe for a renewal of their
attempts, he reappeared to act as their leader. But in 785, having secured a
promise of impunity, he surrendered himself, together with his brother Abbo,
and was baptized at Attigny, where Charlemagne officiated as his sponsor;
and—whether an intelligent conviction contributed to his change of religious
profession, whether it arose solely from despair of the Saxon cause, or whether
his conversion was merely to a belief in that God whose worshippers had been
proved the stronger party — his engagements to the king were faithfully kept.
The Saxons were now subdued as far as the Elbe, and many of the fiercer
idolaters among them sought an asylum in Scandinavia, where they joined the
piratical bands which had already begun their plundering expeditions, and which
were soon to become the terror of the more civilized nations of Europe.
Charlemagne proceeded to enact a law of extreme
severity. It denounced the penalty of death against the refusal of baptism;
against burning the bodies of the dead, after the manner of the pagans; against
eating flesh in Lent, if this were done in contempt of Christianity; against
setting fire to churches or violently entering them and robbing them; against
the murder of bishops, priests, or deacons; against the offering of human
sacrifices, and against some barbaric superstitions. All persons were to pay a tenth
part of their “substance and labour” to the church. All children were to be
baptized within a year from their birth, and parents who should neglect to
comply with the law in this respect were to be fined in proportion to their
quality. Fines were also enacted against those who should sacrifice in groves
or do any other act of pagan worship. In the case of those offences which were
punishable with death, the law did not admit the pecuniary commutations which
are commonly found in the Germanic codes; but instead of them there was the
remarkable provision, that, if any person guilty of such offences would of his
own accord confess them to a priest, and express a desire to do penance, his
life should be spared on the testimony of the priest. The rigour of this decree
was unlike the general spirit of Charlemagne's legislation, nor was it intended
to be lasting. After having been in force twelve years, the capitulary was
modified by one of milder character, which again allowed the principle of
composition for capital offences.
The conversion of the Saxons was urged on by a variety
of measures. Gifts and threats were employed to gain them. Charlemagne offered
them union with the Franks on equal terms, freedom from tribute, and exemption
from all other imposts except tithes. Bishoprics were gradually established
among them, monasteries were founded in thinly inhabited districts, towns grew
up around these new foundations, and each became a centre for diffusing the
knowledge of religion and of civilization. The Saxon youths who were received
as hostages were committed to bishops and abbots for instruction; and by a
strong measure of policy, ten thousand Saxons were in 804 removed from their
own country into the older Frankish territory, where they became incorporated
with the conqueror's original subjects.
A like system of extending the profession of the
gospel with his conquests was pursued by Charlemagne in other quarters—as among
the Frisians, the Wiltzes (a Slavonic people north of
the Elbe), the Bavarians, the Avars in Pannonia, and the Bohemians. Among the
missionaries who were most distinguished in the work of conversion were
Gregory, abbot of Utrecht; Liudger, a Frisian, who had studied under Alcuin at
York, and became bishop of Mimigardeneford (Munster);
Willehad, a Northumbrian, bishop of Bremen; Sturmi,
of Fulda, and Arno, archbishop of Salzburg. Ingo, who laboured in Carinthia,
may be mentioned on account of the singular means which he took to convince the
heathens of their inferior condition—admitting some Christian slaves to his own
table, while for their unconverted masters food was set outside the door, as
for dogs. The inquiries to which this distinction gave rise are said to have
resulted in a great accession of converts.
But although the policy of Charlemagne did much to
spread the profession of Christianity, the means which he employed were open to
serious objection. The enforcement of tithes naturally raised a prejudice
against the faith of which this payment was made a condition, and in 793 it
even produced a revolt of the Saxons. Alcuin often remonstrated against the
unwise exaction. He acknowledged the lawfulness of tithes; but how, he asked,
would an impost which was ill borne even by persons who had been brought up in
the catholic church, be endured by a rude and barbarous race of neophytes?
Would the apostles have enforced it in such circumstances? When confirmed in
the faith, the converts might properly be subjected to burdens of this kind;
but until then, it would be a grievous error to risk the faith itself for the
sake of tithes. In like manner he argued against the indiscriminate
administration of baptism. Instruction, he said, should first be given in the
great heads of Christian doctrine and practice, and then the sacrament should
follow. Baptism may be forced on men, but belief cannot. Baptism received
without understanding or faith by a person capable of reason, is but an
unprofitable washing of the body. He urges that new converts should be treated
with great tenderness, and that able preachers, of such character as may not
bring discredit on their teaching, should be sent to instruct them.
During the latter part of the Merovingian period,
learning had continually declined. A new era of intellectual activity now
began. Charlemagne himself made earnest efforts to repair the defects of his
early training. He began in mature age to learn the art of writing; but,
although he practised diligently, he never attained facility in it, or, at
least, he was unable to master the difficulties of the ornamental calligraphy
on which the professional scribes of the time prided themselves. We are told
that he became as familiar with Latin as with his mother tongue, and that,
although he could not express himself with readiness in Greek, he was well
acquainted with the language. The object of his endeavours was necessarily
rather to revive the ancient Roman culture than to originate a new literature;
yet, while he encouraged the study of the classic languages among his subjects,
he did not neglect his native German; he laboured to raise it to the rank of a
cultivated tongue by reducing it to a grammatical system, he collected its old
heroic ballads, and gave Teutonic names to the winds and to the months. Nor,
although his care for the German speech was little seconded in his own time,
and although Latin had become the authorized language of the church, were the
emperor's exertions in this respect without effect; for a vernacular literature
now arose which had much influence on the education of the people. Among its
remains are poems and hymns, metrical harmonies of the Gospels, and glosses on
the Bible for the use of the clergy.
The instruments of the intellectual reform which
Charlemagne contemplated were not to be found in his own dominions. He
therefore sought for them from Italy and from the British islands, the only
countries of the west in which the study of general learning was then pursued.
The chief of these were Paul Warnefrid, a Lombard,
Peter of Pisa, and—the most important for talents, for influence, and for the
length of his labours among the Franks—Alcuin, a native of Northumbria.
Alcuin (or Albinus) was born about the year 735. After
having studied in the cathedral school of York, under archbishop Egbert,
brother of the Northumbrian king Eadbert, he was ordained a deacon, and became
master of the school, which he raised to such reputation that many foreigners
resorted to it for instruction. He had already visited the Continent, when
Eanbald, his old fellow-pupil, on being promoted to the see of York in 782,
sent him to Rome for the purpose of bringing back the pall, the symbol of the
archiepiscopal dignity which had been recovered for York by Egbert after having
been suspended since the time of Paulinus. At Parma, Alcuin fell in with
Charlemagne, who invited him to settle in France. With the permission of his
own king and of Eanbald, he accepted the proposal; and was appointed to the mastership of the Palatine school, an institution which had
existed under the Merovingians, and was now revived. This school accompanied
the movements of the court. The pupils were the members of the royal family,
with noble youths who belonged to the household, or had been permitted by the
sovereign to partake of the education thus provided. Charlemagne himself, his
sons, his daughters, and some of his courtiers, became the scholars of Alcuin.
It has been supposed that they formed an academy, in which each bore the name
of some ancient worthy; thus Charles himself is styled David, Alcuin is
Flaccus, Angilbert (son-in-law of Charlemagne, and afterwards abbot of Centulles) is Homer. But the only evidence in favour of the
supposition is the fact that such names are used in correspondence. Alcuin’s
instructions were given rather in the form of conversation than of lectures. He
taught the seven sciences which were distinguished as liberal, and were
afterwards classified under the titles of Trivium and Quadrivium—the
Trivium consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics; the Quadrivium
comprising arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy; while above these two
classes theology held a place by itself. Alcuin's writings on these subjects
contain little of an original kind, and may be regarded as mere notebooks of
his teaching. His other works are very various—commentaries on Scripture,
liturgical treatises, tracts on the controversies of the age and on practical
religion, poems, lives of saints, and a large collection of letters. They
appear to be justly described as displaying more of labour than of genius, more
of memory than of invention or taste ,m but in estimating the merit of the man
we are bound to compare him with his contemporaries. His work was that of a
reviver.
Alcuin was not only the instructor of Charlemagne in
religion and letters, but his most confidential adviser in affairs of state.
After having taught the Palatine school for fourteen years (with the interval
of a visit to his native country), he became weary of a court life, and
expressed a wish to retire to Fulda for the remainder of his days; but
Charlemagne provided another retreat for him, by bestowing on him the abbacy of
St. Martin at Tours, a monastery of great wealth, but then notorious for the disorderly
character of its inmates; and with this he retained some other preferments
which he had before received. Alcuin in some measure reformed the monks of St.
Martin’s, although an affray in which they were concerned towards the end of
his life proves that the reformation was by no means perfect. He enriched the
library of the abbey by importing books from England, and under his government
its school attained great fame. We are told by his old biographer that he would
not allow the pupils to read the “falsehoods” of Virgil, in which he had
formerly delighted, and that when one of them secretly transgressed the rule,
Alcuin by supernatural knowledge detected him. Among his scholars during this
period were Raban Maur, afterwards abbot of Fulda and archbishop of Mayence (Mainz), Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt, and other
eminent men of the next generations He kept up a frequent correspondence with
Charlemagne on politics, literature, science, and theology; and (as we shall
see hereafter) he continued to take part in the controversies of the time. From
some expressions in his letters it appears that he was dissatisfied on account
of the novelties introduced into the teaching of the Palatine school by his
successor, an Irishman named Clement. At length he obtained the emperor’s leave
to devolve the care of discipline in each of his monasteries on younger men,
and he died in 804.
Charlemagne was bent on promoting education among
every class of his subjects. He urged his nobles to study, and loudly reproved
those who considered their position as an excuse for negligence. The laity were
required to learn the creed and the Lord's prayer,—in Latin, if possible, with
a view to bringing them within the Roman influence. Fasting and blows were
sometimes denounced against any who should disobey. But it was found that the
hardness of the task was regarded by many persons as even more formidable than
such penalties; and it also appeared that many of the clergy were themselves
unable to teach the forms in Latin. The reenactments and the mitigations of
such rules sufficiently prove how difficult it was to carry them into
execution. The clergy were charged to explain the creed and the Lord’s
prayer to their people, and sponsors at baptism were required to prove their
acquaintance with both forms.
With a view to improve the education of the clergy,
Charlemagne ordered in 769 that any clergyman who should disregard his
bishop’s admonitions to learn should be suspended or deprived. In 787 he issued
a circular to all metropolitans, bishops, and abbots, complaining of the
incorrect style which appeared in many letters addressed to him from
monasteries. This want of skill in writing, he says, leads him to apprehend
that there may be also an inability to understand the language of Scripture
rightly; he therefore orders that competent masters should be established, and
that study should be diligently urged on. Two years later he ordered that there
should be a school in every cathedral and monastery, open not only to the
servile class (from which the clergy were usually taken), but to the free-born;
that instruction should be given in psalmody, music, grammar, and computum (a term which denoted the art of
reckoning in general, but more especially the calculation of the calendar); and
that care should be taken for the correct transcription of the service-books.
He employed Paul Warnefrid to compile a book of
homilies from the fathers, and published it with a preface in his own name.
These homilies were arranged according to the ecclesiastical seasons. It seems
to have been at first intended that they should be read in Latin, the language
of both the church and the state; and that it was a concession to national
feeling when councils of the emperor’s last year directed the clergy, in using
them, to render them into a tongue intelligible to the people—whether the
“rustic Roman” of Gaul, or the Teutonic. As the manuscripts of the Scriptures
had been generally much corrupted by the carelessness of copyists, Charlemagne,
with Alcuin’s assistance, provided for the multiplication of correct copies.
While the pupils of the schools were employed in transcribing the less
important books for churches, none but persons of mature age were allowed to
write the gospels, the psalter, or the missal. Manuscripts were acquired for
libraries from England, Italy, and Greece. Presbyters were before ordination to
be examined as to their faith, as to their knowledge of the creed and the
Lord's prayer, of the canons, the penitential, the gospels, the homilies, the
public services, the rites of baptism and the Eucharist, and their power of
instructing their flocks.
In addition to the education of the clergy, a new
feature appears in the articles of Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, where it is
ordered that in every parish the clergy should provide a school for free-born
children as well as for serfs. The payment for instruction was to be only such
as the parents of the pupils should freely give. The bishop also invites the
clergy to send their relations to the monastic schools. But the attempt to
establish parochial schools does not appear to have been carried far even in the
diocese of Orleans, and there is no evidence of its having been imitated
elsewhere.
Charlemagne paid much deference to the usages of Rome,
as the most venerable church of the west. He obtained from Adrian the Roman
code of canons (which was founded on the collection of Dionysius Exiguus), and
in 789 he published such of them as he considered necessary for his own
dominions. The Roman method of chanting had already been introduced into
Gaul. Pope Paul had sent books of it to Pipin, and had endeavoured to procure
its establishment; but although he was supported by Pipin in the attempt, the Gallican
chant still prevailed. During Charlemagne’s third visit to Rome, in 787,
disputes arose between the Frankish and the Roman clergy on the subject of the
liturgy and the chant. The Franks relied on the king’s protection; but to their
dismay he asked them, “Which is the purer—the stream or the source?”—a question
which admitted but of one answer; and on this answer he acted. He carried back
into France two skilful clerks to teach the Roman chant, and stationed one of
them at Metz, while the other was attached to the court. He also established
the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great in the Frankish church; it is even said
that, in his zeal for conformity to Rome, he endeavoured to suppress the
Ambrosian forms at Milan, by destroying the service-books, or carrying them “as
if into exile” across the Alps; but that miracles came to the rescue of the
venerable ritual, so that Pope Adrian, who had instigated the attempt against
it, was brought to acquiesce in the local use of it. Charlemagne paid special
attention to the solemnity of divine worship. The great church which he built
at his favourite place of residence, Aix-la-Chapelle, was adorned with marble
pillars from Rome and Ravenna, and was furnished with vestments for all its
clergy, down to the meanest of the doorkeepers. He diligently frequented the
services of his chapel, both by day and by night, and took great pains to
improve the reading and the singing; “for”, said Einhard, “he was very skilful
in both, although he neither read publicly, nor sang, except in a low voice and
together with others”. A biographer of more questionable authority tells us
that he used to point with his finger or with his staff at any person whom he
wished to read; and when thus ordered to begin, or when warned by a cough from
the emperor to stop, the reader was expected to obey at once, without any
regard to sense or to the division of sentences. Thus, it is said, all were
kept in a state of continual attention, because each might be called on at any
moment. No one could mark his own portion with his nail or with wax; and all
became accomplished readers, even although they might be unable to understand
the language and the matter. Charlemagne himself is said to have composed
hymns—among them the “Veni Creator Spiritus”; but as to that hymn, at least,
the statement appears to be groundless.
Charlemagne’s ecclesiastical legislation was carried
on by his own authority. He regarded it as the duty of a sovereign to watch
over the spiritual and moral well-being of his subjects; he alleges the reforms
of Josiah as a scriptural precedent for the part which he took in the
regulation of the church. Ecclesiastical subjects occupy more than a third of
his capitularies. The ecclesiastical as well as the other laws were proposed in
the assemblies which were held yearly in spring and in autumn, and which bore
at once the character of synods and of parliaments. The clergy and the laity
sat together or separately, as was most convenient, according to the nature of
the subjects proposed to them. Discussion was allowed; but both the initiative
and the decision belonged to the sovereign, and in his name the decrees were
published.
The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor, although it
did not add to the power which he before possessed over his subjects, invested
him with a new and indefinite majesty. He was no longer the chief of a nation
of warriors, but the representative of the ancient Roman traditions and
civilization—the anointed head of western Christendom. The empire was to be a
consecrated state, with the same ruler in ecclesiastical as in civil affairs,
and this ruler directing all to the glory of God. In 802 an oath of allegiance
to Charles as emperor was required of those who had already sworn to him as
king; and whereas such oaths had not before been imposed among the Franks,
except on persons who held office or benefice under the crown, all males
above the age of twelve were now required to swear. The civil hierarchy in all
its grades corresponded to the ecclesiastical; and forthwith a new system of
commissioners (Missi Dominici) was set on foot. These were chosen partly
from the higher ecclesiastics and partly from the laity. They were to be men
superior to all suspicion, fear, or partiality; they were to make circuits for
the inspection of both secular and spiritual matters; they were to control the
local administrations; to take care of churches, of widows, orphans, and the
poor; to exercise a censorship of morals; to redress wrongs, or to refer to the
emperor such as were beyond their power; to see to the due execution of the laws
which were passed in the national assemblies. In spiritual as well as in
temporal affairs, the emperor was regarded as the highest judge, beyond whom no
appeal could be made; in authorizing the canons of Adrian’s collection, he
omitted that canon of Sardica which prescribed in
certain cases a reference to the bishop of Rome. While he cultivated friendly
relations with the popes, while he acknowledged them as the highest of bishops,
and often consulted them and acted on their suggestions, the authority by which
these were enforced on his subjects was his own; nor did the popes attempt to
interfere with the powers which he claimed. On the conquest of Italy, he
assumed the same control over the ecclesiastical affairs of that country which
he had been accustomed to exercise in his hereditary kingdom, and the popes
submitted to him as their lord and judge. Lofty titles and flattering language
were, indeed, often addressed by bishops and others of the Franks to the
successors of St. Peter; but the real amount of the authority which these
enjoyed during this period is to be measured by the facts of history, not by
the exaggerations of rhetorical or interested compliment.
CHAPTER VII.THE EASTERN CHURCH —CONTROVERSIES OF CHARLERMAGNE’S AGE,A.D. 775-814.
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