BOOK V. 

FROM THE DEATH OF CHARLEMAGNE TO THE DEPOSITION OF POPE GREGORY VI,  A.D. 814-1046.

 

CHAPTER I.

LOUIS THE PIOUS (A.D. 814-840).—END OF THE CONTROVERSY OF THE IMAGES (A.D. 813-842).THE FALSE DECRETALS  

 

 

THE great defect of Charlemagne’s system was, that it required a succession of such men as himself to carry it on. His actual successors were sadly unequal to sustain the mighty burden of the empire.

Feeling the approach of his end, Charlemagne, after having obtained the concurrence of the national diet, summoned his only surviving legitimate son, Louis, from Aquitaine to Aix-la-Chapelle, where, in the presence of a vast assemblage, he declared him his colleague and successor. He exhorted the prince as to the duties of sovereignty, and received from him a promise of obedience to his precepts. He then desired Lewis to advance to the high altar, on which an imperial crown was placed, to take the crown, and with his own hands to set it on his head—an act by which the emperor intended to assert that he and his posterity derived their title neither from coronation by the pope nor from the acclamations with which the ceremony in St. Peter’s had been hailed by the Romans, but immediately from God. After this inauguration, Lewis returned to the government of Aquitaine, but was soon again summoned to Aix-la-Chapelle, in consequence of his father’s death, which took place in January 814.

Lewis, at the time of his accession to the empire, was thirty-six years of age. In his infancy, he had been crowned by Pope Adrian as king of his native province, Aquitaine. He had for many years governed that country, and had earned a high character for the justice and the ability of his administration. He was brave, learned, and accomplished; kind-hearted, gentle, and deeply religious. But when from a subordinate royalty he was raised to the head of the empire, defects before unobserved began to appear in his character. His piety was largely tinctured with superstition; he had already thought it his duty to abjure the study of classic literature for such as was purely religious, and, but for his father’s prohibition, he would have become a monk like his great-uncle Carloman. He was without resolution or energy, wanting in knowledge of men, and ready to become the victim of intrigues.

In Aquitaine Lewis had been surrounded by a court of his own, and his old advisers continued to retain their authority with him. The chief of these was Benedict of Aniane, whose rigid virtue could not fail to be scandalized by the licentiousness which, after Charlemagne’s example, had increased in the imperial household during the last years of the late reign. This Lewis at once proceeded to reform by banishing from the court his sisters and their paramours, with other persons of notoriously light reputation. Nor were the statesmen who had been associated with Charlemagne spared. Among these the most important were three brothers, related to the royal family—Adelhard, Wala, and Bernard. Adelhard had in his youth left the court of Charlemagne in disgust at the divorce of the Lombard queen, and had entered the monastery of Corbie, of which he became abbot. In later years he had acquired a powerful influence over the great emperor; he had been the principal counsellor of his son Pipin in the government of Italy, and in conjunction with Wala he had advised Charlemagne to name Pipin’s son Bernard as heir of the empire, in preference to Lewis. Adelhard and the youngest brother were banished; Count Wala was compelled to become a monk in the abbey from which Adelhard was removed; and thus was laid the foundation of a lasting enmity between the men of the old and those of the new reign.

Leo III, dissatisfied (as it would seem) at the manner in which Lewis had received the crown, omitted to congratulate him on his accession, and did not exact from the Romans the usual oath of fidelity to the emperor. The feuds which had once before endangered this pope’s life broke out afresh shortly after the death of his protector. There were serious disorders and much bloodshed at Rome; and Leo took it on himself to punish some of his enemies with death—an act which Lewis regarded as an invasion of his own sovereignty. He therefore sent his nephew Bernard, king of Italy, to inquire into the matter on the spot; but the pope disarmed his indignation by submitting to give an explanation of his conduct. Leo died in 816. The wealth which he had at his disposal appears to have been enormous, and the papal librarian Anastasius fills many pages with an enumeration of the splendid gifts which it enabled him to bestow on his church.

The Romans hastily chose as his successor Stephen IV, who was consecrated without any application for the emperor’s consent. Stephen felt the necessity of apologizing for this irregularity, which he ascribed to the emergency of the time, when popular tumults were to be apprehended. He published a decree by which it was enacted that the consecration of future popes should be performed in the presence of imperial commissioners; and, after having made the citizens of Rome swear allegiance to Lewis, he himself went into France for the purpose of explanation and excuse—perhaps also to secure himself from the violence of the Roman factions. But the devout emperor did not wait for his submission. He met him at the distance of a mile from Reims; each dismounted from his horse, and Lewis thrice prostrated himself at the pope’s feet before venturing to embrace him. On the following Sunday, the pontiff placed on the head of Lewis a splendid crown which he had brought with him, and anointed both him and his empress Ermengarde. Anastasius tells us that the honour paid to the pope almost exceeded the power of language to describe: that he obtained from the emperor whatever he desired; that, after our Lord’s example of forgiveness, he pardoned all who in the time of Leo had been obliged to seek a refuge in France on account of offences against the church, and that they accompanied him on his return to Rome. On the death of Stephen in the beginning of the following year (817), Paschal was immediately chosen and consecrated as his successor. The new pope sent a legation to assure the emperor that he “had been forced rather than had leapt into” his see; and his apology was accepted.

Lewis was bent on effecting a reformation both in the church and in the state. By means of his missi he redressed many grievances which had grown up under his father’s government; and in councils held at Aix in 816 and 817, he passed a great number of regulations for the reform of the clergy and of the religious societies. The secular business in which bishops had been much employed by Charlemagne had not been without an effect on their character and on that of the inferior clergy, so that the condition of the church towards the end of the late reign had retrograded. The canons now passed testify to the existence of many abuses. Their general tone is strict; they aim at securing influence and respect for the clergy by cutting off their worldly pomp, and by enforcing attention to their spiritual duties. The canonical life is regulated by a code enlarged from that of Chrodegang. The acquisition of wealth by improper means is checked by an order that no bequest shall be accepted by churches or monasteries to the disinheriting of the testator’s kindred, and that no one shall be tonsured either as a monk or as a clergyman for the sake of obtaining his property. We find, however, complaints of the evils against which this canon was directed as well after its enactment as before. Another important canon ordered that every parish priest should have a mansus, or glebe; that both the glebe and his other property should be dis­charged from all but ecclesiastical service; and that when this provision should have been fulfilled, every parish, where there was a sufficient maintenance, should have a priest of its own. Benedict of Aniane was president of the assembly which was charged with the monastic reform. He recovered to their proper use many monasteries which had been alienated either to laymen or to secular clergy; and he obtained relief for many from the burdens of gifts to the crown and of military service,—burdens which had pressed so heavily on some of them that the remaining income had been insufficient even for food and clothing. The rule of St. Benedict was taken as the basis of the new reforms; but the canons are marked by a punctilious minuteness very unlike its original spirit.

These reforms were the work of the independent Frankish church, and were sanctioned by the supreme authority of the emperor, who exercised the same prerogative as his father in matters concerning religion.0

In the holy week of 817, as Lewis and his household were passing along a gallery which led from the palace to the church of Aix, the wooden pillars on which it rested gave way. The emperor suffered little hurt; but the accident suggested to his counsellors the possibility of his death, and the expediency of providing for that event. By their advice he proposed the subject to the national assembly, and obtained its consent to the association of his eldest son, Lothair, as his colleague in the empire; but this measure, which was intended for the preservation of peace, became the source of fatal divisions. The younger brothers, Pipin and Lewis, who held respectively a delegated sovereignty over Aquitaine and Germany, were discontented at finding themselves placed in a new relation of inferiority towards their senior, to whom they were bound to pay gifts, and without whose consent they were not at liberty to make war or peace, to receive ambassadors or to marry. But the elevation of Lothair was still more offensive to Bernard, son of the emperor’s elder brother Pipin by a concubine. Bernard had been appointed by Charlemagne to succeed his father in the kingdom of Italy. The defect of his birth was not regarded by the Franks as a bar to inheritance; as it had not prevented his receiving an inferior royalty, it did not disqualify him for succeeding his grandfather in the empire; and, as it was chiefly on the ground of maturer age that Lewis, the younger son of Charlemagne, had been preferred to the representative of the elder son, Bernard might have now expected on the same ground to be preferred to the children of Lewis. The king of Italy had hitherto endeavoured, by a ready submission and compliance with his uncle’s wishes in all things, to disarm the jealousy which the empress Ermengarde continually strove to instil into her husband’s mind. But he now yielded to the influence of the discontented party, of which Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, a Goth or Lombard by birth, and the bishops of Milan and Cremona, were the most active members, while Wala from his monastery zealously aided them by his counsels. The pope himself, Paschal, is said to have been implicated in their schemes. But the emperor and his partisans made demonstrations which showed that any attempt to subvert the government would be hopeless. Bernard repaired to Châlons on the Saone—decoyed, according to some writers, by the empress, under a promise of forgiveness and safety. He confessed to his uncle his guilty designs, and after a trial was sentenced to death. The sentence was compassionately changed by Lewis to the loss of eyesight; but, whether from the cruelty with which the operation was performed, or from grief and despair, the unhappy Bernard died within three days. Theodulf was deprived of his see, without any regard to his plea that, as having received the pall, he was subject to no jurisdiction except the pope’s. Lewis, now rendered suspicious of all his kindred, compelled three of his illegitimate brothers—of whom Drogo was afterwards creditably known as bishop of Metz—to be tonsured.

The empress Ermengarde, whose zeal for the interest of her sons had been a principal cause of the late troubles, died shortly after. Lewis in his sorrow was disposed to resign his crown and become a monk. But the ecclesiastics whom he consulted dissuaded him; the daughters of his nobles were assembled for his inspection, and he chose Judith, daughter of Welf I, count of Bavaria, to be the partner of his throne. The new empress is described as not only beautiful, but possessed of learning and accomplishments unusual in the ladies of that age; and her power over her husband was absolute.

In 821, on the marriage of Lothair, Theodulf, Wala, Adelhard, and the other accomplices of Bernard were forgiven—an act of grace which has been traced to the removal of Benedict by death from the emperor’s councils. But Lewis was still disturbed by the remembrance of the severities which had been exercised in his name; the alarms of his conscience were increased by some reverses, by earthquakes, and other portents; and at the diet of Attigny, in the following year, he appeared in the dress of a penitent. He lamented his own sins and the sins of his father. He expressed remorse for the death of Bernard—an act in which his only share had been that mitigation of the sentence which had been so unhappily frustrated in the execution. He entreated the forgiveness of Wala and Adelhard, who were present. He professed sorrow for his behaviour to Drogo and his brothers, and bestowed high ecclesiastical dignities on them by way of compensation. He gave large alms to monks, and entreated their prayers; and he issued a capitulary acknowledging his neglect of duty towards the church, and promising amendment of abuses. Wala was sent into Italy, to act as adviser to Lothair, who had obtained that kingdom on the death of Bernard.

On Easter-day 823, Lothair, who had gone to Rome on the invitation of Paschal, was there crowned by the pope as emperor. He had already been crowned by his father, at the time of his elevation to a share in the empire; but Paschal, by persuading him to accept this second coronation, as an ecclesiastical sanction of his authority, carried on a chain of policy which resulted in persuading the world that sovereignty was derived from the gift of St. Peter’s successors.

Soon after Lothair’s departure from the city, two high officers of the church, who were among the chief of the emperor’s Roman partisans, were decoyed into the Lateran palace, where—in punishment, as was believed, of their attachment to the Frank interest—they were blinded and afterwards beheaded. Lewis, on hearing of this affair, sent a count and an abbot to investigate it. The pope appeared before the commissioners, and, with thirty-four bishops and five other clergymen, swore that he had no share in the death of the victims. But he maintained that they had deserved it as traitors; and he refused to give up the murderers, on the ground that they had sought the protection of St. Peter and belonged to the apostle’s family. The commissioners, having no authority to use force, reported the circumstances to their master, and Paschal at the same time sent some envoys to offer explanations. The emperor did not pursue the matter further; but he resolved to place his relations with Rome on a more satisfactory footing.

An opportunity was soon furnished in consequence of Paschal’s death, which took place in May, 824. A severe contest arose for the papacy. Lothair again went to Rome, and asserted the Frankish sovereignty by acknowledging Eugenius II, the candidate who was supported by Wala’s influence, as the rightful successor of St. Peter. The young emperor complained of the late murder of his adherents. He inquired why the popes and the Roman judges were continually spoken against. He discovered that many pieces of land had been wrongfully seized by the popes (perhaps under the pretence that they were legacies to the church), and caused great joy by restoring them to the rightful owners. He settled that, according to ancient custom, imperial commissioners should visit Rome at certain times for the general administration of justice. He exacted of the Romans individually an oath of fealty to the empire, saving their faith to the pope. He enacted that no person should interfere with their right of electing a bishop; but he bound them by an engagement that they would not allow any one to be consecrated as pope until he should have sworn allegiance to the emperor in the presence of an imperial commissioner. Although this engagement was in the sequel sometimes neglected or evaded, the report of Lothair’s proceedings is evidence of the ideas which were then entertained as to the relations of the papacy and the empire. It was considered that the emperor was entitled to investigate elections to the Roman see, and to decide between the pretensions of candidates; and, while the pope was the immediate lord of Rome, his power was held under the emperor, to whom the supreme control of the administration belonged.

After four years of childless marriage, Judith in 823 gave birth to a son, Charles, afterwards known as the Bald. The jealousy of the emperor’s sons by Ermengarde was excited; they declared Charles to be the offspring of adultery, and charged Judith with bewitching their father. The empress, on her part, was bent on securing for her son an inheritance like that of his elder brothers, and in 829 he was created duke of Germany— probably in the vain hope that such a title would give less offence than the title of king. Lewis, under the influence of his wife, laboured to buy partisans for Charles by profuse gifts from the hereditary domains of his family and from the property of the church. On this account he had been bitterly attacked by Wala at a diet held in 828; and when his elder sons now broke out into rebellion, they were aided by a powerful party of the hierarchy, headed by Wala (who in 826 had succeeded Adelhard in the abbacy of Corbie), with the arch-chaplain Hilduin, abbot of St. Denys, Jesse, bishop of Amiens, and Elissachar, abbot of Centulles. Of the motives of these ecclesiastics it is difficult to judge. They may have honestly felt the dangers which threatened the empire from the system of partition which had been introduced; they may have been galled by the imperial control of ecclesiastical affairs, as well as by the invasions of church property. But the pretentions to superiority over the crown which now began to be asserted in their councils are startling, and the conduct by which they followed up their theories was utterly indefensible.

Judith was caught by the insurgents at Laon, and was pursued by the curses of the people into a convent at Poitiers, where she was compelled to take the veil. She was also forced to engage that she would use her influence over her husband to persuade him to enter a monastery. But the inclination which Lewis had formerly felt towards the monastic life was now mastered by his love for Judith and her son. He asked time for consideration; in spite of all opposition he contrived that the next national assembly should not be held in Gaul, where the population were generally disaffected to the Frankish rulers, but at Nimeguen, where he might hope to be supported by the kindred and friendly Germans; and the event answered his expectation. At Nimeguen the emperor found himself restored to power. Hilduin, who had ventured to transgress an order that the members of the diet and their followers should appear unarmed, was banished; and a like sentence was passed on Wala, with others of his party. Lothair (who had rebelled after having sworn to maintain the young Charles in his dukedom), with characteristic meanness, made his submission, abandoned his accomplices, and joined in giving judgment against them. Judith was brought forth from her convent, the pope having declared that her forced profession was null. She undertook to prove by ordeal her innocence of the witchcraft and adultery imputed to her, but, as no accuser appeared, she was allowed to purge herself by oath; and Bernard, count of Septimania, her supposed paramour, on offering to clear himself by the wager of battle, found no one to accept his challenge. Some of those who had been most hostile to Lewis in his distress were condemned to death; but, with his usual gentleness, he allowed them to escape with slighter punishments.

Again and again Judith’s eagerness for the interest of her own son, and the jealousy of the elder brothers, brought trouble on the unhappy Lewis, who seems to have fallen into a premature decay. A fresh insurrection took place in 832, in consequence of Charles’ advancement to the kingdom of Aquitaine. The pope, Gregory IV, who partly owed his dignity to the influence of Wala and Hilduin, crossed the Alps, and appeared in the camp of the rebels, where Wala and the other ecclesiastical chiefs of the party waited on him. Lewis was supported by many bishops, who, on a report that the pope meant to excommunicate them and the emperor, declared that, if he had come with such intentions, he himself should be deposed and excommunicated. An answer which Gregory issued, and which was probably written by Paschasius, one of Wala’s monks, had no effect; and he began to show uneasiness and discontent with the part which he had undertaken, when Wala and Paschasius reassured him by producing a collection of canons and decretals, which were intended to prove that the pope had the right to judge all causes, and could himself be judged by no man. It seems to have been at this time  that Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, sent forth two tracts—the one, a comparison between hierarchical and secular authority; the other, a defence of the rebel princes. In the first of these, he insists on the superiority of the ecclesiastical power; he utters many reproaches against the emperor, and exhorts him to submit to the pope. “If, indeed, pope Gregory had come without reason, and for the purpose of fighting, he would deserve to be opposed and driven back; but if he came for peace, he ought to be obeyed”. In the other pamphlet, Agobard charges Judith with gross and notorious profligacy; he justifies the proceedings of the emperor’s sons; and, as a precedent for the part taken by himself and his brethren, he alleges the opposition which the priests and prophets of Israel offered to Jezebel and Athaliah. He tells the emperor that Samson, for his love to an unchaste and unbelieving woman, lost his eyes and his judgeship; he exhorts him, since he has thus far been like Samson in the loss of his power, to study that, like him, he may escape the forfeit of his eternal portion by humbly and patiently submitting to his lot.

On St. John Baptist’s day (833), the two armies encamped opposite to each other near Colmar. Gregory paid a visit to the emperor, who received him without the usual marks of respect but they afterwards exchanged presents, and the pope continued to pass from the one camp to the other. Arguments, threats, money, and other inducements were employed to influence the adherents of Lewis; and, on the morning of St. Peter and St. Paul’s day, he found that all but a handful of his men had deserted him during the night. On discovering his forlorn condition, he professed himself unwilling to be the cause of bloodshed; he advised those of his followers who could expect no mercy from the rebels to save themselves by flight, desired the others to follow the example of the majority, and gave himself up as a prisoner to his sons. The pope is said to have returned to Italy in deep grief and shame on account of his share in these transactions, while the popular feeling with respect to them was shown by the name given to the scene where they took place— Lugenfeld,  “the Field of Lies”.

Judith, for whose safety in life and limb the successful rebels had pledged themselves by oath, was sent across the Alps to Tortona, while Charles was shut up in the abbey of Prüm, and Lewis was led about as a captive by his eldest son. But Lothair and his advisers soon became aware that a general feeling of pity was rising in favour of the unfortunate emperor; and they resolved to defeat it by an act which was intended to disqualify him for reigning. At a diet held at Compiègne, a bishop (probably Agobard) begged Lothair’s permission that a representation should be made to Lewis of the misdeeds by which he had lowered the empire of the great Charles. There was little show of opposition to the proposal; Lewis in his captivity was importuned to become a monk by a number of bishops, among whom Thegan tells us that the most active were some of servile or barbaric birth,—above all, shameless and most cruel, Ebbo of Reims, who had turned against the emperor at the Field of Lies; and, as their solicitations were in vain, they resolved to proceed by other means. In an indictment of eight heads, drawn up with much iteration, and partly relating to offences for which he had already done penance at Attigny, he was charged with acts of violence towards his kinsmen—the death of Bernard, the tonsuring of Drogo and his brothers; with frequent breach of oaths, especially as to the partition of the empire; with having violated the rest of holy seasons by military expeditions and by holding courts or diets; with outrages and injustice against many of his subjects; with having caused waste of life and an infinite amount of misery through the calamities of war. The bishops assumed the right of judging the emperor. They condemned him in his absence, declared him to be deprived of earthly power, and, in order to prevent the loss of his soul, they sentenced him to do penance before the relics of St. Medard and St. Sabinian at Soissons. He was strictly guarded in a cell until the day appointed for the ceremony, when he was led forth, not as a sovereign, but as a sinful Christian desirous of showing penitence for his offences. Lothair was present, with a large body of bishops and clergy, and the cathedral was filled by a crowd of spectators. The emperor, clothed in sackcloth, prostrated himself before the altar; he acknowledged that he had been guilty of misgovernment, offensive to God, scandalous to the church, and disastrous to his people; and he professed a wish to do penance, that he might obtain absolution for his misdeeds. The bishops told him that a sincere confession would be followed by forgiveness, and exhorted him that he should not, as on the former occasion, attempt to hide any part of his sin. The list of charges against him was put into his hands; with a profusion of tears he owned himself guilty of all; and he gave up the document, to be placed on the altar as a record of his repentance. He then laid down his sword and his military belt; he was stripped of the secular dress which he had worn under his sackcloth; and after these acts it was pretended that, according to the ancient canons, he was incapable of returning to the exercise of arms or of sovereign power. 6 Every bishop who had been concerned in the affair drew up a memoir of it, which he gave into the hands of Lothair.

But the projectors of this humiliation were mistaken in their hopes. Compassion for the emperor and indignation against those who had outraged him under the pretence of religion were almost universal. His younger sons, Pipin and Lewis, took his part, and Lothair, alarmed by the tokens of the general feeling, hastily withdrew from St. Denys, leaving his father at liberty. Friends speedily gathered around Lewis; he was advised to resume his military ornaments, but refused to do so unless with the formal sanction of the church. He was therefore solemnly reconciled in the abbey of St. Denys; his belt and sword were restored to him by some of the same bishops who had been concerned in his degradation; it was declared that a penitent who had laid down his belt might resume it on the expiration of his penance; and the popular joy at the emperor’s restoration drew encouragement from a sudden change of the weather, which had long been boisterous and ungenial.

In February 835 a council was held at Thionville, where eight archbishops and thirty-three bishops condemned their brethren who had shared in the proceedings at Compiègne and Soissons. Among these delinquents the most noted was Ebbo, a man of servile birth, who had been foster-brother of Lewis, and like other low-born clerks, had been promoted by him with a view of counterbalancing the aristocratic prelates who aimed at independence of the crown. Ebbo was a man of learning, and had labored as a missionary among the northern tribes; but his behaviour towards his benefactor had been conspicuously ungrateful. His treason had been rewarded by Lothair with a rich abbey, and, when the cause of Lewis again became triumphant, he had fled, with all the wealth that he could collect, in the hope of finding a refuge among the Northmen. He was, however, overtaken, and, after having for some time been detained in the monastery of Fulda, he was compelled to ascend the pulpit of a church at Metz, where, in the presence of Lewis, and of the assembled bishops, clergy, and laity, he acknowledged that all the late proceedings against the emperor were unjust and sinful. At Thionville he wrote and subscribed a profession of his own unworthiness; he was deposed from his see, and remained in monastic custody or in exile until the death of Lewis. Other bishops who had taken part against the emperor were gently treated on confessing their guilt, while Agobard, who did not appear, was condemned for his contumacy.

Lothair was deprived of the imperial title, and was confined to the kingdom of Italy. But Judith afterwards found it expedient to make overtures to him, and a partition—the last of the partitions which attest the difficulties and the weakness of Lewis—was made in 839, by which Pipin, the emperor’s grandson, was to be excluded from inheriting his father’s kingdom of Aquitaine; and, with the exception of Bavaria, which was left to the younger Lewis, the whole empire was to be shared between Lothair and Charles. To the last the reign of Lewis was distracted by the enmities of his sons, who had alike cast away all filial and all brotherly regards. He died on the 20th of June 840, in an island of the Rhine opposite Ingelheim, when engaged in an expedition against his son Lewis of Germany. On his death-bed he received the consolations of religion from his illegitimate brother Drogo, bishop of Metz. His last words, “Out! Out!” were interpreted as an adjuration commanding the evil spirit to depart.

During the earlier years of this reign, the fame of Charlemagne continued to invest the empire with dignity in the eyes of foreign nations, and Lewis himself carried on successful war in various directions. But the dissensions of the Franks afterwards exposed them to enemies from without. The Northmen, whose first appearances on the coast had filled the mind of Charlemagne with gloomy forebodings, advanced up the Scheld in 82o. In 835, they burnt the great trading city of Dorstadt, with its fifty-four churches; and their ravages were felt on the banks of the Loire and elsewhere. To the south, the Saracens were a no less formidable foe; in 838 they plundered Marseilles, and carried off its monks and clergy as prisoners. And on the east, the Slavonic nations had taken advantage of the Frankish contests to make inroads on the imperial territory. The dangers which thus threatened the empire on various sides became yet more serious under the successors of Lewis.

Although the decision of the second Nicene council had been established as law in the eastern empire, the conformity to it which was enforced was in many cases insincere. A considerable party among the bishops and clergy was opposed to the worship of images; and in the army, the enthusiasm with which the memory of the martial iconoclastic emperors was cherished was usually accompanied by an attachment to their opinions.

Leo V, the Armenian, who in 813 became emperor by the deposition of Michael Rhangabé, was, by the influence both of his early training and of his military associations, opposed to the worship of images. His enemies speak of him by the name of Chameleon, on account of the insincere and changeable character which they impute to him; but even they allow that he was a man of unusual energy, and of abilities which fitted him to sustain the declining empire. The patriarch Nicephorus—not (it would seem) from suspicion, but merely in compliance with custom—required him on his elevation to subscribe a profession of faith; but Leo desired that the matter should be deferred until after his coronation, and, when the application was then renewed, he refused.

Like other adventurers who rose to the possession of empire (and probably like a far greater number in whom the promise was not fulfilled), Leo had in early life been told that he was destined to become emperor. Hence he derived an inclination to believe in prophecies; and a monk who by a rare exception to the feeling of his class, was adverse to the cause of images, now assured him of a long and glorious reign if he would suppress the worship of them, while he threatened him with calamity in case of his acting otherwise. The words produced their effect on Leo; and he was further influenced by a comparison between the prosperous reigns of the iconoclastic emperors and the misfortunes of those who had followed an opposite policy. He resolved to take the Isaurian Leo and his son for his examples; but, before proceeding to action, he wished to assure himself as to the grounds of his cause. He therefore desired Antony, bishop of Sylaeum in Pamphylia, John the Grammarian, and other ecclesiastics, to abridge for his information the acts of Constantine’s iconoclastic synod, and to collect authorities from the fathers against the adoration of images. He then opened the matter to Nicephorus, urging that the disasters of the empire were popularly ascribed to the worship of images—an assertion which ought perhaps to be taken as representing the feeling of the soldiery alone; and he proposed that such as were placed low m and within reach should be removed. The patriarch refused his consent; on which the emperor asked him to produce any scriptural warrant in favour of images. Nicephorus replied that the worship of these, like many other unwritten things, was matter of apostolical tradition, and had been taught to the church by the Holy Ghost; that it would be as reasonable to ask for scriptural proof in favour of reverencing the cross or the gospels. And on being desired to argue the question with Antony and John, or to refute the authorities which they had produced against his views, he declined, on the ground that he must have nothing to do with heretics.

Nicephorus and his partisans—clergy, monks, and laity—now held nightly meetings in the cathedral, where they engaged in prayer for the frustration of the emperor’s designs, and bound themselves to stand by the cause of images even to the death. On hearing of these assemblies, Leo in the dead of night sent for the patriarch, and the question was discussed at great length. Nicephorus repeated his declaration as to the unlawfulness of holding conference with heretics, and after a time asked leave to introduce his friends, who had accompanied him to the palace, and during his conference with the emperor had been waiting without the gates. Of these the most prominent was Theodore, a priest, and abbot of a monastery in the capital, which had been founded by Studius, a noble Roman, and was better known by a name derived from his than by that of its patron, St. John the Baptist. Theodore was a nephew of the abbot Plato, who had excommunicated Constantine VI, on account of his second marriage, and had vehemently opposed Tarasius for his compliance with the emperor’s will in that affair. Theodore himself had taken part with his uncle; he had endured exile and other severities in punishment of his contumacy, and had incurred fresh penalties under the reign of Nicephorus, when some questions connected with Constantine’s marriage were revived. Under his care, the Studite community had increased the number of its members from about twelve to nearly a thousand; the strictness of its discipline had acquired for it an eminence above all other Greek monasteries; and the abbot’s character and sufferings had won for him an influence which made him important even in the eyes of the sovereign. Theodore took up the cause of images with all his characteristic zeal. There were, indeed, among its partisans some extravagances so violent that he felt himself obliged to reject and censure them; but he himself went so far as to eulogize a high official for employing an image as sponsor for a child. He held that images were not for the unlearned only, but were necessary for the most advanced Christian; that a reverence for them was necessary in order to a right faith in the Incarnation. If images were suppressed, he said, “our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain”.

On being admitted into the emperor’s presence, Theodore entered on the subject of images with great vehemence. He reproached Leo for innovating in matters of religion, and reminded him of the fate which had befallen emperors who had been enemies of the faith. The Old Testament prohibitions of images, he said, are abolished by the incarnation : if the law of Moses were to be regarded, how is it that we worship the cross, which the law speaks of as accursed?—and he urged the other usual topics of his party. The emperor told him that his insolence was notorious, but that, if he wished for the glory of martyrdom, he would be disappointed. Theodore rejoined that the imperial power was limited to external matters; that, according to St. Paul, God had “set in the church first apostles, then prophets, and afterwards teachers”, but that nothing was said of emperors; that the emperor was bound to obey in matters of religion, and not to usurp the office of others. “Do you exclude me from the church?” asked Leo. “It is not I”, the monk replied, “but the apostle; nay rather, it is you who by your deeds have excluded yourself”. The emperor desired that Antony of Sylaeum might be released from the excommunication which Nicephorus had pronounced against him; but this was refused, and at length Leo in anger dismissed the patriarch and his party. On leaving the palace Theodore was enthusiastically kissed by his companions, and was greeted with demonstrations of the warmest admiration on account of the stand which he had made.

Leo now desired the friends of images to give up their meetings, to remain quietly at home, and to refrain from discussing the subjects which were in question; and he required them to bind themselves by a written promise of obedience. Some complied; but before Nicephorus had signified his intentions, Theodore sent forth a violent circular addressed to all the monks of the empire, censuring the patriarch for his neglect to take more decided measures against the emperor; and threatening with eternal punishment all who should desert the cause of images. He kept up a lively agitation by means of letters, visits, and conversations, and vehemently asserted the cause of images, in verse as well as in prose. The chief of his productions are three tracts which bear the title of Antirrhetics—the first two in the form of dialogue between an orthodox man and a heretic; the third, consisting of the iconoclastic objections with a triumphant answer to each of them.

The emperor’s opposition to images was not extreme. He did not wish to destroy them, or even to remove Such as might be retained without superstition; nor did he desire to disturb the convictions of those who were attached to them, if they would consent to extend a like toleration to others. But the vehemence of Theodore and his party, who regarded the worship of images as an inseparable consequence of a right faith in the incarnation, provoked Leo to measures of great severity. The soldiery, without waiting for a legal warrant (yet perhaps incited by the emperor, as his enemies asserted), broke out into tumult, and rushed to the brazen gate, where the image of “the Surety”, so famous in an earlier stage of the controversy, had been reinstated by Irene. They uttered much abusive language, and pelted the figure with dirt and stones; whereupon the emperor removed it, under the pretence of rescuing it from such indignities, and issued a commission for taking down images in general, wherever it could be done with safety. Images were broken, burnt, or bedaubed with clay and filth. Many refractory bishops, abbots, and others, were ejected and banished; among the sufferers was the chronicler Theophanes, who died in the island of Samothrace.

At Christmas 814, the emperor went in state to St. Sophia’s, having previously satisfied Nicephorus that no disorder was to be apprehended by drawing a picture from his bosom and kissing it. He advanced to the altar, and kissed the altar-cloth, which was embroidered with a representation of the Saviour’s nativity. But when, in the course of the service, a denunciation of idolatry was read from Isaiah, one of the clergy stepped forth, and, addressing the emperor, told him that God, by the prophet’s words, commanded him to proceed firmly in his measures for the suppression of image-worship.

Nicephorus fell seriously ill, and it was hoped that his death would spare the emperor the necessity of proceeding against him. But he recovered, and, as all attempts to treat with him were fruitless, he was deprived, and was shut up in a monastery, where he lived fourteen years longer. John the Grammarian was proposed as his successor, but was rejected as wanting in birth and in age; and the Patriarchate was bestowed on Theodotus Cassiteras, a layman connected with the family of the Isaurian emperors, and the supposed prompter of the monk by whose prophecies Leo had been induced to attempt the suppression of image-worship. Theodotus, who is described by his opponents as “a man without reason, more dumb than the fishes, and ignorant of everything but impiety”, gave great offence to the monastic party by his free and secular habits of life. He assembled a synod, which confirmed the judgments of the iconoclastic council of 754, and annulled those of the second Nicene council. The most eminent abbots had been summoned to take part in the assembly; but Theodore in their name sent a refusal in his usual vehement strain, condemning all who should attend, and declaring that he would not share in or regard any measures which might be taken without the consent of the lawful patriarch Nicephorus. In defiance of the imperial order against the public exhibition of images, he caused his monks on Palm Sunday to carry in solemn procession all those which belonged to the monastery, and to chant a hymn which began with the words, “We adore thine undefiled image”.

The emperor, greatly provoked by this daring contumacy, sent Theodore into banishment, where he remained for seven years. He was removed from one place to another; he was often cruelly scourged, even to the danger of his life; his wounds were undressed, nor, when he fell seriously ill, could he obtain any attendance or relief; he suffered from want of food; he was imprisoned for three years in a loathsome subterranean dungeon, and was often threatened with death. But his resolution rose with the severity of his treatment. He declared that he would bear whatever might be inflicted on him, but that nothing should reduce him to silence. He found means of writing and of circulating letters which sustained the determination of his party; he denounced the emperor as a Pharaoh and a Nebuchadnezzar, an enemy of the Saviour and of His virgin mother; and the increased punishment which he drew on himself by each offence served only to stimulate him to greater violence. He wrote to the bishop of Rome, to the three eastern patriarchs, and to the heads of some important monasteries, representing the oppressions of the church in the most moving terms, and earnestly praying for sympathy.

Paschal, who had just been raised to the papacy, refused to admit the imperial envoys into Rome, sent legates to intercede with Leo for the friends of images, and, in token of the interest which he took in them, built a monastery for Greek refugees, to whom he assigned the new church of St. Praxedis for the performance of service in their own language. The clergy of the party sought ordination in Italy; the laity, instigated by Theodore’s teaching, refused religious offices at the hands of the iconoclastic clergy. Leo was more and more exasperated. The worshippers of images were scourged, banished, mutilated, blinded, or put to death; it was ordered that all pictures should be whitewashed, or taken down and burnt; spies were employed to discover all who possessed images or books in defence of them, all who should venture to shelter a fugitive or to relieve a prisoner of the party. All hymns in honour of images were expunged from the liturgy, and care was taken to instil an abhorrence of images into children by means of their school-books

Michael the Stammerer, a general to whom Leo had been indebted for his throne, at length became discontented, and was convicted, by his own confession, of treasonable designs, on the eve of Christmas 820. He was condemned to death, and Leo would have ordered the execution of the sentence to take place immediately, but for the intercession of his empress, who entreated him to defer it until after the festival. The emperor agreed, but, with a melancholy foreboding, told her that her pious scruples would cost her and her children dear. Michael was confined in the palace, and Leo, anxious to assure himself, went in the middle of the night to look whether the prisoner were safe. He found both him and the officer who guarded him asleep; but the keeper had resigned his bed to the criminal, and was lying on the floor. A slave, who was in the room unobserved, had recognized the emperor by his purple buskins, and on his withdrawal aroused the sleepers. The officer, knowing that the indulgence which he had shown to the prisoner must render himself suspected as an accomplice, concerted with Michael a plan for instant action. Under pretence that a confessor was required, he introduced into the palace one of Michael’s partisans, who, on going out, communicated with others. It was the custom to celebrate the earliest service of Christmas-day at three o'clock in the morning; the ivory gate of the palace was open to admit the clergy and singers, and among them a band of disguised conspirators entered. These attacked the chief chaplain, supposing him to be the emperor, who usually led the psalmody on such occasions; but the priest escaped by uncovering his tonsured head. They then fell on Leo, who for a time defended himself by swinging the chain of a censer, and afterwards, seizing a large cross from the altar, dealt heavy blows around him, until a conspirator of gigantic size disabled him by a stroke which cut off his right hand. On this, the emperor was immediately dispatched; his head was cut off, and his body was dragged into the circus. Michael, before a smith could be found to release him from his chains, was hastily enthroned, and on the same day he was crowned in the church of St. Sophia.

The friends of images now flattered themselves that Leo’s policy would be reversed. The deposed patriarch Nicephorus wrote to request that the emperor would restore the images; while Theodore the Studite warmly congratulated Michael on his accession, and celebrated the murder of Leo with ferocious exultation. “It was right”, he said, “that the apostate should thus end his life. It was fitting that in the night death should overtake the son of darkness. It was fitting that he who had desolated the temples of God should see swords bared against himself in God’s temple. It was fitting that he should find no shelter from the altar who had destroyed the altar itself, and that that hand should be cut off which had been stretched forth against the holy things. It was fitting that a sword should pierce through the throat which had vomited forth blasphemies”. After exercising his rhetoric in this style through other points of congruity, Theodore adds, in words which it is possible that he may have himself believed—“I do not mock at the manner of his death, as rejoicing in the fate of the impious man, but I speak in sorrow and with tears. It is because, as He hath said who cannot lie, that wicked man hath been miserably destroyed”; and he goes on to express his hope “that a new Josiah or Jovian may arise for the restoration of images and of religion”.

Michael recalled those who had been banished for their attachment to images, and the return of Theodore was celebrated by a sort of public triumph. But the hopes which had been rashly entertained were soon disappointed. The emperor, a Phrygian by birth, was a rude soldier; it is said that he could hardly read. His enemies assert that his highest accomplishments consisted in a knowledge of horses, asses, and pigs; and to this it is added, that in early life he had been connected with a strange sect which mixed up Jewish tenets with those of the Athinggani and Paulicians—that he still retained its errors, that he denied our Lord’s resurrection and the existence of the devil. The joy of the monastic party was effectually checked when the noted iconomachist Antony of Sylaeum was raised in 821 to the patriarchate of Constantinople. Michael declared that he himself had never worshipped any imaged he forbade all changes in religion, and all preaching on either side of the question. Both the friends and the opponents of images were to enjoy full liberty of opinion; but no public worship of images was to be allowed in the capital. Thus Theodore and his friends found that, instead of the ascendency which they had expected, they were only to enjoy toleration—and that of a kind which was equal only in name, inasmuch as, while the opposite party lost nothing, the devotees of images were restrained from the open exercise of the worship which they regarded as essential. They once more refused to confer with their opponents, on the ground that it was unlawful to do so. Theodore repeated to Michael the declaration which he had made to Leo, that earthly princes have no right to intermeddle with matters of religion. He desired the emperor to restore Nicephorus to the patriarchal throne, or, if he felt any doubt or distrust, to follow the tradition of the fathers by referring the matter to the bishop of Rome, as the inheritor of the Saviour’s promise to St. Peter. He met Michael’s endeavours at a reconciliation between the parties by labouring to separate the church from the state. He wrote to Marina, the divorced wife of Constantine VI, whose daughter Michael had taken from a convent to become his second wife, charging her to leave the palace and her daughter’s company, because the sword spoken of in the Gospel was now come to set the nearest kindred at variance among themselves. Michael was provoked by the intractable behaviour of Theodore and his followers to abandon his principle of toleration, and to employ harsh measures against them. The Studite was once more banished, and died in exile at the age of sixty-nine.

As the adherents of images relied much on the support of Rome, the emperor in 824 sent a legation to pope Paschal, with a view of endeavouring to dissuade him from harbouring refugees of the party. At the same time, he sent ambassadors to Lewis the Pious, with a letter in which he announced his accession, and his late victory over a rival named Thomas, who had pretended to be the deposed Constantine, and for three years had contested the possession of the empire. In this letter Michael clears his faith and his conduct in ecclesiastical matters from misrepresentations which had reached the west; he entreats the Frank emperor to aid him by the influence which, as lord of Rome, he could exercise over the pope, and in justification of his proceedings he gives some curious statements of the excess to which the superstition as to images was carried. The cross was turned out of churches, and images were substituted for it; lights and incense were offered to them, hymns and prayers were addressed to them. They were employed as sponsors for children; and novices entering into the monastic state, instead of asking religious persons to receive their hair when cut off, allowed it to fall into the lap of images. Some of the clergy, in contempt of the public churches, celebrated the Eucharist in houses, using pictures for altars. Some scraped off the colors of images, mixed them with the sacramental elements, and administered the mixture to communicants ; while others placed the consecrated bread in the hands of images, and from these the communicants received it. The effect of this embassy fell short of Michael’s expectation; but we shall see that it was not unimportant in the history of the western church.

Michael was succeeded in 829 by his son Theophilus. The young emperor had been carefully educated under John the Grammarian. He was a friend of literature, arts, and science; he composed hymns and church-music, and himself led the choir in divine serviced. He prided himself on a strict administration of justice, which sometimes became an absurd or cruel pedantry; and his attempts in war against the Saracens resulted in fruitless displays of courage and waste of blood, which gained for him the epithet of “the Unlucky”. From the lessons of John he had derived a strong abhorrence of images, and he carried out his views with relentless determination.

The first measure of Theophilus against images was an order, issued on the occasion of a general taxation, that the opinions of every person on the question should be ascertained. He then, in 832, commanded that images should not be reverenced in any way, and that they should not be styled holy, forasmuch as God alone is holy. In the same year, on the death of Antony, he bestowed the patriarchate on his tutor, John, who soon after held a synod at which the decrees of the second Nicene council were condemned. The emperor then ordered that pictures of animals and other common subjects should be substituted in churches for those of a religious kind; and he proceeded with great severity to enforce obedience. A general burning of religious pictures and statues took place. Many of the party devoted to images were imprisoned or banished. Monasteries were to be applied to secular uses; monks were forbidden to wear their habit; such of them as had lived in rural convents were not to be admitted into towns; and those who painted images were especially forbidden to exercise their art. The zealous party among the monks, on their side, were as resolute as the emperor. Many of them went to him, and told him to his face that he was accursed for interfering with a worship which was derived from St. Luke, from the apostles, and from the Saviour himself. A monastic artist named Lazarus persisted in painting, notwithstanding repeated admonitions. He was cruelly beaten; but as soon as he had recovered in some degree, he boldly resumed his occupation. For this defiance of the law, he was again arrested; by way of disabling him, his hands were seared with hot plates of iron; and it was with difficulty that his life was saved through the intercession of the empress Theodora. Yet no suffering or danger could subdue the zealous painter, who, on being set at liberty, took refuge in a church of St. John the Baptist, and there produced a picture which speedily acquired the reputation of miraculous power. Two other monks, the poet Theophanes and his brother Theodore, were summoned to the emperor’s presence. Theophilus, who was fond of displaying his learning and ability in disputation, was provoked at finding that the monks did not yield with the same facility to which he had been accustomed in his courtiers. He ordered that each of them should receive two hundred lashes, and should afterwards be branded on the forehead with twelve iambic verses of the emperor’s own composition : “If the lines are bad”, he said, “they deserve no better”. Yet, notwithstanding these and many other severities, it does not appear that any persons suffered death in this reign on account of an attachment to images.

But within the emperor’s immediate circle the worship of images was secretly practiced. In the beginning of his reign, his stepmother, Euphrosyne, the daughter of Constantine VI by his Armenian empress, had caused the noblest maidens of the empire to be assembled in order that Theophilus might select a consort from among them. Struck with the beauty of Icasia, he was about to bestow on her the golden apple, which was the symbol of his choice, when he paused for a moment, and said, as if unconsciously uttering his thought—“Of how much evil have women been the cause!”. Icasia at once answered the reference to Eve with an allusion to the Redemption—“Yes; and of how much greater good!”. But the emperor took alarm at this excessive readiness of repartee; he gave the apple to Theodora, a candidate of less brilliant and more domestic character; and Icasia sought consolation in founding a monastery, where she lived for the cultivation of learning. Theodora had been brought up in the worship of images. Her mother, who was devoted to them, secretly kept a number of them, and, when the emperor’s children visited her, she used to bring forth the images, and offer them to be kissed. Theophilus, by questioning the children, discovered that their grandmother was in the habit of amusing them with figures which they regarded as dolls. He strictly forbade them to visit her again, and she had difficulty in escaping punishment, although she continued to reprove the emperor very freely for his measures. Theodora herself was detected in paying reverence to images by a dwarf, who was kept about the court as a jester. On hearing his tale, Theophilus rushed in a fury to the empress’s apartment; but the images were not to be found, and the dwarf was silenced for the future by a whipping.

Theophilus died in January 842. Fearing, in his last sickness, for the empire which he was about to leave to women and young children, he endeavoured to secure it by the death of his brother-in-law Theophobus, a descendant of the Persian kings, who had distinguished himself by military services. The head of Theophobus was cut off in prison, and was carried to the emperor; and with his hand on it he expired.

It is said that Theophilus, with a view to the continuance of his own ecclesiastical policy, had bound Theodora and the senate by oath to make no change as to religion. The guardians of his son Michael, however, were either favourable to images or capable of being gained to the cause. The only seeming exception was Manuel, uncle of the empress. But in a dangerous sickness he was visited by some Studite monks, who promised him life if he would swear to undertake the restoration of images : and Manuel, on his recovery, joined with the other ministers in laying the subject before Theodora, who replied that her own wishes had long been in the same direction, but that she had felt herself restrained by her engagements to Theophilus. The revolution was speedily begun. The patriarch John was ejected, not without personal violence, and Methodius, who had been a confessor under the last reign, was put into his place. A synod, to which those who were known as resolute iconomachists were not invited, pronounced in favour of images; but the empress still hesitated, and entreated the assembled clergy to intercede for the forgiveness of her husband’s sins. Methodius replied that they could only intercede for those who were yet on earth; that, if Theophilus had died in his error, his case was beyond the power of the church. Thus urged, Theodora ventured on the fiction (which she is said to have even confirmed with an oath) that the emperor, before his death, had expressed repentance for his measures; that he had asked for some images, and had kissed them with ardent devotion; whereupon the patriarch assured her that, if it were so, he would answer for her husband’s salvation. There was now no further hindrance to the restoration of images. Those of the capital were reestablished with great solemnity on the first Sunday in Lent—a day which was styled the Feast of Orthodoxy, and has ever since been celebrated by the Greeks under that name, although with a wider application of the term. The bodies of Nicephorus, Theodore the Studite, and other friends of images who had died in exile, were translated to the capital. The sees were filled with members of the triumphant party, and among them was the branded monk Theophanes, who obtained the bishopric of Nicaea. The empress, at a banquet, expressed to him her regret for the cruelty with which her husband had treated him. “Yes”, said Theophanes, “for this I will call him to account at the righteous judgment-seat of God!”. Theodora was struck with horror; but the patriarch Methodius reassured her by blaming the vehemence of his brother, and by repeating his declaration that Theophilus was safe.

The worship of images—although only in the form of painting, not of sculpture—has ever since been retained by the Greeks. The opposition to it had not proceeded from the people, but from the will of the emperors; and when the imperial authority was steadily exerted in favour of images, the iconomachist party became, not indeed immediately, but within no long time, extinct.

The opinion of the Frankish church as to images had continued in accordance with the council of Frankfort, when the embassy from the Greek emperor Michael, in 824, led to a fresh examination of the question. Lewis had such confidence in the correctness of the Frankish view as to hope that, if care were taken to avoid all cause of irritation, even the pope himself might be brought to agree in it. He therefore, after having received the Greek ambassadors, sent some envoys of his own to Rome in their company, with a request that Eugenius, who had just succeeded Paschal, would allow the clergy of Gaul to collect the opinions of the fathers on the subject. Having, by this show of deference to the pope, guarded against offence in the outset, Lewis summoned an assembly which met at Paris in 825. The bishops drew up a collection of authorities, which they forwarded to the emperor, with a letter in which they censure both the extreme parties among the Greeks. They distinguish, as the Caroline Books had done, between paying reverence to the cross and to images, and declare the opinion of the fathers to be, that images are not to be worshipped or adored, but are to be used for loving remembrance of the originals. They strongly censure Pope Adrian’s manner of answering the Caroline Books; but they charitably suggest that his reference to his predecessor Gregory the Great, in behalf of opinions widely different from those which that father really held, proves his error to have been not wilful, but committed in ignorance. They congratulate Lewis on the prospect which the Greek application affords him of being able to mediate between the opposite parties, to convince the pope himself, and to bring both to an agreement in the truth. They send him a sketch of a letter to the pope, drawn up with an extreme anxiety to avoid all risk of a collision. In this document the emperor is made to extol the position and authority of the supreme pontiff, the universal pope, as having the means of reconciling the intolerant factions of the Greeks; he will not presume to dictate, but only ventures on suggestions; he speaks of the assembly of Paris as not a synod, but merely a conference of his friends, the children of the apostolic father. The bishops even go so far as to annex a letter which they suggest that the pope himself might subscribe and send to Constantinople—forbidding all superstitions as to images on the one hand, and all acts of contempt or outrage against them on the other.

Two bishops, Jeremy of Sens and Jonas of Orleans, were sent by Lewis to Rome, with a letter entirely different from the draft which the council had supplied. The emperor requests Eugenius to mediate between the friends and the enemies of images, and offers that his own envoys may accompany those whom the pope should send to Constantinople. The instructions given to Jeremy and Jonas direct them to deal very carefully with the pope. They are not to show him any parts of the documents drawn up at Paris which might be distasteful to him; they are to avoid everything which might possibly jar on the characteristic obstinacy of the Romans, and thus might provoke him to some irrevocable act; they are to present the matter to him in such a way that, instead of supposing the truth to be forced on him, and thence conceiving a prejudice against it, he may imagine it to be his own discovery.

The result of this mission is but imperfectly known. It did not induce the Romans to abandon their former views; yet Eugenius made no such demonstration against Lewis as his predecessors had made against the eastern emperors; nor did he even attempt to answer him, as Adrian had answered Charlemagne. The envoys whom Lewis sent to the east were well received there, and, as Michael was himself no violent iconoclast, it seems probable that the two imperial courts agreed as to the question of images. But the Franks were soon after engrossed by domestic troubles, which may sufficiently account for the absence of any later communication with the Greeks on the subject of this controversy.

There were, however, some members of the Frankish church who carried their opposition to images beyond the views which had been sanctioned by the councils of Frankfort and Paris. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, whose share in the political movements of his time has been noticed in the earlier part of this chapter, distinguished himself more creditably by his opposition to prevailing, superstitions—as to ordeals, to the expectation of miraculous cures, to the excess of reverence lavished on the tombs of saints, to the belief that storms, diseases of cattle, and other rural troubles were caused by magical art. Among his tracts is one Of the Images of Saints, in which —provoked, as it would seem, by the eastern emperor’s report as to the extravagant superstition of the Greeks—he appears altogether to disallow the use of such representations. He quotes largely from older writers, especially from St. Augustine, and shows that the early church had employed images for remembrance only, and not for any religious purpose. In answer to a plea frequently advanced by the advocates of images, he maintains that visible things, even although good in themselves, instead of aiding towards the contemplation of things unseen and spiritual, often act as a hindrance to it. An image, he says, represents the body only; if men were to be worshipped at all, such honour ought rather to be paid to them while alive, and complete in the union of body and soul. He who adores a picture or an image pays his worship not to God, to angels, or to saints, but to the image itself; to think otherwise is to yield to a delusion of the devil, who aims at the restoration of idolatry. Nor is it less absurd to expect good from religious pictures than it would be to think of recruiting an army with painted soldiers, or to look for the fruits of the earth from a picture of the harvest or of the vintage.

It does not appear that Agobard incurred any censure on account of his opinions as to images; but one of his contemporaries, Claudius of Turin (who, indeed, took up the subject somewhat earlier), by a more thorough and more active opposition to the prevailing religion, occasioned much agitation in the Frankish church. Claudius was by birth a Spaniard, and is said to have been a pupil of Felix of Urgel, although he does not appear to have been a follower of the adoptionism doctrines. He was a diligent student of St. Augustine, but spoke contemptuously of the other fathers in general; and it would seem that from the doctrines of the great African teacher as to the nothingness of human merit he derived a strong dislike of the current opinions as to the means of attaining sanctity. He had gained reputation by commentaries on Scripture, of which some are still extant. He had been attached to the court of Lewis in Aquitaine and in the first year of his patron’s reign as emperor was appointed by him to the see of Turin, in the hope that he might be able to effect a reform among his clergy and in the neighbouring district. The emperor, however, could hardly have been prepared for reforms so extensive as those which Claudius attempted. Finding that the churches of his diocese were full of images and votive offerings, he at once unceremoniously ejected all such ornaments. No distinction was made in favour of historical pictures; and relics and crosses—objects which the eastern iconoclasts had spared—shared the same fate. To worship the images of saints, he said, is merely a renewal of the worship of demons under other names; to worship the cross is to join with the heathen in dwelling on the shame of the Saviour’s history, to the exclusion of his glorious resurrection; and he followed out this by arguing, in a somewhat ribald style, that, if the cross were to be reverenced on account of its connection with the Saviour, the same reason would enforce the veneration of all other objects which are mentioned as having been connected with Him. He opposed the worship of saints, supplications for their intercession, and the practice of dedicating churches to their honour. He also objected to the practice of pilgrimage; it was, he said, a mistake to expect benefit from visiting the shrine of St. Peter, inasmuch as the power of forgiving sins, which was bestowed on the apostles, belonged to them only during their lifetime, and on their death passed from them to others. On being pressed, however, he said that he did not absolutely either condemn or approve pilgrimages, because their effects were various in different persons. The proceedings of Claudius occasioned much excitement. Pope Paschal, on hearing of them, expressed his displeasure, although he did not venture to take any active steps against a bishop who had been so lately promoted by the emperor’s personal favour; but Claudius made light of the papal censure—declaring that the title of apostolical belongs not to him who occupies an apostle’s seat, but to one who does an apostle’s work.

Theodemir, an abbot, who had been a friend and admirer of Claudius, on receiving one of his works which was inscribed to himself, took alarm and wrote against him. Claudius defended himself in a scornful and contemptuous tone. He met the charge of impiety by taxing his opponents with superstition and idolatry; and, in answer to Theodemir’s statement that he had founded a sect which had spread into Gaul and Spain, he declared that he had nothing to do with sects, but was devoted to the cause of unity.  The controversy was carried further. The Frankish clergy in general, who had at first been disposed to countenance Claudius, now took offence. Some of them requested Lewis to examine into the bishop’s opinions, and the emperor, with the advice of his counsellors, pronounced against him. A synod of bishops was then held; but Claudius, who had been cited, refused to appear before it, and is said to have spoken of it as an assembly of asses.

Dungal, a deacon of Scottish or Irish birth, who had been established by Charlemagne as a teacher at Pavia, wrote against Claudius in 827, with a great display of learning, but without much critical judgment; he speaks, for example, of images as having been used in the church from the very beginning—about eight hundred and twenty years or more —although he produces no instance earlier than Paulinus of Nola, who flourished about the year 400. Jonas, bishop of Orleans, one of the commissioners who had been sent to Rome after the synod of Paris, also undertook a refutation of Claudius at the request of Lewis, but before it was finished, both Claudius and the emperor died. Jonas had abandoned the work, when, in consequence of finding that the errors of Claudius continued to be spread by means of his writings and of his pupils, he was induced to complete it in three books, which are dedicated to Charles the Bald, and are severally devoted to the defence of images, of the cross, and of pilgrimages. But, although Jonas is vehement in his opposition to Claudius (whom he charges with having left behind him writings of an Arian tendency), he preserves on the subject of images the medium characteristic of the Frankish church, whereas Dungal had approximated to the Nicene view; and he denounces in strong terms the superstitious doctrines and practices of the Greeks. As a lesser matter, it may be mentioned that he frequently remarks on the ignorance of Latin style, and even of grammar, which the bishop of Turin had displayed.

Claudius died in possession of his see. It has been erroneously said that he went to the length of separating his church from the communion of Rome, and the hostility to Roman peculiarities which was afterwards cherished in the Alpine valleys has been traced to him, either as its originator, or as a link in a chain begun by Vigilantius, or earlier; but, although it may be reasonably supposed that his writings, like those of others who more or less strongly opposed the prevailing system of religion, had some effect in maintaining the spirit of such opposition, the idea of a succession of connected “witnesses” against the Roman church appears to be altogether groundless. In Claudius, as in many other reformers, the intemperance of his zeal marred the goodness of his designs.

Notwithstanding the difference on a subject which had elsewhere occasioned so many anathemas, the Frankish church remained in uninterrupted communion with Rome. It continued until nearly the end of the century to adhere to its distinctive view; but about that time a change becomes visible, which gradually assimilated its doctrines on the question of images to those which were sanctioned by the papal authority.

About the time which we have now reached, the law of the church received an extraordinary addition, which in the sequel produced effects of vast importance. The collection of canons and decretals made by Dionysius Exiguus had been generally used throughout the west. But from the beginning of the seventh century another collection, which (whether rightly or otherwise) bore the name of Isidore of Seville, had been current in Spain; and, as it contained some pieces which were not in the compilation of Dionysius, it also found its way into France. The same venerated name was now employed to introduce another set of documents, distinguished by some new and very remarkable features.

In the older collections, the decretal epistles had begun with that addressed by pope Siricius to Himerius, in 385. But the writer who styled himself Isidore produced nearly a hundred letters written in the names of earlier bishops of Rome, from Clement and Anacletus, the contemporaries of the apostles, with some letters from supposed correspondents of the popes, and the acts of some hitherto unknown councils. The spuriousness of these pieces is established by gross anachronisms, and by other instances of ignorance and clumsiness; as, that persons who lived centuries apart are represented as corresponding with each other; that the early bishops of Rome are made to quote the Scriptures according to St. Jerome’s version; and that some of them, who lived while Rome was yet heathen, complain of the invasion of church-property by laymen in terms which evidently betray a writer of the Carolingian period. Some of the forgeries included in the work—among them, the Donation of Constantine—were of earlier manufacture : a great part of the other materials has been traced to various sources—to Scripture, to the Latin ecclesiastical writers, to the service books of the church, to genuine canons and decretals, to the Theodosian code, and to the Pontifical Books (a set of legendary lives of Roman bishops, which was continued by Anastasius the Librarian, and is usually cited under his name). The work of the forger consisted chiefly in gathering these materials (in great part from secondary sources), in connecting them together, and in giving them the appearance of a binding authority.

The date of the composition must be placed between the sixth council of Paris, in 829, from which the forger has borrowed, and that of Quiercy, in 857, where the decretals were cited as authoritative by Charles the Bald. That they were of Frankish origin is proved by certain peculiarities of language; and Mayence is now commonly supposed to have been the place of the fabrication. Hincmar says that the collection was brought from Spain by Riculf, who held that see from 787 to 814—a statement which is probably founded on Riculf’s having obtained from Spain a copy of the older Isidorian collection, of which the forger availed himself. And Benedict, a “Levite” (or deacon) of Mayence (Mainz), who between 840 and 847 added to the capitularies of Charlemagne and Lewis three books of spurious collections, which have much in common with the decretals, states that he chiefly derived his materials from the archives of his cathedral, where they had been deposited by Riculf and had been discovered by the existing archbishop, Autcar, or Otgar. This Benedict has been regarded by many writers in late times as the forger of the decretals also, although it seems to be questionable whether the evidence will suffice to bring the work home to him.

In these decretals, the privileges of the clergy in general, and especially of the bishops, are set very high; and the power of the pope is extended beyond anything that had as yet been known. He appears as the supreme head, lawgiver, and judge of the church, the one bishop of the whole. All causes may be carried to him by appeal; he alone is entitled to decide all weighty on difficult causes; without his leave, not even provincial councils may be called, nor have their judgments any validity. A very large proportion of the decretals relates to accusations against bishops; indeed almost every one of the popes who are personated has something to say on this subject. Bishops are declared to be exempt from all secular judgment; evil bishops are to be borne as an infliction of Providence, which will redound to the eternal benefit of those who submit to it; the judgment of them is to be left to God. If, however, charges should be brought against a bishop, care is taken, by the rigour of the conditions which are laid down as necessary, to render the prosecution of such charges almost impossible. No layman may accuse a bishop, or even a clerk; for the disciple is not above his master, nor must the sheep accuse their shepherd. A clerk who would accuse his bishop is infamous, as a son taking arms against his father; and therefore he is not to be heard. In order to prove a bishop guilty, seventy-two witnesses are required; and the qualifications of witnesses are defined with a strictness which seems intended rather to shut out evidence than to secure its trustworthiness.

There was, however, one grade in the hierarchy on which the decretals bore hardly—the metropolitans. In the Frankish system, the trial of a bishop had belonged to his metropolitan, from whom the last appeal lay to the sovereign; but by the decretals the metropolitan was powerless without the concurrence of his suffragans; he could not even assemble these except by the pope’s permission, and all decisive judgment in such matters belonged to the pope alone. And now a broad distinction was drawn between ordinary metropolitans and the higher grade of primates, who were distinguished by the commission of vicars under the pope.

It is matter of conjecture in what interest this forgery was originally made—whether in that of the pope, to whom it assigned a supremacy so awful in its alleged origin and unlimited in its extent; or of the bishops, whom it emancipated not only from all secular control, but also from that of metropolitans and provincial synods, while it referred their causes to the more distant tribunal of the pope, as the only judge competent to decide them; or whether, without any definite purpose as to the mutual relations of different classes in the hierarchy, it was merely intended to assert the privileges of the clergy against the oppressions which they suffered in the troubled reigns of Charlemagne’s successors, and to claim for them a position independent of the temporal power. The opinion of the most judicious inquirers appears to point to a combination of the second and third of these motives—that the decretals were fabricated for the benefit of the clergy, and more especially of the bishops; that they were designed to protect the property of the church against invasion, and to fix the privileges of the hierarchy on a basis independent of secular authority; that the metropolitans were especially assailed because they had been the chief instruments by which the Carolingian princes had been able to govern the bishops, to depose such of these as were obnoxious, and to sway the decisions of synods. The popes were eventually the principal gainers by the forgery; but this appears to have been a result beyond the contemplation of those who planned or who executed it.

That the author’s design was, as he himself professes, to supply a digest of the existing ecclesiastical laws—to promote the advancement of religion and morality—will hardly be believed on his own authority, although in our own time the assertion has found champions whose ability is more conspicuous than their sincerity. Yet we may do well not to judge him too severely for his imposture, but are bound to remember the vicious principles which his age had inherited from several centuries which preceded it as to the lawfulness of using falsehood for purposes which were supposed to be good : nor, although he differed from other forgers in the greatness of the scale on which he wrought, and although his forgery has exceeded all others in the importance of the results, would it be easy to show any essential moral difference between his act and the acts of others who had fabricated documents; of less extent, or of the innumerable legendary writers who imposed on the world fictions as to the lives and miracles of saints.

It has been argued in the Roman interest, that the false decretals made no change in the actual system of the church. The only considerable new claim, it is said, which they advanced in behalf of the pope, was that which regarded provincial councils; and this, it is added, never actually took effect. To such arguments it has been answered that the system of the decretals was a direct reversal of that which immediately preceded them in the government of the Frankish church; but the answer, although true, is even narrower than the proposition which it is intended to meet. To rest such a proposition on an analysis of the decretals is, however, obviously a fallacy. Although it may be shown in detail that this or that portion of them was older— that things which were now laid down universally had before been said with a more limited application—that claims had been made, that jurisdiction had been exercised; although, in truth, the main outline of the papacy had been marked out four centuries earlier by Leo the Great;—the consolidation of the scattered fragments into one body, the representation of the later papal claims as having come down by unbroken tradition from the apostolic times in the character of acknowledged rights, could not but produce a vast effect; and the difference between the earlier and the following history abundantly proves their influence.

The story of the introduction of these documents in France and at Rome will be given in the next chapter. Published in an uncritical age, they bespoke a favorable reception by holding out to various classes redress of their grievances and increase of their privileges; even those who were galled by them in one respect were glad, like Hincmar of Reims, to make use of them where it was convenient to do so. They were therefore admitted without any expressed doubt of their genuineness, although some questions were raised as to their application or obligatory power. In the next century, they were cited in a collection of canons by Regino, abbot of Prum; and they continued to be used by the compilers of similar works, until in the twelfth century Gratian made them the foundation of his Decretum, the great law-book of the church during the middle ages, and accommodated to their principles all the more genuine matter which he admitted. Although sometimes called in question during the long interval before the Reformation, they yet maintained their public credit; and, while the foundation has long been given up, even by the extremest writers of the Roman church, the superstructure yet remains.

 

 

CHAPTER II.

THE FRANKISH CHURCH AND THE PAPACY.

FROM THE DEATH OF LEWIS THE PIOUS TO THE DEPOSITION OF CHARLES THE FAT.

A.D. 840-887.